Art, Meditation, Tea

Dear friends and family,
I've hit the 8-month mark in Korea, and to briefly sum it up- I absolutely love it here. Let me share some (and I mean just a fraction) of my many adventures here.
In January, I met Miae, an amazing Korean artist. She went to Art school in Georgia for 5 years, and now runs an art and English school in my city. We became really good friends, and we hang out a lot. She propositioned that I teach at her art school, to her little ones, and I obliged. Her students are so cute, and each week I came up with a simple art lesson. Then I let the kids go crazy with it, taking the idea to other planets of imagination. I no longer teach those classes, though.
In February she started giving me art lessons. She's taught me so much, and now, after lots of practice, I can draw still life objects quite precisely. Many nights before bed I have so much energy that I draw for hours.
My Korean continues to improve. I have a fairly strong foundation now regarding grammar and vocabulary, and I'm able to have a basic conversation. I study everyday by myself, and I meet with my exchange partner twice a week. Best of all I can practice anywhere I go, by reading signs and talking to people. By the time I leave, my Korean will be rocking. Besides work, these two activities, art and Korean, are constant in my life here.
Teaching has become quite easy in a lot of ways. I know what to expect from the students, and I've bonded with most of them. The material is so easy that there is no prep work necessary, and the few minutes I have before class I can envision exactly how the 50 minute class will go. That's the native speaker advantage-my Korean coteachers on the other hand, even though they speak English fluently have to come early to prepare. Still, some classes are hard, but I'd say that most are enjoyable. My hardest class used to be this beginner middle school class where 4 out of the 7 students were troublemakers. Their English was minimal, and the behavior was horrible, talking, not paying attention, etc. I dreaded that class every time, and prayed that it would get easier. Amazingly, over the course of a month, the worst kids dropped out (probably since we were so hard on them), and the class size reduced to 2 students. The last time I had the class, only one student showed up, and I felt so happy that the hardest class was now the easiest.
And now for some anecdotes:
In February, a friend and I held an art exhibit at a café in my city. It was a combination of my photography and his art. The opening night a ton of people came, and the manager told me that was the busiest the café had ever been. The show lasted over a month.
A few weeks ago I attended an osho aum meditation program in Bundang. Osho is an active, group oriented meditation, where a range of emotions is expressed over the course of a 3 hour period. There are 12 stages, each one 15 minutes long, and each one a different emotion. The emotions ranged from negative to positive, from sad, to laughing, and everything in between. I learned how to express my emotions totally, as well as how to control them. It was a very intense experience.
A group of friends and I put together a zine called whole zine. We released our first issue in April, and I contributed an article. It looks really cool in the DIY style, and it's fun to pass around something we created to friends and strangers. We're working on the second issue (I'm going to write an article about my experience with osho meditation).
This past weekend I went to a tea bowl festival in Munkyeong, 2 hours south of seoul. We sampled a few different kinds of teas, met the most famous potter in Korea, and even got to make a tea bowl. When we returned to seoul, we went to the big parade for buddha's birthday. Seoul is an awesome city, with so much to offer. Because of that, I find myself there almost every weekend.
In less than 2 weeks Vijay is coming to visit me. I'm so excited to have a piece of home here, and to show him my life. I'm getting my place ready for him, and I'm starting to think about all the fun stuff we have to do. He'll be here for 3 weeks or so.
So, that's a glimpse of what's going on. Happy Spring!
Love
Daniel