The next few months were a blur of teaching, exploring, and learning more about nearly every aspect of Korea - her students, her new environment, and her friends.  To say the time passed without incident would be wildly inaccurate.  On the contrary, they passed with so many incidents that Caden could hardly remember them all.

Her Korean language skills steadily increased with regular practice, and her teaching skills seemed to do the same.  Likewise her students’ language skills also seemed to be on the incline, which she hope somewhat supported her perception of her own teaching abilities.

Those first few months on her own (without Teacher Park) were full of plenty of learning experiences and firsts that would become the foundation of her assimilation into her new home and culture.

It was also filled with food.

Lots and lots of food…

Luckily for her waistline, it was also filled with plenty of hills and walking (literally everywhere) which helped to even everything out.

Caden was quite happy in the development of her relationships - with the boys, with her friends.  She was starting to become more familiar with her environment and therefore more confident in exploring and discovering on her own.

Rather than recall every detail, much of that time came back to her in snapshots.

The first time she treated all of her students out to a meal.  Walking along crowded city streets with her friends at night, on their way to sing norebang.

Discovering her favorite street food nearby her apartment.  Having all of the ahjussis and ahjummas in her neighborhood begin to recognize her on sight, and eventually speaking to her in Korean.

Witnessing the full glory of Jung Su and Soonbok’s drunken debauchery.  Meeting with Daeho just before he got off work and being pleasantly spoiled by his grumpy manager.

Watching all the random performances in the park.  Randomly meeting friends for drinks in the middle of the day and ending up talking until dark.

Meeting with Teacher Park for meals once she’d returned from her honeymoon.  Happily watching her sunbaenim look happier than she ever had.

As for most Westerners, the age hierarchy and the Confucianist based culture took a lot of getting used to, but once she’d experienced it for a while firsthand, Caden was able to begin to appreciate the way that the differences in age and position can affect the interactions between herself and those around her.  She could appreciate her position as ‘unnie/noona’ among her friends (despite being the only foreigner and non-student) and the odd combination of teacher-close-in-age to the Big Bang boys.

This allowed her to easily take charge in class, but also understand the boys’ desire to take care of her outside lessons.  She noticed herself becoming less standoffish in that regard, which in turn allowed the boys to become more comfortable with her, which she liked.

Although many, many mistakes were made, very few of them were recalled in a negative light.  They were all learning experiences that helped her to continuously improve. Jung Su in particular loved to about silly mistakes, while Soonbok loved nothing more than to chide him mercilessly for doing so.

She couldn’t lie and say that it had all been a field of daisies - there were times when she became so frustrated that she could scream, and more than one night had been spent curled into a wet, sobbing ball on her bed.  But she’d had those days in America, Japan, anywhere - she wasn’t going to hold the hard times against her new home.

Every day required more effort on her part than she could have possibly imagined, but she was also incredibly happy to do it.  It was the first time that she realized it was possible to actually chart her personal growth - she could look back and mark the ways she had changed in a significant way and grown as a person.  She felt quite accomplished

From the end of August through the beginning of November here is a brief look into Caden’s life as it was remembered - in bits and pieces.

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Hey there party people ^^

Here's a little in between/introduction to the upcoming chapters.  I didn't want to attach it to the next chapter, so here's a little blurb.

Not to worry!  A much more exciting chapter will be up shortly ^^

After that... I'll really be caught up with my writing.  I'll force myself not to have any more 4 year breaks lol

<3's all around!