Day 224 -- Solnal and Valentine's Day

This weekend I went back to Nonsan for Solnal and Valentine's Day, which happened to fall on the same day this year. Solnal is the lunar new year celebration in which Koreans traditionally honored their ancestors and offered food. Other traditions include flying kites with wishes written on them and eating dokkguk, rice cake soup. DY cooked dokkguk for lunch on Sunday for me and one of his Army friends, Min Oo, who brought his English teacher girlfriend. She was actually not ashamed to use her English, so it was a good time.

Solnal was also Valentine's Day, so Min Oo's girlfriend (who said her English name was Pink) brought the felt house she made for Min Oo. It was filled with candy and kind of tacky looking, big and gaudy and a little like a kindergarten craft. I guess that makes sense though because she's a kindergarten teacher. I thought the chocolates I made for DY looked cuter and more sincere.

Yeah, cute as hell, right? I can totally do the Korean-girlfriend thing. DY said he hated getting gifts on Valentine's Day though because the bigger Valentine's Day is, the better White Day has to be. HAHA TOO BAD

In unrelated topics, it is around that time of year to think about extending for a second year of teaching English in Korea or finding a biopharmaceutical job back home to America. I'm getting a lot of differing opinions, but when I lay out the pros and cons for me--personally--I really feel like I have more to gain at this point in my life by staying in Korea. Professionally, maybe it's not the best choice because staying out of the field for long isn't a great resume bullet, but I guess in my less-than-wise-years I'm figuring that there's the rest of my life to work on my professional life. I should do this adventure-kind-of-stuff while I'm young, right?

Right?