The Future

No, this is not about the year 2012, when, because of the Mayan calendar, either the world is going to undergo numerous gigantoid natural disasters OR humans will undergo a radical change in consciousness. Depends who you ask (ooh, that could start an argument: I've decided to stop trying to use the word "whom").

Nor is this about the fact that some grammarians insist that English only has two tenses: the present and the past. What we normally consider the future tense they consider a sort of mood, with the word "will" indicating our feeling about the action, much like we use "might" to assess probability, "can" to assess possibility, or "should" to assess propriety or duty. ("Will," then, indicates that we are nearly certain about the event, since knowledge of the future is technically impossible.)

It is about my predicted employment status, which is: employed. Here's the rundown:

Actually, it's way too complicated for a good rundown. Let's just say I prepped the docs last year in April when I was applying for jobs, had to use some for a summer camp visa, had to get them replaced, had to drive around and wait around a lot, then took them to Korea, got a few job offers, accepted one, the school had some legal troubles (they were found innocent), my position got postponed, I left my docs with Chris when I went to India, they were turned in to immigration the day before they expired, they were all processed, I received a visa application number in my email, I took the number to Mumbai, got the visa after 1.5 days waiting and minimal hassle, and now have it in my possession.

About the job:
Decent pay, plus nice apartment very close to where I used to live.
Class 9-11 and, 1-3, and sometimes also 4-5.
No Fridays.
Several (3-5) months off. Paid.

Can't beat that, eh?

So I've been making some plans for my return. Here are a few things I'd like to do next year:

-Host vegan (or maybe just vegetarian) potlucks/movie nights.
-Start bicycling all over the country on the sweet bike Chris will hopefully sell me (so that I can be prepared for a future massive bike trip).
-Learn to play the harmonica, and maybe the guitar.
-Join political protests relating to stuff I'm not happy about.
-Learn some Chinese calligraphy (already have a teacher and a classmate lined up, along with knowledge of about 300 or 400 characters).
-Get a Chinese conversation partner to help me study (see above re: bike trip).
-Join some teaching organization and try to figure out how to run awesome, useful, conflict/stress-free lessons.
-Use tests for only 10% of the grading in my classes.
-Finish becoming fluent in Korean.
-Take a Vipassana meditation class and do some temple stays.
-Read a lot of stuff about linguistics, politics, and food from Kyungpook Univ's massive English library, which I am assuming exists but might not.

Anything else to add?