Have you ever felt like you are spreading yourself just a little too thin?? Like maybe you should have said no to at least one of the things you are currently juggling? Welcome to my month, or months I should say!! Not only am I trying to keep this blog up and running so my friends and family can see what is going on in my life, I recently enrolled in a professional photography program back home to fine tune my eye and give me the technical know-how to feel confident in the field! I also found out that I would have my first solo photography exhibition in my home city! I was selected to have four pieces displayed in a central Starbucks location for the month of February and then would be transferred to an even more central location for the month of March!

I was so stoked to be selected and couldn’t believe how lucky I was!! The only thing is trying to organize a show while living overseas is a bit tricky! I am amazingly lucky to have a wonderful retired mother who has the time and patience to help me out, but the perfectionist I that I am made it painful not to be able to control every last detail! Many of my recent nights have been spent emailing explicit, patronizing and slightly apologetic emails to my mother, uploading, deleting, and uploading again photo upon photo to various developing sights in order to get the perfect print created. Sizing photos, well getting Graham to size photos cause I’ve no idea how to do technical stuff like that and then transferring from one USB to another only to find it wasn’t sized properly or named correctly and the photo site wouldn’t accept it so we had to start all over again. I really thought it would be much easier, but when it came down to it there were so many tedious little things that had to be done! There were times I’d just slam my computer shut and head to the corner store to find the cheapest bottle of wine possible!

For some reason during all of this I decided to sign up with National Geographic’s One Shot site and start to enter assignments in order to get my pictures out there more. I was beyond happy to find that the current assignment was “The Moment” where you had to submit a photograph which depicted a certain moment in time. My immediate thought was of this shot:

Which then led me to dive into my picture files and before I knew it an entire day had passed and I had so many pictures I wanted to choose I didn’t know where to begin! Only three photos were allowed to be submitted and after consulting with Graham I finally narrowed it down to my original choice as well as:

I was up until the wee small hours of the morning when I turned to look at the clock and realized SH#*!!! I still have a day job that I have to be alert for!!! Not only do I have to be alive and energetic for the kindergarten and elementary school kids I teach, I also have to stay awake and ‘on’ for about 10 hours a day. I love to teach and take all my jobs seriously, therefore preparation and organization are essential to my days!! Where I find time to make worksheets and plan lessons I’ve no idea! I guess it helps that I’ve started doing it in my sleep!!

Did I forget to mention I also enjoy having a social life?? Between school, teaching, contests, exhibitions, editing and studying I try my best to get out and see some of the great people I’ve met over here! Which sometimes throws a wrench in my plans because soju and mekju are usually thrown into the mix and thanks to my old age I am usually hung for a good day or 2 after… and when hung, nothing gets done!! Not even phone calls to all my wonderful people back home who I would love to keep in touch with more often, but thanks to the insane time difference I am usually sleeping before I get a chance to call them!!

In the midst of all that we also headed to Tokyo for a whirlwind 4 day vacation?!? It was lunar New Year and Japan was a must see destination, but of course nothing got done while we were gone, well other than having fun and touring around that is!! I would love to put some pics up, but I haven’t even finished editing my Beijing shots from Christmas yet!! One of these days I swear!!

Aaaaahhhhhhh!!!! I don’t even want to listen to myself anymore!! So many plates in the air and I don’t want a single one to drop!! Wish me luck as I continue on this jam packed journey please!!! Though, I wouldn’t change any of it!!!