free!

I am free of one student loan as of today. I paid off stupidass wells fargo. YEAH!!!! it feels good, friends. it feels good. it's the smaller of my two loans but the one with the highest interest and biggest monthly payment. i won't be able to pay the bigger one completely off this year but i will be able to pay off enough so that beard and i are equal in our debt and still put some away towards some sort of retirement. coming back to korea for a second year was definitely a good idea financially.
i've been wanting to put a few thousand towards retirement for a few years now but it seems things keep coming up. i was going to put money for this loan into an IRA but i really really really wanted to get rid of it. but now, by my not-at-all strict calculations, i'll be able to get even with beard and still have enough to invest and travel in november/december and move back to Bellingham.
recently i was in a funk and wanting to move back/quit my job/change everything. a big funk. i felt like i was working my ass off and was unappreciated and tired. but then a couple of days ago, i got over it. paying off this loan helped. it made me realize WHY i'm working my ass off. And really, I like working. True I get SUPER sick of teaching at my hogwan. But the kids in general are still really cute and continually surprise me.

on a different note: today is mine and beard's 8 year anniversary. Eight years is a LONG time. I can't believe i'm not sick of him yet. OK, not really. We work well together. Rosaleen bought us each a choco muffin and put a candle in it at work on Friday. She put a note underneath that said to write 7 things we liked about each other. At first I scoffed at it, joked (i can maybe think of three) but really it was nice. (i just asked beard and he said he though it was cool but if asked again later he would scoff at it). It was nice to take a minute and think about why we like each other. And really, it was a minute, Rosaleen was waiting.