Home!!

Happy holidays, everyone!! We hope you're all doing well! Daniel and I are sorry that we have been remiss in blogging the last couple of months! I finally have some time to write and add pictures and will therefore attempt to summarize some of the highlights from our lives recently. Since December 19th, we have been home in the United States! We spent the first week and a half with my family--it was wonderful to be home with them--and yesterday, we arrived at Daniel's house and had a lovely second Christmas Eve (including my first lefse-making) with his family. We plan to spend the next week and a half visiting with family and friends and, unfortunately, finishing some grading once we get back to Seoul on the 8th. Here are some pictures with brief explanations from the last month...


This is the resort on Korea's east coast where we spent Thanksgiving (thanks to a discount from the school) with a few friends. It was beautiful!


The ocean!


Daniel on top of Seorak Mountain (near the resort).


A statue of the Buddha at Seorak Mountain National Park.


Shopping with Clara in Insadong (a nice but touristy part of Seoul).


Home!!! Daniel with Diana.


Our gingerbread party!


My gingerbread house.


Our finished products! A fun day with Alison, Claire, Ruhan, Robby, and Danny!


With Diana in front of our tree.


Our tree.


Lefse-making at Daniel's house!!!


I'm about to flip the lefse, while Sarah is rolling out a new one.


Daniel and Sarah setting up the nativity.


Happy New Year!!

Love,
Leslie

The Silence of the Aitches

Today in Social Studies, we took a quiz on the geography of South Asia. One of the most diabolically fun things about my job is that I get to make my pupils learn whatever geographical locations and features I think are important. Few moments here in Korea have given me greater pleasure than the time I leaned back in my chair, steepled my fingers, and with a faraway gleam in my eye, said to myself..."Yeessss...very good...they will be required to learn the locations of the Indus and Ganges rivers. The Brahmaputra will be extra credit. Mwahahahahahaha. Mwahahahahahaha! MWA-HA-HA-HA-HAH!"

But I digress.

South Asia includes such countries as Bhutan, and such national capitals as New Delhi, Kathmandu, Thimphu, Dhaka, and such landforms the Brahmaputra river, etc. Of course, all these silent aitches present a challenge to memorization. So correcting the quizzes, I've seen a lot of Dehli, Thimpu, Dakha, etc. The most entertaining is when they throw a silent aitch into a country name that has none. I have seen both "Bhurma" and "Burmha" given as names for Burma (the country immediately to the east of India whose oppressive military government would rather that people called it Myanmar).

A Very Special Episode of "Korean Eighth Graders Write the Darndest Things!"

Assignment: write a critique of the story "The Treasure of Lemon Brown" from the perspective of the article "Homeless in America."  (Basically: is the story's portrayal of Lemon Brown, a homeless character, realistic?)

"In the last part, Lemon Brown said that he'll be moving to East St. Louis so he could be safe from the thugs who are trying to hurt him.  It's unknown how he'll move and why moving to East St. Louis rather than any other places.  Homeless people wouldn't have money for expensive transportation unless they manage to hide inside an empty backpack, hitchhike, or hijack a vehicle."

"He picks [food] out of the trash sometimes, but he doesn't seem weak from hunger.  Either he gets a lot of good food from the trash or it's just not real."

"I wonder how he [Lemon Brown] ate, how he washed, and how he slept because in the story it did not tell about Lemon Brown's supplies like toothbrush, sleeping bag."

"I researched in google and it says that the most reason homeless people doesn't leave their place is that other people might steal their seats."

Gratuitous Song Post #2

Dear fellow pirates,

I miss you.  Please come to Korea and visit Leslie and me.  We live right next to Wolgye station in Nowon-gu.  Bring a guitar or two.  We have a copy of Rise Up Singing and easy access to a photocopier (although I think the principal wouldn't be too happy if she found out we were using it for non-school-related things).  I will bake you cookies (which will have no structural integrity whatsoever, probably because the flour is different here) and give you glasses of milk (which you will think tastes funny), and we will sit around the living room and eat and drink and sing.

Love,

Daniel

Warning to non-pirates: strong language (G-- D---) in the following video.

Gratuitous Song Post

One of the best things about not sleeping for a really long time (say, 36-40 hours), or being sleep-deprived for an extended period (say a week or two) is the moment when you realize that you don't have to (or can't) stay awake any longer: you can (must) just lie down and sleep.  The very best thing is the feeling you get when you lie down, pull the covers up around you, and put all worries from your mind.  At that point, you can't worry: you're too tired to worry anymore.  I think at those moments I am more carefree than I ever have been since I was a child.  It almost makes it worth staying up for that long.  Maybe that's why I still have such bad sleep habits.

This song reminds me of those moments, and maybe that's why I love it so much.

[FIRST NAME REDACTED] Kim's mom just gave me cologne and aftershave

That's the kind of gift that says, "[FIRST NAME REDACTED] told me you smell bad, so I thought I would do something to help you out."

It's parent-teacher conference time here at APIS. We had a half-day today (with 25-minute long periods). Then we spent the afternoon into the evening talking with parents. We'll spend the whole day tomorrow in conferences. Yay.

The mom who gave me cologne was the first one to come in. (The students all came with their parents, so [FIRST NAME REDACTED] was there too.) Her son is in my homeroom, so I gave them his report card. Most of the rest of the conference was taken up by the mother yelling at her son in Korean, pointing to his religion grade and saying "F!" and pointing to his GPA and saying "2.58!" It was not a very productive discussion.

My final conference of the day was with a kid whose father is the CEO of a huge company in Korea. The mother spoke no English. The father thought he spoke better English than he did. I asked him after we had talked for a while if he had any further concerns. He proceeded to talk for about five minutes about his concern that his son have enough time to study and also play sports so he would stay healthy. I was not sure how to respond to it. He seemed to expect a response, but there didn't seem to be an appropriate response besides, "Well, in my expert opinion, [FIRST NAME REDACTED] should be studying for three hours every night, so that would probably leave him time for about an hour and a half of sports every day." And I wasn't going to say that. Then he talked for another five minutes--I really don't know what he was trying to get at, but it had something to do with prestigious high schools and colleges. Again, he seemed to expect an answer but did not provide me with anything to respond to, so I was a little baffled.

Now I'm really tired. That was oddly taxing, just like everyone said it would be. Just one more day of it: they can hurt you, but they can't stop the clock.


Leslie's Addendum:

I didn't get cologne, but I did get chocolates, tea, an umbrella, Burt's Bees lip balm, and sweet Korean dumplings. One more thing--we got to see the awesome Clara Kim on Saturday!! This was her house-warming present--delicious tira misu:



I can't wait until conferences are over! I saw seven homeroom kids and twelve other kids that I teach this afternoon and evening. Some conferences were very pleasant, while others were very awkward. During one conference, the 10th grader looked like he was about to cry the entire time. I felt really bad, but he got a 91% in my class. I think he was mostly upset about his other grades. Oh well! A few parents wanted to talk to me about college and AP classes. One 6th grade mother is already very worried about her son getting into a great college, and he's an amazing kid! He has a 98 in my class and has almost perfect grades in every other class. I told her she shouldn't start worrying for another few years... :)

Daniel's addendum:

Not only did Leslie get chocolates, tea, an umbrella, Burt's Bees lip balm, and sweet Korean dumplings, but she also got four Halloween candygrams from her students.  I didn't get any.  It's pretty obvious whose students love their teacher more.  Not that I'm jealous or anything.  (He wrote, and resolutely blinked back his tears.)

The Scariest Thing I've Ever Read

From a student's journal:

[Discussing an episode of CSI: New York, which his mother encourages him to watch to help his English, and in which there was some bad language]

"My mom said you have to learn swear words, too. Because I can use in situation like bar fighting."

I'm so glad I'm preparing these young minds for success in every aspect of their lives...

Happy Chuseok!

Happy Chuseok!! Today is the beginning of our four-day weekend in honor of Chuseok, an important Korean holiday. It is a bit like Thanksgiving for Koreans; they spend the weekend with their families, often leaving Seoul to visit their parents or grandparents, to whom they give big gift boxes of fruit, or they visit the graves of their ancestors. In addition, instead of having class yesterday, we had an all-school field trip. The pre-school through second graders went to see a show called "Bubble World," while the third through tenth graders went to an amusement park called Everland. Since I am a ninth grade homeroom teacher, I had collected my students' permission slips and money, and yesterday morning, I went over the rules with them and gave them my cell phone number in case they had any problems.

Once we arrived at the park, which was a little more than an hour away, I, like the other homeroom teachers, gave them their passes, told them where to meet us at 2:50 pm, and set them free to enjoy the day (which was 80 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny). This meant that all of us secondary teachers also had the day to ourselves (I only received one call from a student). The highlight of the day was riding a new (as of last year) roller coaster called the T Express. This is apparently the steepest wooden roller coaster in the world, with the first incline at an angle of 77 degrees, and it was awesome! I was afraid at several points during the ride that I was going to fly out of my seat. It was actually the only roller coaster at the park (the other was closed for inspection). The other "ride" we did was the "safari," which involved waiting in line for a long time and riding in a bus through areas of free-roaming lions, tigers, and bears (and a liger). It was cool but also very sad (the animals did not look happy). Otherwise, we walked around with some other teachers, ate lunch, and watched a too-long "Happy Halloween" parade. One we arrived back at school, Daniel had to talk to a couple parents about their son's inappropriately helping other students with homework. Then, even though we were pretty exhausted, we went to another great concert by the Seoul Philharmonic with Sophie, the band teacher; they played Rachmaninoff's "Isle of the Dead," Sibelius's violin concerto, and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Now, we're cleaning the apartment and getting ready to relax and work. Hope you're all doing well!

Some pictures:


The sunset from our apartment


A river near our apartment



It was a beautiful walk but full of mosquitoes.


A stall near our apartment.


Caitlin and Lee on the safari ride at Everland


The two of us (with other teachers in the seats in front of us)


He was this close to my face.


One of the poor bears


The T Express


The beginning of the Halloween parade


The view while walking back to the main entrance

Gems from Student Papers

I assigned my eighth graders a paper comparing and contrasting the poem "Richard Cory" by E.A. Robinson and the song "Richard Cory" by Simon & Garfunkel.  Here are a few quotes from their rough drafts that I thought were funny, and I think some of you might like them too.

"After I listened to this song, I felt hollowness inside me.  Maybe it was just because I was hungry but maybe it's because I felt pity for the man who wanted to become Richard Cory."

"The song was bright and cheerful even though it had one line that shows sorrow; the part when Richard Cory put a bullet through his head."

"'The Song Richard Cory' was about two singers named Simon and Garfunkel.  The song was about the two singer that expressed their feelings and facts about Richard Cory.  When you listen to the chorus part, you'll understand how Simon and Garfunkel felt working in Richard Cory's factory."

"The poem, 'Richard Cory' was a man who was rich but committed suicide.  Except for being rich, he was clean, wearing modestly dressed.  Also he was well taught.  But the problem was, he fluttered when he talked.  For example, "Good-morning."

That's all for now...I'm not giving these back tomorrow after all, and I may find a few more good ones as I continue to work through them.

Good night from tonight!  (It is now tonight for most of you, right?)

H1N1 "vacation"

Well, H1N1 did hit our school--four kids tested positive for the flu in less than a week, so the Ministry of Health advised our school to close for at least a week. Since the fourth diagnosis arrived Wednesday evening, the school was closed on Thursday and Friday and for the rest of this week. We (the teachers) will be at school on Friday for an "in-service day" (apparently we attend a lot of meetings), but we won't see the students again until the 14th. But because this week is supposed to count as "school" (so we don't have to make up the days at the end of the year), we still have to assign and grade homework for when we would normally meet. Most of my kids have been very good about emailing me their work on time, but I still haven't heard a word from a couple of them (and they don't respond to my emails)--they'll definitely get points deducted. :) The advantages to working from home have been that we can sleep in three hours later than usual (we've been waking up around 9:30 or 10) and we can correct assignments in our pajamas. ;) On top of that, we've had more time to hang out with the other teachers. Thursday night, we went out with thirteen of the others for Korean BBQ. This involves eating a lot of meat (in this case, pork) in lettuce leaves, along with some side dishes. I had a really good hot tofu dish and enjoyed the sides of garlic and pickled radish. We then went to one of the teacher's apartments and played the game Apples to Apples for a few hours--it was lots of fun (I won)! I've never played the game with so many people before. Daniel and I made a few shopping trips on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday--the first day, we went to this gigantic grocery/everything you need store (Home Plus), which includes a pet store and dry cleaners; the second day, I went to E-Mart with a couple of the other teachers; and yesterday, Daniel went back to HomePlus to get a few things that we were missing.

Yesterday morning, Daniel and I went to the International Lutheran Church in the center of the city. Daniel had checked it out last weekend and liked it; the congregation is, apparently, about 35% North American, 35% Korean, and 30% everything else. Afterward, we walked to Itaewon (which was about 15 minutes away) and had lunch at a Thai restaurant for our three-month anniversary. It was delicious! We also found a Body Shop, so I bought some shower gel. Last night, we had our first party as a married couple. We invited all of the teachers over, but we weren't sure how many of them were going to show up. It was very nice!! About 16 people came over, and we had a lovely time talking with all of them, while eating cheese and crackers and other snacks and drinking wine. Daniel also made cookies, which was more of an adventure than we expected it to be. First of all, we had a very hard time finding chocolate chips (this was one of the reasons Daniel went back to Home Plus yesterday), and for some reason, his batter turned out much more buttery than usual. So, between each batch, he had to add more flour to the mix. On top of that, our oven is missing racks that fit it, so we tried to bake them on a small rack at the bottom of the oven, but it was slanted, so the cookies started sliding toward the back of the oven. We changed tactics and ended up cooking them in the toaster oven. It worked in the end (everyone loved the cookies!), but the baking process took much longer than usual. :) Now, we have a bunch of glasses to clean and homework to grade. Love you!

Some pictures from the last couple of days:


Home Plus--it's crazy on the weekends; people especially like to hang out there and shop on Saturday night


Thai food!


The street in Itaewon where we found our Thai restaurant


The restaurant


The main street in Itaewon


Daniel's first batch of cookies :(


Daniel hard at work


He smiled in spite of his frustration

School Pictures

Daniel and I had a nice weekend, but, as usual, it passed too quickly. On Saturday evening, we went to the band teacher's apartment for wine and cheese, which was lovely, and then went with her and another teacher to Itaewon, the "American" part of Seoul (next to the army base). When we left the metro station, it felt like we were no longer in Korea--there were signs that I could read and people speaking a language I could understand. :) Daniel met up with five other male teachers and the three of us ladies met up with three other female teachers for our respective guys' and girls' nights. It was a lot of fun! The girls went to an Italian restaurant for dinner and a Belgian restaurant for drinks, and the guys went bar-hopping. There were so many ethnic restaurants in Itaewon (including a couple of Turkish kebab places), so I'm looking forward to going back! But the atmosphere there (especially in the crowded bar where we met up with the guys) was a little weird--it reminded me of college parties. When we returned to school today, we discovered that H1N1 is a big threat right now. One 7th grader was diagnosed with the flu, so his sister (one of my students) is also quarantined for the week; if they have two more cases of H1N1 within a seven day period, the school will need to close for the week. At school this morning, they checked everyone's (including the teachers') temperatures with ear thermometers and encouraged everyone to use hand sanitizer. If school closes, we still have to assign homework--my students were most seriously displeased. :) Here are some pictures that I took at APIS this afternoon:


The back of Daniel's classroom.


The front of Daniel's classroom.


The back of my classroom.


The front of my classroom.


From another angle.


One of the school buses.


The school (Daniel and I are on the 4th floor).

In Which Daniel, Having Eaten Three Tuna Melts and Working on his Third Hoegaarden, Reflects on his Experiences as a Teacher Thus Far

First let me say this: the tuna melts alone would have been sufficient reason to marry [NAME REDACTED TO MAKE IT MORE DIFFICULT FOR STUDENTS TO STUMBLE UPON THIS BLOG BY GOOGLING MY WIFE'S NAME]. As it was, I don't think I ever had one of her tuna melts before we were married, so it turned out to be just icing on the cake after all.

It's Friday evening, a quarter to eight; it will probably be well after eight by the time I post this. Leslie and I have finished supper. I washed enough bowls and spoons for both of us to have ice cream; it turned out we didn't have much left, so Leslie finished it off. She's watching Amélie as we both sit in the living room. I'm glad it's the weekend.

We've now been teaching for two weeks. I'd like to think I'm beginning to get the hang of it. Certainly, I haven't had any moments as awkward as the time on the first day when I ran out of things to do a good fifteen minutes before social studies class ended and told my class, "well...I don't have anything for you to do...so you can sit quietly in your desks until the bell rings...actually...you might as well be working...uhh...answer questions 1-3 on page 12." That was the low point so far. Although I don't think any of my creative writing students were too impressed with my idea of going through the first page or so of "The Landlady" by Roald Dahl, with all the paragraph separations taken out, to try and decide what would have made good paragraph divisions. I'm learning, I guess.

The secret of teaching, if I understand my mentor Nathan correctly, is not to run out of things to do. That does seem to be a hard part about it for me. My tendency towards disorganization is another Achilles' heel (can one have more than one Achilles' heel?). Another one (now I have three heels, apparently, all of them vulnerable to attack from Trojan archers) is my tendency not to explain minor (or major) details that are obvious to me, but not necessarily to anyone else, certainly not to eighth graders who do not have English as their first language.

I have been a little distressed so far by the number of kids who don't turn their homework in. I think it's partially my tendency to project myself onto my students: when three or four of my students don't turn their homework in, I get to wondering if I didn't make it clear enough that it was to be turned in. The fact that I have all the same kids each day, but have some of them for English Language Arts and some for social studies on an alternating basis, doesn't exactly help me keep things straight, either. I'm sure things will improve as the year goes on, I get more into the rhythm, I get more things in my gradebook, and missing a single homework assignment isn't quite so fatal for a student's grade in my class.

In English Language Arts, we've been reading "Flowers for Algernon" this past week. In social studies, we've been studying the basics of geography. I gave them their first project, which was to create their own country, draw a map of it, and answer questions about it based on the Five Themes of Geography. This drew a wide range of responses, from the disappointingly mundane to the wildly imaginative; one young man created an underwater country in a post-global-warming future world, inhabited by one hundred forty million mermaids, half of whom are scientists and half of whom are engineers. Grading those projects will be my main task this weekend.

Leslie, of course, is thriving; she's so good at anything she puts her hand to, and is really a born teacher. I think I'm improving too. Both of us are getting more and more used to living in Korea. But I don't know if either of us could do this for the rest of our lives! (Well...Leslie probably could. But I don't know about me!)

Some pictures

We had lots of fun at the Seoul Philharmonic concert--they were really good! The performing arts center where they played, the Seoul Arts Center, was beautiful, and we had a great time with the band teacher and enjoyed meeting her husband. Yesterday, we slept in, did two loads of laundry (our laundry machine did not drain properly the first time we used it, so we had to wait two weeks for the mechanic to come fix it), and cleaned the apartment. In the evening, we went to a party at another teacher's apartment. It took us an hour to get there, since he lives with his wife in south-eastern Seoul, but we had a fun time (and got home even later than the night before). We just finished eating pancakes for brunch (thanks to our Bisquick mix), after talking to a couple of our friends on skype. :) Here are a few pictures from the last couple days...


Daniel opening a can of tuna with a knife and a cutting board; we have no can opener and really wanted to eat tuna melts.

The result. :)

The Seoul Arts Center.

The performance hall.

People outside before the concert.

The hall again.

And again. Inside, it reminded me of a cross between the Disney concert hall in L.A. and the Sydney Opera House.

Our apartment--the living room.

The kitchen.

My desk and the ironing board (you can see our washing machine on the other side of the window).

Daniel's desk and our dining room table.

Diana Nightingale! She's not here with us, but I thought this picture was too cute not to put up. :)