Saturday, November 11, 2006

For every failure there is a triumph.....

This last week, we were doing some English exercises (as one often does in an English class) and I called on one of my students to complete a certain exercise. The sentence was "The lights went off." She was supposed to make it into a sentence with a time clause or something. She looked at the sentence, looked at me and said "This mean.... cat feed me dinner eats?" ........

I really didn't know what to say. I felt like a complete failure. Why am I even trying to teach anything?

But last night, Jason and I heard a knock on the door- actually it was more like a bang and a bit of muffled Korean as they tried to get through the screen door. There stood my students. They handed me a plate of freshly made kim-chee pancakes and smiled and giggled. I had never eaten Kimchee and it was VERY good. Along with the pancakes, they handed me a card that simply said "THANKS". In that simple gesture, all my failures were forgotten and I felt hope again.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Star Sightings...

First, can you guess the famous star in this photo?

I will tell you if you are right at the end of this post.

This weekend, Jason's dad, step-mom and step-brothers came to visit. We were going to go hiking at Joshua Tree but then realized that it was really far away. So then we decided to go to San Diego instead. Ha. Well, yes San Diego is farther than Joshua Tree but whatever....

We went to old town San Diego. Here is a picture of me outside the old prison!

Then we went and saw the oldest wood hotel in the US. Or something like that. It was beautiful with the full moon and everything!

Sunday the adults had to go to a conference so us kids went surfing. I actually decided to just lay there and read a book while the guys surfed and that is what I did. It was a really nice day. Then we drove around and looked at the beautiful mansions of Bel Air and walked around the UCLA campus.

Then we went to get ice cream and happened across a movie premiere! Jason let me jump out of the -slowly- moving car so I could see the stars as they were just beginning to walk in. If you guessed Brad Pitt, you are RIGHT! It was the premiere of "Babel". All the stars were right across the street from us. I guess we missed Richard Gere. Jason's step-brother Phil was heckling Brad Pitt. Yelling "Hey Brad" Trying to get his attention when the rest of the crowd was silent. It was embarrassing. But he got some good pictures so I didn't mind that much. Plus now Phil can say that Brad Pitt has heard his voice. Heh. It was really too bad that I was the only girl there. Because all the boys were like "This is so ridiculous. Who cares if it's Brad Pitt. He's just a human like us." So that was uber-annoying. Like I think he is a god or something. Geez, snobs.

I have been trying to add more pictures of Brad Pitt and a picture of Cate Blanchett but I am having technical difficulties so maybe I will add them later. Yeah, I saw Cate Blanchett. She was really pretty.

So that was my weekend. It was fun!

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Halloween Party Korean style

My students have been planning a Halloween bash for about a month now. They don't celebrate Halloween in Korea and had only seen Halloween in the movies. So they were VERY excited. They wrote out beautiful invitations and I explained all about RSVPs and Halloween traditions.

I told them that some people don't celebrate Halloween because they think it is worshiping he devil. I told them about bobbing for apples and trick or treating. Then I told them that some people kill black cats on Halloween because they think they are evil. I realized I gave them the wrong idea when I read one of their diary entries (a school assignment): "We learned the holiday Halloween. Some people don't celebrate Halloween and kill cats because they think they are evil." Oops.

Their oven was broken so they came to my house to bake pies and such. I made some rice Krispie treats because they said they don't have them in Korea. Those are pretty easy to make. Here I am walking out the door to the party with my costume and my treats. I am an Indian...er... Native American.


My mom made this cosutme for me for last Thanksgiving. She likes us to dress as Indians and Pilgrams for our meal. It is quite a sight. Anyway, this is a picture some of my students in their costumes. They decorated their house up nicely!


A lot of people came. I was glad becuase NO ONE RSVPed. I was actually kind of embarrassed. I taught them about RSVP and then no one did. They borrowed a Japanese horror movie to watch. They told me it was really scary. I didn't think it would be that bad so I watched it. It turns out that this is the movie that "the grudge" is made from. "The grudge" is just the English version. I never saw "the grudge" because I really didn't want to. So I was tricked into watching it with subtitles basically.


After that, I taught them to play spoons. They really got into it and there was a lot of shrieking and trash talking. Then we played black jack and rummy.


I had taught them those games earlier during a culture class. None of them knew any card games except "one card" which is uno with playing cards. Anyway, we had a good time and I want to have a Halloween party every year. That would be fun.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Whew, it's been awhile....

Sorry. Anyway, to update everyone, I have a job. I am an English as a second language teacher. Right now I have 5 Korean students. That number should increase 5-fold in January. We will see. I really like teaching English. My students are very excited to be in America so it makes it so much more fun. None of them had ever been here before. I am only working part-time right now. Mon-Thurs, 9-2. Not bad hours eh?

Today I had the pleasure of calling my students and trying to explain to them what Daylight Savings time is. I told them "You need to turn your clock back one hour". And they asked "This is a popular thing to do in America?".

Here is a picture of us at my house. We just finished watching "America's Next Top Model". They were a little wary of the fresh guacomole I made, but that was ok with Jason and I. We just got to eat more.


I also had them over to make some traditional American food. They said they didn't need to learn how to make any American food because they have all the American restaurants in Korea and American food is easy to make. Well humph! I told them that there are many American foods that you can't find at KFC or McDonalds and that they should experience those foods as well. Then I had to think of a food to make to prove my point. This was the tricky part. I decided we would make the Friday night traditional meal in our family. Potato soup, Drop biscuits, and bunny salads. Here is a us partaking in our wonderful dinner.


For those of you who don't know what bunny salads are; have no fear, there is a picture below.

We are having a merry time in class and I hope they are learning. If anyone has any teaching plans that you thought were especially helpful in your language classes, please tell me! I have never taught before!

Cheers!

Monday, August 07, 2006

Our Beach Trip

Jason and I bought a surf board. Yeah, I know. Anyway, we used it this weekend at the beach with our friends. The camera lens fogged but I think we got a couple good pics. Jason would like there not to be any pictures of him surfing so there are only pics of me. Here is a picture of me waxing our new board.

I really didn't like doing that. It covered up the pretty design. Here is me surfing.

Kind of. Thanks to Jessica and Niel for teaching us how.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Our Trip

Some interesting things happened on our trip down here to Southern CA. Mostly what was interesting was when we went to visit Adam, Jason's best friend, and his wife Susan at Stanford. First we got a nice tour around campus. They have a free bus service that I found extremely helpful (that was a segue). So we took some pictures around campus.


Here we are in front of the Stanford church. Inside, I think it is the most beautiful church that I have seen in the US (as Susan said). I also went to pilates class with Susan and got a MAJOR charlie horse in my arm. In other news....

We saw something that could have been out of national geographic!

No this is not on the Stanford campus, we had to drive several miles to see it. We went to a preserve for elephants seals and saw them fighting. In April, they come to this beach to have their young. I want to come back around that time to see the cuties!!

We have our new dinnerware and I thought you would be interested to see how beautiful it is.

Actually I am sure most of you would not be interested. However, having reasearched quite a bit of dinnerware before purchasing these, I would have appreciated more reviews out there. So here is my review. These rectangle dishes from Crate & Barrel are really nice. They are durable and they match the other Crate & Barrel white porcelain dishes. They are dishwasher/microwave safe and very cool looking in person. Good price too. There, I have now done my duty!

Sunday, July 30, 2006

I'mmmm Baaaaack!

Well, I finally came back to my blog. This post will be dedicated to updating everyone on our new abode.

We are now residing in Loma Linda, CA. Jason will be starting Medical school in a few days and I am looking for a job. We moved into our nice little house and we are almost settled in. We got our house through the school for a good price. It is 2 bd, 1.5 bath with a cute little backyard big enough for a garden, a garage and lots of storage space. So, we are happy. Here are some pictures:




Here I am leaning over our table that Jason's mom so kindly gave us. We are having burritos and it is beautiful, not that you can tell from that distance. Here is a closer pic

Yes, that is a paper plate. We have had a really hard time with dinnerware. First of all, we are really picky. Finally we decided on some we liked and ordered them online. When they got here however, they turned out to be white plastic as opposed to the white porcelin we thought they were. So we are sending those back. And getting some nice new dinnerware. we even went to the store in person to make sure that they were what we wanted.

Since we got here, we haven't been doing a very good job of documenting things. Which we are sure to regret someday. Heck, I am already regretting it since I am trying to write a blog post and I don't have interesting pictures for you. More later.....

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Switching

Well, I am on my honeymoon now and am switching over to a new blog while I am gone! There is a link on my sidebar. It is called Around the World. Enjoy!