A few glimpses of home

It has been great to be home for the holidays. Here are a few highlight shots from my holiays thus far:

Hawley Christmas party:



Trip to Long Barn with some of my high school friends:





Family time:







Facebook album of the holidays thus far:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2134022&l=9fb51&id=4702163

Flashback to Group Bath Time

Tonight I ate a pomegranate. As I glanced around my kitchen that slightly resembled a crime scene with dark red fruit splatters haphazardly strewn along the counters, my memory leapt back to elementary school. In my mind’s eye I replayed a scene where all three of us kids were crammed into the bathtub and stripped before we were allowed to eat our respective pomegranate segments. Three kids in a tub with a lot of messy fruit and one smart mother.

While we’ve long since outgrown group bath time, I am so grateful that next week my brothers and I will be in the same place. For the first time in a year and a half my entire immediate family will be in the same house. And for Christmas! I’m pretty darn stoked.

Writing 2 Final Exam

My sophomore writing students had to present the cultures that they researched at our class "museum" for their final exam. Here are a few of my students with their creative masterpieces :)

More calculations

I'm thinking about quitting English teaching and taking up math instruction instead. I mean, no more papers...clear right/wrong answers...fewer ESL issues...no grammar instruction...no more papers...no more papers... no more papers!!!

Okay, so I'm not really thinking about teaching math. But these days, a couple (or several hundred) fewer pages of student writing would be pretty nice. I did some rough calculations below on the hours of my life I've used grading papers this semester.

I teach 3 courses: Writing 1, Writing 2, and English 10. This semesters I have read (with varying degrees of seriousness) the following:
approx. 25 pages for each of my 8 writing 1 students (approx. 400 total)
approx. 36 pages for each of my 30 writing 2 students (approx. 1080 total)
approx. 45 pages for each of my 37 English 10 students (approx. 1665 total)

=3,145 pages of student writing in the last 4 months. And I teach really small classes in comparison to the states!! What was I thinking when I chose to teach English?!?

Dancing with Jesus (and a few good friends)

I swear I'm not trying to be sacrilegious. I'm just procrastinating.... and slightly obsessed with Elf Yourself.

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/I0lFcua9lvzoy6aAAvuT

1,687 is the magic number.

As you might guess by the frequency of my recent blog posts, I am trying to avoid the massive piles of papers to grade, comments to write, and student excuses to address that accompany the last week of classes before finals. Accordingly, I took the night off and went to the jimjilbang.

In my attempts to avoid real work, I have have also completed the following pointless calculation:

I have now spent approx. 16 months in Korea. I tend to go to the jimjilbang approximately one-two times a month:
16 x 1.5=24

Each time I go to the jimjilbang, I probably encouter a minimum of 45 people in the sauna area:
24 x 45=1080

Several times I have far exceeded my 1.5 times a month (ex: vacations):
1080 + 3(45)=1215

When I was in Pusan I went to a MASSIVE jimjilbang that can hold 2000+ people:
1215 + 250 extras=1455

The next day I went to a jimjilbang with hundreds of extras crammed in:
1455 + 117 extras=1572

Can't forget the public school vacation jimjilbang experience last year (where probably 3 dozen children asked Kirsten and I over and over again how old we were, where we were from, and what our names were)
1572 + 115=

Approximately 1,687 KOREAN WOMEN HAVE SEEN ME NAKED in the last year and a half. About 3 dozen of them are my friends. Another 200 (at least) have asked me where I am from. Wow. Who would have guessed?

Survived my first turkey!!

This was the weekend of birthdays. In honor of my friend Emily's birthday, a group of us went up to Seoul on Sat. Then on Sunday, Kirstin and I cooked a turkey for a big thanksgiving-ish birthday extravaganza for Emily and Virginia. I can now say that I have officially made a turkey :)

A very cold Myeongdong...can you find the birthday girl?


You never know what characters you'll find on the streets of Seoul


The turkey that Kir and I cooked:


Kirstin and I posing by our masterpiece :)


The birthday girls

Fragments of Fall

New coffee shop in the O-jung Dong:


Last leaves of fall:


Alison's quite the henna artist (getting me excited to go to India this spring!)


TCIS 50th anniversary balloon release (supposedly special biodegradable balloons)


A small portion of the massive table at the TCIS Thanksgiving dinner:

My favorite contribution to the Thanksgiving feast (courtesy of Eric):

Yum!

A few of my soccer girls who are OCKs and MKs(out-of-country missionary kids):