Hello all,
I am so sorry I haven't written in so long--it's been over a month! I can't believe it. I have been keeping myself busy with teaching, of course, Korean lessons, a new language exchange, a new boyfriend =) and possibly, in the near future.....ceramics lessons!!! (I hope, I hope=)
Things at school have been going more and more smoothly. One of the teachers went back home to the US this week =( and a new Canadian guy came! Classes have shifted around and my work load has increased and new programs have started....students have left and some new ones have arrived....the months have been full of change.
For the rest of December, I shall be running around all over Seoul Christmas shopping...and loving it! And then....on December 25th (aka Christmas Day) I get to come home and see you all! (well, most of you reading this anyway=) I can't tell you how excited I am for that. I've been loving it here, but it is going to be splendid to see you all back home again.
Until then, have a wonderful, wonderful holiday season and see you soon! All my love,
Maria
giovedì 4 dicembre 2008
mercoledì 22 ottobre 2008
my life is a joke....I'm sure someone somewhere is laughing
I don't have this thought very often here in Korea, but when I do, I'm usually in my oven-less kitchen, accidentally pouring too much chili oil on my broccoli or trying to pick up thinly sliced pickled radish with chopsticks. Sometimes, it's when I'm in my bathroom and have forgotten to turn the dial from the shower to the faucet (long story, seeing pictures helps) and end up getting showered on in my clothes.
Other times it's when I'm tired of eating rice all the time! I miss mashed potatoes. Yummmm! I miss basil. I miss oregano.
Sorry, negative thoughts.
Other times, it's when my kindergartners say things like, "We never cry in any other teacher's class." That one hurts.
The other day I found myself giving my students a recipe for guacamole just so that I think about it for a while. Damn you, California! You've forever ruined my experience of just about everywhere else in the world....
OK, I'm feeling better now. Sorry, I was pretty hungry and tired when I wrote this blog.
Hope you're all well. I miss you tons. Sleep well.
Maria
PS: If you laughed at this at all, I guess you're the one I talk about in the subject header.
Other times it's when I'm tired of eating rice all the time! I miss mashed potatoes. Yummmm! I miss basil. I miss oregano.
Sorry, negative thoughts.
Other times, it's when my kindergartners say things like, "We never cry in any other teacher's class." That one hurts.
The other day I found myself giving my students a recipe for guacamole just so that I think about it for a while. Damn you, California! You've forever ruined my experience of just about everywhere else in the world....
OK, I'm feeling better now. Sorry, I was pretty hungry and tired when I wrote this blog.
Hope you're all well. I miss you tons. Sleep well.
Maria
PS: If you laughed at this at all, I guess you're the one I talk about in the subject header.
lunedì 20 ottobre 2008
my favorite moment of the day so far.....
So I teach two kindergarten classes when I come into work. The first one, "Bear class," has been the source of all the drama in my life. Today for the first time in I-don't-know-how-long we got through the entire lesson with no one crying....wonder of wonders.
My next class, "Chipmunk class," has been the source of all joy and pleasure (not to mention paper airplanes). I love this class to pieces! Two of the students, Sam and Jasmine (their English names), sit next to each other and are so cute! I keep secretly hoping they'll date someday soon.
Yesterday Sam was practicing a recitation of "The Hare and the Tortoise" for an English contest next week, and suddenly, Jasmine hugged him around the neck and started swinging him around. Everyone started laughing. Sam didn't seem to mind it either.=)
But, today there was a bit of scandal.
The students had to write a journal entry about their friends in class. Jasmine, Sally and Kate (all of whom sit nearby Sam) all wrote about how much they love him and how they should be married to him! Naturally, Sam wrote about his friend Leo.
His journal went something like this:
I like Leeeeooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Yes, a good day =)
My next class, "Chipmunk class," has been the source of all joy and pleasure (not to mention paper airplanes). I love this class to pieces! Two of the students, Sam and Jasmine (their English names), sit next to each other and are so cute! I keep secretly hoping they'll date someday soon.
Yesterday Sam was practicing a recitation of "The Hare and the Tortoise" for an English contest next week, and suddenly, Jasmine hugged him around the neck and started swinging him around. Everyone started laughing. Sam didn't seem to mind it either.=)
But, today there was a bit of scandal.
The students had to write a journal entry about their friends in class. Jasmine, Sally and Kate (all of whom sit nearby Sam) all wrote about how much they love him and how they should be married to him! Naturally, Sam wrote about his friend Leo.
His journal went something like this:
I like Leeeeooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Yes, a good day =)
lunedì 13 ottobre 2008
Re new found purpose in life
New favorite activity: making funny faces at Korean babies without their parents seeing me do it. Hope by the end of the year to make all Asians think Westerners behave wildly inappropriately in the subway. Thanks God: have finally found purpose in life.
Have a good day everyone and special shoutout to Jordan for her birthday!! Love you!
Maria
Have a good day everyone and special shoutout to Jordan for her birthday!! Love you!
Maria
venerdì 10 ottobre 2008
John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany"
I don't like buying modern fiction unless it's specifically recommended to me by someone I can trust (extra points if the person is an English major). Turns out my fellow teacher Carly is one such person. On our first excursion to What the Book, a famous foreigners' bookstore in Itaewon (a spot of the city famous for its Muslim community and appeal to foreigners), she told me how much she loved A Prayer for Owen Meany. She's read it three times, and it began her love of John Irving's writing. She's read several of his books, and there was even a period of about 3 months when that was all she would read. I bought the book on the spot. Always take the passionate advice of an English major.
So glad I did. It is an exquisite book.
John Irving, himself, writes in the Afterward about the significance of the first sentence, which reads something like this:
'I am doomed to forever remember a boy with a wrecked voice--not because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he made me believe in God---I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.'
Irving has written a wonderful portrayal of adolescence which goes far beyond the tragic irony of A Separate Peace (not sure if you ever had to read that in high school--I did). The narrator, a New Hampshire-born expatriate living in Canada, tells the story of his best friend, Owen Meany, the only son of a granite quarryman. Owen Meany, a tragic and lovable character, believes in God's purpose for his life....and death. Spanning their boyhood in the 1950s, the hopeless war years of the 1960s, and the narrator's retelling of the story in the late 1980s, A Prayer for Owen Meany, weaves together historical events and fictional moments of love, friendship, and grief to perfection.
On a scholastic note, if you have ever been confused about the meaning of symbolism or allusion or foreshadowing, Irving offers a textbook of examples in this novel. It's an absolute gift for the intellectual reader.
I hope you all get a chance to read it some day. It's a thing of beauty, and totally worth the two hours of sobbing at its conclusion. Highly recommended!
So glad I did. It is an exquisite book.
John Irving, himself, writes in the Afterward about the significance of the first sentence, which reads something like this:
'I am doomed to forever remember a boy with a wrecked voice--not because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he made me believe in God---I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.'
Irving has written a wonderful portrayal of adolescence which goes far beyond the tragic irony of A Separate Peace (not sure if you ever had to read that in high school--I did). The narrator, a New Hampshire-born expatriate living in Canada, tells the story of his best friend, Owen Meany, the only son of a granite quarryman. Owen Meany, a tragic and lovable character, believes in God's purpose for his life....and death. Spanning their boyhood in the 1950s, the hopeless war years of the 1960s, and the narrator's retelling of the story in the late 1980s, A Prayer for Owen Meany, weaves together historical events and fictional moments of love, friendship, and grief to perfection.
On a scholastic note, if you have ever been confused about the meaning of symbolism or allusion or foreshadowing, Irving offers a textbook of examples in this novel. It's an absolute gift for the intellectual reader.
I hope you all get a chance to read it some day. It's a thing of beauty, and totally worth the two hours of sobbing at its conclusion. Highly recommended!
Arts and Crafts
You know that arts and crafts project where you take a ball of foil, cover it in a tissue, tie a string around it, and it becomes a ghost? The unfortunate, sick, and twisted of you will have no idea what I'm talking about. I still remember when my babysitter showed me and my sisters that lil' trick.
I've been trying to think of enjoyable arts and crafts projects for my kindergartners. Friday is art day, and while they each have their own sketchbooks, complete with an art lesson for each week, it's always a struggle to figure out which lesson to do. They all have their favorite; they all beg me to pick the one they want. And painting is normally a blast, but with kindergartners they spend 10 minutes getting their stuff--from the palette to the paints to the water container to these plastic cuffs which keep their sleeves clean--then they need at least 15 minutes to clean up all that jazz. (They insist on using soap to clean watercolor paints--ahh!) Hence, when all's said and done, they can only paint for about 5 minutes of the 40-minute period. It's ridiculous. And my job isn't as an art teacher; I become a policemen or a referee. I just try to keep them on task and away from the sink.
So, as I was searching for some art project which could jive with our Halloween theme*, I suddenly remembered the ghost craft. It was a huge success (till my class decided to launch their ghosts across the room and almost hit each other in the eyes).
I hung their beautiful art projects on the window sill in one of my classes, and found out later from one of the other teachers that we had inadvertently participated in a Japanese tradition. Apparently, they hang ghosts on the window to keep the rain away. Children will do this before a big field trip in the hopes that the sun keeps shining. Sounds like a good idea to me. I wonder if it works on gloomy thoughts and feelings, in addition to weather....
*I am starting to realize that holidays and all the pizazz that comes with them are perpetuated by elementary school teachers who are just looking for some underlying themes to keep their classrooms decorated and things interesting for their students. It all makes sense.
I've been trying to think of enjoyable arts and crafts projects for my kindergartners. Friday is art day, and while they each have their own sketchbooks, complete with an art lesson for each week, it's always a struggle to figure out which lesson to do. They all have their favorite; they all beg me to pick the one they want. And painting is normally a blast, but with kindergartners they spend 10 minutes getting their stuff--from the palette to the paints to the water container to these plastic cuffs which keep their sleeves clean--then they need at least 15 minutes to clean up all that jazz. (They insist on using soap to clean watercolor paints--ahh!) Hence, when all's said and done, they can only paint for about 5 minutes of the 40-minute period. It's ridiculous. And my job isn't as an art teacher; I become a policemen or a referee. I just try to keep them on task and away from the sink.
So, as I was searching for some art project which could jive with our Halloween theme*, I suddenly remembered the ghost craft. It was a huge success (till my class decided to launch their ghosts across the room and almost hit each other in the eyes).
I hung their beautiful art projects on the window sill in one of my classes, and found out later from one of the other teachers that we had inadvertently participated in a Japanese tradition. Apparently, they hang ghosts on the window to keep the rain away. Children will do this before a big field trip in the hopes that the sun keeps shining. Sounds like a good idea to me. I wonder if it works on gloomy thoughts and feelings, in addition to weather....
*I am starting to realize that holidays and all the pizazz that comes with them are perpetuated by elementary school teachers who are just looking for some underlying themes to keep their classrooms decorated and things interesting for their students. It all makes sense.
mercoledì 8 ottobre 2008
Stephen Colbert's "I Am America and So Can You!"
So, as promised here's the first of my book reviews. Before leaving for Korea, I bought The Prehistory of the Farside. I figured there would be times when I would feel homesick or lonely, and I really wanted a quick and easy way to laugh handy. One of my fellow teachers had the same idea. She smuggled the glorious treasure that is Colbert's I Am America and So Can You and then lent it to me. Thank God she did.
This book is absolutely fantastic! I can't give it enough praise, or at least I can't give it as much as Stephen Colbert gives it himself on the front and back covers. An erudite textbook of Colbert's pearls of wisdom on every subject for the average American. From family to immigrants to class warfare to universities to the future, Stephen Colbert creates a handbook for the way we should all think. Each chapter comes complete with footnotes, margin notes, a fun activity zone, and charts and graphs, so that when just the regular writing isn't enough, you can have extra Colbert thoughts on everything.
Nation, the best thing about it is his honesty (and, of course, how he's right about everything he says). The answer to our bleeding border controls? Stephen Colbert has it: take all the old people who've given their time, money, and sweat in service to this country and help them keep on giving. Put them on a row of porches with rocking chairs and let them yell at the Mexicans trying to step on the lawn of American soil. The answer to how to snazz up your love life? Stephen Colbert's questionnaire. If you have problems of any kind, from sex to sports to money to politics, get Colbert's book. He'll prove to you that as a red-blooded American you can face your problems because America is about freedom! (If you're an immigrant and reading this, I'm afraid there's nothing I can tell you.)
Since no one can speak as well for himself as Colbert, himself, here are some highlights from the bestest parts of the book.
1. The sex and dating questionnaire. Questions include: "What would you be willing to do to get someone to love you?"
a) anything b) not that
"Which president would you assassinate?"
a) Taft b) Ulysses S. Grant c) Harry Truman d) Martin Sheen
2. Colbert on foreign relations:
I'm afraid of Koreans.
Bamm! That's me right off the cuff. I think. I say it. You read it. Sometimes I don't even think it.
3. Chart on how you know which class your in.
Question: "What keeps you up at night?" (Please check one.)
Lower class: The sound of my own weeping.
Middle class: The sneaking suspicion that I've been duped.
Upper class: Should I arrange my topiaries according to alphabetical order by the kind of plant or by the animal?
4. The chapter on "The Future"
Warning! Don't read until the future!
5. "Appropriate bookmarks for this book include: money (no less than a twenty) and another copy of this book."
Yes, folks, you have to buy it for yourselves and read it to get the full effect. I give it 7 Colbert stars*. Before you vote, read this book! Then vote the way a red-blooded American should vote: the way Fox news tells you to.
*Note: Each Colbert star is worth approximately one and a half normal stars.
This book is absolutely fantastic! I can't give it enough praise, or at least I can't give it as much as Stephen Colbert gives it himself on the front and back covers. An erudite textbook of Colbert's pearls of wisdom on every subject for the average American. From family to immigrants to class warfare to universities to the future, Stephen Colbert creates a handbook for the way we should all think. Each chapter comes complete with footnotes, margin notes, a fun activity zone, and charts and graphs, so that when just the regular writing isn't enough, you can have extra Colbert thoughts on everything.
Nation, the best thing about it is his honesty (and, of course, how he's right about everything he says). The answer to our bleeding border controls? Stephen Colbert has it: take all the old people who've given their time, money, and sweat in service to this country and help them keep on giving. Put them on a row of porches with rocking chairs and let them yell at the Mexicans trying to step on the lawn of American soil. The answer to how to snazz up your love life? Stephen Colbert's questionnaire. If you have problems of any kind, from sex to sports to money to politics, get Colbert's book. He'll prove to you that as a red-blooded American you can face your problems because America is about freedom! (If you're an immigrant and reading this, I'm afraid there's nothing I can tell you.)
Since no one can speak as well for himself as Colbert, himself, here are some highlights from the bestest parts of the book.
1. The sex and dating questionnaire. Questions include: "What would you be willing to do to get someone to love you?"
a) anything b) not that
"Which president would you assassinate?"
a) Taft b) Ulysses S. Grant c) Harry Truman d) Martin Sheen
2. Colbert on foreign relations:
I'm afraid of Koreans.
Bamm! That's me right off the cuff. I think. I say it. You read it. Sometimes I don't even think it.
3. Chart on how you know which class your in.
Question: "What keeps you up at night?" (Please check one.)
Lower class: The sound of my own weeping.
Middle class: The sneaking suspicion that I've been duped.
Upper class: Should I arrange my topiaries according to alphabetical order by the kind of plant or by the animal?
4. The chapter on "The Future"
Warning! Don't read until the future!
5. "Appropriate bookmarks for this book include: money (no less than a twenty) and another copy of this book."
Yes, folks, you have to buy it for yourselves and read it to get the full effect. I give it 7 Colbert stars*. Before you vote, read this book! Then vote the way a red-blooded American should vote: the way Fox news tells you to.
*Note: Each Colbert star is worth approximately one and a half normal stars.
Iscriviti a:
Post (Atom)
