Odds and Ends

So, last time I babbled on about liking to have pictures to blog about. So, I went through our camera and my phone and got all the pictures I hadn't taken the time to talk about. There's a few more I'd like to add, but they're on a friend's camera and haven't made it to the 'net yet.

Let's start things off dangerously!

Dangerous for some broccoli that is!

Mel loves broccoli, but I detest the stuff. Here she decided to try out a recipe for the 'best broccoli ever' or something like that. This is a fabulous recipe. Aaron is a poop head. I forget why I was taking pictures of the process though. Here's a link to the recipe I used (also modified since I'm not using garlic cloves or lemon zest; instead I use garlic powder and packaged lemon juice...ghetto!)

Amper, much like me, was rather ambivalent to the whole process.

Mel got out tons of spices and such and set to work.
That Parmesan cheese was obtained from the black market for the low low price of our first-born child.

Lola was definitely intrigued.

Here's the nasty stuff all set out and ready to hit the oven.

Lola gazes on with a high level of anticipation.

And here's the end result. The verdict?

Flippin' amazing! It was far too much for Lola to handle.

She had to go take a nap to after all the excitement.

Back towards Halloween, one of my lessons was to have the kids make masks. I had my co-teacher order a bunch of paper plates and large rubber bands. The kids took to the task with gusto. Unfortunately, I only snapped a few pics.

Here's a group of devilish 3rd grade boys. I think the masks brought out the monsters within. They're always demonic, but now we can see it!

Whoa! Scary guy!

Here's some more of the 3rd graders.

See, the girls are scary too :D

Amper has nap time in a blanket cave.

Mel's school....

So my school got government money to renovate the English room. If you go back through our posts to the beginning of the school year, you can see how ugly the old room was. Here's the pictures I took after the renovations were (finally) finished. I would like to add that they did not consult with me in any but the most cursory of ways about this room. There are some things I detest and with good (non-Korean) reason.



The screens on the windows are kinda cool.


Millions of won in English books. Including Twilight (UGH!!) but very good for me. I am the only person in the school who will actually read these. And I'm already half-way through them all. Some oddities: We got all of the Princess Diary books except the first one, and when the delivery person put them on the shelves, he did not put these in any logical order. For example, all of the Roald Dahl books are all over the shelves and not next to each other. I was FORBIDDEN from correcting this. Seriously. And now there are labels on all of these books, similar to what they do in libraries, and they cannot be rearranged.

A plethora of DVDs, including the first 4 seasons of Lost and all 10 seasons of Friends. Also includes such classics as A River Runs Through it, High School Musical 1, 2, and 3, and Gladiator. Yeah.

Almost every "new" English room I've been in has these; the idea being that the students can role-play in front of them and pretend to be at the airport, or in a restaurant, or whatever. These will never be used in my class. Never.


Whimsical shit my co-teacher put in my room. Along with the little figurines of black people playing instruments (including bongos, naturally?) I also have a windmill and a mailbox (I have the same one). She adds something new all the time. I now also have a large silhouette of the Eiffel Tower (where they don't speak English) and some silhouettes of girls with the title City Fashion or some other such nonsense. I asked her not to put those up but my request was denied.

Anyway, this room is far better than the previous edition, but as you can see it is lacking in the LOGIC department. That could go for all of Korea, actually...

Amper likes to climb up on me when I'm on the couch, whether I'm eating or playing video games, regardless of how I'm sitting. I swear he'll sit in the most uncomfortable of positions as long as he's right there next to my face.

Hi again! Back to me for a bit. So, one day I was teaching a 2nd grade class and one of the girls was soooooo sad. She was just sitting there moping and I couldn't seem to cheer her up. So, I got a piece of paper and I drew a big smiley face on it. I wrote smile Ji-un (her name) and also wrote her name in Hangul. I folded it up and handed it to her all secret-like. I figured a note from teacher was a pretty big thing (it would be to most kids) and should cheer her up.

At the end of the class, she gave me the following:

Doesn't it just break your heart? That's damn sad! The Hangul says "teacher teacher" phonetically. She's been peppy most classes since, but I'm on the lookout for more sad days so I can give her a big hug!

Yeah, my co bought a tree. I put it up. I made the star.

A project with my 2nd graders. I made all the letters and hunted down all the pics on the 'net. Then we colored and now we have a pretty wall. The 3rd graders were jealous. No one else seemed to notice.

I'm getting ready to give some Christmas themed lessons. I think we're going to make some snowflakes this week. I made a few to show them. I also made a couple different ones to 'wow' them....

3d snowflakes are pretty sweet looking. The white one is made out of standard 8x11 paper and is way too huge. The red and green one is origami paper. That one is probably the best size. That little blue one is made from 1/4 sheets of origami paper. Since it was so small, it was quite difficult. I don't suggest it.

Instructions are here: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-3D-Paper-Snowflake

Suwon has a Batman bar. We did not get to go inside, much to my sadness. Actually, with as disappointing as the Rivendell bar is (or so we've heard) it's probably for the best that we didn't get to see the inside of this.

Michael Keaton, I'd like to drink a Hite with you!

This was the bar we actually did go to. It's a large chain called Wa Bar. The Wa apparently stands for western ice. I don't know how, but that's what I've heard. Because it's a "western ice" bar. They take a bunch of foreign beers and throw them in a table filled with ice and you can pick out what you like. OR, you can just order from the wait staff.

It would be easy to blame Aaron for this, but it would also be unfair. He didn't know. Neither did I.

We ordered this at the Garten Bier bar in Osan. On the menu pages, the names of dishes and their descriptions are all in Korean (naturally) but the headings are in English. The heading on this page was Chicken. The picture looked like pieces of chicken, covered in cheese. Maybe some peppers too for good measure. (Please note that this is a "western style" bar, so we didn't expect anything odd). So he ordered it. We took a piece, and ate it.

The texture was so weird; it was really hard to chew and kind of tough. Kind of reminded me of eating octopus. We let everyone at the table try it and no one could figure it out. So I went up to the counter and showed the waitress the picture again and asked, "Chicken"?

She said "yes, feet. Chicken!"

Yum, chicken feet. Just want I wanted.

Yep, I suppose that IS a chicken foot, now that I look at it this way...

Dear god. The horror. Strangely, one of our party continued to nibble on them...

Two Dogs and a Cat. Oh, and They Can All Talk

So, I guess we haven't blogged in a while. Nothing really super exciting has happened, so I haven't felt the need to write. Also, I haven't had any great pictures to post. Usually I like to blog when I have a lot of pictures. The pictures help me focus and getting me writing. Well, I don't have any. The only things I have to write about are grumps and complaints. So, if you feel like muddling through that, by all means press on.

I had previously wrote about all the grumbles and gripes in way too intricate of detail. I glossed over points and summarized, but it was still boring to read. Depressing too. I don't like to be a downer or moan on in a 'woe is me' fashion. That's no fun for any of us.

Let me summarize the situation a bit more succinctly. Here in Korea, teachers' contract are typically quite vague. The governing language is Korean and the interpretation of that language is up to the principal. If you have a great and lenient principal school life tends to be pretty good. You concentrate on the students and classes instead of worrying about vacation days and other job interests.

Throughout my contract, I have been under a principal who looks towards his own interests. These interest usually end up being pretty shitty for me. His interpretation of our contract causes a lot more work and headaches than that of my friends and fellow teachers. Things they take for granted (due to having an awesome principal) are just a blissful daydream for me. So, things have been cruddy in a lot of ways that I really don't feel like detailing.

Most of the time, the teaching isn't too bad. I like interacting with students and enjoy seeing them improve at something through my teachings. Regardless of that, I don't wish to stay at my school. This has caused much debate, between Mel and I, on what exactly we should do next.

So, what are we doing.....?

Melissa here; we have decided as of yesterday that we are 99% sure we are coming home when our current contracts are finished. So sometime in the beginning of March, we will be back in the States.

We're not quite sure yet where we'll live, but what we're going to do is this: take the courses necessary to get our teaching certificates, and do our student teaching. Once this is done, we can get real teaching jobs most anywhere in the states (though probably not Michigan, obviously, as that state is stuck in a hand-basket, on the road to hell) or even teach for the military and travel around the world again.

So we're looking at Ohio, or Colorado, for our year of college courses. We'll have to get jobs so in that case, Colorado might be better, but Ohio is much cheaper as far as living expenses go. Though the thought of having to drive 65 on the highway fills me with pain. Then again, so does the thought of moving all our stuff all the way out to Colorado.

Ohio is closer to home. Granted, it's much closer to AARON'S home, but after going without my family for a whole year, I can't really complain about only getting to see them maybe once a month. I mean, I can complain, but I foresee that most of my complaints will have to do with Ohio itself, and not the (slightly inconvenient) distance from my family. On my scale of disdain, Ohio falls somewhere between being at Meijer on a Saturday afternoon in December, and student loans.

We're not even sure what we're going to teach, either. I'm leaning toward science, but if I can I'll get certified in as many subjects as possible. (Considering my degree is in English and my minors were Japanese, Professional Writing, and Political Science, it's better to have many options, I think) I'm not sure what Aaron wants at this point either. (Probably math, I heard there's a big need for math teachers. Oh, and I rock at math).

For the most part, we are simply relieved that we are coming home. Now that we've made up our minds, a huge load of stress has been removed. Of course, now we have all the new stresses of where to live, what jobs to get, buying a new (used) car, moving our stuff, etc. But we'll get through it.

Anyway, so that's the news. Now you know!

And knowing is half the battle! (The other half is red and blue lasers).

We went through a lot of options. We talked about taking different schools and staying in Korea. However, a lot of the problems we have with Korea would still be a factor.

We were thinking about going to Japan to teach. But, it's super expensive to live there and we wouldn't get paid as much. We also wouldn't be able to save as much as a side-effect.

Our other possibility was getting jobs on a military base and working while obtaining our teacher's credentials. This is a good option because the pay is decent and there is actually jobs. At the end of the day though, we can work a job and go to school back in the States. Then we can be near the people we miss the most :D

So yeah, that's the story. Oh! The title, if you didn't get it, I was slyly describing the 1993 movie "Homeward Bound" ;)