I've lived a clockful of years!

Today's blog music is the wedding song we will be singing for a friend's wedding this weekend. The lyrics are really beautiful, especially the second verse, I think. Please enjoy Give Yourself To Love by Kate Wolf.


My brother pointed out to me the other day that this birthday was special for me because I have lived as many years as there are hours on the clock. This is definitely cool, because somehow it makes me feel like this next year can be like "a new day." It's past midnight now, and I'm heading towards a new morning.

See what living in the land of cutesy has done to me? I am getting a little cheesey, I think. But I'm feeling more optimistic these days.

Turning a year older is a perfect time to reflect on the days of yore though. Today in the teacher's office we talked about saving up for stuff as kids and how some of us were better at it than others. My one success as a child for saving up for something big was an American Girl doll...which got Kate and talking about our favorite games to play with our dolls. Kate joins the group of us who played less house related games with our dolls and more "escape from the villians" or the myriad of "we are orphans in dire circumstances including perhaps all of our limbs are broken" type games.

What is it with children and pretending to be orphans? how morbid is that. We were so weird.

But then, my students remind me of the weirdness of children every day. Today in my 4:30 class, Susan and Eileen and Cindy discussed being sick and how the yellow dust in the air (thanks China!) was maybe a reason for why Susan was feeling a little sick. I told them that Anna was feeling a little sick too, in her nose, so maybe she had breathed too much dust too.

They then proceeded to draw a giant nose on the board with cavernous nostrils and tell me that "Teacher if Anna teacher's nose is this big then there will be a lot of dust inside and maybe a tree." Then they added a cute little pine tree inside the left nostril. So be careful Anna, you don't want to accidently grow a tree inside your nose. The ENT downstairs might be stumped by that one....

Other neat things in my classes has been a successful (so far) restorative discipline meeting with my troublesome 5:30 class. Jae and Yoonseo and all the interns came to my classroom, so the adults were outnumbering the kids by far. Pretty intimidating, but I think that was exactly what was needed. They just have had repeated behavior problems and just weren't taking the problem seriously. It ended up being really good and they were able to come with a list of promises that they wanted to help each other keep and we posted it on our classroom wall. I have seen some improvement, and I know they will need reminding, but it was so good to see that they were finally taking class seriously. Huge answer to prayer!

This weekend we are headed to Gangneung, Yoonseo's hometown for Sarah Jill's wedding. Sarah used to word with NARPI and did some substitute teaching for Connexus too. We have the great honor of singing her wedding song, which you can listen to in the link I posted at the top. We are also having a staff retreat, the first since the addition of three new KOPI interns. I'm excited to have some time to get to know everyone better.

Two of the interns, Minjung and Hyesun are doing a language exchange with Anna and I. We are meeting on Wednesday nights to have conversation in Korean and English and check each other's journals; Anna and I will write in Korean and Minjung and Hyesun will write in English. I am really excited to get the chance to practice Korean and become better friends with people we're working and living alongside. Minjung is actually in my cooking group on Mondays and also goes to Grace and Peace church with us.

I'm still collecting quotes, so instead enjoy some little updates from the community. Thanks for reading!

Community News:

* After spending many great months with us, Juhee decided it was time for a change, and so now we have a new grammar teacher, Jiyoung Park, who is just lovely and is great to have in the office! I'm looking forward to getting to know her better too as she is taking Juhee's place as one of my cooking partners as well.

* On March 17, I made omurice for lunch and let it be known to all that Omonim said that it was delicious and I did well. I wrote it on my calendar.

* One of my friends from Messiah is coming to Connexus to teach! Michaela, I am so pumped!

Tonsillitis and a case of Inadequacy

Today's blog music is again some Sleeping at Last, a song I feel like I need to take to heart these days: You Are Enough by Sleeping At Last. Whoops, already feeling weepy....Sorry, this one is more of a personal blog rather than a news update.

I've been sick.
For almost two weeks now, first a weird fever-y stomach thing that then morphed into an ear-throat-nose deal that I found out today from the doctor is Tonsillitis. No, don't worry, not the kind that requires surgery, but the kind that can turn into strep pretty quick, and felt like it was well on its way there.

Anyway, the visit to the doctors brought into focus another kind of sickness I've been suffering: Inadeqaucy. 부적임.Big time megacity.

Not feeling well physically kind of puts a lot of things into perspective, but can also give you usually unhelpful mix of self-pity and lots of time to think.

So far I've reflected quite extensively on the fact that I can't go on double dates with my boyfriend with getting a fever halfway through, I can't play sports well (especially ping pong),  I can't understand or speak Korean as well as I feel like I should,  I can't go to a Korean wedding without being ultra awkward greeting people, and I can't visit the doctor and have him suck the pus out of my throat without bursting into tears.

Yep, that happened at the doctor's this morning. Reaaalll classy. I was instantly embarassed, but the truth was, I was scared. I couldn't understand what the doctor was saying to me, and they moved so quickly I didn't know what was going on until suddenly there was a suction in my throat, poking at my sore tonsils. It hurt, and I gagged and out came the waterworks.

Surprisingly, I missed the U.S. a lot in that moment. I missed good old Mont Alto Family Practice and the physician's assistant telling me what they were planning on doing to me before they did it, and telling me why they were giving me a shot, and giving said shot in the arm instead of the butt (why is that necessary? as if I needed another reason to feel uncomfortable).

I think the excessive reaction was mostly a result of other pent up feelings of not feeling good enough: not strong enough, not experienced enough, not capable enough to handle what is needed to live here as a "foreigner" and an English teacher. I know my skin should be thicker, that I should be braver, that I should eat more kimchi, that I should be more interesting girlfriend, that I should be and do a lot of things I'm not currently. But the truth is, I'm not there yet. I need to grow more. I know it.

But I also don't need to let the awareness that I need to grow consume me and make me feel like I need to hide away like a tulip bulb until I'm 'ready' to come out. Reality is that we need to be growing our entire lives. We're never 'done.' We're always growing with God, and we're never adaquate without him. There isn't really a timeline of how 'done' we ought to be at a certain point either. There is no official manual that has a chapter labeled "What You Should Be Able To Handle After Living In Korea For Almost 10 Months." No one is evaluating my progress and judging my worth as a person based on it. No one is writing me a report card circling the numbers in each category and deciding whether I'm behind or not.

Oh yeah, except for me.
And I need to quit it.

So it's ok that I suck at ping pong. It's ok that I think some kimchi is too sour and is gross. It's ok that I can never remember the name of my favorite sauce in Korean and can't understand the doctor. It's ok that I baked those jammy scones a little longer than I should have. It's ok that I am a little boring and talk too much about books to Yoonseo. It's ok. I'm enough. I'm still growing with Jesus, but with him-- I'm enough.

“you are enough.”

these little words, somehow they’re changing us.

“you are enough.”

so we let our shadows fall away like dust.

when we grew up,

our shadows grew up too.

but they’re just old ghosts

that we grow attached to.

the tragic flaw is that they hide the truth

that you’re enough.

I promise you’re enough.

I promise you’re enough, I promise you.

February!

Song of the day is the Olympic Theme. Because it's that time of year. Guess who wrote it? John Williams. I like the fact that the Olympics theme came from the same mind that composed for Star Wars. So have a listen: Olympics Fanfare and Theme.

Speaking of Olympics, we just had a little competition of our own at Connexus this past Friday. The Friday before we had each class create their own flag and country name. Trying to get four kids to coordinate on a design was a doozer of a task in many of the classes, but in the end we came up with some great flags and great team names. I had a Frozen Castle team among my bunch, but the other teachers had some even greater ones: Eat the Rainbow, Freedom Dragons, Parkour Generation, Crystal Republic, Music Ghosts etc.

Heather came up with five events:
* a bobsled race  (push an ice cube with your nose)
* a biathalon (knock over a bottle with a ball/ hit a target with a rubber band)
* a baton relay (featuring a rubber chicken)/Clothespin curling (drop a clothespin from under your chin into a cup)
* Chopsticks drop (picking up little foam squares and transferring them with chopsticks to a bowl as fast as you can)
* Ski dress relay (put on ski clothes and go around box, then take them off and give to the next person)

Each team competed by themselves at each station, getting 5 minutes to get their best time, which they wrote on the official time sheet at the station. They would be able to see the times of the other teams, so the competition was definitely on, but there wasn't as much pressure as if they were competing in the same room.

It was so fun! So many students that usually are grumps on activity day were too busy to complain, and it was really cool to see the kids work together and cheer each other on. My vocal chords were pretty much shot by the end (we later went to karaoke with two of the students, so that didn't help hehehe).

I came away with two bronze medal teams, a silver team and one gold. Let me tell you, for the gold one, I think I was as nervous as the girls in the team...we heard bronze called, then silver, and were thinking we were out of it, but then...dun dun dun! We screamed pretty loud. The day was exhausting, but everyone loved it.

Other important connexus news is the in-progress review/enrichment month being added at the end of all Backpack units. We've noticed that there are quite a few classes and many individual students that are being pushed along into higher levels when they are not ready. Case-in -oint would be one of my students who is about to move into an advanced beginner level and still is unable to read.

Since the Blue and Yellow levels are in the most urgent need for review curriculum, we're focusing on those first. My current Blue 9 class will be the first to try it out, so I have been responsible for creating most of the plan...yikes! I am a little nervous to try it out, since it's all on me, but at the same time, because it's so flexible, I feel like it will be ok to drastically change the plan too...it's the test run after all.

I have another Blue class that is only one level behind the one that is doing the review month next month, so as soon as I finish teaching the review month, I will teach it again, so I am hoping that I will be able to work out most of the kinks in these two months. It's great to finally be doing something to try to help the kids get caught up, because it's been a problem for a while. So here's hoping!

Outside of Connexus, I haven't done many new things...something I would like to change! Routine is good, but not when you start to forget what you did the last couple weeks because they all run together.

Two weeks ago I started something new: a language exchange! A Korean friend of Anna's was interested in doing a language exchange, so I met her two sundays ago and we talked for two hours, about 40% English, 60% in Korean...It was so wonderful! Usually I end up not trying to speak Korean on a daily basis because it takes me a while to say what I want to say, and I feel like people don't have time or are a little annoyed at having to wait so long, so I just speak English. But at the language exchange, Jieun waited for as long as I needed, so I realized that I actually can communicate (maybe not completely correctly, but understandably) lots of things I didn't know I could--I just never got the chance to try! It was a really neat time, and I hope I can do it more regularly.

And, now I will have a little more time than expected to do some of the fun things/studying I wanted to do while here...I will most likely be staying until the end of July now, because of the unavailability of most of the teachers applying before the fall. To come at the beginning of June is really soon for most people who are applying now, because they'd like the summer to visit family or whatnot, not to mention the lengthy visa application process. So, I'm added around 2 months on to the end of my time.

I'm actually feeling good about that--it was kind of scary to think that I only had three months left actually; time goes so quickly here that I knew that it was going to feel like the blink of an eye. I'm glad now for the chance to have a bit more time, and also be thinking about how to use it wisely. Busan and Jeju are still on my list of places to go.

I guess those are the most recent developments! a little long and dull, I apologize. You can just scroll to the bottom for the quotes... :-p

Thanks for reading!



Community News:
* End of January marked the first batch of online report cards. We are moving up in the tehno world! seriously, it turned a 6 hour job into a 2.5-3 hour job. Typing for the win!

* This February marked 100 days for little Aurie, and 100 days together for me and Yoonseo. Hooray for special days!

* We're official wedding singers! The Connexus crew and KOPI/NARPI are singing the wedding songs at Sarah Jill and Jong's wedding. We practiced a bit and already we are sounding super. Not to brag or anything....

* Two new female KOPI interns, Minjung and Angela, will be moving into our old apartment building soon! Good old  백유동산 is still a part of the community.

Quotes from the Community:

Yoonseo: "This soup is good..Can you give me some more juice--more brenda?"
Abby: "Broth?"
Yoonseo: "Yes, what a beautiful name."

"I'm never being sarcastic."--Anna.

Watching speedskating...
"Can they use this ice for patbingsoo after? Put down red beans and everyone eat together?"-Yoonseo.

"Kevin--I mean, Michael--"--Heather
"Now I know who you really love!"--Michael.

Abby: "How do you feel about the muppets?"
Yoonseo: "I want to drink soju with them one time."

Yoonseo: "You know, my nickname was Apple."
Abby: "I thought you said it was Strawberry?"
Yoonseo: "That's for the Spring."

Quotes from the Classroom:

We were talking about the Olympics in my newly moved up 3:30 Blue 8 class, and Hyesu told me, "Teacher, in 2018, Olympics in Pyongchang!" So I asked them how old they would be, and this began a hilarious conversation. They told me that they would be 15 and 16. After agreeing that this was pretty old, they then asked me,
"Teacher, how old? 29!"
"Oh man, so old. Maybe I will come to Korea and see the Olympics then."
"Teacher....29...so wedding?"
"Oh maybe. You want to come?"
 "Yes! and wedding 축하 (congratulation song?) is 'F is for Fred!"
"Oh good idea, you can come to my wedding and sing all the Backpack songs for me!"
*they begin a run down of their Backpack repetoire until I decide it's time to actually study...hahaha*

Abby: Who is your favorite character in "The Princess and the Pea?"
Yoochan: Pea.

"My favorite animal is a beach alligator."--Daniel

Cindy: "What does 'noticed' mean?"
Abby: "It means something like, 'You see and know for the first time.'"
Susan: "Oh...like, 'I noticed I don't have a dog'?"

"When girls take off glasses they are pretty, but when boys take off glasses they are more ugly."--Susan and Eileen. Typical. They can be really hilarious and so shallow at the same time.

"Raphael...stand down."--Daniel. I think he meant 'sit,' but they both were appropriate in the situation.

Lunar New Year

Have a listen to this song by Rooftop Moonlight. It's been stuck in my head for a few days, so hopefully it gets stuck in yours! 정말 고마워서 만든 노래 (Thank You So Much).


February 1! A new year again, this time according to the moon. I suppose since I forgot to make any New Year;s resolutions on January 1, I can make them now. I don't have many:

1. Get to know my best friend better. That's right, some serious Jesus time.
2. Learn. to. speak. Korean. gosh . darnit.
3. Have some marvelous adventures with marvelous people.

I've started on number three already, actually! This past weekend I visited Ganghwado, an island to the west that is only a few kilometers from North Korea. Kate and I went with Sarah, who graciously organized the whole thing. We didn't have a packed schedule, mostly going to the Peace Observatory and checking out some other things as we felt like it.

Visiting the Peace Observatory was both a really neat and an odd experience. It has a fantastic view of a the North Korean village...some of which is fake, but there are people who live there too. We could see them through binoculars, on their bicycles, a family or friends gathered in front of a house. Just normal things. On a holiday like Seollal when Koreans usually are with family, it was sad to think that there were some families that were still divided, on either side of a river that was only a few kilometers wide physically, but much further in reality.

While looking at the village, I thought how strange it was...there was a probably a bird somewhere who lived in North Korea and flew across the river to South Korea whenever she liked to get some food or look for sticks in a new place, going and coming freely. How many older Koreans with siblings and cousins across the divide can only dream of that for themselves and their families. May God grant it in their lifetimes.

Our pension was on the other side of the island, so it took a little while by bus to get there, but it was very quaint and comfy, in the slightly tacky way of every pension-y place I've been to here so far. We played Dutch Blitz, and Phase 10 and Banagrams, which I lost, but was pretty pumped to be able to play the words "pidgeons" and "prenatal." We slept in pretty late the next morning, which was of course glorious, and then the pension owner gave us a ride to the rocky beach area next to the bus stop we were headed to. The weather was very overcast, and it was a little windy, so the rocky beach was putting me in mind of visit to Cramond island in Scotland. Wild places everywhere have a taste of each other.

While on the rock beach just enjoying some nature without frills or loudspeakers, we were talking about how it was being a kid and how we feel nostaligic for it. Sarah mentioned that she wished she could experience life like a child does, which is to simply do and not think about experiencing it. So many times as adults, we have marvelous moments, just as marvelous as ones that we had as children, but unlike our childhood moments, we are aware of how special they are. We make a mental note to treasure them, to savor them. Not that doing that is wrong or not important, but sometimes it can seem like you're taking pictures all the time and forgetting to look out from behind the camera and just see it as it is. I hope I can do that more this year.

We arrived at the old Anglican church just as the rain started to come down hard. It was built in 1900 and is one of the oldest in Korea. It is also one of the only churches I have seen so far built in a traditional Korean style, with the beautiful red and turquoise wood and concave roof. I was talking with Karen later about it, and she mentioned how it seemed that older church traditions, like Anglicanism and Catholocism seem to often times do a better job of taking on the architecture of the countries and areas where they are present. Probably because those faith styles traditionally have taken the space or building used for services into account as an important part of the worship experience, thus building in such a way as to communicate the importance of the place to the people who will worship there. We weren't able to go inside the church at the time we visited, but someday I would like to go there on a Sunday morning.

So, it was a fantastic vacation! I feel very refreshed, ready to finish off the Connexus month well.

Community News:

* This month is our first month of doing the report cards on the computer! huzzah to digitalization.

* We're also hoping to begin discussions about adding an enrichment month into the curriculum year to help the kids who are struggling have a time for review and give the kids who are doing well a chance to do some new and fun projects.

* We are starting the process of interviewing new teachers! Only problem is...there aren't many applicants. If you know anyone interested, or you are interested yourself, contact me!

Quotes from the Community:

"My face is so close to my face."--Kate experiences the last-elevator-down squish next to the mirror.

Yoonseo: "Did you finish that Uptown Girl thing?"
Me: "Downton Abbey?"

Yoonseo: "I think Yongjin got more handsome after drinking American water."
Yongjin: "I did drink a lot of water."

Thanks for reading!
-Abby

Number 8 comes to a close

I'm just a few days away from completing my 8th month here! It's crazy to think that I am 2/3 of the way through my year teaching. I'm not really sure what kind of music that merits, but since I'm super grateful for the way God has been with me so far, how about He's Always Been Faithful by Sara Groves.

So what's up these days?
Lately, I have been feeling renewed in my desire to get better at Korean, but kind of bored of the methods I was following before, since I am really not in as much need of taking in tons of information, I need instead to be producing more. Particularly verbally.

Actually, I could really use some prayer about this. I sometimes feel like I have something physically keeping me from speaking, that's how nervous and self conscious I get before I try to say something besides two to three word answers. Don't get me started about talking to elders, like grandmother aged people. I am so afraid of not using the formal verbs and insulting the pants off them by accident that I have pretty much resorted to gestures.

One problem I have is that I keep having a lot of grammar/"does this sound natural" questions and I haven't been able to find someone that both can answer my questions in a way I can understand and who actually has time to do it. As is the same for English, if you haven't studied how your language works, it's hard to answer questions about it that a second-language learner might have. So, I've been feeling a little frustrated about that, but I don't really know how to fix it. I guess just keep trekking and trying my best.

On the Connexus side of things, it feels like the month has been flying by. Besides the projects I mentioned last time, I am starting to do something else new as well. During teachers' meeting this week, Heather gave the idea of having the more advanced classes self-correct their homework before turning it in, which I thought was an awesome idea. Otherwise, homework correction tends to be a time when the students are just waiting around and not learning anything. Also, I know for a fact that they often make the same mistakes over and over again, even if they know how to do it correctly, simply because they rush. So, I think that from now on I am going to have them try to self-correct before turning in their work. I might even try to have some of the higher Blue classes try it. They can at least try to fix things like spelling and using 's' on the end of simple present verbs in third person, which are often the most common mistakes I find.

We finally got some snow a few days ago, around 2.5-3 inches total I think. It was enough to make everything really beautiful, and so far it's been cold enough that is hasn't melted yet! I wish I could just stay inside and drink tea and admire it, but walking to work in it is pretty nice too.

Community news:

* Our newest idea of how to avoid the artic stairwell is cutting a hole in the desk between Sarah and Heather and creating a chamber pot/outhouse (inhouse?) area. There is already a sewer smell outside almost everywhere, so why not inside?

* Me and Sarah and some others are going to try some scripture memorization! It's been a while since the days of Bible quizzing, so we'll see how well it goes! I'm planning to re-memorize Romans chapter 12.

* Karen's parents are here from the U.S. until the end of January. So fun to meet some people who are special to some of our community members!

Quotes from the community:

"The New York strip is so good. When I eat it, I feel naked." -Yoonseo's thoughts about Outback Steakhouse.

Abby: "Lomie, is your monkey a boy monkey or a girl monkey?"
Lomie: : "방귀." (Fart).

"Hey! you can lick this envelope!" --Kaia has a miraculous experience.


Quotes from the classroom:

Rafael: "The mouse puts the dog in the girl."
Abby: "This sounds like 영양탕..."
Rafael: "Yes the girl eats the dog."

"My least favorite animal is a dead rat." --Yoochan


Thanks for reading!
-Abby

We are the New Year

It has been a coon's age, everyone. It's hard to choose a blog song because there are so many I have been listening to lately, but here is one for the new year: This is the New Year by Ian Axel. This one will be a long post, so hang on tight!

Let's do some serious reminiscing. The Christmas party at Connexus on Dec 21 went super well. It was crowded though, let me tell you! with our students almost as full compacity, even when we split the day into two parties we still had at least 50 people or more in the building during each time slot. I manned the paper plate angels station with Kaia. Most kids did well, but we had a lot of wingless or dress-hacked angels too. We also had one Zombie angel and one of my students (now former) Jerry, decided he would make a dragon instead. What ever floats your canoe. One really fun part of the night was the auction we had to raise money for Save The Children. Basically the parents spent ridiculous amounts of money on little trinkets and some cool stuff, but it was all for a good cause. I knitted two ear warmers to donate, which two of my students bought in the end. So cute.

On December 22, my Christmas started early with a trip with Yoonseo to see a boy's choir from France perform. They were so excellent! I absolutely loved it. It was very Les Choristes -y. Never will I cease to be amazed at how high little boys can sing. If they were instruments, they would be piccolos.

Christmas eve and Christmas festivities in our community were super. I'll be honest and say that before hand I was just kind of viewing Christmas here as something to "try to make the best of" since Christmas is so special and fun at home in the U.S. But I was happily surprised that it was nearly as special, just in different ways. We all met together on Christmas Eve after work and had lot of finger foods and a gift exchange. Then we sang carols together until it was quite late. I think singing together was one of my most favorite things. There is something so warm in sharing in such a familiar thing together. We all knew the songs, we all knew the tunes. There have been many times here where I am more aware of difference between us than the things that are the same, so it was such a blessing for all our commonalities to show up so clearly. A few of us finished up Christmas Eve by watching The Grinch, Jim Carrey version, which was different from the usual Muppet Christmas Carol in the Long family, but was still fun. I burned the midnight, er, 1 a.m., candle baking some scones for our Christmas breakfast.

Christmas morning we had breakfast at 8:30 to make time for another new tradition to try out: In Korea, Christmas is traditionally a time to go to church. So, Grace and Peace was also having a service at 11 with a lunch at the Greek restaurant following. A few of us went to different churches or just stayed home to rest, but I went with Yoonseo to the service. It was really neat! We read some scripture and sang carols, and then some church members shared some songs as special music. It was nice to see so many people on such a special day. I was a little zonked from lack of sleep, but I still really enjoyed it. I think my favorite part of the day however was skyping my family with Yoonseo for a while. It felt like I was really there with them! It definitely got me in the mood to see some family in person, which was great because two days later, Sie arrived!

It will be hard to detail all the things we did, so I will highlight some favorites: visiting Chuncheon and seeing Yoonseo's university, then taking a quick hike up a snowy mountain. It was really fun to hear Yoonseo's stories from being in university, and I was so happy that Sie got to be there too. Sometimes it's difficult when you realize that the most important people in your life don't really know each other, so it was awesome that Sie could be with us and help bridge that divide. We had many other awesome adventures, like Jump (my second time: can't get enough of martial arts comedy), visiting the Two Waters park in Yangpyeong, walking through the middle of protests, playing Killer Bunnies, drinking lots of tea and lots of great chats. Best Christmas present ever!

It was definitely sad to say goodbye. I suppose it will sound depressing to say that it was so nice to truly be myself, because it's not that I can't be myself here, it's that I am a different self here than I am in the U.S....I don't relate to people the same way here as I do there because we don't have the same shared personal history/inside jokes/interests what have you. It's not bad, it's just different. I'm sure I will miss being my Korea self when I leave. This Christmas, I was especially missing being my U.S/Pennsylvania self, so it was a really special time to reminisce and just hang out with somebody that knows me pretty much as well as I know myself. Miss you, Sie!

After he left, it was time to get down to business to defeat the huns. The huns in this case were Yoonseo's papers for his master's program. He had written them in Korean, and he was going to translate them into English outloud while I typed them and tweaked some grammar. We had one day to do it, so we skipped church on January 5th and worked from 11:15 am to 11:15 pm to get them finished. It was actually pretty fun for me; I loved being able to do some academic writing again, even if was only editing. And, I ended up learning a lot about Restorative justice methods and theories. I felt like a student again, how fantastic!

Speaking of students, there's been some major changes with classes here at Connexus. I lost my beloved Green class, the students went to other teachers. But, thankfully, they all seem to be doing really well in their new classes. In place of them, I've started teaching a phonics 2/ Blue 1 combo class with two new little guys, Raphael and Daniel. Yup. Raphael. Gotta love some of the English names kids come to Connexus with. They are really quick, which is a nice change, since most of my classes are a little on the slower side. Also, they have really good ears for pronounciation and intonation, so already they have great expression when reading their storybook! I think it's going to be a great class.

I've also been doing some fun projects with my classes! This past friday I made sock puppets with all my lower level classes and they loved it! I had them draw pictures of what they wanted their puppet to look like before they started, so it was cool to see how they acutalized those ideas, or how they changed as they got their hands on the materials. I wish I had taken more pictures, but because I was so busy helping kids glue things, I only took pictures in one class. However, I will do it again with my more advanced class (who learned knitting on Friday) because they are doing a puppet unit this month! We're working on shadow puppets right now, but we will finish those this week. Teaching that advanced class knitting went well! Eileen actually came back on Monday and had finished her scarf! I was so surprised. I knew she had learned once before how to knit, so she was quicker to pick it up, but I was amazed at how fast she had finished it. Projects are so fun!


Recently Read/Watched/Listened:
Read: The Fellowship of the Ring--still in progress...I have become a really undiligent reader.
Watched: About Time, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Frozen. All were super! I was actually a bit surprised by how much I liked The Hobbit because I used to be such a book purist. I think now I am just such a sucker for anything Middle Earth related that I'm ok if it is basically just a well-written fan fiction version of The Hobbit..though still not really down with the whole dwarf/elf romance. If you're going to take the audience out on a limb, it has to at least have precidence in the history of Middle Earth. As for About Time and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, they are some of the most beautiful non-artsy films I've seen in a really long time. About Time made me cry and Walter Mitty not only had a really neat story line, it was just lovely to look at because of the cinematography. Frozen was FANTASTIC. It reminded me of the older Disney films with how much music was in it, and all the songs were great and I just loved the storyline--true love for once wasn't a prince doing something to save the princess, but instead was a sister giving up her life to save a sister. Totally neat. Also Olaf. Loved that guy.

Listened: These days I am loving the soundtrack of About Time, Rooftop Moonlight (옥상달빛), and Sara Groves.

Quotes from the community:

Sarah: Yongjin, when is your lecture?
Yongjin: 2:30
Sarah: Good, you can help with dishes!
Yongjin: Sounds good....but tastes bitter.

"I hate saliva from people I'm not in love with." --Sarah

Anna: "Does my hair look as good as I think it does?"
Kaia: "It reminds me of the 90s."
Anna: "I'm at peace with that."

"If it's chunky, is that fun?" --Kaia's question about deviled egg filling.

"All the moms here are babes!"--Heather

"I can't believe our holiday is this fruitful. Usually we are just lying down and scratching our legs."
  --Yoonseo

"I don't think Jesus would turn down waffles." --Josiah

"Have you guys seen our new couch? Come and touch." --Jae

Quotes from the classroom:

"'Oh no! the princess is beautiful' says the prince.
Prince goes to the princess. He talks 'do you want a boyfriend?'
'Yes I want a boyfriend'
'It's me, boyfriend'
 'Ok.'
 --Joy's homework sentences. The prince is one smooth cookie.

Abby: "Do you like silkworms?"
Joy: "No I don't because silkworms are yucky." PREACH IT SISTER. Grossest snack in Korea.

O Come O Come Emmanuel

Can you guess today's music? One of my favorite versions of O Come O Come Emmanuel is the fantastic Rosie Thomas version, but unfortunately I couldn't find a good version of that on Youtube, so I will go with my current favorite instrumental version of it: O Come O Come Emmanuel by The Piano Guys.

This past weekend was a super relaxing one for me. It's sometimes hard to have a relaxing weekend because you feel like you want to get out of little old Deokso, but this time we had some project to do! First was deep cleaning the apartment...I know boring, but it's actually really satisfying to everything looking all nice and shiny. Because our apartment is not too big, you can get a lot done in a short amount of time, so you feel really productive without spending hours on it. Next was Skyping with Josiah, which was even more awesome. In case any of you want some good advice on nearly anything or want to look at cool lego sets with someone, he's kind of the best person in the world for that. We both pretty much decided that Lego's Creator line of lego sets is the bee knees. 

Sunday I stayed home from church and had some F.A.B.I.C. From Afar church on the couch. So enriching! I'm realizing that I need to be more intentional about getting spiritual food in my own language. Translation at church is a huge blessing, but sometimes it feels a little like trying to suck water out of a washcloth instead of drinking from a glass. That's a weird word picture, but you get what I mean. Then in the afternoon, Kate and I made an awesome paper bunting decoration for our wall while watching Baby Mama. Can you get better than crafts and Tina Fey? 

In the evening I had some awesome Korean-Chinese food with Yoonseo and then we went with Michael and Heather to see About Time, which turned out to be the best movie I have seen in a while. Yes, I even cried, can you believe it? 

So a weekend at home actually turned out to be just as great as an adventure weekend.

What's happening on the Connexus side of things? I found out yesterday that my favorite student Grace is moving to Sarah's class next month. I'm glad she isn't leaving Connexus entirely, but I am sad that she won't be in my Green class anymore. I know it's probably against all teacher protocol to have favorites, but I do in pretty much all of my classes. Sometimes it's hard to remember that we won't have these students forever, and probably a few will even leave Connexus while we're still here, like precious old Jack. (Still miss that kid).

We've started to talk about things like enhancing/changing the curriculum too. We're all going to try implementing some new ideas. For instance, for my yellow class, I am going to try a knitting project for Friday individual activity days probably starting in January, and might try making a puppet theater with my Green and Blue classes.
So, I'm feeling excited about trying out some cool new things!

Christmas Listening List (Old and a little more obscure edition):

* In the Bleak Midwinter

* The Wexford Carol

* The Huron Carol

* Good King Wenceslas

* Boars Head Carol

* Adam Lay Yboundem

* Coventry Carol

* Hear We Come A' Wassailing

* The Holly and the Ivy

Quotes from the Community:

Yoonseo: *After looking at a picture of Elmer Fudd* That is my dream.

"Oh, your belly button's cute, Sarah!"--Anna

Quotes from the Classroom:

Susan: Eileen, would you rather marry with Korean boy or American boy?
Eileen: American boy because...cute babies!
Susan: Korea babies are not cute? You are Korean baby! You are cute!

Sungyeon: "Which do you like better, Rudolph or snowflakes?"
Joy: "I like Rudolph better."
Abby: "Why?"
Joy: "He is cute."
Abby: *mentally* "she said I'm cuuuuuuuute!"  Gotta love the stop-motion Rudolph film.