Sorry I dropped off the face of the universe...

I've been having internet problems. They are finally (almost) resolved. So I am sorry that I've dropped off the face of the universe...
On the upside, the serious lack of internet has meant time spent painting, knitting (someone will be happy to hear that I'm about 2 seconds away from being done their socks) and studying Korean. (I am now proud to say I speak at the same level as a three year old)

Here's a funny - you know when you're a kid and you're chasing your siblings around threatening a tickle attack, and you say "ticky, ticky, ticky"? The "chasing your siblings around threatening a tickle attack" sound is the same in Korean! Sweet!

Also, went to the newly renovated "Homever" (kind of like a Zellers but 1/2 groceries, 1/2 appliances, clothes and everything else under the sun but alarm clocks)... all I needed was an alarm clock (see last sentence), but was amazed by all the crazy amounts of waygook food they have! Whoa! I can now go no further than the Homever for all my nachos-salsa-and-cheese needs. However, it should be noted that it's still worth the trip to Costco... my co-workers are still teasing me about the green beans.

Oh, one more little thing... I signed my "request to renew" for my contract today. I haven't committed to a second year at my school yet, but I think I will. My evaluation was "excellent" on everything... The contract will be negotiated mid-June, but I will have the terms negotiated before then... it's not a for-sure thing, but it is a very likely thing, especially if I want to do my Masters when I come back to Canada... I really like my school, I have friends (most of whom are leaving, *sob*) and I do have a pretty sweet deal here...

Kimchi, kimchi, kimchi

I like kimchi. Kimchi is yummy.

This is my fridge. It is small and cute.This is the kimchi shelf of my fridge.

The plain white bag, that's the kimchi I made in Gwangju at the kimchi festival (I hope it's still good!)
The sealed kimchi bag, I won that at the kimchi festival in Gwangju. I had more kimchi, but I finished it. Luckily. Because the brown tuperware, that is from a local shop owner that I'm friendly with - she just surprised me today with a whole lot o'kimchi. I had to reorganize my fridge shelves to fit it in there.

This is the kimchi that she made and gave me... as well as the other two bags of kimchi.Jess, prepare yourself for a kimchi-eating odyssey because there is no way that I can eat all this kimchi in a month and live to tell about it.

Oh, and this is Angela and I posing with Kimchi at the Gwangju Kimchi Festival.

Off to the doctor's... (on my own!) Wish me luck.

... Back from the doctors, with much success (depending on how you define "success"). He's recommending another ACL recon for my poor knee (I had misunderstood about the patella tendon thingy, apparently) and has given me a referral to his "mentor". SOOO I think I'm going to join the local tai chi joint for classes starting tomorrow night, and amp up the exercises a bit. Sigh. There are mountains to climb in the spring and I damned well will be able to do it.

Lost!

No, not the t.v. show, this is about Katrina-the-cyclist. And how after school today, I decided to go exploring -- 1/2 an hour, I was going to give myself. An hour later, so absolutely confused and surrounded by nothing but mountains and farmers fields, I was so lost I actually started to worry a bit. That, and I was getting really sick of biking up and down mountain foothills, trying to find my way. Doubled back a bit, and I finally found a familiar sign... pointing to the Carrefour (department store), a few kilometers away. And in the right direction I went.

Lesson learned. Don't travel to parts unknown without phrasebook and a charged cell phone. Also, no camera, can't share the beautiful things I saw... (beautiful things are more beautiful when you have some idea of your actual location in relation to anything else familiar, by the way).

On the upside, students who saw me riding through their neighbourhoods (upon my return) now think I'm some amazing thing because my ride back was mostly no-hands...

Oh, and to those who don't believe my students are everywhere - today two different students came up and told me about their random "Katrina-sightings" -- one in Shinae (the old downtown) and one in Samsondong (the new downtown) -- both over 1/2 an hour by bus from my 'hood. I don't even remember when I was in Samsondong... I hope whenever I was there, I was behaving teacherly!

My Local Celebrity-ness.

Hee. I was in the Ulsan newspaper - colour photo - on Saturday. Why? Because I'm a non-Korean teaching an English Winter Camp through the school board. That's right, photographer and reporter showed up to my class on Friday morning. I was a bit, uh, shocked ...(could someone have warned me, I would have done something about my hair!)

But apparently everyone's pleased, my principal brought me the article today and congratulated me. Like I had anything to do with it! I was actually kind of cheesed about the whole thing, the kids lost their break because we had to do a "Katrina fakes teaching" photo shoot... and that's not really fair to them.

I don't really know what the article says, except that there are three of us waegooks (foreigners) teaching an English Camp and that it's fun and exciting for the kids. Right. I find it ironic that they came to my classroom - I'm teaching grammar and writing. Fun and excitement just oooozes. Well, I'd like to think it does, but I can be a bit delusional.

I'm a joiner!

Guess what? I found a stitch-and-bitch in Busan! And I can make the first meeting! I am so stoked - and yes, I am traveling at least one hour so I can sit in a Starbucks and knit with expats who I do not know. But you should be happy for me - you don't have to listen to me chat about my knitting anymore, I can talk to actual knitters about it!

The meeting is next Thursday afternoon, so I'll let you know how things go. (Or maybe I won't - and keep true to my above pledge to not speak of my knitting anymore...)

Also, may be going to Daejeon this weekend, to hang out with a rock climbing club... see, look at me, being a "joiner"!

dialogue journals /or/ the awesomeness of my students!

I've just passed the 1/2 way mark with the first of 3 "winter camps" that I am teaching. This round there are 20 middle school students, about 13-14 years old, separated into two classes. I am teaching writing and grammar, two subjects which ALL students find incredibly interesting and fun (that was sarcasm).

My students are golden. I gave each of them a little notebook at the beginning of class, and I give them about 5-10 minutes in class to write in their journal. I then collect the journals, take them home, and write back... it's kind of a conversation (thus the name "dialogue journals") and they can write without fear of being told they're wrong about things, I will only correct global errors that are recurring. I love it! They are writing more and more each time - the progression in almost all students is noticable! Some students even ask to take the journals home because they want to write more than what they got to in class... that's right, they're actually volunteering for homework! And we're really getting the opportunity to develop relationships with each other through these journals. I can see why this is a popular method in North American ESL classrooms, to increase fluency and communicative comfort! It is so much easier to teach in a classroom when you're able to get to know your students like this. And they are voluntarily writing, some of them up to 1/2 a page a day! WOOT!

So I just wanted to share how wonderful my current batch of students are - an opinion that I feel I can offer validly because through this exercise we are getting to know each other outside the classroom too... I will be sad to see them go (in two days *sob*) but I hope that in our short class time, they were able to really experience English as something not just theoretical - it is an interactive means of communication between people.

I know this is cheesy, but it's things like this that really reaffirm my decision to come over here to teach for a while. I look forward to doing this exercise with my regular after-school conversation classes in the new year, too. The extra work this project creates for me is well-worth it - and fun!

oops...

Um, you know how I just proudly gushed about finishing Chris's hat, and how it's all superawesome because it's my first fair-isle style project? Well, all that pain and agony will have to be repeated, the hat is a shade too small and so I'm going to frog it all the way back to the earflaps (essentially, I'm starting over again). It will therefore be both my first and second fair-isle style project. Or does it just count as one project?
hrm.

(shhh! don't tell Chris - I told him that it would be hardly any work and that's a bold-faced lie, it will take me many many many hours of counting stitches and untwisting tangled yarn but I don't want to give him a hat that he won't wear, right?)

Aaaah, my knitting is truly my constant companion this month!!

If Na-Young's sweater doesn't fit, I swear to god I will scream. Knitting for people (surprise gifts) is not as easy as it looks - how do you nonchalantly attack someone's head with a tape measure to ensure accuracy?

On a different note, met more foreigners (and Koreans) tonight. One of the (newish) girls said that she's here to break through all the inequities (I'm paraphrasing) that we (women) deal with here - I'm not sure at all that it's any of my business to do such a thing though. As much as I'm a feminist and believe in equality for all, this isn't my culture to change. I am happy to speak about the issues if asked, but when not asked, I respect the culture as it stands.

To me, that sentiment is no different than a particular super-power government deciding to bring their own brand of democracy to the world. Change like that doesn't come from foreigners, it needs to come from the people who are the members of society -- who actually fully understand the constructs of the society. The Korean language is structured based on hiarchy and respect. There is no first person/second person/third person or plural in the verb conjugation. It's all about the hiarchy and where you fit in to it. To abolish hiarchy would be absolutely revolutionary in a linguistic sense, too, I think.

ringing in the new year with a bang

New Year's Eve has come and gone - 2007 seems to hold so much adventure and loads of promise! Spent New Year's Eve in Busan with Liz, Chris and a variety of others, partying late into the night. Check out Liz's blog for photos of the evening - I didn't really take any but Liz sure did!

Chris and I were still getting served at 5am, but decided to head on back to Ulsan, to watch the sun rise. And proceeded to fall asleep on the way home, both on the bus and in the cab. If there's one thing I wish I had taken a photo of, it was Chris at the bus terminal walking about 2 steps behind me and then POOF! he was gone -- he had decided to take a nap in some nearby bushes! Poor guy, I'm always telling tales of his misadventures (and never my own!) here...

I'm quite enjoying my 2-hours-a-day work schedule right now. Last night, went for tuna and stayed out until late into the night... met many wonderful Koreans, and was (sometimes) expected to act in a much more demure way than I ususally do. Y'all would laugh, because it's coming second nature to me now. Knowing when it's appropriate to sip my soju delicately, covering my mouth when I'm giggling, editing what I say and even how I react - and deferring to the males in the group. It drives me nuts, but I understand that it's important and don't even notice when I'm doing that kind of stuff anymore.

Tonight, off for the weekly foreign-teachers-pint-night at the local bar. It's a nice hump-day thing but I'm the only middle school teacher in the bunch, so I don't even want to mention my work schedule tonight (most hagwan teachers have a very full load during winter vacation!)

On the knitting front (because you all care SO much) I've finally finished Chris's hat, my first attempt at fair-isle style knitting (on double pointed needles, I was just asking for hell there) and am trucking quite quickly through the sweater I'm making my co-teacher. I am no longer afraid of the knitting store, and they are no longer afraid of me (wooo!).

Another haircut by the way, and this time, when I went in, the girls rushed to the counter and pulled out a phrase list that they had compiled -- I have to assume just to speak with me, as I'm really the only waygook in my 'hood, everyone else is on the other side of Hogye. SO sweet!

This country drives me nuts, any time I want to be frustrated with things, the niceness of everyone makes it impossible.

However, I still feel like, some days, my life is like a korean film without any english subtitles!