Friday, May 29, 2009

Another day another dollar...

Kinda fun day at work today. It was my sixth graders today, which I look forward to. As my oldest class they have the most advanced speakers and the most rambunctious attitude. Tons of fun. We started a new lesson today entitled "Can I have a glass of water?" Enthralling stuff. All the curriculum I've been given is pretty formal stuff and sometimes nonsensical. For instance. Two characters are sitting at a lunch which they, presumably, brought or bought. The conversation between them goes as follows...

"What's that?" Says Character One pointing to a box of chicken.
"I have no idea" says Character Two as she forks a piece of chicken and sticks it in her mouth.
"Mmmm...It's good. Try this." Says Character Two pointing to the chicken.

Seems a little off, doesn't it? As such, I've been trying to give the kids examples of conversations as they might actually happen. Less formal, some simple slang like dude, or saying go for it instead of "Help yourself , please." They seem to like the bee's knees which makes me happy. Good day today so far. Let's go and see what the night has in store.

Gotta go clean and I'm not sure how to access the draft. I'll edit this in a sec :P

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Today, this very fine day.

Now that I've bitched a bit, I suppose I should tell you about our day. I took the day off after lunch so we could hit the Suwon Immigration Office to see about getting Caroline a short term visa since her 90 days is almost up. We went on down to the subway where we picked up a delicious chicken stick for me and started traveling. It was a short trip and we were soon at Songkungkwan University (Which I was actually able to identify in Korean). A quick Taxi ride later we were at the immigration office. Fortunately the lines weren't long and moved at a decent speed. They told us to just go to the Embassy and get marriage papers processed and then come back. Also, its gonna be 60,000 won (50 bucks or so). The ride back was less fun, mostly because we had trouble finding a seat for Caroline and she was getting hungry. We found a seat eventually (though we almost missed getting it) and the hungers were corrected with another chicken stick :) Pretty chill day over all.

On another note I'm going to be running a 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons game for some of the other teachers here. Maybe Tim as well if I can get him to play. Should be a lot of fun. 4th Ed is pretty cool. I'll let you know how it goes. Laters.

My Co-teacher.

Hello all. I thought I'd post some thoughts regarding my work. Let me start off by saying that I love the kids. They are great. Unfortunately my co-teacher is driving me batty. She has a large English vocabulary and almost 0% ability to use it in a useful way outside of basic "Hi/Hello" conversations. Her ability to effectively convey concepts is nil. Furthermore, her voice can get really high pitched. It grates on my nerves. But wait...that's not all! Act now and you can also get her to interfere with my lessons! Today's lesson had a game and the review of the lesson. the first class it all goes very smoothly and ends on time. The second class she seems to have decided that I was allowing them too long to play the game and starts the review ten minutes early, leaving us with a gap at the end of the class. What fun! Also I decided that when the class is doing prep for an activity, like cutting the cut-outs the book provides, that I'd play some western music. the Beatles seemed like a good idea. Apparently not so. She turned it off because it was "noisy and not relating to the lesson." Balls to that, says I. I'm going to have to have a talk with her about this soon. It is 100% not ok.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Home for July/Baby Registry

I wanted to post on here for anyone who doesn't yet know, I will be coming back to the states for most of July. I'm flying in on the first to Austin. My mom and I will be driving up to Fort Collins on the 5th/6th, and then to Wyoming (for my brother's wedding!!) on the 9th. We will be in Wyoming til the 14th, then heading back down to Texas. Charlie's (my brother) reception in Texas is that Saturday. After that, I'll just be hanging out in the Austin area til the end of the month. I will be having a couple of baby showers in that time as well. If anyone is interested, we have already set up our baby registries. We can't bring a lot of stuff here, just the essentials. Whatever we bring here, we've gotta get back home too. And we really don't have much space. So here are the registries:

http://www.babiesrus.com registry number:65449029

http://www.target.com Search for: Caroline Glass or Justin Long

http://www.amazon.com/gp/baby/homepage?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
Search for: Caroline Glass or Justin Long

There are some duplicates between them. I have noted the duplicates and price differences on Amazon.

I can't wait to see everyone back in the states!!

Hypnobirthing Class #3

Had a great class last night! A good night altogether, actually. Justin and I decided to head up early, and check out the buses. There is a bus that goes right from Osan to a terminal about 5 subway stops away from the clinic. It was perfect! And it took less than an hour (50 min. actually) to get there. We met up with Debra and a friend of hers at Hooters. Neither of us had been to a hooters before, and we thought it was hilarious to be going in Korea for the first time. The food was ok, and it was a little expensive. Probably won't be going back there. Too many other good restaurants in the area to try. We got to class early, so we relaxed and talked with Trish, the instructor, and Dr. Chung. It was a nice relaxing class. We watched a couple births then did a really interesting exercise. It took us very deep and we were able to numb certain parts of our body. I know I'm not explaining it well, but it was very cool. We are also starting to write our birth preferences. Next time we will be having a fear-release session to help with anything that might be counterproductive to our easy birthing.

Justin and I left class about 30 min. early to catch the last bus back to Osan. We had planned to stay the whole time and just take the subway back, but the class was just going over a sheet of birth preferences, and I was falling asleep! The bus ride home was even faster (40 min.). It was definitely worth the couple extra bucks. We will just be getting to class early again next week and talking to Trish about what we "missed." I was able to talk a little bit this time to Amanda. She had a home-water-hypno-birth with Dr. Chung. She gave me a book on EC* to read on the bus home. I have already been reading about it online, and I am very interested. I can't wait to talk more with her about this and her birth.

*EC is Elimination Communication. It is a way of communicating with your child that eventually allows you to be diaper-free.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Score!!

I went over to the World Mart that I had heard about. There was quite a bit of useful ingredients. The only thing I bought today was a lychee drink. But they did have fresh herbs, lots of coconut, and curry pastes. There was also another international food mart across the alley, but it was mostly a little cafe/restaurant with a few shelves of the same stuff as World Mart. On the way home I stopped by the school to grab Justin. It is market day, so we went looking for some plants. I've been wanting at least an aloe vera. We were in luck. We found a huge aloe for only 5,000 won ($4.04), and a nice size rosemary for 3,000 won ($2.42). Then, on the way home, there was a hoddeok (think that's the name of it) vendor. They are these awesome little pancakes with gooey cinnamon goodness inside. They were nice and hot and only 500 won (about 40 cents) apiece!! We totally scored!!


















Barefoot and Pregnant

The best part of last week in my opinion was Sunday. Mother's day. For my first Mother's Day, I wanted to do something really fun. I found out about a Barefoot Festival going on in Daejeon. Debra used to live in Daejeon, so she knows the area really well. So she decided to come with us. It was quite a journey to get there. We got up about 5am, traveled by bus to the subway station to take the train to the bus terminal. The train was late, so we missed our bus. We took the next bus, ended up at the wrong place to catch the shuttle to the mountain. We did find 3 very helpful Korean campus police at the University. We used their computer to show them where we wanted to go, and they decided that we could get a cab there easily. They argued over which way to tell the cab driver to go, then started calling cab companies. The whole time, there were cabs driving by on the road outside. They finally realized this, and 2 of them ran outside to catch one. No more came, so one of the guys jumped into his tiny campus police car and drove away. He came back a minute later with a cab following him. They put us in the cab and told the driver where to take us.

30 minutes later, we were at the mountain. We started walking (UP the mountain) to the festival. We came to a set of booths where people were registering and getting numbers for the marathon. They told us to just keep walking. We came to another set of booths, and they told us to keep walking. We came to ANOTHER set of booths, and they held our backpacks for us, but told us to keep walking. Finally we came to a booth that said "Foreigner Information". There, they just gave us some numbers. They didn't want to deal with trying to get us to fill out registration forms. Hehe. So we pinned on our numbers as they photographed us. Then we set out for the starting line. We were going to be walking the 5k. There was also a harder, 13k. And yes, it was all barefoot. So we walked along through the forest. It was beautiful. A nice warm, sunny day. About 3/4ths of the way along, there was a large inflatable pool filled with mud. There was a crowd of Koreans stomping around in it, so we decided to do that on the way back. We got to the 2.5k turnaround point, where they were handing out chocopies. They had just run out though. So we found a shady spot and sat to eat our fruit. We had brought watermelon, oranges, grapes, and apple. Then we headed back down. Justin and I were excited about getting all muddy!! Debra was not too thrilled about the idea, but was too tempted anyway. The Koreans took so many photos! There were stealth photographers in the bushes!

Once we got back to the bottom, we were handed a snack of vitamin C drink and rice cakes. Then as a finishing prize, they were handing out gift boxes of Soju. Soju is the very alcoholic rice liquor. They even handed one to me!! We had to get a picture of that one. There was entertainment including breakdancing and women in schoolgirl outfits pretending to play stringed instruments. We took that as a cue to leave. We caught the shuttle back into town, and headed over to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. It was a real Chinese restaurant too. Not American Chinese, not Korean Chinese. It even had Chinese writing on it. I was not too into the food. I was really hoping for some chicken, but the dish they said had chicken in it turned out to be pork. It wasn't too bad though. They are most famous for their lamb skewers. There is a grill set into the table, they put the burning coals into it and you cook your own skewers over it. Then they give you a saucer with coarse salt, curry powder, ajwain (parsley) seeds, and chili powder in it. You mix them all together and roll your meat in it before you eat it. I am NOT a fan of lamb, so I spit it out as soon as it was in my mouth. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it though.

After dinner, we made the long trek home. Justin got on a train heading towards Osan (he had to work the next day). Debra and I got on a bus back to Incheon. We actually didn't get home that late, considering the day we had. I had a nice long bath and slept very well. I didn't have any soreness at all the next day! All I had was a couple blisters from wearing my flip flops up the mountain! I'm just made to be barefoot though. Justin and Debra didn't have it so easy. They got pretty sore. It was a great day. Looks like we have a tradition developing!

Ok, I've gotta get going! Gonna get over to that market, then we have class tonight! Yay!

안녕

Last week recap

Ok, I know it's been awhile. I got home on Monday. It's really nice to just be alone and have naps after a week like last week. Every single day was doing something. I did get to spend lots of time with Debra, my belly buddy. Justin was even able to spend most of the week with me. He had Monday, Tuesday, and Friday off. Lots of holidays.

I will post about my favorite part of the week (Sunday) separately, since it will most likely be long. Justin and I went up on Sunday and met Karin and her daughters in Itaewon. We had a brunch at Rocky Mt. Tavern. Not near as good as the last time we had it. I don't know if I would recommend it anymore. The food was small portions and was all cold. The bar is also very smoky. I was glad to leave.

Monday we met up with Debra for dinner. We decided on sushi, and were heading that way, when we say a couple foreigners with a map. They were trying to talk to a Korean. Debra asked if they needed help, and the Korean waved us away. So we walked away. A second later he was running after us. He said the foreigners did need help. We said hi and introduced ourselves. They were Mexican, just got into town, and were only in town for a couple days. They are on a boat. Debra also knows Spanish, so she started talking them up. They were so surprised. She asked if they had eaten yet, and they said no. So we brought them along for sushi. We went to a great all you can eat sushi buffet. YUM. It was funny to watch our new friends eat sushi. Especially when they didn't know how hot wasabi is. One of them dipped his sushi in it, and started coughing really hard. He had to run for the water fountain.

We found out more about them. They travel all over on a huge boat. They showed us some beautiful pictures of it. They had just come from Shanghai, and were headed to Russia next. They had no idea that Koreans really speak almost no English. So they had been really lost. How lucky are they to find someone like Debra? Someone who not only speaks English, but also their language and the language of the country they are in. After dinner, Justin and I headed home and she showed them to a PC bang, so they could get on the internet. Such an adventure!

Monday night Tim was over, stayed all day Tuesday, and we had lasagna that Karin made us before she left. It was amazing, of course. It was Tim's only day off, so we just hung out all day with him. Debra and her friend Tina came over for a little while in the evening. Wednesday, I met Debra at her University so we could head over to hypnobirthing class together. We caught a bus right from the University to the bus terminal very near to class. It didn't even take an hour. We even had time for ice cream before class.

Class was great too. We got to meet a doula and a mother who has had a homebirth here in Korea. I'm excited to talk to both of these women soon. Debra spent the night that night and made some awesome banana pecan pancakes the next morning. Justin came back up Thursday night and we hung out for the rest of the weekend. Saturday we took the Karin's dog over to the park in Incheon. They had a couple really big fountains for the kids to play in. It was so cool.

It was a good week, but very tiring!! I'm glad to be home. We had some dinner at a friend's house here in Osan last night (Tim cooked). Afterwards the boys met up with some Osan English Teachers to go see the new Star Trek movie. Justin says it was AWESOME.

Well, I will post about Sunday, then I'm off to the market. Found out there is an International market here in Osan. Gonna go check it out. 안녕

Friday, May 8, 2009

Belly 17w 2d

I am house-sitting for our friend Karin in Incheon right now, so I'm not going to do a better post until I get home. But for now, who wants a belly pic?!

Friday, May 1, 2009

The rest of wednesday...

Awesome as the hypnobirthing class is, it's also in Apgujeong, which is 2 hours away by subway. As such, we decided to see about trying out the bus and/or train in hopes of speeding the whole process up. The process was not sped up...maybe in the future it will be since we won't be checking this and that and wondering where exactly we need to go, but in the mean time it sucked. It was worth it though since I got to see the baby for the first time on the ultrasound. It was an amazing moment getting to see our baby for the first time. As Caroline said I smiled a lot. I also came pretty close to tears.

After we decided to go check out this area nearby that supposedly had some pretty sweet food options. Supposedly is the key word here. I suppose they may actually exist and we simply managed to find none of them. We walked up and down hills tried a couple subway stops and it all came to nothing. Though we did see a mouse come out of the subway and scare a Korean woman half to death. That was kind of funny. Eventually we just hopped in a cab and managed to explain to the driver that according to our map a T.G.I Fridays was just up the block. We arrived and ordered. Our drinks came out with our food cause that's often how it goes around here. Both of us were very hungry so conversation was light. After we ate though all was well. We then hopped into another cab and got back to the clinic for the hypnobirthing class. For more on this see Caroline's post.

Getting home was another ordeal. We were essentially catching the last trains of the night. No buses were available. Our final train didn't actually take us to Osan. We had to catch a cab. The cab had some others in it who were also going to Osan. That was cool. One lady spoke good English and had zero accent. That was really cool in fact. However when we got out the cab driver cheated us. I handed him 15,000 won for a 12,000 fare and he switched the ten for a one once I handed it to him. I hadn't been paying that much attention and assumed I had accidentally handed him a 1,000 instead of a 10,000. I gave him the money and moved cause really I just wanted to be home at that point. Caroline is 100% sure I handed him a ten though. So that's pretty upsetting. It was about 1 in the morning at that point and for two who usually turn into pumpkins around 10, sleep was a welcome friend.

Hypnobirthing is amazing!

The Hypnobirthing class on Wed. night went very well. There were 3 other "couples" there. A couple from Australia, a woman from the Phillipines and her Korean mother, and a couple from Germany and New Zealand. Our instructor, Trish, is also Australian. I love meeting people from around the world. It was a very relaxing class. We were introduced to Hypnobirthing and the person who created it. We watched 2 hypnobirths, and had a self-hypnosis session. The book, Hypnobirthing, The Mongan Method, comes with the class. We are also given a cd with our birth affirmations and relaxation on it. I have already listened to it twice, and am quite a ways through the book. I really like this program. It incorporates everything I already feel and believe about natural childbirth, and it gives me the tools to get into that meditative, relaxed state that I need.

Other than the class, we had another sonogram. Most of you have already seen the pictures, I'm sure, but here is the link to the set on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweet-caroline/sets/72157617404462447/

She is 10.6 cm long and very healthy. We still don't know the sex because she is still too small. Our next appt. is Sat. May 30th. It will be the major time for screening her body. She will be large enough to check all her organs. I can't wait! Justin was so excited to finally see her. He had a BIG smile on his face!

The rest of our day on Wed. was not so much fun, but I will let Justin post about that. 안녕