Maxine's Menu

The other day Maxine showed me a menu she had made.  She wanted to keep the source secret, but I eventually found out.  It's from a book about a pig family going to a Mexican restaurant.

The Menu

She wanted to play restaurant, but Horyon and I were both busy, and Quinten is a lousy customer, though a decent short order-cook.  (See what I did there with the hyphen?)

The Menu pictured with the inspiration for it

There was disappointment and another bedtime with a damp pillow.  Sorry, Maxine.

The next day I played along.  Had me some nachos.  Mmmmm.... nachos.

Kids.  Always getting hung-up on something.

KIT, places and students

The place is just beautiful in the spring.  Plenty of cherry blossoms, and a nice campus.

The water has been on a couple of times.  Gives the place a lively yet relaxed feel.

I have a couple of classes in this building.

Some of my students in the foreground, protesting being in the picture.
Another building in which I teach in the background.

Two of my friendly students.  It's hard to hold
the camera straight standing on a slope like this.

A portion of my night class, more than 50 enrolled!

Another large class, almost 50 in this one.  Don't ask me their names.

Coffee machine and other stuff.

Lots of steps at KIT

This plaza is a popular hangout.

Funny, it doesn't look that steep...

A nice resting place close to the bottom edge of the campus.  Great for reading.

Yeah, that looks as steep as it feels.

That building houses the office of the foreign teachers.  23 men, one room.  Recipe for comedy.

They like curvy glass.

It's good to have a color assigned to the campus.

One of my smallest classes, about 34 students.

The Centum City campus building.

Computer majors at the Centum Campus.

The main entrance to the Centum Campus.

Please not in 3's!

In the past week I've killed two gadgets in our home. The first was a DVD player which we inherited from the previous occupant of our previous apartment. I paused a movie the kids were watching, then left it on pause overnight, and well into the next day. When I came back to it, it did the electronic equivalent of staggering around until it fell on its face in the gutter and didn't get back up again: "Loading... loading... loading... No disc." You just can't argue with persistence like that. It was a freebie, so I'm not too upset.

The kids are dying, or at least doing a good impression of dying. When we moved here, we decided to not hook up the cable box, so we can't watch tv.  (The cable TV is still part of our TV/Internet/Phone package, but it turns out to be cheaper to leave it in than to cancel it.  Go figure.)  Horyon and I were relying way too much on it to keep the kids occupied, so now it is practically not there. We did let them watch some of their DVDs, but it was kind of like...

Hmmm, let me think.  What's a good addiction metaphor that doesn't make my kids sound like junkies and my wife and I sound like pushers? Can't think of one. Never mind.

 So the tv hasn't been on for the past few days. Doesn't really bother me. Sometimes the whining from the kids bothers me a little, and Maxine wants to get on the computer for a fix of PBSKidsGo.org. Sorry, I meant "a little quality time on PBSKidsGo.org." But they are adjusting to the new reality. And I, while writing this piece, have decided not to get myself the birthday present I had previously wanted to get. Which may solve my problem of 3's.

You see, the second gadget to go is much more sharply missed by me: I dropped my Kindle Touch. Put it down on a high place wrong, it fell off, and now it just doesn't work.

non-functioning KTouch with screwdrivers purchased to access its innards

Some time ago my friend Elaine stepped on hers, killing it dead.  (By the way, completely off topic, she has an excellent blog which you will undoubtedly enjoy more than mine, or at least enjoy more often than mine.)  She gave the body to me, and I found that I am unable to Frankenstein it without a $60 replacement screen, and no guarantee that that will fix the problem.

Elaine's Deceased Kindle

The deceased, autopsy in progress, tools shown.
Prognosis: coffee stains likely non-fatal.

You can buy a regular, non-keyboard Kindle for $69, and a new Keyboard Kindle 3G for $139, so it's a tough call: fix or replace?  (Her KK is not 3G, only wireless, so the replacement is a more expensive model.)  However, my Kindle touch replacement screen is only $30. Again, no guarantee that it will work, and I've got to get it here from America. Ironically, I can have my parents send it along with the case for my Kindle Touch that I asked them to hold on to for me until I got together some other stuff to send with it. Dangit. I mean, sure, this will save them money on shipping, but not as much as it would have saved me if I hadn't had to buy a new Kindle. Oh, the irony.

 Since disasters seem to come in 3's, I've been wondering what my 3rd gadget death will be. The computer is just a few months old, so I really don't want it to die. The TV is a freebie, but we don't watch it enough to even know whether or not it is dead. Horyon and I both have Samsung Galaxy Note phones, the most expensive gadgets in the house at around $1000 apiece (paid for in monthly installments over three years). I would really rather not have one of them die. So maybe it's time to sacrifice the birthday present.

You see, I've had my mind on a used DVD player with a built in amplified Dolby 5.1 surround system, speakers included.  Only $100.  Haven't tried it out, but if it works, it's a real bargain.  The thing is, if I buy it, we'll use it to watch DVDs.  More precisely, my kids will watch DVDs.  Maybe we're better off without it?  And if I don't buy it, that's practically the same as buying it then having it break down completely, so I have to throw it away, right?  So not buying it solves three problems:  1) Less tv time for the kids, 2) money saved can help replace dearly departed Kindle, and 3) 3rd bullet dodged.  And hey, I'll probably enjoy the surround sound more in my imagination than I would in real life, right?

Thanks for tuning in.  Coming soon, a review of my new job so far.

Last Week at Dongsung

Hello.

It's Saturday afternoon, Horyon and the kids are out, and I should be working on this week's assignment.  But it has been ages since I added to the Roblog, so here I am.

Tomorrow is New Year's Day (Solnal) according to the Korean Lunar calendar.  We will have a big, awesome breakfast around 8 tomorrow morning that won't look like anything you would call breakfast, with fried foods, fish, soup, rice, and of course, kimchi.  Gotta have kimchi, right?  The days before and after Solnal are national holidays, so today is a wasted holiday, but we get Monday off.  The last Monday of my school year, with only 6th grade classes!  I could not be happier to miss a day. 

This coming week is my last week of classes at Dongsung Elementary School.  I went out with most of my coworkers last night after work.  Since we finished around 4:30, we had dinner and drinks at a Mexican/Korean fusion restaurant.  The food was excellent, though I'm not sure how garlic french fries fall into either category, but when the restaurant brings you free food you don't complain.

I am ready to be finished with this job.  I am simply not an elementary teacher.  At least, not here, and not with my own kids at home.  My daily portion of patience is rarely sufficient for the day.  It does not help one bit that I feel frustrated with the direction of the English department: our students spend 6 class periods a week with a native speaker, and 4 with a Korean English teacher.  There is so much potential with all of this classroom time, and yet I have students in my 6th grade English class who can barely hold a conversation, comprehend a basic text, or sit on a chair without falling off.  (OK, that's sort of a standard problem for middle school kids, so I shouldn't fault my school for this.)

My lack of job satisfaction is one reason that the Roblog has been on a sort of hiatus.  I don't like to get on here and whine, and I don't expect that my readers would be happier with a sniveling post than with no post.  But now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I am hoping it is not a train.

This coming Valentine's Day will be special for us: first of all, we will be moving to a new apartment.  I have posted photos on Facebook (easy to do from my phone), and you can see the difference: more than twice as big as our current digs, lots of windows for light and air, a veranda with a laundry hanger.  No cool roof for parties like our current home, no comfort and security and fun of knowing and working with my immediate neighbors.  It's a worthy trade-off.  Fortunately, Horyon is only teaching vacation classes for the next three weeks, so she will have time to get us settled.  I will have two weeks between jobs, but expect to be somewhat busy preparing for the upcoming Kyungnam College position.

And three days after Valentine's Day (easy to remember), is our 12th wedding anniversary.  It's finally starting to sound right.  I've always felt like we've been together for a long time, even in the year before we got married.  Twelve years doesn't quite reflect the feeling that our souls have always been together, but it doesn't leave me saying, "Only 12?"  I'm thinking that by the time I've been married more than half my life (2032), it will finally seem just about right.

I am hoping that the new job will bring a lot of changes, including more time for blogging, my kids, and my studies.  I will try to keep you updated.

And here's a picture of Quinten on the floor.

Little Stinker

(A picture is worth a thousand words, sometimes more. Between the 4th and 5th pictures I turned off the flash, so he couldn't see it coming!)

3 Pictures

My Wednesday night Bible study group is resuming this week after a summer hiatus, and our homework is to present 3 photos of our summer adventures. I chose these three, but was unable to email them because they were too large.  Rather than editing them down, I'm posting them here. And because I'm not good at counting I put in 4.  I guess we can drop the one of Quinten in my hat, Joe.  I know he's looking really adorable, but he's in that last fountain shot as well.  If you don't want any spoilers for Wednesday, you should stop reading here.

Both fountain and hat shots are to represent the miserable heat we lived with all summer.  The small parrot was one time I took the kids out to an animal cafe.  Lots of time with the kids this summer.  And me trying to cover up the naughty bits of that brass bass relief is from English camp. I took very few pictures, and that was one of the most entertaining of the lot.

The End of Summer "Vacation"

I put vacation in parenthesis because I've worked every day of the four weeks that comprise this particular summer vacation.  As usual, food seems to play a big part.  Maxine loves going to the cake-decorating place, where you buy a cake and decorate it.  Almost too much adorable for one picture.

 The two of us went out for a late afternoon that included Japanese Octopus Spheres, which Maxine did not enjoy nearly as much as it looks like in this photo.  They are basically a little wheat flour and octopus fritter, with a savory sauce that is Worcestershirey and shavings of some dried fish that taste better than they sound.  I enjoy this relatively recent addition to Korean street food, even when prepared and eaten in the basement food court of Shinsegae Department Store.

 Last week Horyon's mother made a Vietnamese dinner that I have been unable to hunt down a name for, in spite of spending literally minutes looking on the internet.  It is a sort of make-your-own spring roll buffet, with julienned veggies (red and yellow bell peppers, cucumber, carrot, cabbage, onion, sauteed mushroom), fruits (pineapple, apple, peach and cherry tomato) meats (shrimp, Korean style cooked pork, snail), cooked Vietnamese rice vermicelli, fried egg white strips and fried egg yolk strips, and two or three kinds of fresh, raw bean sprouts.  You first dip the rice paper squares into hot water.  They start out stiff, like an x-ray sheet, but quickly get floppy after being dipped in the water.  Place it on your plate, then pile up whatever ingredients you like, topping them with sweet chili sauce.  The thick, tasty, fun-making spicy one, or the more watery, vinegary one.  By this time, your rice paper is rubbery and sticky, and doesn't seem like something you would voluntarily eat, but it sticks to itself well enough to burrito-ize your stuff without needing any other adhesives.  Then pop the whole thing into your mouth (oops, should have mentioned that before you started piling stuff on.  Sorry.).  Don't even try to take a bit of it, because the whole thing will fall apart and you'll mess up your shirt.  This is why we can't go to nice restaurants, you know.  For me, the major triumph of the evening was remembering to take a picture BEFORE we decimated the spread.

 Another in my "Seen While Biking" series, in fact taken on the same day as the Water-Bike Guys, this lovely couple was having their wedding photos taken by the sea.  It was actually a nice day for it, luckily for them.  They had probably had it on their calendar for months.  The wind even cooperated in blowing that silly veil in a most romantic fashion.

 Horyon's father took me and the kids to the fountain in their apartment complex, where the kids and I splashed around for a bit.

  Later Horyon asked how clean I thought that water was.  You know, there are some things we are probably better off not thinking about.  With temperatures in the high 90's, I hope for our sake that they were pulling fresh water from the tap rather than recycling it for this fountain, or that if they do recycle that they have some pretty good filters in the system, but I'm not really feeling very optimistic on this one.

 Our church has had half a dozen babies born in the past six months, and Maxine has enjoyed holding all of them.  Here she is with Trip, a.k.a. John Harrison III.  So far she has not dropped a single baby!  I think she's ready to babysit!

 Here is a photo of Horyon and Quinten walking down the hill from our church, ICC, which meets on the campus of Busan University of Foreign Studies.  We walk down this hill most Sundays, and I thought I'd share the view with all of you.

 This is, I believe, the secret entrance to the undercity.  I need to go back and take more pictures so you can see the locked chainlink fence and gate at the bottom.

Or it might be the secret entrance to the new apartments going up in the background.

Or it could be an old underground street crossing that has been closed up because too many vagrants were sleeping there and kids were going there to smoke and make out.  Who knows.

Anyway, my apologies for not being a more regular poster.  I know that many people don't see what my kids look like outside of the Roblog, and people who love us have no idea what is going on in our lives.  Frankly, there are times when I am not sure what is going on in our lives.  It's all happening so quickly:  Quinten is talking more coherently and hasn't worn diapers in more than a month.  Maxine is starting at a new school in September.  Horyon is very happy teaching at her old high school.  And I love certain aspects of my job.  Which is not to say that I am excited to go back to work next Monday, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

And I have to put together next week's lesson plans and a sermon for this Sunday.  So I hope you all have a nice whatever time of day you are in the middle of.