Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas!

The kids had a pretty good Christmas.  We did not pull out all the stops, as you can see from the picture of our Christmas tree.  It may not be spectacular, but it fits our living space, and will not be terribly offensive if left up until Easter, a long time custom in our home.

Maxine was probably the happiest person of the day.  She got a Barbie-clone bedroom set:


She also got some little tin cats from Grandma and Grandpa, as well as a Ken doll, which can be seen in the background.

Unfortunately, Ken is proving to be a bad influence...

SCANDALOUS!

Quinten is happy with his dragon that shoots yellow balls (of fire, I presume) when you jam them in his snoot and squeeze his belly (the dragon's belly, that is, not Quinten's).


Horyon and I got matching Kansas Jayhawks shirts, which is pretty awesome.

I also got Horyon some thick, fluffy socks to keep her feet warm.  I got a new chair to sit on while I use the computer, hence the Roblog entry.

Of course, we got to church a little late.  I took care of Quinten while Horyon talked with an expectant mother (due any day now), so neither of us actually got to sing along much or listen to the sermon.  Hopefully we will have many more opportunities to actually participate in a Christmas worship service.

Merry Christmas from the Sacks in Korea to all of you.

Peace,

Rob

Weight for it...

[It's been a crazy month.  I wrote most of this post a month ago, and then totally forgot about it.  So here it is, minus some bits that were just way too negative.  -R]

I'm trying a new look for the Roblog.  Blogger suggested it, and I figured why not?  At first glance I like it.  Easier to see more posts, and you only get the first couple of paragraphs.  If you're looking for anything within the past couple of years, you could probably find it easily.  Let me know what you think, Uncle Bob and Mom.  I guess anyone else reading this is welcome to comment too, but they are my loyal core.

I rode to work today.  It was some kind of cold.  The other day I bought some K2 mountain climbing gloves. They use Windstopper technology, but I couldn't find them on the website.  They are very much windproof, but just barely warm enough for this weather.  It was pretty close to freezing this morning, and I discovered that I really need to get some overshoes to put on my biking shoes.  Everything else warms up with hard riding, but my feet tend to stay cold.

I should also remember to grab my earmuffs and face/hat tube top.  These accessories make me look a bit dorkier than usual (a neat trick for a fat man wearing spandex), but the first five minutes of that ride are really cold, and if the temperature gets much lower it will be more than the first five minutes.

I feel that I am nearing the end of my cold.  My cough is dying off, though slowly.  Last night I had enough energy to dance around the kitchen with Maxine and Quinten to All Star from the Shrek soundtrack.  I was still wiped out by bedtime, but I haven't had enough sleep in weeks, so that is hardly surprising.

Today we sent the final translation of the website we were working on.  It was fun to do technical writing again.   Drove Horyon crazy, though.  Too many new, complicated ideas.  Not enough time.  If they are happy with our work, I kind of hope to do it again.  Horyon hopes not.  I told her that maybe I would just study Korean well enough to do that kind of project all by myself next time.  We both shared a good, hearty laugh over that.

The school year is coming to an end.  Sort of.  The students took their final exams on Tuesday.  All of them.  Every grade.  Rough day, I feel sorry for them.  Now they have only three more weeks of school until winter break.  Then we come back in late February for two weeks of classes before the spring semester starts.

So is the year finished?  Students sure think so.  I really have no way of arguing with them. We did oral level tests at the end of the spring semester, and I think we will do so again in February.

[This is where it stops. I was writing late in November, then things happened which even now make me want to stop writing, curl up, and go to bed with a good book. So I'll stop thinking, and publish.  I think the main point was this: I had lost more than 20 lbs in the previous 5 months!  Hence the cute title. Ha. ha.]

Nasal Irrigation, Speech Contest, and Biking (of course)

I've been coughing for a couple of weeks.  It moved up into my sinuses this past week.  I've been using my Neti Pot (a device for nasal irrigation) the whole time, once or twice a day.  Today I stayed home from church and have used it four times already, and plan to use it at least once more before going to bed.

Friends, if you have not poured water through your nose to fight a head cold, I most heartily recommend it.  I've been doing this for a few years now.  During allergy season I do it once a day, as well as when the pollution levels are high.  This cold is pretty nasty, but for ten or fifteen minutes after rinsing, I can actually smell things and breath freely.  I've also read that it helps you to heal faster because there is no more efficient way to get rid of the gunky mucus resulting from a cold.

So this past week I only biked a couple of times.  Got caught riding home in the rain Monday.  It was only sprinkling when I left school, but it slowly got heavier until I was soaked.  If it had just been pouring when I left school, I would have taken my bike on the subway; When it rains the roads are slippery, and the drivers are crazier.  Tuesday I was sore all over from the tension of riding in the rain on busy roads, so I skipped.  My cough was showing no signs of vacating the premises by Wednesday, but I still rode.  No rain, and I figured the exercise might help me throw it off.  Instead, for the last five minutes I started sneezing, as though I had walked into a hot barn full of dusty hay which had been thoroughly searched for needles by wrestlers who search by throwing things.  I figured it was something in the air, but it turned out to be something in my sinuses.

I didn't ride Thursday and Friday because the sneezing, coughing and ear-clogged dizziness just seemed like poor choices for riding partners.  "Hey guys, you wanna go for a ride?"  "Sure!  Don't worry, we'll keep it short!"  [evil chuckle].

Saturday was speech contest day at Dongsung.  It's in the contract, it's been planned for months, it was unavoidable.  I was miserable, coughing and blowing my nose while trying to be impartial in judging these poor 1st graders who had worked their hearts out.  The scores I gave showed a general downward trend that was more reflective of my physical and mental state than of the speeches being delivered or the props being presented.

Afterwords we all went out for sam-gae-tang;  It's a Cornish game hen stuffed with rice, flavored with ginseng, jujubes and chestnuts, and served in a heavy ceramic bowl in soup that is still boiling when they bring it to the table.  It was pretty good, one of the few Korean foods that comforts me when I have a cold.

So it's Sunday night, almost 11 o'clock.  I've almost finished my Theraflu Night drink (for severe colds, not "serve cold" Josh), and I'm ready to sleep.  There's plenty more on my mind, but you will probably not see another Roblog post for a while.  This week is shaping up to be crazy, and we have a job translating a website for a Korean company that makes a new, exciting (dare I say revolutionary?  Nah.) kind of shear reinforcement for concrete.  You probably know it as rebar--the metal rods that are hidden inside concrete structures to keep them from breaking when there is any force other than simple downward pressure put on them.  It's a new level of editing for me.  They gave me a version that has two English translations.  One is better than the other, but they are both clearly written by engineers.  A lifetime ago I learned that Engineers are generally terrible writers, and in some alternate reality my career is/was/would have been in technical writing and I wouldn't have ever met Horyon and Maxine and Quinten would be no more than cloudy dreams, forgotten upon waking.

Anyway, we're trying to get that done by Friday, but I just don't think that is going to happen unless I wake up tomorrow healthy as a bat.  And that is more possible if I get more sleep.  So goodnight.

Recent Riding

I've been pretty good.  As it becomes regular, it feels like there is less to report.  My right leg is about 95% recovered, but I am still taking it fairly easy on it.  Haven't taken the mountain road home yet.

Monday Horyon told me not to ride, and I decided not to fight it.  I had been (and am still) fighting a cough, and she thought riding would make me worse.  I felt a bit better Tuesday, so I rode.  Wednesday too.  I think riding actually helps to fight it off, as it makes my lungs work harder and more thoroughly than usually.

Today (Thursday) I couldn't ride because I had to get to the doctor's office then home.  Our doctor doesn't take appointments, but if you go sign in, you can leave and come back in an hour (or less) and not have to wait.    I think this is because Koreans are (in general) not good at appointments.  I know, sounds racist, but it's actually a cultural thing with them.  Drives newly arrived Westerners crazy, and can do a number on those of us who have been here a while as well.

Tomorrow I'm not sure whether or not to ride.  On Fridays I leave school and go to chat with someone almost an hour away by subway.  I have to drag my bike on the subway, right at the beginning of rush hour, then ride home afterwards in the dark on a pretty busy street.  But if I don't do it, my daily exercise is reduced to walking.

We've had a scale now for a couple of weeks, and it looks like I've dropped about a kilogram.  Feeling good about that, though the scale doesn't do decimals, so it's hard to be sure.

And this week I was informed that Dongsung Elementary School will rehire me for the coming year.  I was told this at a 40 minute meeting which was not the most fun meeting I've ever been in.  I won't go into the details, as I would rather not look back at this some day and experience a spike in my blood pressure.  If I leave it vague like this, I will be able to look back on it and laugh.  "Ha ha, me in 2011 so funny!"

It's getting cold to ride, which causes problems for me.  The biggest problem is, of course, shedding excess heat.  Dress warm enough to start, and I am hot 10 minutes in, sweating by the time I get to work.  Dress too skimpy and I don't warm up until I'm almost at work.  Gotta figure out the balance.

Two Turtles, a Buffet, and some Blocks

Yes.  We have our first pets, and they are reptiles.

No, your monitor is not malfunctioning.  They are in a pink wash-basin while their tank is being cleaned.  I can't get any decent pictures of them in their tank.

I don't know what kind of turtles they are.  If anyone out there can help me on this, I would sure appreciate it.  Maxine was begging for a turtle, and we gave in for her birthday without researching much.  Turns out that turtles often carry salmonella, so you aren't supposed to touch them or hold them.  Makes them pretty boring pets in some ways.  They are still fun to watch, though.  They are semi-aquatic, and like to swim around in their tank as well as perch on the faux rock we bought for them.  It's kind of sad to be on display like that, and not entirely unlike my job as an English teacher in a Korean school.

For Maxine's birthday we went to a kids' buffet at Bexco, which I wrote about in this post.  Here are a couple of pictures we took at the time which I have only just now moved to my computer.  We have borrowed my parents'-in-law camera.

 I like these pictures.  It's difficult to get Quinten to look at the camera and smile, so this is a rare find.

 And this picture of Maxine and I captures both of us nicely, if a little darkly.

We recently got some Duplo blocks for the kids to play with.  Horyon found them used, and got an incredible deal.  I'm sure we'll be able to sell them for more than we paid, but more importantly, Quinten LOVES playing with them.  Right now his focus is on seeing how high he can stack them.  Not bad for three-and-a-half, eh?

Don't Wear Your Coat All Day!!!!!!!!

So Maxine told me that she wore her coat all day at school today, and I decided to let her know that if you wear your coat too much in the winter, you sweat, then it's easy to get cold when you go back outside.  Being a big fan of the Socratic method, I started leading her with some questions.  Here's how it went:

Rob:  So when you wore your coat did you feel hot?

Maxine:  A little.

R:  So what happens to a body when it is too hot?

M:  When a body is too hot it explodes!

R:  !

So be warned as winter approaches:  Don't wear your coat all day, because if you get too hot...

BANG!

Rides 8-11

This week I have ridden every day, following the subway here (20 minutes, though I think I got it down to 17 today busin' my hump) and taking the mountain road home.  I still can't get all the way over without putting a foot on the ground.  Especially if there is a lot of traffic coming up behind me, and especially especially if someone honks at me as he passes.  That happened yesterday and just blew my concentration, and once you stop going up a steep hill it is really hard to get going again.  I ended up walking a way until the traffic let up.

The traffic is not really that fast; they are dealing with stop lights and frequent stops by taxis and buses.  Sometimes I pass cars going up hill, even as I am in granny gear, huffing and puffing and wishing that there was a short cut to getting serious bike muscles and lungs.

Maxine told me that it looked like I had lost some weight.  I'm not sure that I trust her on this one; she knows I want to lose weight, and likes to say things to make me happy.

So I have biked back and forth to work 11 times out of the last 12 work days, missing only once because of a rainy forecast.  I could have beaten the rain here, but there's no way to know that when you set off, so I'm probably better off not finding out.  That puts me at around 92%, an A-.  But they have forecast rain for tomorrow as well, so we will see what happens.  As it is now, I change clothes when I get to work anyway, and my bag has a rain cover.  If it is a light rain, I might ride anyway.

It seems that this is really the only way I will get regular exercise.  I can't squeeze any more significant time out of my daily schedule, and this combines a necessary activity (getting to work) with a desirable activity (exercising).  I know that some people wake up early to exercise.  I just can't do it.  Waking up early is an unnatural activity for me, whereas staying up late comes easy.

In other news, at work they are asking for all of the foreign English teachers to evaluate a big stack of English science books to choose one for next year.  It will be a supplementary book, used a couple of times a month, and probably not by us.  It's hard for me to build up much interest in this, as this school has a reputation for soliciting advise and then ignoring it.  What does it cost them to ask us to spend time?  Nothing.  But we are not considered experts, in spite of our experience and first-hand knowledge.  It is quite frustrating.

And at the end of October it is time for re-signing contracts for next year, and for the school to let us know whether we will be invited to re-sign or just resign.  Unfortunately, there are already rumors about who will not be asked to come back, rumors spread by the people making the decision.  It seems very unprofessional to me, but once again, I was not asked.

The other event at the end of October is Halloween.  We will have our school-wide Halloween party on the 28th, with games, a haunted house, and candy.  It will be a nice break from teaching, but it is ironic that we are doing fake scary at the same time that some of us are going through the real-life scary prospect of losing a job.  I think if the party were after they dropped pink slips, some of our kids might get a bit more scaring than they had anticipated.