Some Pictures, Being Worth a few Thousand Words, for your Delectation

More pictures, huh? Well, it seems that I haven't cleared out my cell phone's cache for a good long time, so perhaps I'd better choose a few favorites from the last massive download and post them here for your enjoyment.

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Katherine with our old-fashioned watering can, in our garden. Just after we planted our lettuce, spring onions, spinach, and acorn squash, we had a cold snap. I think the germinating lettuce has bitten the biscuit, but the tougher spinach survived - there are little sprouts poking through the soil already.



Homeschooling: A picnic in 'the quarry' - we had our lunch outdoors during a geology lesson, discovering quartz and mica among other 'treasures'.



Kath posing in front of one of her favorite paintings at the Klimt exhibition we were lucky enough to catch in Seoul this spring. We created a great lapbook on Klimt later, with our favorite selections and plenty of gold accents... visit Lapbook Lessons, here, to see it: http://lapbooklessons.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?user=27cmhh10i5j63



Il-Sun and Choon-Dae took us to an excellent Chinese restaurant for Bryan's birthday last December; here he is being served with the piece-de-resistance, a whole octopus all to himself. He was kind enough to let Kath and me nibble a couple of tentacles, though!



Homeschooling sometimes involves chocolate pudding.



Last autumn one of Il-Sun's dogs had puppies. Here's Katherine, with a priceless expression on her face, part delight and part apprehension. (Just last week the same dog had another litter - Kath was far more confident showing them off to our friends this time, snuggling them blissfully under her chin, and then nonchalantly handing them back into their nest...)

The Bard Quits.. Becomes Unpaid Teacher

KATHERINE MAKES KIMCHI AT YUCHIWAN

A long time between posts, as usual! Here we are in 2009 already.

What with work, final exams, vacation, dying computers, and a new job, somehow there never seems to be enough time to write things down. So, just for the record, because it's not as if friends and family don't keep in touch with us other ways (well, if I updated this more regularly, I'm sure they'd check it more often? Right? Right.), I should make a few notes and post a few pictures.

I have gracefully informed Myongji that I will no longer be working for them; it was both flattering and satisfying to receive a visit from my (no longer) boss, who asked a variety of questions and made a variety of offers all revolving around attempting to keep me on...

At this point I'm 'employed' by my darling daughter, Katherine Joy. We've spent most of winter vacation designing an ambitious and comprehensive curriculum for our extremely exclusive homeschool: the Alembyc Academy, if it please you, with an enrollment of one... However, if I were able to accept other students legally, I'd be making more than I did at MJU! Perhaps it will be a possibility in the future for me to own/run my own hogwan - not at present, though.

See the next post for the in-depth (12 MS Word pages) curriculum, if you're interested in our plan of study, and feel free to point out any errors or obvious omissions. It's a five-year plan of study, but we'll see if we get through it sooner or more leisurely, so I'm not including a lot of 'detail' at this level of depth. We'll return to it in five years (or so) and take it down another level of complexity, with concepts that are appropriate for her age and understanding.

I'm also quite informally helping out a Korean church on Sundays, teaching three classes of children from 1 to 4 in the afternoon - fun, even though I've only just started! They've given me my own office-cum-classroom, with a desk and computer, bulletin board and whiteboard, sofa, and a bigscreen TV! Mind you, we all sit on the heated ondol flooring to study together, in good Korean style - which suits my style of teaching to a T. More updates there as events warrant...

Bry has swapped our car (a whitish, more or less, Leganza sedan which I quite liked chauffeuring about) for a truck I have nicknamed "The Beast" (a big white Musso, with 4-wheel drive, a Mercedes engine, and a clutch...). Which means that I can not, once again, drive anywhere. At least until I learn, from scratch, how to run a stick shift. One more level of tension to add onto the various changes, responsibilities, and burdens for the year 2009. It's a very macho vehicle, right down to the leather-wrapped steering wheel, the custom sound system, and the back large enough to hold all the camping gear we don't have. Mind you, I'm very much looking forwards to the weather being warm enough to go camping... so perhaps I'll be slowly less antagonistic to "The Beast" if it takes me places - preferably with Bryan driving. At this point I stall the confounded fewmet just getting from stand-still into first, so there is no fondness there at all.

Bryan is studying Korean quite assiduously on his own, with various books designed for Korean elementary students, Korean buddies, and a couple of our co-workers who also want to try to improve their skills in hangul. Kath and I see a lot less of him, partly because we don't work in the same office any longer, as we have for a lot of our married life, and partly because he's got a lot of classes this semester. As does everyone else, because MJU was unable (due to unrealistic expectations and inadequate benefits) to replace me, and because they didn't bother to replace the last two teachers who left, either! So - plenty of stress for the team at this point, which almost makes me feel guilty. We'll see how they're holding up around midterms.

Kath is her usual joyful, sensitive, observant, articulate, creative self, only more so. How can she keep getting more fun and interesting all the time? Once I learn to pace her and myself and relax a bit, we're going to enjoy this holistic learning together even more: right now I'm far too goal-focused and academically-tainted...yet we still have marvelous days!

She knows all the planets of our solar systems, their names and places in order from the sun, and the duties of the Greco-Roman deities which those names represent...identifies Van Gogh, Monet, and Klimt art on sight by style... can find Casseopia and Orion and the Dipper in the night sky....has about sixty or seventy sight words and can sound out most three and four letter words not on her sight list...can speak Korean like a native child...is memorizing the 10 Commandments and quotes the Golden Rule... creates imaginative dramas with her plastic dinosaurs, using their correct scientific names....asks to use the Cuisinaire rods to practice math concepts on her own...walks a three-hour nature hike cheerfully....is sensitive to and protective of others' feelings and emotions...spontaneously makes collages, stampings, recycled art, comic book pages, and other artworks on her own...learns and recites poetry...bargains at the local market and makes change... what a privilege it is to spend time with her, to guide that inquisitive mind and discipline that cheerful heart!

OK, it's nearly midnight, and I still haven't added the promised pictures, so enough writing for now. A couple of photos to be going on with, and then next time I'll put more in, plus the curriculum.

KATHERINE IN HANBOK FOR CHUSOK (Korean Thanksgiving)

KATH'S FIFTH BIRTHDAY PARTY (Princess Theme)

MY SPARKLY MOPPET (the eyeliner and rouge is faux but the lashes are real!)

Kyongju Vacation - Summer 2008 Photo Collage

Some collages for those of you who want more pictures! Sorry about the poor quality - they are jpegs of jpegs from my cellphone onboard digital camera - but hopefully you can get an idea of some of the locations and expressions....

Read the previous post for the blog/scrapbook journal and information to put these photos in context!

Family Vacation: Kyongju, Summer 2008

KATHERINE’S KYONGJU SCRAPBOOK Summer 2008

Tuesday, August 5

We left our house at about 11. We stopped for lunch at a rest area and then another break at about three o’clock.

Kyongju at 5! We decided that there would be lots of places to stay near the bus terminal. Most were ‘love hotels’ – too tacky or too expensive! We found the Hanjin Hostel on the fourth try. Mr. Kwon was very friendly.

Dinner at “6Shi” near the hostel: Mom had twegi kalbi, Dad had duenjang, and Katherine had gyeran-bap! Then we went back to our hostel and rested.

Wednesday, August 6

The next morning Daddy and Katherine went for a walk and had a snack at Paris Baguette. Mom woke up around 9 and we drove to McDonald’s for breakfast. Then we headed out for a drive.

We went to the Korean Folkcraft Village and wandered around looking at the ceramics. Katherine found a broken pottery bird. We bought an amethyst necklace for Nana and a sword for Katherine!

Here is Katherine, Warrior Princess… isn't that an intimidating scowl?

Daddy can read Korean very well now; he found a sundubu restaurant for lunch. The walls were yellow and brown clay, with big wooden beams and tree trunks. Katherine and Mommy shared the side dishes and some very good haemul pajeon.

We kept on driving because we wanted to look around “KyonguLand”. There was a lovely waterfall and pond with fish. Katherine fed the fish but then she fell into the pond and got soaked! So we went back to Hanjin Hostel to change and have an afternoon rest.

After a break at our hostel, we went out again to the Kyongju Museum. It was hot, so we tried to stay inside.

First, Mom told Katherine the story of the Emi-leh Bell. It was sad but interesting. We saw the apsaras (angel-fairies) on the outside of the bell. Then we looked at the tomb guardians. They are twelve different animals from the Korean/Chinese Zodiac. Mommy is a Rooster and Daddy and Katherine are both Monkeys!

We went into the main hall and saw lots of things from Anapchi Pond. There was a big, heavy boat that the Korean princesses used. There were lots of roof tiles. Katherine liked the dragon head because it looked like Mushu. Mommy liked the golden jewelry. We looked at some ceramics and drank lots of water. Then we visited the Shilla golden crown.

Katherine ‘wearing’ the Shilla crown

For supper we were going to eat at the Duck/Chicken (samgyetang) restaurant on Mr. Kwon’s map, but Katherine ran out the front door of the hostel and almost got hit by a car. We were all a little shaken and Mom lost her appetite. The samgyetang restaurant wouldn’t serve just one person, so we had a light dinner of apple pies from Paris Baguette instead.

Thursday, August 7

Daddy and Katherine got up early, went for a walk and had cookies for breakfast. Mom was up by 8 and made herself and Katherine some bacon and tomato sandwiches up on the roof with her little camp stove. We packed everything up and said goodbye to Mr. Kwon. He wrote Mom’s favorite Korean shijo poem by Hwang Jini in Chinese calligraphy; Mom says that will be her souvenir from the trip.

We went back to the museum from 11 to 12 for Katherine’s ‘children’s art class’. Mom and Katherine put together a Chamsongdae observatory puzzle – twice – saw how the Korean kings’ tombs were built, made some tomb guardian rubbings and created our very own monster face roof tile! We had fun.

We stopped for a short time at Anapji; it was even hotter than yesterday. Mom took some pictures of the lotus blossoms and the orange flowers in the surrounding fields. We pretended to be Korean princesses, sailing our boat on the pond, catching fish, and playing with the deer. We did see a real heron standing in the pond!

Time to say goodbye to Kyongju! We didn’t see the real Chamsongdae on the way out – next time…

Highway 45 took us between two national parks. Daddy chose Worak-san because of the beautiful waterfall marked on the map. We found a ranger stop with a swing, some great mountains and valleys, a tumbling river full of round stones, and some little restaurants and minbak.

‘Let’s stop and paddle,’ said Mom, so we did. Daddy watched Katherine play in the water while Mom collected some decorative rocks. It was cool and restful. We decided that it was time to get back on the road and had a lovely drive through the rest of the park – but we never did find that waterfall.

Let’s go home! Back to Yongin, on the highway. Mom and Katherine fell asleep for a while but they woke up in time for a quick bite of fast food.

We unpacked and put everything away, because that’s what you have to do first when you get home! It was good to be back in our own house, and our own beds.

(Some photo collages in the next post, for those of you who want more pictures! Love, Judy)

A Few Pictures / A Child's Wisdom

If you wonder why she is so foreshortened in the above shots, it's because *I* didn't take them. The camera was in the hands of our Korean office assistant, the oft-afore referenced 'Beautiful Jisu', who is just short of six feet. It didn't occur to her to crouch down to get a few eye-level pictures. Nonetheless, that Kath-charm comes through... She was able to score quite a few more toasted marshmallows, bits of hot dog, and s'mores than she really should have!

Another photo-collage - K at Everland last month. We put these together afterwards and print them out for her scrapbook, which is her on-going art project to learn some basic principles of design. Mostly she enjoys embellishing with stickers - which excess of tastefulness many an older scrapbooker has fallen into - but she's learning other techniques and concepts as well!

On one of the rides, flashing a somewhat nervous grin but determined to enjoy herself anyhow.

Katherine’s Bedtime Musings, July 13, 2008

(after being tucked in bed and given her goodnight kiss, begins to talk to herself. I quickly open up Word and begin to transcribe her original and unedited musings…)

We should do this every day:

Eat one candy a day -
Don’t eat six candies or seven candies.
Take care of others...
Help others.
Brush your teeth.
Take care of puppies
Do what others say….
Do what your mom and dad say.
Play - by yourself.
Do good things.

One more thing that’s special. God loves us!

(continuing to muse, beginning to repeat herself)

Don’t do bad things.
Don’t steal something from others.
Obey. Write that one down. Obey.
Love others!

(puts her head down on her pillow peacefully, still repeating her credos to herself)

Ya Want More Pictures?

Ok, ok. No text, just pictures. Well, perhaps just a few explanatory titles if they aren't already self-evident, which really good pictures should be, but of course these aren't because they were taken in haste with a little digital camera under mostly low-light conditions with a fast-moving model (I wonder who that might be?) in almost all cases, so I expect that the titles will be helpful as long as they aren't all as long as this self-referential run-on sentence has turned out to be...

Katherine and Choon-so hamming it up with purple carnations. Too much cuteness!


Kath solo hamming. Almost too much cuteness, especially considering the soft-focus (not a deliberate effect, trust me...) She gets her daily dose of compliments whenever we take her out in public, and they are always the same: "Oooooooh! In-yo... nomu kiawayo....noon arumdawayo....noon-sup yeppoyo!" Which loosely translated means: "Awwwwww! She's a doll....so cute.... what beautiful eyes.... such lovely eyelashes!" Honestly, it never varies.

Antidote to all that cuteness. An artsy self-portrait (taken in the women's washroom, if you must know....) Actually it's rather flattering and you can tell I've dropped five pounds already.



Oh look! A picture with Bryan in it! Here's Kath refusing to give me a kiss after disembarking from her nice yellow daycare shuttlebus. Ah well, it was a great pose and really captures the typical apres-daycare routine....


Wow - a picture WITHOUT Katherine in it! I call it "Classic Band-Aid Solution"... and no, that is NOT our car. Ironically enough, I caught this snap in the parking lot of the Driver's Training Centre...

Daycare - with pictures!

Tuesday, March 27 - our regular day off

Apologies to Bennigan's and their club sandwich. I wound up as sick as Bry yesterday and last night. Fortunately (more or less) I spent most of my evening and night being ill, so I didn't have to cancel classes...and I had today to recuperate (more or less). But I'll spare you the details of my miseries; we have pictures to peruse!

We got Kath off to daycare as usual and then ran a number of errands in town during the morning, enjoying our 'new' car and the new freedom it's giving us. Around quarter to twelve we stopped in at the daycare to see the director and drop off our payment for the month. She was quite gracious about allowing us to be 'late' with it next month as well (they prefer to be paid at the beginning of the month rather than at the end, understandably) and was happy to let us sign Katherine up for special supplementary classes that will run for the next two months as well. For an additional hundred thousand won she'll be getting Logic, Art, Math, Music, and Science during the afternoons (that includes the 'textbook' and other supplies, apparently, as well). We hope she'll enjoy it all!

We were able to watch her through the classroom door for several minutes undetected before we stopped in at the director's office, and it was delightful to see her in her environment, interacting with the teacher and with the other children. Her 'songsaengnim' (teacher) noticed us and slipped out to welcome us in, but we indicated that we'd see the director first. What struck me was that while we were talking, Katherine (along with all the other children) looked up and noticed us at the door, and while she smiled happily in recognition, she showed no indication of getting up, running to us, or in any way being discontent with what she was currently doing (studying the names of shapes with the 'English teacher', as it happened!)

After our visit with the director we were invited to come in and see the class settling down to lunch. The songsaengnim moved gracefully around the room with a pot of rice, filling up the little cups in the presented lunch trays, and the children sat happily eating and chattering. Our sweet daughter ran over to us with a big smile, dispensed several hugs, and then resumed her seat with her classmates, picking up her miniature fork. Her friend Choon-so greeted us with equal enthusiasm and had to be asked several times, patiently, to "Anju-seyo!" - please sit down- and go back to her lunch. Katherine, who won't touch rice at home, daintily began to nibble on her rice, a forkful at a time, interspersed with ladylike sips of the clear beef broth - "soup with nothing in it", as she likes to order whenever we eat out. We sat on the floor and looked round, and the director gave us permission to take photos. And, for your enjoyment, here they are!

The corner of the classroom, where they are just sitting down to lunch

Katherine with her lunch tray. She has beef broth, rice, a scrap of pickled vegetable, and a half-a-savory-pancake. Note the adorable rabbit-eared 'joined chopsticks' to her left.

And finally, here she is at the end of the day, with her friend Choon-so, outside the Honeybee Restaurant at Myongji Ipgu, which Choon-so's grandparents own and operate. Aren't they an adorable pair?

Oh, by the way - the other errand we had to run, after we left Katherine happily eating, was to go out to the Yongin Department of Motor Vehicles and exchange our car's license plates. The ones we had actually belong to the used-car lot, and one of the gentlemen from the lot drove down to Yongin today to meet Bry and give him his new, legal plates. There was a bit of a mixup (we wound up waiting at the wrong office) but we did eventually get the new plates - AND Bry got his Korean driver's license, which was due to expire this May, extended for the next two years... without PAYING anything for the privilege! And we met some interesting people, so there's yet again a silver lining to our various clouds.

We hope you appreciated this illustrated installment of "Leaves from the Land of Morning Calm"! If you want more pictures, make sure to leave comments.... :)

xxoo,

Judy

Katherine the Trooper

March 7, 2007

Katherine has been completely amazing through all the various hassles and stresses we've been undergoing in the last week. She's trudged along on her little legs without complaint, uphill (literally) and down, through bitterly cold weather, with her new best friend 'Backpack' on her shoulders; waited for half-an-hour for her shuttlebus to show up, hopped on said bus with her new classmates without tears; gotten through an eight-hour day of shopping and traveling around Seoul; eaten seaweed, fish, beefknuckle, and other strange broths quite cheerfully; trusted assorted strangers with whom Mommy and Daddy have decided to leave her; put up with head-petting, cheek-pinching, and numerous other types of fawning from the adjummas and adjusshis on a daily basis - apparently the eyelashes are a big hit. She keeps getting 'arumdawayo!' (beautiful) and 'kyowaaaaayo!' (so cute) and 'in-yo!' (like a doll) as a steady diet of compliments.

I must say, she's behaved angelically through it all. A few tears here and there, sure, and perhaps just a bit more whining when she wants something - but for a three-year old in a strange country where none of her language ability does her any good, sans most of her toys, all of her books, videos, furniture, and other familiar things, in a new tiny house, her first daycare (in a strange environment, culture, and language), she has shown remarkable flexibility and even grace. We are frequently amazed at the understanding and perception her comments show, and how maturely she expresses herself.

In the morning she hugs me tightly and says, "I don't want to go to daycare, Mama - I want to go to the office with you. Can I come to the classroom?" Note: she understands that we both have to teach, and she refrains from saying that she doesn't like daycare, which she does. But she misses the intensive time that she has had with both parents since she was born. .. At five-fifteen she springs off the little shuttlebus full of energy and bright-eyed, telling us she had fun.

Yesterday she got off with her new friend Choon-so, the three-year old (well, ok, in Korea apparently both Katherine and Choon-so are actually FIVE years old, but anyhow...) whose grandparents run the Honeybee Shik-dang (restaurant) at the Myongji gates. Bryan and I often go there for dinner and Bry has his favorite dosot pibimbap (rice and veggies in a scorchingly hot dish, with an egg cracked on top and some red pepper paste). Choon-so's mom (who with her husband also works at the Honeybee) and I were waiting together, and after lots of hugs and kisses we were all swept into the restaurant together. I assumed we'd just warm up (it is SO cold here this week!) but before I knew it the two girls were sitting at a table together and Halmoni (Choon-so's grandmother) had whisked two little dishes of food in front of them. Child-size servings of hot rice, some fish broth, some hot fried tubu (tofu) and a fried egg each! It was delightful to see the two rosy little faces tucking into it together.

I picked up a little box of bee-shaped pushpins at the market to say 'thanks' but I think I'll need to come up with something fancier, because the Honeybee folk have been marvelous so far.

This morning, for example. It was NOT a good morning. Katherine came home with a four-page 'newsletter' in her bag yesterday which I stuck in my purse to have our office assistant help me with (because of course it was all in Korean). We left the house together, Kath and I, at eight, in a cold wind, and trotted fairly briskly down the hill to catch the shuttlebus (which has been coming at 8:20 - 8:30 am). We sat by the bus stop for thirty minutes in the increasingly bitter cold, and at quarter to nine, in a panic, I ran up with her to the Honeybee (about thirty feet from the bus stop). Choon-so's dad was 'on duty' and welcomed us to sit down in the warmth. I explained, nearly in tears, and in mixed Korean and English, that I had to teach at nine and was afraid Katherine had missed the shuttlebus.

He picked up the phone, dialed the daycare, and informed me gently that the shuttlebus time had been changed and that from now on it would come at nine. "But I have to be in the classroom at nine," I nearly wailed, looking between my chilled child and the clock. He indicated that he would be happy to take her down ten minutes from now and that I should go. Katherine, not oblivious to this exchange, flung herself into my arms in tears - understandably. Here was her dear mother abandoning her to a stranger, instead of her comparatively familiar shuttlebus driver and teacher.... and why couldn't she come to the office with me, please Mama?

I had a brainwave: pulling my business card from my purse, I got him to phone our apartment. In a few quick words I explained to Bryan and asked him to stay on the phone with Katherine so I could make my escape without hysteria (on whose part I did not specify). He cheerfully talked, sang, and told her a story until it was time for the bus to come, and Choon-so's dad patiently took the phone away and let Bry know he was walking her out. When we called the daycare later to check up on some other information, she was apparently just fine - so most of the trauma was on our part!

I came panting and frazzled into my office at two minutes to nine, threw on makeup, grabbed my books, took a deep breath and marched outwardly serenely into my classroom.... only to belatedly realize that on Monday my schedule (like everyone else's this week) had been changed around and I didn't start teaching till eleven.

I am ashamed to say that I said several unladylike words under my breath at this point and, I suspect, swore. It's all rather unclear. Anyhow, it did all get sorted out, I did get to all my classes, the newsletter got translated (I have to buy a birthday gift under 2000 won - two bucks - for two of Katherine's classmates who are having a birthday this month! And we have to bring in 'beans and dried anchovies' - presumably for a class snack! - on the fifteenth.... Don't you love this country?), and I've finally printed out my FINAL REVISED ULTIMATE SCHEDULE which should be valid for the rest of the semester.

Must go, have a class in five minutes. Love you all!

Don't forget, you CAN post comments. Just type in nonsense in the verification bar and keep submitting it and refreshing until the picture shows up!

Judy