Monthly Archives: October 2007

So we have a ton of pumpkins around the school right now. I’m thinking that after tomorrow I should take them and do something useful with some of them, but I’m not a big fan of pumpkins or squash-like things. Anyone have a suggestion for cooking/baking with pumpkin that even a non-pumpkin enthusiast might enjoy? It just seems to be a waste to throw them out. Maybe I’ll make something for the office. I’ll poke around a bit, but suggestions are welcome! Keep in mind if you do suggest something, though, that I have no oven yet.

Just came back from a halloween dance at Fiesta bar. Fun stuff!

I was actually out near Jongno3 station buying some second hand stuff from a teacher who was leaving Korea soon, when I ran into a swing dancer. She said hi, and asked if I was coming to Fiesta tonight, cause there was a halloween party. So I said sure… and then realized that not only did I not have a costume, but also didn’t know where to find one.

And then I remembered that we got aprons and chef’s hats with our cooking stuff for the dorm. So I went as a chef. It was pretty cool. The decorations were awesome; balloon skeletons, giant spiderwebs and all. And the dancing was great as always.

My room is looking much nicer now; I now have good speakers, plants (including basil and rosemary plants!), sheets that are not pink and purple, a Korean/English dictionary, a travel guidebook for Korea, etc. I’ll also be getting a cell phone on Monday.

Cool upcoming things are a trip to Daegu to dance (they have an anniversary dance next weekend), and I’m planning to have some of the dancers who’ve helped me out come over for dinner sometime, probably the weekend after next.

I’m so glad I decided to come to Korea!

Actually, at first I wasn’t sure if I should come, because though I loved teaching swing dancing, and I loved teaching ESL at Chinese school, I wasn’t very happy with any of my stages past maybe the first one. I was worried that I didn’t like full time teaching. Not that you can really call less than 3-4 hours of teaching a day (what I’m doing now) full time, but wow, I actually like my job.

My long stages were each two months long. My short ones were two weeks long. By halfway through, I wanted to leave, and every day became a chore. Maybe it was the 1.5 hour commute (one way) to get to any of the schools I was placed at. Maybe it was my awful “co-operating” teachers, who ranged from non-constructive to passive agressive. Maybe it was moving from one class to the other and not having my own classroom. It might even have been not being able to develop my own materials, but having to follow along some textbook one page after another. But I am now about 3 weeks into teaching here, and I love it more than I loved any of my stages. At this point with my stages, I’d nearly be counting down the days until the end. I’d be tired and stressed. None of that! I realize I’m still early in, but still.

So  here’s to having a great job that doesn’t drag me down, and most importantly, has made me remember that yes, I actually can like teaching.

Fun stuff.

Cooking:

I happened to mention in the office the other day that I’d love to learn how to make good Korean (vegetarian) food. Turns out, Angela (Korean English teacher, co-worker) has a friend who is a really good cook. Like, really good. She apparently wants to teach me how to make Korean food. She knows I’m vegetarian too (no meat, no fish), so it’ll be veggie Korean food. Yum! It’ll start on Friday after classes.

Baking:

Tomorrow I’m going to host a baking party/class. Heh. Angela and Danny (Danny’s one of my bosses) had mentioned that they wanted to learn to make cookies, so we’re doing that tomorrow. Should be fun.

Dancing:

Trying to set up a (legal) swing dance class for foreigners. I checked around the ESL teaching community here, and I’d have enough students for a small class. So I went to talk to Jay, she’s going to try to help me set it up. Basically, I’d just need a swing company to jump through the hoops at immi for me so that I can add them as another employer on my visa, and then run my classes through them (and pay taxes, etc through them too). Hopefully this gets done quickly, but like everything in swing, it’ll probably take a while. But the thing is that now that I have my own students, and they’re English speaking, so I can’t possibly have stolen them from other dance schools or anything, swing politics is not a problem anymore.

Travelling:

Thinking about going to India for my winter break. Thing is, I’ll have about 10 days, and the ticket will cost 1,000$ at least. Is it worth it? I have to decide soon!

Looking into a second-hand oven. 150,000 won. I’m going to see if my work will arrange for it to be picked up, brought here, and installed properly.

Just in time for Daring Bakers next month too!

Edit: Found a cheaper one! 115,000.

Mmmmm. Watch on and drool!

As you can see, I nearly forgot to take pictures.

They didn’t brown like they should have. I’m blaming my toaster oven for that. But they tasted great! The kitchen smells amazing too, right now. I still have some uncooked crumble in the fridge, so I’m going to make more tomorrow when I go to the store. I considered trying a Korean pear crumble, since Korean pears are so good, but they’re also very expensive (like 4$ each last time I saw them at the mart near me), so I haven’t. Maybe I will at some point.

The funny thing is that Jen and I both made apple crumble today, pretty much at the same time, without knowing that the other was making it also. Weird coincidence!

Entrance (no, none of those shoes are mine)

Living room

Main kitchen (my kitchen)

Second kitchen (Hannah’s kitchen)

My room

Flowers on desk

Painting from Mokpo. To be framed and hung over the bamboo wall covering.