Cooking yummy dinners in my really small kitchen!

So basically, ever since we got packages from home containing taco seasoning, ranch dressing, hot sauce, pasta sauce packets, gravy packets, more ranch, more taco seasoning, and more hot sauce...our dinners have greatly improved. (THANKS FAMILY--YOU ARE THE BEST!!!) Then after about a month of being here, we got a Costco membership. Yes--it was necessary. Everything not part of Korean cuisine is expensive in the stores. Makes sense since it has to be imported. So everything we want to eat for dinner (we rarely eat Korean food for dinner--I mean, we have Korean food every day at lunch) would cost us a fortune if we bought it at the local E-Mart. Anyway, we buy pretty much everything we want that can be stored in the freezer or pantry at Costco once a month. Because of family-sent seasoning/sauces and our Costco food, Fluke and I have made some amazing dinners. Sometimes, we even impress ourselves with our cooking skills! We only take photos of the good-looking dinners though. We even have a "homemade food" picture album! I thought it was time to share some of these dinner pics with you!

After we bought the huge cheddar cheese block from Costco ^^

That's right...we made french fries!

Guess what the holiday was??

Happy 4th of July dinner!!!

Chicken parmigiana sandwiches 

The salad has amazing balsamic dressing (thanks dad)

Ravioli courtesy of Costco, pork chop courtesy of Costco,
and tomato/lettuce  courtesy of the local grocery store.
Yes, that silver thing is the space next to the sink meant for drying dishes,
but when we cook, it's where we put the cutting board/assemble our dinner plates. 

Taco night!!! We even fried the tortillas!!
Guess whose plate that was? heehee

Mashed potatoes and gravy!!!
The other stuff was good too, but the highlight was definitely the potatoes.
That's the space in front of my laptop. It's our "dinner table" when we eat! We could eat somewhere else, but then we couldn't watch our T.V. episodes haha

That's mozzarella cheese that hadn't melted yet haha 

Flowers from Fluke...just because! and those blue things are  like thunder sticks!
We bought them at the Samsung Lions baseball game. 

Jinju Lantern Festival October 2011

Let's talk Jinju. Now, you may or may not remember, but Jenn and I have gone to a Lantern festival already. It was in Seoul, and it was pretty awesome. It was basically a big parade at night, down one of the main streets, and incredibly long. So what makes Jinju different? It's a lantern festival, on water! Yup, basically it consisted of a bunch of lanterns, floating in a river, in Jinju. 

It sounded pretty cool, so Jenn, me, and some of our friends headed down there for the weekend. When we got there, we were pretty much overwhelmed at the insane amount of lanterns. Not only were there lanterns in the water, there were lanterns all along the riverside, lanterns in the temple, and lanterns on the street! There were so many things to see and do. And for once, there were a variety of eats! Not to get down on Korea, but at pretty much every festival we've gone to, they offer the same kinds of food. In the beginning, it was awesome getting a corn dog with french fries. But when we saw it at every single festival? Along with 5 or 6 other main dishes? Nah. Not as awesome. But here, they had Vietnamese and Japanese food! 

Some highlights of our day:
- We made a lantern and put some of our wishes on it!

- At night, we lit them and floated them on the river.

- We saw some sweet lanterns. Disney, Comic book characters, random movies, UNICORNS (What?).

- The lantern tunnel. During the day, and during the night. Awesome!

- Our hotel! Right next to the river, and about a 5 minute walk to the main festival area. Lotte Motel. Highly recommend it!


- Made some personalized stamps! Mine said "Ati Teacher" and Jenn's said "Jennifer Teacher."


- Firework show above the water 

- And of course, the lanterns lit up at night were amazing. I don't think I could ever get tired of looking at them.


After one day and night there, we headed back home to Daegu. It was a great weekend! 

Today Was a Good Day Vol. 2

Hi everyone! This is my first "Today was a good day" blog entry! Enjoy :)


I have a student who last semester was extremely difficult to control and this semester, still refuses to do anything, but is more quiet about it. Today I said, "Please open your book to page 132." I know he understands me. He opens his book and then says, "No, teacher. I won't do." Instead of *trying* to make him complete the exercises by staying beside him the entire time, I decide to do something new. I looked at his drawings on the inside of his torn book cover. I asked, "What's this?" He proceeds to tell me all about the monsters. I ask him to name the body parts, to count the body parts (I think there were 6 arms and 3 eyes???) and to label his monsters. We have a short conversation about his life. (I knew his living situation was far from ideal.) And he told me he is happy living with his grandparents (I don't know what exactly happened to his parents, except that under their care, he was not happy.) He walks to school (like most of the students) and has breakfast every morning.


I always knew that connecting with students and having meaningful conversations with them is the best way to motivate and teach them. Until today, I had not done that with this child. I'm embarrassed to admit this because it should have happened much, much earlier in the school year. Anyway, later in the period, during a partner creative writing activity, his partner asked me how to spell a word. I always ask the students to try to spell the word first and then I will help them. Well, this boy blurted out the correct spelling! (For a difficult word too!!!) Partners are supposed to help each other and learn from each other. Until this activity, I had never seen this boy be a "partner" or participate in a cooperative learning activity voluntarily. No, I don't think he will suddenly do all the textbook exercises without being prompted. No, I don't think he will suddenly be volunteering and raising his hand all the time. BUT, I do hope that his participation improves and he has more of a desire to learn English. I look forward to the next time I teach him. I wonder what short 2-minute conversation I will have next time???

Today was a Good Day Vol.1

I thought I'd try something new and maybe start a series of posts about a good day that Jenn or I have had. It'll give us a little break from writing about our super awesome weekends, and give you guys a little more info about what goes on in our lives daily. Let's begin!


Today was a good day,
                 I started off the morning with a nice cup of coffee, and had my favourite 7th grade girls class. I taught them how to use the "Would you like to ______" phrase, and then we played a Pokemon review game about it. They were really into it, and were shouting out Pokemon names and yelling "oooh, so cute!" every time they saw Pikachu. It was definitely a great way to start the morning. After their class, I had 2nd period with one of my 8th grade boys classes. They are one of my favourites, and I had a good time teaching them, "What's the matter? My blah blah blah." I always like my 8th grade boys, because even though they can get a little rowdy sometimes, they always have the most energy and enthusiasm out of all my classes. The trick is to get them to focus all that energy and enthusiasm into learning English.  After 2nd period, our school had an English festival for the next two hours. I judged a student presentation contest, in which they made awesome powerpoints and speeches about what they wanted to do with their future. (Mostly awesome. Haha). One student even talked about a popular PC game called Minecraft which I thought was really creative! 
                  After a solid lunch with corndogs (nice!), I had 5th period off so I used that time to prep for next week. Ok. So really, I used that time to relax and do some Fantasy Football. Which was so much more important! Hehe. Then in 6th period, I got to play a music trivia game with some more of my 8th grade boys. I was a little nervous at first because I thought boys wouldn't be as into music as my girls classes were, but they loved it! It's probably one of the benefits of having an all-boys/girls class? The boys can be boys, and not have to worry about acting "manly" all the time for the girls. School gets out in an hour, and after grading a couple newspaper articles, I should be able to use the rest of my time to just relax and maybe grab a cup of  coffee. All in all, not a bad day at the office! 

One of the few pics I have of me teaching!

Seoul for the Weekend!

Hello everyone!!! Monday, October 3rd was a holiday which means...we had a 3-day weekend! So what do we do on a 3-day weekend that also happens to be our friend's bday weekend??? We go to Seoul of course!


We caught a KTX Friday right after work, checked into our 6-person room in Hongdae, and went to Namsan Seoul Tower. Fluke and I went there before, but our friends hadn't and it's definitely something you have to do in Seoul. We rode the cable car, which was fun, and got to the ticketing office at 10:32. Guess what time they close the ticketing office even though the tower is open until midnight??? 10:30!!!! Even though we didn't go up to the top, we took pictures at the base of the tower and got some good pictures (but not with my camera because it is terrible with night photos :( Anyway, we did all this without eating dinner (unless you count coffees and Dunkin Donuts from Dongdaegu as our train snacks at 6pm). And we still had to walk down back into the city. After a walk down many, many, many stairs, we arrived at the subway stop and went back to Hongdae for none other than....Taco Bell!! Now, my family and friends know that I don't eat fast food at home (I still don't in Korea overall), but occasionally, I do have to bend my "no fast food" rule. I don't eat Taco Bell at home because I've gotten sick a couple times. I've had it twice now in Seoul....and not gotten sick!

Everland group pic!

Saturday was our Everland day! Everland is the largest amusement park in Korea. After a long bus ride, we arrived to Everland and saw Halloween decorations everywhere! It cost 35,000w to get in and it was TOTALLY worth it! We went on a few rollercoasters, but by far the best rollercoaster was the SK Express. SK Express is the steepest wooden rollercoaster in the world!!!!!!! I've been on a lot of rollercoasters, but I think SK Express has to be my favorite. It's a wooden coaster, so there aren't any upside-down loops (which are fun) or corkscrew turns (not so fun)--it's all about the super steep drop, twists and turns. We waited an hour for this ride and it was worth the wait. Then it was time for lunch (hamburgers) and back to SK Express  we went! We had seen people with what looked like Disney fastpasses, but we couldn't figure out how to get them. I asked one of the workers who said to go inside the SK Lounge so we went there (SK is a phone company). Apparently, if you have an SK cell phone, you can get the pass. We asked the lounge guy and he gave us 6 passes without showing any cell phones!!! We think he was being nice ^^ So we got to ride the coaster again and we only waited maybe 5 minutes!!! And that would have been 2 minutes if our friend didn't lose her pass in her bag ^^ Everland was a ton of fun, but we still had another amazing part of our Saturday left!! A place called, "Mercados." Mercados is a Brazilian BBQ place, which means all-you-can-eat delicious meat!!We were so hungry by dinnertime and the food was soooo good that--are you ready for this?--not one person took a food picture! It was our friend's bday dinner and we were so busy eating and enjoying our meal that we don't have any pictures because no one thought to take any! :(

Rollercoaster pic-round 2. We definitely were NOT ready the first time!

Sunday was our hiking day! We hiked Mount Bukhansan which is really easy to get to from one of the subway lines. We didn't have all day to hike, so we chose the shortest and easiest trail to one of the peaks. It still took us a while and it definitely was NOT easy (a LOT of stone stairs), but the view of Seoul beneath us was breathtaking. Check out the pictures to see what I mean...

After Bukhansan we went to a Mexican place called "Tomatillo." Tomatillo is set up like a Chipotle restaurant and it serves really good Mexican food. We love Mexican food (duh) and Daegu doesn't have the best Mexican restaurants (duh), but this is the second place we found in Seoul that has really good Mexican food! If we had time to go there twice, we would have. haha After an amazing lunch, we went back to the room to change into nicer clothes to go see a play! We saw the non-verbal dance play called, "Ballerina Who Loves Bboy." The dancing was so cool! The best part is...they encouraged everyone to take videos and pictures during the performance! I'm guessing to help promote it. Anyway, the show was really cool. It was in a theatre in Lotte World...which has an ice skating rink! So of course we decided to go ice skating after the show! We had pho for dinner and then called it a night--we were exhausted!

Monday we had to come back to Daegu, but first, Fluke and I had a dim sum lunch with a friend from UCI! The dumplings were really yummy and then we had boba for dessert! And that was really yummy too! Since we were in Myeongdong, a really popular shopping area, we did some shopping. We bought our first "couple clothing" item and met up with our friends when they finished their shopping sprees in Forever 21. A side note about couples clothing--it is really popular in Korea for a couple to wear matching clothes. We've seen couples with the same shoes, backpacks, pants, shirts, hats, sweatshirts, everything. I guess we figured it was time for us? Mostly, we just found super cute sweatshirts!

Boba!

Kyoto, Japan Chuseok Vacation!!!

Jenn and I decided to celebrate Chuseok weekend in Korea by getting out of Korea! We had 4 days, so we thought, why not hop over to Japan, and check it out? We booked our flights, and decided to visit Kyoto, one of the more culturally-rich cities of Japan. When we first got there, we were amazed at how hot it was, especially because Daegu had started cooling down for the fall season. But dang, Kyoto was hot! At least mid 80s, but we weren't complaining, because we loved it.


Another observation about Kyoto...the sky was so clear. Daegu is a city, and heavily industrialized, so very rarely do we get a blue sky sort of day. But in Kyoto? For the 4 days we were there, the sky was clear and blue. It was beautiful, and we loved it. We landed at Kansai airport, which is actually in Osaka. From there, we had to take a train to Kyoto. Once there, we got to our hotel, which was right next to the station. The location was perfect, especially because we were right next to the train station, and also right next to the main bus stops. Jenn and I had no trouble getting anywhere when we were in Kyoto.

At Kyoto Station. You can see Kyoto Tower in the background!

We arrived to Kyoto late Saturday afternoon. The first thing we did was go check out Gion Corner. This place was famous because it had a lot of old  traditional Japanese restaurants (also very expensive!), and Geishas! So Jenn and I went here to see if we could spot one. And we did! We almost didn't want to take pictures though, because they looked so uncomfortable with all the looks that we, and other tourists were giving them. I don't blame them though, they're just trying to go about their daily lives and here we are ogling at them. So we took a picture anyways! Hahahaha. But we tried our best to be sneaky about it, and it really didn't turn out that well.

Geisha!!!

After Gion corner, we headed back to our hotel. Right next to our hotel was Kyoto tower! So we went up to the top, and caught some pretty sweet views of the city at night. This was of course, after we had our first Japanese meal. And I have to say, it was delicious. I love Japanese food, and my time in Kyoto made me love it even more. I'll post some pics, but I don't want to talk about it too much because then I'll just get sad. :( Anyways, after Kyoto tower, we headed back to our hotel to get some rest.

Dinner #1!

Sunday was a blur of temples, shrines, and cultural-ness. Seriously. We went to maybe 5-6 or cultural sites. Kyoto has a large number UNESCO World Heritage sites (17 I think?). Did some quick Wiki research...that makes up for 20% of Japan's national treasures. In one city!!! So...I won't tell you about all of them, because honestly, we went to so many I kinda forgot their names! Hehe. But we started off our morning with a World Heritage site called Nijo Castle. It was pretty awesome. The day was so nice, blue skies, and perfect weather. The castle had a couple moats, which I thought was pretty cool. 

Nijo Castle!

After Nijo castle, we went and got our bikes! Yup. We wented bikes for the whole day, and biked to another couple destinations. After about a 10 minute ride, we got to Kiyomizu temple (I might be spelling these all wrong). Anyways, this temple was sweet. It was on top of a hill, and we got to see some great skylines of Kyoto. The wind was also blowing, and since it was such a hot day, it felt really good. After Kiyomizu temple, we kept biking and saw a bunch more temples and shrines. I'll post some of those pics now. Oh, and we stopped to eat lunch! I had Unagi over rice, and Jenn had cold udon noodles. Delicious! 

Ryoanji  Memorial/Temple

Ok. So...you make X amount of wishes, and then, touching the ball with your hand, you circle it
however many wishes you had. (2 wishes = circle twice around the ball) and it will come true! Supposedly. :)

Unagi over rice lunch!

Actually got a pic of us while riding our bikes!

Riding along the river. So pretty ^^

After our bike ride, we went back and chilled for a while. Then...we headed over to one of night life areas. Not gonna lie, we were a little disappointed. It was more of like a street with a bunch of bars. That was it. BUT, luckily, that street was next to a main street, with a bunch of restaurants, shops, and best of all, a ROUND 1!! What is Round 1? Well, my little brother and sis might know, but if you don't, it's basically a huge arcade/bowling/whatever building. After another delicious dinner, a mini-Benihanas type place where they made our yakisoba noodles and beef slices right in front of us, we headed over to Round 1. And I won!! One of those machines where you can get stuffed animals. Okay, it was more of like a stuffed animal key chain...but...check it out! Then we played a couple of games, one in particular was very fun. Imagine a big pit filled with cheap plastic balls in front of you. Kinda like the balls in those big pits you used to play in as a kid (at Chuck-E-Cheese ya?). Basically, you took those balls, and chucked them at the screen at things that appeared. It was definitely Jenn and I's favorite game of the night. I could see it being really good for stress relief! After Round 1, we kinda just wandered and headed back to the hotel. We were tired!

Victory!!

On Monday, we headed over to Philosophers road. Philosophers road is this beautiful path alongside a creek that was named by the, you guessed it, Philosopher who used to walk on it everyday. It took us straight to Ginjuku Pavilion, also known as the Silver pavilion. We looked at it. It was nice :) Afterwards, we took the bus to see the GOLDEN Pavilion, which was...just amazing. The pictures we took looked exactly like some of the postcards that were on sale. It was just that perfect of a day. Check them out! Afterwards, we visited a lot more temples. One had a famous Zen garden, another had a famous Zen Rock garden, and we took a lot of pics. Check out the pics!

Tempura snack!

On the Philosopher's Road

Golden Pavilion! Our favorite picture

Lunch!

Famous Zen rock garden. 

Moon Crossing Bridge. It was raining, but the sun was out!

For dinner on Monday night, we had all you can eat meat! The meat was sooooo good, super flavorful, and cut really thinly. Tuesday, we woke up...and went home :(


Japan, you were good to us. It was an amazing time, and I blame you completely for making me feel miserable at work for the first week that we went back. You were that awesome. We hope to go back soon!


Closing thoughts about Japan...


- Food was amazing
- People were so nice. One man stopped to help us when we looked lost (we were!), which we really appreciated!
- Lines EVERYWHERE. To the subway, to the bus, and guess what? No CUTTING.
- Weather was beautiful, the sky was clear and blue.
- Culture everywhere. Kyoto was truly a city filled with contrasting views. Temples right in the middle of the city, and traditional Japan everywhere.
- Awesome hotel. Perfect location. Clean, and a really nice...bathroom. Seriously. The toilet was super fancy.