ESL Adventures

Teaching in South Korea

Archive for the 'Home Life' Category

Kitties!!!!!!!!!

It’s been a while since I updated y’all about Ivory.  Well, she has a little sister now.  Gidgette is your standard domestic shorthair with tabby markings.  She weighed 380 grams (.84 pounds) when I first got her, and she’s up to 755 grams (1.7 pounds) three weeks later.

Ivory is a very good Mamma cat.  She makes sure to give Gidgette a bath.  Not that Gidgettte really appreciates it.

From the way Gidgette eats, you’d think I never feed her.  And boy does that girl poop….

posted by Kathryn in Fun things,Gidgette,Home Life,Ivory,Pictures and have No Comments

Dalk-yachae-bokum-bap

Better known as cheesy rice. I get mine in a dalk-galbi restaurant in Shinae. It’s cheesy and meaty and spicy and just plain yummy. This time, I got beef instead of chicken. I’ve had similar dishes with seafood as well. I can’t remember the name of the restaurant off the top of my head, but it’s right above Loteria. It’s on the same road in Shinae as New Core Outlet is on. The Megabox movie theater is on that road as well.

You start off with some kimchi and the usual cabbage salad. The put the burner on under the big pan in the middle of the table. Once you order they bring out the food, which is cooked at your table. They start with some basic veggies. Once those are moving along well, they add the meat, spices and rice. That gets all nice and mixed together. To finish it up, they add the cheese, mozzarella in the case of this restaurant. Pair with a bottle of Coke, and you have a meal fit for a queen (or king as the case may be).

posted by Kathryn in Food and Drink,Fun things,Home Life,Korea,Korean Vocabulary,Off time,Pictures and have No Comments

Chon Dak

On Saturday, I went to Samson Dong for lunch.  One of my favorite places to go is Chon Dak.  I love their spicy chicken dish.  It’s chicken, small rice cakes and vegetables in a spicy sauce.  They top it with cheese, a hard boiled quail egg and a few shrimp.

They start off by giving you some pickled radishes and a cabbage salad.  The dressing somewhat resembles French, but I highly doubt it is.  The chicken comes with a bowl of rice.

One of the ladies who works in the kitchen speaks a little bit of English so we usually have a short chat.  Between her limited English and my limited Korean, we get by ok.

Enjoy!  Just don’t drool on your keyboard.

Outside of the building

Outside of the building

Close up of the sign

Close up of the sign

Salad and radishes

Salad and radishes

The whole meal

The whole meal

Chicken close up

Chicken close up

posted by Kathryn in Food and Drink,Fun things,Home Life,Korea,Off time,Pictures and have No Comments

9 Course Chinese Meal…

… but only 8 pictures.  In my excitement, I forgot to take a picture of one of the courses.

Backstory:  There’s a little Chinese restaurant right up the street from where I live and work.  It’s owned by a very nice Chinese couple.  Prices are very reasonable and the food is pretty good.  You can get an 8 course meal for 15,000 Won per person.  I’ve never seen so much food in my life.  We actually got a 9th course.  The four of us greatly enjoyed ourselves.

Pictures of the food.  I don’t even remember what was in the dishes.  I was too busy eating, and eating and eating.

posted by Kathryn in Food and Drink,Fun things,Home Life,Off time,Pictures and have No Comments

I’ve been trained

I went to bed last night.  It dawned on me as I was  lying in bed.   Ivory has me trained.  I was all the way by the wall, basically smushed into the corner.  She was all stretched out on the other part of the bed.

It’s true what they say.  Dogs have owners; cats have servants.

posted by Kathryn in Home Life,Ivory,Just Wow,Off time and have No Comments

Whoa – Actual Updates

Well, in addition, to being totally busy, I’m also sick.  I actually took a sick day today.  Seriously, I never do that.  The last time I took sick time was when the doctor dumped me in the hospital with pneunomia.  That’s not something I want to repeat.  I picked up a cold, probably from a student, but possibly a coworker.  It so wonderfully turned into a sinus infection last week.  That immediately traveled to my chest and I now have bronchitis.  Oh yeah.  The biggest reason I took off today was because I have no voice.  Like, can’t even whisper no voice.  My ears are also blocked up so I can’t hear much of anything.

So to kind of bring things up to date, we started our new term.  We have a whole batch of new kids and the classes of the returning students have been rearranged.  Again, I get the pleasure (ha!) of teaching the second floor Sha Sha program.  It’s not so bad anymore.  I’ve explained that the books they use for those kids are horrible.  So I read story books and sing songs.  The goal of the program isn’t to get the kids fluent in English.  It’s really just general exposure in letters, sounds, colors and basic vocabulary.  I have a 6 year old class and I have the 5 year old class.  I met the 5 year olds yesterday.  There’s about 15 of them.  One one of them flipped out when he saw me.  Poor little thing, he didn’t want any part of me.  I have a feeling my 3.5 year old self probably wouldn’t have wanted much of anything to do with the adult me either.  I don’t hold it against him.  He’s a little cutie actually.

I have a total of 4 kindergarten classes, plus the Sha Sha classes.  I have 6 classes in the afternoon (2 A classes, 2 B classes, 2 D classes) plus two speaking and writing classes (A1 and D3).

We finally are almost finished with a curriculum.  This involved quite a few hours of meetings, but I think it will benefit everyone.

Ivory is doing well.  When I took her to the vet last week, she had her first set of kitten shots.  She’s still pure white except for a dime sized patch on the top of her head that’s gray (salt-and-pepper really).  She was 1200 grams (2.65 pounds) at her vet visit and she’s about 3 months old.  She’s now eating Hill’s Science Diet for kittens.  She loves it.  She devours it.  In fact, she’s doing that right now.  She loves the little toys on the end of an elastic band.  She goes crazy.  She leaps and twirls.  Ivory still takes up the entire bed.  I’m not sure how a tiny kitten can do that.  But it seems where ever I want to sleep, she’s there.  She’s actually outgrowing the kitten looking stage.  She seems to be growing into her body.  It’s amazing the changes in a few short weeks.  I can’t even imagine life without her.  I still miss Sparkler and Jeepers (my last cat).  Nothing will ever replace them, but Ivory has her own place in my heart.

I’ll post my schedule and I’ll try to get the curriculum posted within the week.

Take care everyone!

posted by Kathryn in Home Life,Ivory,Little Campus,Off time,Teaching and have No Comments

Kitten!

I have an adorable ball of fuzz. I’m so excited. It’s only in the last couple weeks I’ve felt like I’ve completed the grieving process with Sparkler. I loved her so much. But, I knew I didn’t want another guinea pig. I knew I wanted a cat. Now, you have to understand, Korea is not a cat country. No serious. It’s really not. I went to a dozen places before I found one with a cat for sale. And dear lord was she expensive. But she was totally worth every won I spent. She’s been in my life less than 12 hours and I can’t imagine living without her.

Right now, she’s curled up in (on?) one of my shoes. Once I coaxed her out from under the bed, she started to play. She has one of those mice on an elastic string tied to a stick. She loves it. She was going crazy. She’s purrs like no cat I’ve ever heard before.

I’m still working on the name thing. I know her Korean name will either be 눈(noon) which means snow (and eye) or 구름(goorum) which means cloud. I’m sort of leaning toward 눈. I’m just not sure what English name to give her. I’ll take suggestions.

So here are some pics of my new baby.

posted by Kathryn in Fun things,Home Life,Just Wow,Off time,Pictures and have No Comments