Tuesday, November 26, 2013
I have given up on NaNoWriMo for the year. And I don't feel bad about this. I've won four years in a row, and the point of doing it this year was that, despite moving to Korea and all the crazy things in life that came along with that, I had some free time on my hands and wanted to stay as busy as possible. I didn't want to use the fact that I was "settling in" as an excuse to sit around and mope instead of writing. While, I didn't sit around and mope. I wrote over 20,000 words, which is still a considerable amount, and I kept extremely busy when I wasn't writing. I've gone somewhere every weekend in November, from zip-lining to Thanksgiving parties to meeting up with old friends to touring the DMZ. And all of that was in between planning and teaching my students, administering their speaking tests and helping them prepare for their finals. It's been a busy and wonderful month. Even though I'm not going to "win" NaNoWriMo. And to be honest NaNo isn't about a specific number like 50k (which is pretty much an arbitrary number) anyway. It's about accomplishment. And I feel like I've accomplished a lot this month.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Happy Thanksgiving all!
This weekend was the Cheorwon Thanksgiving extravaganza. Thanks to much more experience and resourceful expats than me, several of us stayed in an apartment and ate a real Thanksgiving meal, including Turkey, stuffing, gravy and pumpkin pie.
After the meal, we chatted over mulled wine and more pie.
This morning was a massive cleaning effort, which I and the other Cheorwon-ites escaped a bit early since we have so far to travel.
I got home fairly early this afternoon, and immediately took a nap. Then I struggled with my Korean thermostat, because my floor has barely been getting warm when I turn it on lately, and the water for my shower has been a bit chilly too. After much button pushing, I managed to turn the hot water temperature up and get my apartment warm for once. The rest of the afternoon was spent cooking dinner, washing dishes and doing laundry.
No offense to the company I celebrated Thanksgiving with, but observing the holiday without my family made me feel pretty homesick. I have a feeling this might be a tough week for me as far as that goes. My school is trying to figure out what to do with me during winter vacation. Normally, teachers are given just two weeks off; the rest of the time, we are teaching "English Camp" or working on lesson plans and paperwork (aka "deskwarming"). Basically, even if there's no school, you still have to be at work for 8 hours except when you're taking your two weeks of paid vacation. However, my school is going to remodel the building during break, which means no English Camp and possibly no desk to warm. So they are trying to figure out if they can give me the remainder of Winter break off unpaid, which would be fine by me, but it's very complicated as to whether my contract allows for that. Confusing. I haven't made any decisions about break yet, expect that if I have the entire month off, and permission to live the country for that amount of time, I will most likely come home.
This weekend was the Cheorwon Thanksgiving extravaganza. Thanks to much more experience and resourceful expats than me, several of us stayed in an apartment and ate a real Thanksgiving meal, including Turkey, stuffing, gravy and pumpkin pie.
After the meal, we chatted over mulled wine and more pie.
This morning was a massive cleaning effort, which I and the other Cheorwon-ites escaped a bit early since we have so far to travel.
I got home fairly early this afternoon, and immediately took a nap. Then I struggled with my Korean thermostat, because my floor has barely been getting warm when I turn it on lately, and the water for my shower has been a bit chilly too. After much button pushing, I managed to turn the hot water temperature up and get my apartment warm for once. The rest of the afternoon was spent cooking dinner, washing dishes and doing laundry.
No offense to the company I celebrated Thanksgiving with, but observing the holiday without my family made me feel pretty homesick. I have a feeling this might be a tough week for me as far as that goes. My school is trying to figure out what to do with me during winter vacation. Normally, teachers are given just two weeks off; the rest of the time, we are teaching "English Camp" or working on lesson plans and paperwork (aka "deskwarming"). Basically, even if there's no school, you still have to be at work for 8 hours except when you're taking your two weeks of paid vacation. However, my school is going to remodel the building during break, which means no English Camp and possibly no desk to warm. So they are trying to figure out if they can give me the remainder of Winter break off unpaid, which would be fine by me, but it's very complicated as to whether my contract allows for that. Confusing. I haven't made any decisions about break yet, expect that if I have the entire month off, and permission to live the country for that amount of time, I will most likely come home.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
"It is that time of year again when Jaquie posts numbers on facebook... Boy I missed that." - Josh Gering
In other words, it's National Novel Writing Month! (nanowrimo.org) Which is why I haven't updated the blog in a few weeks. National Novel Writing Month is when I ( and many others) spend the month trying to force 50,000 words that, in some slight way, resemble the first draft of a novel into a blank word document. This is my sixth year participating, and if I manage to keep up, it will be my 5th straight "win." NaNoWriMo is one of my favorite hobbies, so be nice. And no, you can't read my novel, trust me, you really don't want to anyway.
I hope that one day I will actually finish Nanowrimo and not completely loath my characters and despair of ever piecing together the plot into something that makes any sense, in which case I will be able to move on to re-writing and editing. In the meantime, I won't inflict my "novels" on anyone, just know that, however weird it may be, I'm actually enjoying this. Be happy for me and congratulate me when I make it to 50,000. Or just hide my status updates if the numbers annoy you that much.
Moving to life in Korea, my schedule has gotten extremely confusing lately, due to the fact that I have to give a speaking test to all of my students, but each grade is getting their speaking tests at a different time. So last week it was the 3rd graders, and then this week they have their finals, so they are kind of panicking all over the school (or they just look like zombies because they've been cramming all week).
This week I have to give the 2nd graders their test, but unfortunately, the way we formatted the test, I simply can't even come close to fitting in all of them in one period, so it's going to take two weeks. The first graders will have their speaking test next week or the week after.
It's all very confusing, with class times changing, I was late to one class, forgot the classroom key for another, and then EVERYONE -me, my co-teacher and the students for one class- got told the class was moved from second period to first period. This normally wouldn't be a big deal, except we were all told this ten minutes after the first period had started, and since we were giving an exam all the kids were panicking and saying they weren't ready (as though they'd be studying for their English exam had they had math class as regularly scheduled!).
And beyond that, since my 3rd graders have their finals 3 weeks earlier than the other two grades, I have to come up with something to teach them. What? Who knows really, just something. So... I guess I better get on that sometime soon. Ah, well, we'll figure it out.
As for my weekends, I really don't know if I can describe how awesome the 1st-3rd was. There were a lot of animal costumes involved and bowling and karaoke. We also toured the DMZ, which was very cool. There were lots of covert photos taken in the 2nd tunnel. I won't say by whom, but there are photos.
Last Saturday I woke up with a sore throat, and decided to ignore it, because Saturday day was zip-lining day! I met Ben and Rochelle, my fellow Cheorwon-ites, and we took the bus to Gapyeong where we met some friends of a friend. Sadly, our mutual friend was sick and couldn't come. We found the zip-lining platform and after a long wait (during which we took a lunch break) we made our way up to the top of the 80 meter platform and went whooshing two-by-two (except me, I was the odd one out) out over the water all the way to Nami island. The zip-lining was really amazing, but unfortunately, it began raining right after we touched down, after wandering around the island, we were all wet and tired. We hopped on a ferry back to the mainland, and waiting in the rain for what seemed like forever until we could shove our way onto a bus to the train station. Several hectic chases after trains and buses later, we made it safely on the bus to Sincheorwon and two hours later we were home and I was finally admitting that I was indeed coming down with a cold. So I've been well-punished for the rainy-day trip to Nami Island, but it was still lots of fun, and hopefully I will get a chance to go back sometime when the weather is more cooperative (and when I haven't been exposed to the Cheorwon death plague).
In other words, it's National Novel Writing Month! (nanowrimo.org) Which is why I haven't updated the blog in a few weeks. National Novel Writing Month is when I ( and many others) spend the month trying to force 50,000 words that, in some slight way, resemble the first draft of a novel into a blank word document. This is my sixth year participating, and if I manage to keep up, it will be my 5th straight "win." NaNoWriMo is one of my favorite hobbies, so be nice. And no, you can't read my novel, trust me, you really don't want to anyway.
I hope that one day I will actually finish Nanowrimo and not completely loath my characters and despair of ever piecing together the plot into something that makes any sense, in which case I will be able to move on to re-writing and editing. In the meantime, I won't inflict my "novels" on anyone, just know that, however weird it may be, I'm actually enjoying this. Be happy for me and congratulate me when I make it to 50,000. Or just hide my status updates if the numbers annoy you that much.
Moving to life in Korea, my schedule has gotten extremely confusing lately, due to the fact that I have to give a speaking test to all of my students, but each grade is getting their speaking tests at a different time. So last week it was the 3rd graders, and then this week they have their finals, so they are kind of panicking all over the school (or they just look like zombies because they've been cramming all week).
This week I have to give the 2nd graders their test, but unfortunately, the way we formatted the test, I simply can't even come close to fitting in all of them in one period, so it's going to take two weeks. The first graders will have their speaking test next week or the week after.
It's all very confusing, with class times changing, I was late to one class, forgot the classroom key for another, and then EVERYONE -me, my co-teacher and the students for one class- got told the class was moved from second period to first period. This normally wouldn't be a big deal, except we were all told this ten minutes after the first period had started, and since we were giving an exam all the kids were panicking and saying they weren't ready (as though they'd be studying for their English exam had they had math class as regularly scheduled!).
And beyond that, since my 3rd graders have their finals 3 weeks earlier than the other two grades, I have to come up with something to teach them. What? Who knows really, just something. So... I guess I better get on that sometime soon. Ah, well, we'll figure it out.
As for my weekends, I really don't know if I can describe how awesome the 1st-3rd was. There were a lot of animal costumes involved and bowling and karaoke. We also toured the DMZ, which was very cool. There were lots of covert photos taken in the 2nd tunnel. I won't say by whom, but there are photos.
Last Saturday I woke up with a sore throat, and decided to ignore it, because Saturday day was zip-lining day! I met Ben and Rochelle, my fellow Cheorwon-ites, and we took the bus to Gapyeong where we met some friends of a friend. Sadly, our mutual friend was sick and couldn't come. We found the zip-lining platform and after a long wait (during which we took a lunch break) we made our way up to the top of the 80 meter platform and went whooshing two-by-two (except me, I was the odd one out) out over the water all the way to Nami island. The zip-lining was really amazing, but unfortunately, it began raining right after we touched down, after wandering around the island, we were all wet and tired. We hopped on a ferry back to the mainland, and waiting in the rain for what seemed like forever until we could shove our way onto a bus to the train station. Several hectic chases after trains and buses later, we made it safely on the bus to Sincheorwon and two hours later we were home and I was finally admitting that I was indeed coming down with a cold. So I've been well-punished for the rainy-day trip to Nami Island, but it was still lots of fun, and hopefully I will get a chance to go back sometime when the weather is more cooperative (and when I haven't been exposed to the Cheorwon death plague).
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