Plan for the Week

So, this week, I am going to 1) buy a bathroom scale, 2) take a sample hapkido class at the TMAS center in Itaewon, 3) start a diet, 4) save up for my birthday present to me, and 5) maybe... get a bunny? o_o

I get paid tomorrow afternoon. Once my local bills and debts are paid off, I'm going to send home my allotted amount of money to take care of US bills and debts (student loans, my old cell phone, money owed to boyfriend, etc).

I'm also going to send home a little extra so I can save up for my birthday present to myself. I'm not going to tell you what it is here, because it's entirely frivolous, but I think I earned ONE big frivolous purchase after 4 months of being pretty good about not doing that.

May send home even more so that I can shop online for a few things like multi-vitamins and such to help with this diet thing. www.iherb.com has cheap flat-rate shipping to Korea, and very rarely gets tagged for customs fees, and they have stuff I want.

I've got a lovely person on Dave's ESL Cafe helping me make a meal plan. It's going to cut down on my carbohydrate intake a bit, but I'm not willing to give up ALL carbs. I like fruit and bread too much, though I suppose I can give up bread for a month or two just to kickstart this diet thing. SO not giving up fruit, though. I don't care. It keeps me from craving refined sugar. I need fruit.

Buying a bathroom scale and taking regular waistline measurements will help me keep track of my progress. I'm not going to do it every day, though. That way, as they say, lies madness. I'm going to do it once a week at a certain time and day every week, and mark the results down. I've got a small note pad all ready for this purpose. I may hang it on the wall over the scale. I'm also going to be using the note pad to keep track of my food intake and write down recipes, daily meal plan, etc.

I may also post my results here, with pictures. Here are my current "Now" pictures, courtesy of the bathroom mirror:

(At least I still look good in that black dress!)

I'm going to check out TMAS (Total Martial Arts System) in Itaewon and check out the taekwondo and hapkido lessons on Saturday. I'm pretty sure hapkido is more my speed, as it's closer to aikido, which is what I used to take back in MN before I became unemployed. For 60,000W/month (a little under $60), I can train for an hour every Saturday and use the open training time on Sundays. Not quite as good a deal as I was getting for aikido, but still very reasonable, and they have discounts if you pay in advance for 3 or 6 month packages.

Now, about this bunny. Someone on Dave's ESL Cafe, not too far from where I am, is giving away a rabbit. She's going to be finishing her contract soon, and needs to find a new home for this guy. He's pretty cute, extremely laid back (doesn't bite or scratch, not nervous or jumpy), appears to be in good health, and is at least litter trained as far as going in his cage instead of outside it. As there wasn't a lot of interest, I asked her a few questions about the rabbit, and finally agreed to take him. Of course, if I get there and it turns out the rabbit isn't as she said, or if he's sickly, I'll walk away. But I think this is legit. I've been reading up on the care and feeding of rabbits, and while I was iffy about getting a rabbit, getting one for free with a bunch of equipment to start seems a much less risky venture. Worse comes to worst, I have to find another home for him when I leave and I'm out a bit of cash for feeding him, or he winds up dying on me because I'm incompetent at keeping a pet (unlikely). I think I can manage.

Anyway, look at him. D'aww! And it's the Year of the Rabbit, too.


Okay, what else do I need to do this week... Ah. Sort through all the classroom handouts and materials from 1st semester and get them organized into files. *stares guiltily at the bag full of papers and file folders lying on the apartment floor* Since I didn't get that done THIS weekend... I also need to start up some lesson plans for at LEAST the first 4 weeks of next semester, as I don't want to be doing that over my vacation.

Also, I discovered that my digital camera is a decent replacement for a scanner. I can post artwork again! It takes some editing in Photoshop to clean it up, but I had to do that with a scanner anyway, so no big deal. I'm going to attempt to get through this stack of sketches and marker drawings this week sometime.

Okay, on to other news.

Korean baking soda/powder sucks. It made my pancakes smell like ammonia! Apparently, instead of sodium bicarbonate, they use ammonium carbonate. Works the same way, but is better for cookies because by the time cookies are done the ammonia smell has baked out of them. Not so with pancakes! Ugh. They were edible, as long as I didn't sniff them, but I'm going to be sticking to crepes from now on. Less flour, anyway, so I can probably get away with having them once in awhile even on a diet.

Did I mention before that some Korean couples do this thing where they dress alike? I'm pretty sure I did. Anyway, this time, it was my turn with Sam. We accidentally bought the same sweater vest at eMart (because I like to shop in the men's clothing section like that), and wound up wearing them on the same day. This got a lot of laughs from our coworkers and some of the students when they saw us together. Nathan was kind enough to take this photo on my iPod of Sam and me looking extra classy.


I had one more bout with this throat infection/cold thing this weekend, but I think chugging water and sleeping FOREVER helped me get over it. I also took extra vitamin C and D. Feeling much better now, and looking forward to the new week. Only two left before vacation time!

I'll come up with another post later about my plans for Lunar New Year break. So far, it's going to include a lot of cheap travel (buses and subways), exploring more of Seoul, and trying to find some good Lunar New Year festivals that are okay with foreigners poking around. :P

As for my other New Year resolutions, I'm working on them. I've written some stuff, drawn a few things (though not every day, because I'm TERRIBLE), and I'm starting to look around for Korean lessons. Signed up for a few websites already, but I'd like to learn from a native Korean speaker if I can.

I think that's it for now.

Over and out,

-Maria

Photos of Anyang, Lesson Planning, and Halloween Preparations

I finally did go out last Sunday and take some pictures around Anyang with the good camera, but I was too busy to upload them until now. Photobucket is being kind of a dinkus, however, so I've put them up on Facebook. I'll try to post some here another time, for those of you who either aren't on the Facebook or don't have me friended (my albums are always friends-only, sorry).

I spent the past week working on lesson plans for the Library Program with my co-teacher, Nana. Because we are super awesome and lucky, we have to plan for 10 different classes per week. That's 40 different lessons per month, and 120 lesson plans per semester. I might add that we don't get a textbook for this. We have certain assigned library books and a few pre-chosen topics, and some of the higher levels even come with already made worksheets, but we're expected to fill in all the blanks ourselves. I'm not complaining, mind, but I'm just pointing out that this is a lot of work to get done in one week. We've got crafts, flash-cards, worksheets, PowerPoint presentations, videos and songs to queue, and a slew of other things to create and/or find.

Realizing there was no way we were going to do a semester's worth of lesson planning in the space of a week, we decided to focus on planning the first month. Then, we set about creating the materials for the first week. After much hump-busting, we're most of the way finished, though we still have a few more things to do Monday morning before the first kids arrive around noonish. Oh, and I'll normally be teaching classes between the hours of 10:30am and (I think) 5:45pm. So, not a lot of morning prep time for me, but a couple hours at the end of the day for clean-up and prepping for the next day. Whew!

Things are a little tight right now, money-wise, but I should have enough food to last me the week. Our manager put in a request for us to get our first paychecks a little early, so I should have money by Friday if all goes well. If not, well... I think I have enough pancake ingredients, rice, and eggs to last me until November 10th. It's a good thing I make decent pancakes.

In the meantime, I'm taking it easy this weekend. Just a bit of sweeping and laundry to stay on top of my household chores, but no excursions into the mountains or even much walking about town. Nana was nursing a cold all week, and I think I caught it, so I spent most of today sleeping in late and guzzling water and OJ. I feel a lot better now, though there is still a suspicious tickle in my throat and a bit of a cough. Please, PLEASE don't let me get sick for my first week of classes. That's all I need. T_T

Tomorrow is my favorite day of the year, of course: Halloween! If you haven't heard about it, Neil Gaiman has started a new tradition called "All Hallow's Read", where you give scary books to your loved ones (or even strangers) for Halloween. Lacking many books or money to buy them at the moment (and most of the ones I could get around here would be in Korean), I am instead running a game called Dread for my fellow FTs. There will also be scary movies, and presumably a little bit of drinking (but hopefully not a lot, as it is a work night, and some of us actually need to be at work in the morning).

What is Dread, you may ask? It's probably the most perfect blend of a role-playing game and a party game. It's a game about survival horror, and instead of using dice or cards, you use a Jenga tower. When the tower falls, somebody dies. It's an absolutely elegant game, and the only one I've ever been able to run with any success. My friend Rhianna and I came up with a pretty spiffy scenario for it, too, which I will be running for the FTs. I can't wait. Pictures and full report to come later this week.

Now to marathon one of the many TV shows I've got sitting around on my computer. Have a happy and safe Halloween, everyone!

Cheers,


-Maria