Hooray it's Friday!

Not such a pleasant day today. I went out last night for dinner with Courtney and Mike. We went for Mukinji, which is this ridiculously tasty Korean pork and kimchi stew.  It was a bit more spicy than usual last night, and I woke up this morning with a pretty upset digestive system :( It continued on and off right through to just before lunch. It seems to be gone now (fingers crossed). On top of that I also ate an ice cream last night, and had a really unhealthy take away dinner on Tuesday night. I actually think the food affects my mood and how easy it is for me to wake up in the morning. Up until Tuesday I had eaten only negligible amounts (like what I couldn't avoid in school lunch) of sugar and grains for over a week. I was finding it easier and easier to get out of bes, and my mood was consistently positive and I felt good. Then had a bit of a bad time on Tuesday afternoon and ate badly, then ice cream again yesterday night, and come this morning I found myself negative, unmotivated, and kind of bloated. I've never considered myself sensitive to food, but maybe there was something going on. But, then again, I also had an upset tummy, so can't really say.

Regardless, I need to re-commit to my health 'goals' as such. I'm not worried about having food like I did, but I don't want it to become regular like it was a couple of months ago.

Anyway, today's five things:

1) I've got my bodyweight workout this afternoon and I'm really looking forward to it.

2) It's Friday! I'm going to the movies with Courtney tomorrow, in Suwon.

3) My article is coming along really well. I'll be finished the first draft early next week.

4) I got a little program for my work computer that pops up a message every 15 minutes and reminds me to stretch a bit. I've been getting sore shoulders from all my desk time.

5) Pork belly for dinner!

Wednesday's five

Me: Why do you want to learn English?
Him: Ummm................ English.......... America............. number one!
Me: Oh, ok. Do you want to go to America?
Him: No.
Me: Oh, do you want to talk to American people when they come to Korea?
Him: No.
Me: Ok, do you like American TV and movies? Do you listen to American music?
Him: No.
Me: Ok, so why learn English?
Him: America... number one.... powerful.
Me: oookay then.

Today's five:
1) I had a really good night's sleep.

2) I've written 2,000 words of draft for my ESL teaching article.

3) Mr B. kept telling all the kids they had ADHD today. I have no idea why, it was his phrase of the day or something. It cracked me up... so un-P.C!

4) I picked up a dark chocolate toblerone at E-Mart today. It's dark chocolate so it's ok right? Well, I put it back! Yay for me :)

5) I was talking to the not-quite-the-full-quid kid today before class. He saw we were going to do something different and wanted to know what. I said we were signing a song today, and said the Korean work for singing. He got so excited and was really happy! Then I was joking with him -in a way so he knew I was joking - and said 'and dancing too!' and he goes 'Oh! Dancing! Michael Jackson!' and struck this awesome Michael Jackson pose. We were both cracking up :D I tell you, there's something wrong with him, but sometimes he's more switched on that the 'regular' students. Cool kid :)

Lots of teaching Monday

Whew, what a day!

I've gone from teaching nothing in weeks, to teaching nearly every class today. It's been fun, though. Mr. B. has been in a really cooperative mood, so the teaching feels like it's quite smooth and that the kids are actually benefiting from both of us being in the classroom. My goal this week is to write at least 500 words of my article, but I didn't get any done today because I was so busy. I had about 40 minutes free at the very end of the day, but by that time my nose and sinuses were so sore, my head didn't feel like it could handle much more.

I've been sick now for over a month. I don't think that there's much point in going back to the doctor. My symptoms are server, just persistent. After reading through some stuff written by others here in Korea, this is really common at this time of year. It seems like half the foreigner community of Korea is sick for the entire months of April and May because of the yellow dust and other allergens in the air. I've got the name of some allergy pills and a nasal spray, so I'm going to the pharmacy tonight to try and at least get some relief. Hopefully I just have to last until June and it'll all go away.

This does not make staying in Korea seem at all desirable though. Let's see... Winter in freezing cold, and while snow is neat, it gets not so neat quite quickly. Then spring, which is apparently just allergy/respirator infection central, even for people like me who don't have problems back home. Then summer, which by all accounts is just non-stop torrential rain, heat, and humidity. Autumn in lovely. Sooo, 3/4 of the year suck! Fail, Korea. Fail.

Good news! Brook and I got all out tickets and accommodation booked for our trip to Japan in July! I'm super excited! It's going to be really hot and humid, but surely it can't be any worse that places I've already been? I had wonderful holidays in it before, so Japan shouldn't be any different. I'm just hoping Brook will be ok. He can be sensitive to that kind of thing - We'll have to be careful to drink lots of water.

So, the plan is: 4 days in Korea, 7 days in Japan, and then 3 days in Korea (including my birthday!). We're going to Osaka and Kyoto in Japan. Both places look fascinating. Woohoo! Dreams of this holiday are going to keep me going for the next couple of months.

Ok, today's five things:

1) I had salmon and eggs for breakfast. Salmon is so cheap here!

2) Lots of fun teaching today.

3) The prospect of spending even a couple of hours with an unblocked nose...

4) Gorgeous weather, again. It's so much easier to be happy when it's sunny.

5) I talked to all my peeps on Skype over the weekend (apart from you mum!). It was really good to catch up and find out how everyone is :)

Sunny Sunday!

It is such a nice day today! And yesterday too. In fact, yesterday was wonderful!! Someone adopted my rabbit, so I took her into Seoul and gave her to the guy, Arthur, who was very nice. The bus trip with her was easy as anything, and it all went super well. So, I am now rabbit free - which is a relief, the place feels so clean now!

After dropping Kyle off, I went to Myeongdong to have my summer shopping spree - and oh, what a day! I went mainly to two stores - Forever 21 and UniQLO, both cheap but nice (and big!!) clothing chain stores that carry sizes that fit me. $200 later and I'm decked out for summer - two new dresses, work skirt, short shorts, and some staples like new black and white singlets, new black t-shirt, that kind of thing. The UniQLO store actually has REALLY nice basics kind of stuff made from this smooth fabric. I also got these neat 'ultra-seamless' undies, you can almost not even see them when I'm wearing them, they just looking like skin, and are very comfy, so really good for under white skirts or tight dresses.

And now, for mum, here's most of the interesting stuff I got yesterday:

New stripy dress (channelling you mum!) and old cardi.

I'm a prude, and while I like the dress, the neckline is too low for me. hence the cardi.

I'm bringing sexy back. With my back. Get it? Back, back? Ohhh, never mind then.

Work skirt, new singlet and cardigan (which although it doesn't look it here is really light-weight).

Short shorts and floral blouse.

Totally not my usual, but I LOVE this top.

And this dress. It's cute!

And I'm pretty sure I can wear it to work with the cardi.

That's my weekend adventure. The end :)

Sore sinus Thursday

Just a quick one today - I'm tired and have a sinus headache :(

1) I made a strawberry banana coconut smoothie. It was yummy.

2) I'm making a new dish for dinner - chicken kiev. Not sure it's going to work, but it should taste good :)

3) All the spring flowers are out. It looks lovely.

4) I got to level 44 on StarWars.

5) I read a really good article today about how to use student choice in the classroom. It was very interesting.

P.S. Here is my dinner :)

First bash the chicken out.

Then add garlic butter and roasted capsicum.

Wrap and refrigerated for an hour. The fry, seam side down first.

Looks delicious.

Yummy middle!

Researching Wednesday

As I work on this article about student choice, I've been lead to a lot of academic work on fostering student autonomy, and how supporting learners autonomy has a number of positive outcomes like increased motivation and engagement, but also a bunch of other stuff, such as students being happier about doing the work, feeling more fulfilled, a growing more as people. Interestingly, I can relate this not only to my own classroom, but myself in my job. Things that suppress autonomy (which means doing things of your own accord, because you want to and feeling like you have the power and skills to do things on your own) are a lack of genuine feedback, forced tasks that have no discernible reason or value, and intruding on tasks with unwanted correction or 'help'. Clearly, the biggest one for me is the forced tasks with no value (or even any outcome as far as I can tell, half the time). So, I think a lot of my dissatisfaction with my job stems from me feeling like I have no control, and very few tasks that are personally relevant or of any value to me. Well, I didn't need to do research to tell me that, but it is interesting.

Also, since I started doing the reading and writing, I've noticed I've been feeling much happier in general. My day feels a little bit more worthwhile. I think this is because I'm doing something which will yield results and that is interesting to me, relevant to my career, and should have a usable result (an article to try to get published). Even if all I do is write a bad article that no one wants anything to do with, at least I learned that the 'doing' is of value for it's own sake :)

One article I read said: "When students feel that teachers support their autonomy they are likely to value the task and experience positive feelings toward it". I'd say this is true for any number of situations, not just teacher-student.. I know my favourite jobs have been the ones where my employers trusted me to get the job done, provided support, but mostly trusted me and left me alone. In fact, I've enjoyed all but two of my jobs (out of 9-ish) and those were the two that included make-work for no reason, excessive monitoring and control, and no opportunities to take responsibility for myself. Interesting.

So, can a worker - stuck and unmotivated - in one of these non-autonomy supporting jobs, find a way to foster their own autonomy? Can a student? If I was one of these blogging gurus with a website anyone actually read, perhaps I'd come up with some nifty 10-step plan for it :-D Haha, but I'm not. But I've maybe (even just temporarily) fixed my own.

*            *            *

Anyway, no teaching again. By the end of this week it will be a month since I taught properly. Well, I did get to teach one full Wednesday last week, but other than that, nothing. I still have to be at work though, for a full eight hours. Even when all the other teachers get to leave at lunch, I still have to be there, at my desk. Weird system, but whatever. Holidays in July! And, only two weeks of summer camp! I taught six in winter, so that's a lot less planning for me to do :)

You know, it's gone past 'warm' now, and is definitely into 'hot'. My apartment was apparently 25 degrees inside this morning. Won't be long before the air-con comes on. I love it. However, many Korean people are still wearing jackets, and EVERYONE is still in pants, socks, and shoes. And hardly anyone opens the window on the bus. It's like they are resistant to the heat. I swear, it's somewhere around 30 today, and my co-teacher is still in full pants, socks, long-sleeved shirt and blazer. I'd die! I'm in a t-shirt, skirt, and sandals. In fact, I've just read that it can be considered suggestive for a woman not to cover her feet, so a lot of women in Korea will wear socks right through summer. Well, I'm all for cultural sensitivity, but bugger that. I'm gonna let my suggestive feet show.

Ok, today's five things:

1) Getting lots of reading done and feeling inspired by it.

2) Mastering the sinus rinse technique.

3) Boneless fish fillets for lunch - really yummy, along with a tasty omelette. 

4) Sun sun sun!

5) I went to the market on the way home and got two big things of strawberries for $4! They're only a bit squishy in places. I'm freezing them to make smoothies with! Also, I just (hopefully didn't break) my blender making almond butter. It's like peanut butter, only made from almonds. And WOW, I don't think I can go back to peanuts now - it's soooooo good!

Holiday dates Tuesday

Another lovely warm day, though a bit overcast today. Again, a desk day for me, but I do have after-school class this afternoon. We did a lesson on zombies last week, so this week we're watching part of the movie 'I am Legend', and then doing a worksheet and talking about it. I'm also planning on doing a questionnaire about what the kids want to learn, and talking to them about some different things we can do in class, if they want to. I'm hoping it goes well - a lot of the time when I try to talk to them about doing anything differently they don't understand at all.

Big news! I've got my holiday dates! At long last, Mr B. came through for me and got it all sorted. He even managed to score me two extra days. My contract says the principal can give me five extra days, but Mr B. reckons that's only if the school is REALLY rural, like on a tiny island or something. That was fine, but then he said I could have two days instead. He told me about six times 'just two days, not five'. I was like, yeah, I can hear you. I'm totally happy with two more - I could have none! So, my holiday dates are from the 25th of July to the 5th of August - twelve days that include my birthday. Pretty darn likely that Brook will be here for my birthday - kind of awesome!

Because today is a late start (and finish) day for me, I got to play some StarWars this morning. I'm totally getting back into it, though the server my main character is on is not very populated at the times I play, so I'm basically playing a single player game online. I'm really enjoying it, though. I also made another awesome smoothie in my new blender. I think it's really going to come into its own when summer really arrives and I can make ice-cold smoothies from frozen fruit. Yummy! I'm really into oranges at the moment.

I've been working on my research all day, but I'm going to stop now. My head feels really spacey - I think from the blocked sinuses. I read four articles this morning and got some good references, and wrote a couple of hundred words of my own. A few hundred a day and I'll have it done in a few weeks. At the moment I'm leaning towards writing more of a practical 'five steps to implementing student choice in your classroom' sort of thing right now, rather than something hardcore academic. I think this suits my situation and aspirations better for now. I'm enjoying thinking about things :)

So, today's five:

1) Got my holiday dates - very happy about this (it also means that my dealing with Mr B can go back to minimal = much less ranting from me).

2) I'm delivering my rabbit into Seoul on Saturday, and I'm going to do some summer clothes shopping in Myeongdong for the day.

3) Mmmm, smoothie.

4) Lunch today was roast pork with a salty/spicy sauce on the side. I love the roast pork - it's so simple and tasty. And not covered in goop made of goodness knows what.

5) Turns out my after school class has been cancelled this week. And I only found out when I went to ask where my students were 5 minutes into class time. Haha, excellent communication there. Oh well, I just left and came home early. I'll have to do my needs analysis next week.