What Color is Your Belt?

I had mentioned in a previous post that after 3 1/2 months, we were going for our yellow belts…
Well, all original members of the Jinjeop 5 passed the test… with flying colors.   And it was actually a bit more professionally conducted than I had imagined.
Sabumnim had to bring in an elder- a true, [...]

Weekend Goods

This past weekend was pretty fun…  Friday, after we returned home from the school field trip, I just hung around here.  Oddly enough, I felt like doing some yard work.  So I picked some weeds out by “the Jew,” scooped dog poop, did some house and zoo cleaning, read my book… even practiced violin for [...]

Kowabunga, Dudes

So our Jinjup crew was one short tonight… Joe was sick.  But the rest of us kicked some ass and then had a pizza party after class with our Grandmaster.
He’s enjoying expanding his English vocabulary and we’re doing our best to hone our limited Korean skills.  We’ve pretty much got the counting down pat.
But tonight [...]

Korea Fighting!

Out with the old, in with the new.
Whenever I used to hear this expression, I thought of a new year beginning, full of new goals, the start of a new school semester, a whole new me.
These days, I still go to school.  But not as a student- as a teacher.  And when I hear an [...]

Meat by the Moon

Today was Malbok, the last of the 3 hottest periods of summer in the lunar calendar.  On this day, most Koreans go out for a big meat-oriented dinner.  They believe the summer heat makes them weak, and that a hearty meal of meat will make them strong again.
So, Mrs. Lee invited me to eat samgyetang [...]

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

For the past several weeks, I’ve been floating on Cloud 9.  I wake up happy, I go to bed with a smile on my face, and everything is perfect in the hours between.  Even my friend back home said I sounded happy when I called him up this morning.  “That’s because I am.” I replied.  [...]

Your Mom’s on Facebook

Honestly.  She probably is.  It seems like the whole world is these days.  It’s kinda cool.
Yesterday, I received a facebook message from a girl from Massachusetts.  She had accidentally stumbled across my blog after googling “hookah bars in Seoul.”  She saw I was teaching English here in Namyangju and decided to contact me.  She, too, [...]