2003-02-11 - 12:21 a.m.

Sunday & Monday, Feb. 9 & 10, 2003

Sunday Night: I've just done laundry and some soup-making, had a really lazy day at home here. Had a large peanut butter sandwich on the six-grain bread, with a chocolate-banana smoothie for supper to balance the big green-veggie soup for lunch. What with all the smoothies and cereal, I've put away six quarts of milk since Friday afternoon. That should be good for healing. I'm feeling really rested and ready for work tomorrow.

I've been reading the first draft of Carol's novel. It's really good! I'll keep you posted about it as it progresses toward publication. She's been teaching English in Korea and China since the mid-1980s. All that experience makes for a rich background in her book. The working title is "Asia on Her Own."

Monday 13:30 Yep, I came home for lunch and a rest. It seems counter-intuitive to travel an extra 3 hours, but I can nap on the subway or meditate or do lesson plans. It also gives me exercise walking at the two transfer points each way. That adds up to 3 kilometers each round-trip. I can walk fast and climb stairs, too, so it's "aerobic walking."

We had three new students in Moms' class this morning. It made for an interesting change. I did the introductory "I'm Sil and I'm from Maine" lecture, as well as Q & A with the new students. We talked about making maple syrup, as it's about "that time" of year. The new ladies want to be called Alice, Cathy and Yokka (she made that name up herself, "it's easy for teachers to say." Clever woman and a cute idea; I'm going to enjoy these gals.) Two of them took English classes here two years ago, but have since moved to Seoul (a lot closer to Gwangmyeon than I am, though). Cathy seems to be the leader of the trio. Alice will need to be drawn out; she's shy. Yokka is enthusiastic,- perhaps a bit of a "wild card."

Breakfast today was bread and soup made from "mountain vegetable" (a bit like cilantro). For lunch, I "went to the ocean" and made a soup from tuna and a kind of seaweed called "yetnal meeyawk." I think its Japanese name is "wasabi." It's a tender, slender, small kelp-like plant. After the yetnal meeyawk was cooked, I added cold water and the tuna, and cranked the blender up to Liquify for a couple minutes. I'm soaking the six-grain bread in the soup, to make the bread softer to chew. It's pretty good. Goes down easy and tastes kinda like a tuna sandwich.

19:40 Left home at 2:30 p.m. and returned at 7:35. Got in two hours of teaching there and am grateful to be home. It's so nice to walk into the warm, ripe-banana-scented air in my "little cave." Fruit for supper seems right. The bananas have bloomed a few freckles since this morning, just the way I like 'em. I'll wash down my pills with a cuppa hot cocoa and then relax!

23:30 A nap set me right and I'm heading for the PC bang to post this.

Kids' classes went well, but ten-year-old boys are "wigglers." I've had one of these boys before also, and he thinks he knows it all. ;-) The two advanced girls are a lot of fun. We talked about owls and alligators. Owls arose because of a persistent "whoo, whoo" noise outside the classroom. The book introduced the phrase, "See you later, alligator." Rhymes for humour are not a Corean staple, so we had to "go back and forth" a little to get the idea across.

Thanks for reading.

Happy Trails!

~ Sil in Corea

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