Amanda Takes Off...

I have not been studying Korean. I am being very lazy about it.

Yet I don't seem to be losing my passive Korean. I can pick up something which was difficult to read six months or a year ago and understand much more of it than before

There has to be a happy medium between "studying so much my brain can't process it" and "studying so little that my passive understanding increases while my active understanding slides back."

I need to find that happy medium.

Amanda Teacher: So if you pass next Friday's vocab test on Monday, you don't have to study the class' vocab words. You'd get to choose your own affixes to study this week.

Dead Meat, joking: Like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?

Amanda Teacher: Actually, some people say that word can be broken down into roots. So sure, I'd let you break it down.

Another Student I Haven't Nicknamed Yet: What's 'do'?

Subatomic: A deer, a female deer.

Amanda Teacher: Ray, a drop of golden sun!

Another Student I Haven't Nicknamed Yet: What?

Dead Meat: Me, a name I call myself. [Suddenly serious.] I want next week's word list.

***

Inspired by an idea I found in a new teaching book, I did something different with vocab this week.

We've been studying affixes for a few weeks, and it's clear that some of these affixes are too easy for some of the students. On Friday I offered my students the opportunity to get this week's affixes. If they chose to get the words, they would take Friday's test today. And if they showed mastery (80% or greater), they would get to pick their own words to study during the week.

Seven students chose to get the word list and out of 18 points, all of them scored a 16 or above. Five of them got perfect scores!

Part of the test was to brainstorm 5-10 words (total) based on all of the affixes we've studied so far. Surprise, surprise, most of the students went crazy on that one. They were brainstorming 12-15 words. Then they were supposed to write a paragraph using 3-5 of their selected words.

Here are some of the paragraphs they came up with.

At school I'm doing a PHOTOGRAPHY project. Ms. S DISLIKED it when no one brought their materials in to take PHOTOS. Ms. S EXCLUDED them from taking after that. Everyone else was ABLE to take pictures.

True story. Thanks for documenting that.

From another student:

I play tennis and my dad always says have good SPORTSMANSHIP and when I lose my temper and my dad says that is not ACCEPTABLE so, I would consider tennis a HARDSHIP because I suck at tennis.

And finally:

I was a doctOR traveling the world with many ugLY people. Those people were so mean that they broke my BIcycle so I TRANSported them to the bottom of the ocean. And know I'm happy.

Now they've all chosen their own ten words to study this week. They'll be assessed on those words on Friday. They chose cool, dorky, way-too-hard affixes that the rest of my students wouldn't get, like RAGO for beg or ask. (Arrogant, for example.) Or HYPNO for sleep.

Let's see how this plays out on Friday, when they get tested on their level...

산토끼 토끼야

A few days ago, Good Man started singing a children's song.

산토끼 토끼야
어디로 가느냐?
깡충깡충 뛰면서
어디로 가느냐?

Mountain rabbit, rabbit!
Where are you going?
Hopping and hopping!
Where are you going?

He skipped the next verse, which is:

산고개 고개를
나 혼자 넘어서!
토실 토실 알밤을
주워서 올테야!

Up the mountain, mountain hill
I will go alone!
Chubby, chubby chestnuts,
I will take them all!

I keep singing it and changing one note. This causes Good Man to flail his arms and legs. "Nooooo! Why can't you get it right? My 음치 wife!"

"음치?"

"Not getting music right, not good at singing."

Fancy-Schmancy

Apparently I say "fancy-schmancy" now that I'm in America. Good Man has picked up on this. He has started saying it, too, except he can't quite get rid of his Korean accent and it comes out fancy-schmanshi. He says it's "a grandmother word." And now everything around us is fancy-schmanshi.

Go-To Dinner

Now that our summer of never eating at home is over with, the grocery bill is up but the total food bill is down.

We had the pesto chicken, brown rice, and green beans last night.

Today I made ginger tea ("You are Eastern medicine woman!") and then ginger carrot bread and muffins with fresh ginger. It was delicious. I used a ton of carrots so the bread was really moist. And then you'd bite into a chunk of ginger and taste the sweet heat... Oh, so good.

For dinner I made spicy pork and in the marinade I used carrots, onions, garlic, and ginger. I haven't used ginger in spicy pork before and the flavor was subtle but really good. We ate the pork with brown rice and lettuce and had plums for dessert. I realized today that spicy pork is becoming one of my go-to dishes. It's delicious and so easy to cook.

I still hate eating the bones left in the pork. I spit them out, but Good Man says I should eat them. They're just 오도독오도독, he says.

Plant Appreciation

Something is eating my plants. I don't know what it is. But it's chowing on all of my plants (except my sweet potato vine). Still, my bell peppers appear to be growing despite the leaf-eater, so I'm ignoring it.

At the beginning of this patio garden experiment I freaked out over bugs and tried killing them with various mixtures. Usually a mild mixture of soap will kill many insects, but it did nothing for the giant aphid population I had going on. I bought a commercial product and it still didn't help. My peppers looked like hell and the aphids were taking over. I was trying to do everything right and it wasn't working.

In addition, I was trying to do everything right be fertilizing my plants weekly, as recommended. I found out that using my "organic" fertilizer wasn't helping. Aphids feast on the new leaves that chemical fertilizers cause to rapidly grow.

While all of this was going on, I was reading In Defense of Food. I was reading about commercial crop production and how horrible it is for soil to be over-fertilized and insecticided.

So I stopped. I bought some ladybugs to eat the aphids. I figured the aphids would come back with a vengeance after the ladybugs left, because, well, I couldn't force the ladybugs to stick around. So I was set to buy ladybugs monthly.

I unleashed the ladybugs at night. I had ladybugs eating aphids for about three days, and then they were all gone.

And they—the ladybugs and the aphids—haven't come back. It's been two or three months and I haven't seen a single aphid.

I left my cayenne peppers outside drying for a bit too long and something started eating them. I harvested the last few peppers while they were green and let them turn red on my counter, indoors.

When I was spraying for bugs and fertilizing weekly, my bell peppers kept flowers and producing peppers, but when the peppers became golf-ball sized, they'd fall off the plant and rot. Since I've quit screwing with the plants, peppers have been growing. And staying on the plant.

This whole experiment with patio gardening has taught me a few things. First, growing things can be a pain in the ass, and I'm feeling greater appreciation for farmers. Second, next year I'm going to try to use commercial products as little as possible. I should have a good amount of vermicompost by then, and now that I know the ladybug trick? Third, I think Americans in general expect produce to be bigger than it naturally should be. Fourth, cooking something with something you grew feels fantastic. I have been known to point at cayenne rounds in our kimchi kkigae, only to say, "Hey, I grew that cayenne right there." Fifth, letting plants do their own thing seems to work better for me than doing what's "right."

Hence, I'm ignoring whatever bug is chowing down on my plant leaves. Instead I'm taking it as a sign that it's time to remove the dying cayenne plants. It's time to trim back the mint. I'm time to whack back the basil.

Pesto

I whacked down my basil. I made some pesto out of the two cups of good leaves I got. Dumped that over three-turned-into-six chicken breasts (seriously, American chickens are too big) and tossed it in the slow cooker for an hour and a half. Made GABA brown rice to go with it. When the brown rice was finished cooking, I steam cooked green beans for five minutes. Served the chicken over the rice and spooned some of the liquid in the slow cooker over it. Served it with freshly grated Parmesan cheese. It tasted wonderful.

Worms Eat My Garbage. And Then They Poop.

I thought my vermicompost was about ready for harvesting today, but I was wrong.

One way to harvest the compost is to dump it on plastic and expose the pile to light. The worms are supposed to dive down into the compost (they don't like light). You then scrape off a layer of compost, let them dive deeper, and scrape again. Repeat until you have a wriggly mass of worms left over. Easy, right?

Well, my compost has been really wet lately, probably because I've been overfeeding it. I ended up smooshing all of the worms and the compost to one side of the bin and propping that side up on two yogurt cups. Over an hour or so a lot of water flowed to the other side. It was probably a good six cups or so, and the composty stuff was still too wet.

Still, I figured I'd harvest the compost. But there was a lot more unfinished material in it than I thought. Plus, it was rainy and not too bright out, so the worms didn't really go anywhere. The lack of light combined with too much unfinished material made any worm diving difficult at best.

I took ALL of the compost out, and dumped the leachate. I added fresh, damp newspaper and dry corn husks and silk. I then went through the compost and sort of aerated it by hand and put it on top of all of the new bedding. I found worms all over. Inside packed newspaper, in clumps of compost, in banana stems.

Egg production is down, as is the mature worm population, probably because it's too damn wet. Hopefully since I'm adding all of this fresh bedding, the worms will have more food and get happy and bring their sexy back. I still have a lot of worms, so it's not like I've accidentally killed them all.

Oh well. Learn as you go. Maybe I can harvest my first batch of vermicompost by the new year.

Before leaving for work yesterday, I sat on the edge of the bed and I touched Good Man's cheek gently. He was still mostly asleep. "여보. 안녕. 난 가." Sweetie. Bye. I'm going.

"응." Yeah.

I waited. Good Man said nothing more. I rolled Good him over and stared at him until he opened his eyes. He nodded. "잘 가." Goodbye. He closed his eyes again.

I poked him. "야! 무슨 일이야?" Hey! What day is it?

Good Man slowly grinned. "Happy birthday."

***

Last year I dealt with a broken toe. This year was better.

I got to work and my new coworker (the one I really, really get along with) had brought me a bottle of champagne, which I'm pretty sure isn't even allowed on school grounds. Champagne and good chocolate. Another coworker brought me a book, which was rather sweet.

My students were well-behaved and in high spirits.

And then, after lunch, I walked into my room and all of my students popped out of the closets and climbed out from under desks and yelled "surprise!"

I knew something was going on because bless them, 12 year-old children aren't quiet when setting up a room for a surprise party, and I was eating with my coworker next door! Plus, I'd been finding sticky notes on the floor. "[Student] cookies," and [Different Student] cups."

But they did an amazing job. They took care of everything—cups, plates, napkins, juice boxes, cookies, chips, dips. A coworker had given me flowers and they moved them from the window sill to the round table. They added more flowers, cards, a few small presents. Confetti made from reused, colored scratch paper. Posters around the room which said "Happy Birthday Ms S!" and "Greatest Teacher Ever" and...

I have generally gotten along well with my students. I've built communities and classrooms and we've had our private stories and jokes and... It's one thing I really missed while living in Korea. For language and cultural reasons, I didn't get the same feeling. But this class is something else entirely.

I hugged every single student, thanked them all individually. Gave Dead Meat back the cash he was trying to give me as a gift. "But it's my gift to you!"

"Honey, I know, but I can lose my license if I accept money from you, OK? I love the thought, but I want to be your teacher."

Dead Meat gave me a note.

Dear Ms. [S], you have been a great
teacher so far this year. You have taught us
how to speak Korean. You have made us
laugh. Even though you yell at us you have been a
great teacher especially in math! HAPPY
BIRTHDAY!!!

Another student, AC/DC gave me this card with a long, funny letter inside of it.

If you look closely, you'll see a report card on me and a bowl of Korean noodles, as well as a wedge of cheddar cheese!

The first month of school the students had to do a writing assessment on a favorite gift. I talked about Good Man's birthday cheese and this child listened, because he gave me these yesterday.

Fancy Schmancy Cheeses

I got cards in Spanish, cards written in slow, careful handwriting. Hugs, the happy birthday song.

We spent recess inside, having ourselves a little party. What was so amazing to me is that even though my students generally get along, all eighteen of them managed to get along well enough to plan this, keep it a secret, and execute it. Wow.

After our party I let the students continue to snack at their desks while I did a social studies lesson on longitude and latitude. And even though they were still a little wired and hyper, they listened. And they answered questions. And they did their work.

With NCLB Act (No-Child Left Behind), the human aspect of teaching can fall to the wayside. It can turn into being all about tests and drills and cramming. But the students, and the teacher, are ultimately human beings who need to celebrate events, who need to come together, who need to form a community.

***

Sister sent me a sweet email. I love chatting with her and emailing her because I care about her and I want to understand, and her to understand me, so she makes me study harder. She asked me if Good Man had gotten me a gift. Said he was 무뚝뚝한, which my Korean dictionary is defining a little too harshly, I think.

Good Man had "bought" me four pairs of leather gloves. Meaning I said, "I want these gloves for my birthday" and he said, "OK, order them."

"Well, technically I did not buy them for you, but in reality, yes," he said.

Which is true.

We went out to dinner at a local Vietnamese restaurant. Afterward, we stopped at a fantastic pastry shop and picked up four little desserts to eat at home.

Pastries

See that mocha tea cup up in the corner? Oh man. Wow. That thing was incredible. It was filled with light, airy chocolate.

Tea Cup

Talked to Mom, George, Dad on the phone. Crashed.

Happy birthday to me.