Good Evening World

Today is payday!  So after school guess who went to town.  Me!  Got money wired to the states to cover bills.  Went to the immigration office to extend my visa.  Finally stopped by S Dot and picked up some new art supplies.  I'm going to be trying to improve my art now with copics.  I can draw well and all.  However adding some color seems like a good idea.  Originally I thought about using a watercolor/pastel combo.  However that is a messy way to go on the small timeframe I have.  Then I learned of the awesome graphics tablet, but if anything is too expensive then that would definitely be at the top of the list.  Recently I asked how the color was achieved by some artists on Menewsha.  That is where I discovered copics.  Better than inking my drawings, they can have the look of a graphics tablet with the ease of a marker.  So I bought a few to start out with.  They are not cheap to get so will expand slowly.  I have the basics that I was wanting to experiment with first to get the skin tone, hair and basic shirt down.  After that, maybe I will expand from portraits to waist up or full body drawings.  Will have to wait and see.  There is a demand for chibis as well, but since that requires purposefully not being proportional I am uncertain I want to go there.  They are cute though.  Maybe I will do chibis someday with pixel art.

Anyrate, just wanted to touch base.  Town trip.  Weekend here.  Tired.  Oh!  Tomorrow is the start of a new schedule.  I will be teaching 3 government paid classes every Saturday morning from here on out.  The government has given almost 50,000 dollars for a supply budget.  We have to spend every cent and none of it can be returned or unused.  Not sure what happens if it isn't all used, but we were told that we had to spend it all in one semester.  That will be difficult.  The government had paid it law that teachers couldn't be forced to work on Saturday and students couldn't be forced to come to school on Saturday.  Our school is the only one disobeying that law.  The government found out and decided to pay us for our time, give us money to run our Saturday programs, and tell us how to do that.  Simply get students from nearby towns to come too.  Fun fun.

The Life of an English Teacher ;)

Good morning everyone.  It is Friday so I am running a bit behind schedule.  Just wanting to get through the end of the day to the weekend like all my students I suppose.  Went to class at first period to learn that there is indeed no class today during first period.  Wow.  Okay.  Well that leaves a class, lunch and a class left.  Then I have some appointments with others in town later.  So it will be a long, stretched-out day but that is okay.

I would like to give a shout out to my grandma.  I heard that you really love my pictures that I add to my blog lately.  I'm glad :)  I love you!!

Rain

Something I really appreciate about today is the rain.  It brought the outside temperatures down to a comfortable level as well as provided a nice wind.  It isn't a strong wind, but it definitely reminds me of home.  This school is well situated in the hills so that it is blocked by the stronger gusts of wind.  That is a mixed blessing.

Conflict of Convictions

So the school is proposing something new.  Instead of teaching one Sabbath School class and then going to church, we are being asked to teach three classes.  Two of them will be for elementary students who will be bused in from a nearby town.  Here is the catch (in addition to the extra work and hours.)  It will be government funded.  The government will pay us 30,000 won for each class which is 90,000 won a weekend for three weekends out of the month.  The government will also give us money to buy supplies with for teaching with.  As an SDA school, it is surprising that the school has allowed government help since it has led to the government dictating how the school is run in some areas.  Now we have the added worry of being paid on Sabbath.  It goes against our conscience.  Also, we are tired by the weekend.  So what to do?

We don't sign on for a lot of what happens here.  Figuring out when to nod yes and when to say no is tough.

Good Morn... oh wait, the sun is out.

So the sun is shining brightly without a cloud in the sky.  We all know what that means... a really hot day.  Sad.

Anyrate, though we barely were touched by the typhoon (rain and wind only) there were other areas that were hit hard (lots of rain and lots of wind).  We have water puddles.  They have downed trees, powerlines, and building that are torn up.  We have grumpy students.  They have fatalities and wounded.  So the lesson learned? Be grateful for the small impact and stop praying for another typhoon ;)

Change

Something that I have had trouble adapting to is definitely the food.  Our cultures really prefer different types of food.  I'm from the midwest.  In my family (in comparison with here) we eat a lot of potatoes with salt.  Here in South Korea (in comparison to back home, all is relative here) they eat a lot of rice (in many forms such as noodles, cakes, and soup) with several seasonings that I am not used to.

When  I saw the picture above, I felt inspired to share something with you.  Last night I had not felt appreciative of supper, so only ate the piece of honeydew melon.  It wasn't really filling and I put off cooking a proper meal back at home for several hours.  By the time I finally did eat, it had been long enough that my body thought I had skipped a meal.  Personally, for me, skipping a meal can have results that are similar to eating something wrong.  I get sick.

Worn out and feeling a bout of self pity, I prayed (rather pleaded and begged) that God would go change the menus so that breakfast as least would have something I really, really liked.  He came through.  God provided the bean paste vegi meat at breakfast.  Not in the popular form where I would pig out and suffer from the overload of spice, but scrambled with egg instead.  In addition to that was a nice, cool fruit salad.  Oh I was so happy.  Who said God doesn't answer prayers?

Then at lunch, they unexpectedly served what is supposed to resemble Chinese sweet and sour chicken but really is fried tofu chunks coated in something red.  It is slightly spicy, but well worth it.  That became most of my meal and I was grateful God was still looking out for me.  Then after lunch a bag of cookies ^_^ which I am still snacking on.  The best part was supper.  Sure there was their version of spaghetti and along with cherry tomatoes.  (The kitchen staff frown if I walk by with no rice, so I had some of that too.)  As I was getting ready to leave though, they brought out rolls of bread.  Nothing like that to bring back pleasant memories.

Pleasant memories by the way also coming back from the lovely weather.  We had a proper rainstorm, finally, and well as normal wind instead of the slight breeze they think is wind.  I was walking down the sidewalk back to the office filled with what felt like normalcy.  It is a rare feeling.  How can I not be thankful to God for looking after me like that?  Finding small ways to remind me of home is so like Him.

Back to the picture at the top.  If you don't like your life, change something.  For me it was the food.  Short of ordering the cafe to provide fruit every meal, I really can't do anything.  Except pray.  So that is what I did.  I prayed about something that seems super trivial.  What is the big deal with adjusting to another culture's food, right?  However God still came through and it meant a lot to me.  Now I am happy with my life because my God is taking care of me.  He is doing so in the small ways, which matter.

Typhoon Affects

Okay, this is my schedule.  The colorful boxes are my main classes.

Tuesday is the pretty column that has purple at the top and then pink after that.  Yeah, I'm only teaching two classes.  Today is as easy as my Mondays.  Pity those are my favorite classes.  You would not believe how hard the conversation classes are to teach with no training, background, skills, materials, goals, standards, or curriculum.  I'm a history education major though!  So I improvised.  They are learning their world geography!