since being home...

Tom and Hank cheering for the Chiefs (too bad it didn't help).

The boys with their game faces on:

Hank and Uncle Jim at our Korean feast:

Friends! Debbie, me, Jill and her baby Bella:

Bella and Me (Bella is so cute!!!!):

I love my Grandma

First off if you have never experienced the jet lag that comes with traveling across at least 10 timezones you really must sometime in your life. There is really nothing quite like it. It is like a war between what your mind knows you need to do and what your body wants to do.

So today Bonnie and I met my brother, his wife, my aunt Lisa, and my Grandma for lunch at one of our favorite places to eat in Columbia, Flatbranch. It is a delightful bar that brews their own beer and has a great menu. It is probably the restaurant in Columbia that Bonnie and I have eaten at the most. We had a great time hanging out, talking, and eating some great food.

My grandma is amazing. She has such a joyful and pleasant personality. She really is one of the sweetest and most precious people I have ever met. So as we are wrapping up our meal the conversation drifted to cats. My bro has a cat, Claudius Frixie, my sister Jill has a two cats, and my grandma has a black cat that frequents her house out in the country. Well she is telling us about this and the sentence that made me crack up as much as I can remember recently went something like this:

"I was trying to think of a name for that cat and I remembered my friend had a black cat that she called 'black beauty' and I thought that was okay but I thought I would just name that cat 'Obama.'"

My grandma has black cat that roams around her house out in the country that she has named after our president elect. I love it.

phone numbers

here are our phone numbers while we're in town:

Tom: 573-424-7309

Bonnie: 573-424-7310 (this was my old phone number)

later!

We're Back

We made it! After a long plane flight we finally arrived in KC last night.
It feels good to be home. We're still fighting jet lag, but we had a good night's sleep last night.

We'll post more later, sorry this is so short, but we just wanted to update everyone.

See you soon!

Korean Christmas

We are currently sitting in the airport in Korea getting ready to head to KC. I'm not really looking forward to 14+ hours on a plane, but I am excited to be home for a bit.

Tom did a great job of wrapping up the semester in the last post. In general it was a great semester and we're excited to have a bit of a break.

There was one thing Tom forgot to mention though, and that was how awesome Koreans are at gift giving! Giving gifts is very much a part of Korean culture, so for Christmas some of our students hooked us up with some awesome things! Here are some highlights:

1. 50,000 won to Outback Steakhouse (around 50 US dollars)
2. T-shirts that say "foreigner" in Korean...they're pretty funny.
3. Mugs with personalized messages
4. lots of chocolate
5. matching scarfs for both of us
6. fancy letter opener
7. small wreath
8. leather planners (love it)
9. huge candy canes
10. and plenty of cards with nice notes

We felt very loved and blessed. Teaching has its perks.
Merry Christmas everyone!

Coming to America

Not just a semi-entertaining movie staring Eddie Murphy, it is also a fact. We are coming to America very soon. We leave at 6pm this Saturday and get into KC at 9pm this Saturday. I love time zones changes. I love that Bonnie still doesn't understand the International Date Line. I love traveling. I love Shakespeare's Pizza, Shakey's, Margarita's, Chipotle, Walmart, QuikTrip, Flat Branch, and America in general.

We are officially done with school for first semester! We submitted our grades, said bye to our friends, and now we just need to pack our bags. Some highlights from the week:

Saturday we had our last b-ball game for a while. It was pretty bad for the boys. We looked okay but the other team was pretty good. As I've mentioned before the officiating is very bad. Well this game we thought it was especially bad and throughout the game Coach Currey made sure the officials knew that. Well at one point the back official is near our bench and coach very calmly and evenly mentions to him that the foul calls are currently are at a 2-1 ratio against us. The official proceeds to T him up. Well coach thought that was pretty lame so he gets fired up and starts shouting. He then turns towards a chair and at this point I get up thinking restraint may be necessary. He bends to pick it up and I decide restraint will be necessary. He instead picks up a clipboard and chucks it at a wall. Thankfully he didn't get kicked out. I have no clue what I would have done. Pretty funny scene looking back on it though.

Tuesday we went to Outback with about 140 people from our school for a Christmas dinner. We paid for our own meal but the school got soup, salad, and appetizers. Fantastic.

Wednesday Bonnie and I went out and had more Shabu-shabu and then I got together with some of the guys at our school and watched American Beauty. Very interesting flick.

Thursday night our PTA President took the whole staff our to dinner to thank us all for a great first semester. Amazing.

That was about it. See you soon. Hopefully we'll keep this up even when we are back in America.

oh the Chiefs...

So every Monday morning I get up at about 5:30 (normal time) and get on my computer immediately to catch up on what has been happening in the noon football games. I usually tune in about the start of the 4th quarter. I have found a couple websites where people some how broadcast the games over the internet. I'm not quite sure how it works but I get to watch live NFL football. Of course the Chiefs are my top priority. Well today I get up and they are winning 21-10. I wasn't able to find a TV broadcast but I did find a radio feed. I proceed to listen to the radio broadcast online and hear Mitch Holtus and Lenny Dawson describe in vivid detail the despicable choke job performed by the Chiefs. So depressing... Well what can I say at least they will get a better draft pick. Maybe if they lose out they will get the #2.

another video

I had my students do a video project earlier this quarter so I made a video of my own to show them how easy it is to use Windows Photo Story.

So I made a video about moving to Korea...it's kind of cheesy, but it works.
Check it out...

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=9HQwQcaMwVY

Also, we're days away from coming home! We're really excited. Right now we're just trying to finish strong. Over the next two days we'll finish up grading late work (which we hate), finals, etc. and submit our semester grades!!!!

It's a great feeling to have things wrapping up for my first semester of teaching.

basketball promo video

Some GSIS students made this as a class project. It is a promo video for the basketball teams.

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=wMMvHObbp6s

Enjoy.

The final push

Well, we have 8 school days left until the semester is officially over. This is going to be a crazy week for Bonnie and I. We have 3 basketball games, a Christmas concert, a Christmas party, finals to grades and a meeting about our mission trip to Nepal. All of that will have to happen between Tuesday and Sunday. Lovely. We've got a lot going on and are really looking forward to break. We are super excited to head back to America for a bit but I think we are equally excited to just get a break. It has pretty much been nonstop since we got here.

I will admit that even though life is pretty crazy right now it is still pretty enjoyable.

To update on GSIS b-ball. The boys have dropped their last 2 and are now 1-2. The girls however are 3-0. We both have tough match ups on Wednesday and again on Saturday. Hopefully the boys can pull it together.

We have been doing some Christmas shopping the past two weekends. Hopefully people like what they get. We went to a new place in Seoul this weekend called Insadong. It was was a kind of open air shopping mall. There were all kinds cool little pottery, antique, gift, and art shops. After shopping with our friends the Majors they took us to try some new food called Shabu-Shabu. It was amazing. Bonnie's favorite thus far. I would try to describe it but it would take too long; maybe Bonnie can sometime.

We also tried making my favorite Korean dish, dak-galbi, again this weekend. It was a definite success and we plan on making it for both of our families when we are home. I hope you all like spicy!

Okay that's all of my ramblings for now. Hopefully we'll get some more out here from time to time when our heads are above water this week.