basketball banquet

This past week we had the girls basketball team over to our apartment for our end of the season basketball banquet. It was so fun to have the girls over! We made them mexican food and one of the girls said it was the first time she had ever had mexican food in her life! Incredible! She liked it too!
Rosanne (the assistant coach) and I got the girls championship tshirts. The girls liked them. Check it out:

Now that we hosted the banquet, the season is officially over. It was such a great experience. These girls are great.

the grocery store

I think one of my favorite places to go is the grocery store. I can't really explain it. It was especially nice in Guam because the grocery store was full of wonderful items.
There is something about the aisles lined with cans, boxes, bags, and packets that just makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. It is also a dangerous place for me because I will come home with 4 boxes of cereal when we already have 2 in the pantry.

a vaction to food

When we were in Guam one of the highlights of the trip was getting to eat some great American food. There we some tasty restaurants to enjoy. Like:

California Pizza Kitchen
Wendy's
Taco Bell
Ruby Tuesdays
Denny's
Winchell's Donuts
We also went to a tasty Italian place called Capriccoisa and a Little Caesar's pizza. The Italian place was great. Little Caesar's was a disappointment. It was like glorified cafeteria pizza. It was not the $5 Hot and Ready to-go pizza I am used to.

It was a great vacation of eating. That was primarily what we did in Guam. Eat.

a clarification

I need to clarify something...

My favorite airline is still Southwest (Go Dad!). Southwest, however, does not fly internationally so I now have international allegiance to Delta because of their rewards program.

And it's okay that Southwest doesn't have first class, because everyone flies first class on Southwest. :-)

first class

We are a part of the Delta Skymiles Team and so every time we fly we save up frequent flier miles with the "SkyTeam." Since we have done quite a bit of traveling in the past year (one flight across the Pacific is about 7,000 miles) we have been upgraded to the "Silver Medallion" status. This means we get special perks when we fly Delta, like cutting people in line at the ticket counter (we get our own special ticket line where you get waited on immediately), 25% bonus miles every time we fly, and on certain flights we get complimentary upgrades from coach to business/1st class. We haven't been able to take advantage of the latter until our trip to Guam. We had four legs in our journey to and from Guam and we got upgraded to first class on three of them!!!

Life in first class is nice!!! First of all, when you walk on the plane they offer you juice or champagne. Then you get to take your seat in these big comfortable seats that come with your own personal entertainment center, fluffy pillows, and warm blankets. We were able to arrange the seat so you could lay almost flat (or at least I could...Tom's legs were a bit too long) :
Then they bring you out a menu and you get to pick what you'd like for dinner. In the "economy class" (aka coach) you just get handed a little set of food, like this (I will note this is the first time we were served sushi on a flight) :
But in 1st class they put a mini table cloth down and serve you this great arrangement of foods that comes with actual plates and nice silverware.
The final perk is that your seated in the front of the plane so when the flight is over we are the first off the plane. This is especially great on international flights because then we can beat everyone to immigration (immigration lines can be brutal).

Would we pay for first class tickets? Probably not. It's a great time but we're frugal and we get by just fine in the economy class.
Will we keep flying Delta and request upgrades every time we fly? Absolutely.

tom's favorite food

Tom loves cereal. When we lived in America we constantly had different kinds of cereal and many boxes of cereal. It's been a little bit more challenging for Tom living in Korea. For one, cereal is not a common breakfast food here so it is about twice as expensive. Secondly, they don't have the same variety America has to offer.

While in Guam Tom could not help himself! He bought four boxes of cereal! Then in a package from my parents he got two more boxes of cereal. So we now have SIX boxes of American cereal and Tom is just beside himself with joy.

For the record, my current favorite cereal is Golden Grahams and Tom likes Honey Bunches of Oats.

is it lame that i am excited about new plates?

For the past year and a half in Korea Tom and I have only had three plates. They're kind of tacky too (see below).


While at a discount store in Guam we found a box set of plates for $25 US dollars! We thought they were cool and they were somewhat easy to carry on the plane, so we went for it. Now when we have more than one guest over we can give them real plates and not cheap plastic plates! Victory!

Japan

On our way to Guam we had a long layover in Japan. We haven't been to Japan before so we decided to leave the airport and explore a nearby city called, Narita.

Here we are as we began our traveling:


A legit Cup of Noodles at a Japanese convenient store:


Exploring Japan:


Tempura (fried shrimp and vegetables) for lunch. Good but expensive.


Holy Smokes! Orange flavored M&M's. I've never seen these before.


We went to a Japanese temple, which was really beautiful. We've been to quite a few Asian temples by now and this was one of my favorites.



More of us walking around Japan.


And like most of our great adventures, it ended with ice cream!

"we're not going to Guam, are we?"

This is a great quote from our favorite TV show, LOST. In fact, Tom and I did make it to Guam for the past five days. We were able to have some much needed rest and relaxation. Guam is a US Territory. There is a saying in Guam that "America's day starts in Guam" because it is the closest US territory to the international dateline. It literally is America in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Our time in Guam was very low key. Every day was a mixture of laying around (whether it was by the pool, beach, or TV) and eating quality American foods (like a Frosty from Wendy's!!!). I think we were on vacation a perfect amount of time because it was long enough for us to escape and relax but by the end we were ready to get back to life/work in Korea. Most of the time when we travel we do a lot of sight seeing and we try to dive into the local culture, but with Guam we know the culture fairly well (although there was some local cultural flare, most of Guam felt like America to us) and there wasn't much to do except go to the beach and to KMART. Overall it was a nice, low key trip. We will be sharing more stories from the trip over the next few blog posts.

post season hair cut

Since the basketball season ended recently and we are going to Guam tomorrow I figured it was time for a hair cut.

Before:
During:
After:
It feels so good to be rid of that thick mop for a little while.

Snow everywhere...

Apparently it is snowing just about everywhere in the world.

Coach of the year

So those of you that use Facebook and Twitter may already know this. One of the awards that they give out at our conference basketball tournament is Coach of the Year. This year the winner for the girls was none other than Bonnie Meyer. I know Bonnie was excited to win the award and I was really excited for her. She worked her tail off coaching the girls this year. I remember when the season started we were seriously worried that they would finish in 6th or 7th place (out of 7 teams). The fact that they won the whole tournament is truly amazing and awesome to me.

Here is Coach Meyer with her award:

Finish Strong (part 2)

So I can't say that my season contained the drama and ups and downs that Bonnie's did. Our team was pretty consistent throughout the year. We were ranked at or near the top of our conference for most of the season. At the end of the season we ended in a 3 way tie for 1st place because we lost our last game. However, through a somewhat complicated tiebreaker system we still managed to get the #1 seed in the tournament. This is huge because it is the only seed that comes with a bye.

We won our first game against the 5th seeded team and that put us in the finals. There we had a rematch with team that beat us in our last game of the regular season. We came out strong and were up 21-8 at the end of the 1st. But then in the 2nd and 3rd quarters we hit a slump, which has been common for us, and ended up down 33-34 at the end of the 3rd. In the 4th we got our game back on track and ended up winning by 10 or 11.

It was a great game and it was really exciting to be a part of a championship team. I was really proud of our guys because they never gave up and fought really hard the entire time. I love that I got to work with them through last year and this year and see all of the progress that they have made. I will miss getting to work and play basketball with them now that the season is over. Some pics:

Our team and the championship plaques (I dressed up for the game but there was a coaches v. all-stars game after the championship game, then after that presentations)
Do-Hwoe Kim (pronounced doe-hey kim) our tournament MVP.

Finishing Strong

"heart; who wants more? don't panic; fake; confident but not overconfident; last chance; finish strong; enjoy; remember the hard practices we had for past months."
These were the words that one of my players wrote as their gmail status and they are quotes of things I've been saying during the tournament. (By the way, the "fake" comment is in reference to using pass fakes so the ball wouldn't get stolen all the time.) And I am proud to say, that our team did in fact finish strong!

The girls team started off the year quite well and before we left for Christmas break we had lost one game in conference, which meant we were first in the conference. We were then off from basketball for a month because of finals and winter break. Then we came back in January and struggled. We lost a few close games, our confidence was gone, and we dropped to 4th in the conference. Ever since January I told the girls that the goal was to peak at the KAIAC (Korean American Interscholastic Activities Conference) Tournament. Well, I was extremely worried this wasn't going to happen because of our downward spiral for the past month. Additionally, on Wednesday we got badly beaten (by 20+ points) to a team we had previously defeated and my team seemed to hit an all time low. Honestly, this was a discouraging moment as a coach because I felt like we were doing the right things to prepare for games but the team just wasn't getting the job done. Thursday was an emotional practice because it was our last one of the season, we were down from the game the day before, and the KAIAC tournament would start the next day. We had a great team meeting where we chatted about forgetting what was behind us and straining toward what was ahead (check out Philippians for more on this). We focused on getting a fresh start at the tournament and leaving everything out on the floor for the next two days so we could finish strong.

We were seeded 4th so our first game was against the 5th seeded team. This was the best game I've seen my girls play. They looked incredible!!! Finally, the were peaking!!! That game gave us so much confidence! Our next game was later that day against the first seed. We've never beat this team in the history of the school (well, our school is only 3 years old). They were a tough team and that game was a battle. I've never seen so much heart from my girls. We came from behind and won by two points. It was amazing. Tears of joy.

That brought us to the championship game. The championship game wasn't the best game I've seen our girls play, probably because they were emotionally and physically tired from the day before, but we just kept saying we have to finish strong. We just need to keep fighting for 4 more quarters. It was close until the end and we ended up defeating the 2nd seed team to win the championship!!!

I am so incredibly proud of my girls. They really came together at the tournament and played their hardest. You can't ask for more than that as a coach. One of our players also got tournament MVP!!! Here are some pics from the awards ceremony...

So great and so tired after our game.


Me and my assistant coach, Rosanne Wendling. She was a huge blessing!!!


1st place!


Rina Morioka, our MVP. She's a great athlete and person. I am so happy for her.


Team shot with our trophies:

a student after my own heart

This was an email from one of my students:

MRS. MEYER!!!!!!!!!!!! LOST'S FINAL SEASON IS HERE!!
THE SEASONS PREMIERE IS FINALLY OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! =D)))))))))
ok have a good evening
hahahaha

i'm korean

When we first moved to Korea I felt uneasy about our North Korean neighbors. Shortly after we moved here there was an exchange of shots fired toward the South, and when I heard about this I instantly felt worried...is this going to lead to war? Then throughout the rest of the year there were other moments of tension, like when North Korea was testing rockets. Technically the two sides are still at war, so in the beginning I really thought that each of these moments could lead to armed conflict breaking out.

Now we've lived here for a year and a half I've come to realize these little skirmishes between the North and South are very common, and nothing much comes from them. My fears have ceased, to say the least.

Last week North Korea fired some shots at South Korea. (See here for more.) And one of my students informed me of this in class. I told my class how stuff like that use to worry me, but now I barely think twice about it. My students started laughing at me and said, "Mrs. Meyer, you're Korean now!"