Gratitude

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I've been asking a lot of questions lately about my life in Korea and feeling gratitude for what I have. I came to Korea because of love. My wife is English and I'm American and we needed a place to live before we got married. I'm grateful for this and the things below.

I got into a really nice school and the kids provided me a challenge that really improved my teaching skills and my stress management. The challenges made me stronger.

Korean culture forced me to do things in the moment and to control my emotions.

My job has given me enough money to take care of all my needs and my wants. I was able to take care of chronic tonsilitis. I've been able to afford really healthy food and nice clothes. I was able to get married here.

This week my 10kg box of apples arrived. I got them on Gmarket for only 11,500 won a deal. Apples keep for 3 months if store properly so I should have apples through the winter if I coulstop eating three or more a day. I love apples. Sarah's been calling me a fruit monster. It's true.

I have decided to change schools for next year. The explanation is too long to go into detail but I am very happy to have met some fantastic people but I need a new setting.

I have a good teaching record and 3 years of experience and confident that I can get a new job for the next term if I want to. I will have to decide with Sarah where we will work and when we will start first after looking at our options.

Here are some of the many pictures I have of some awesome people.

This week I don't teach and I plan to use the time by making super lessons for the last week of teaching and my summer camp.

On Saturday, I had been invited by Sarah's school to perform with her at their school concert. It was a lot of fun to act in front of people. I was an acting major in college and I got a lot of good feelings from doing it again. On top of that children are a great audience. Sarah and I performed a skit called Sarah's Cooking Lesson in which she instructs the kids how to make a strawberry and chocolate cake. The ending of the skit got a huge cheer and because it was the loudest cheer of the day, I think we stole the show. She is editing the video now as I type and I'll post it when it is finished.

Lately, I've been wanting really good quality vegetarian food to make. I've felt malnourished, and I've been craving more variety of protein in my diet besides tofu and flax seed. Yesterday I went to Bangsan Market near Dongdaemun and Bought 2kgs of Almonds for Almond Butter and 1kg of SOybeans. Then I stopped at Foreign Market at Itaewon and got kitted out with chickpeas, cocoa powder, cans of baked beans, olives, soy protein powder, and a kg package of frozen blueberries.

Today, I chilled at home. I left late for Seoul because of the children's concert. My travel time yesterday was three hours and in total I walked for five hours. I put on music and ate fruit and made some of my food I bought. I made hummus and almond butter. I was a little disapointed with both because I made them in a blender which couldn't get them smooth enough for my taste. As a consolation, I learned Sarah likes her hummus chunky since she really liked it.

Tomorrow,

I start my Sogang University course tomorrow. The course three days. It is located at week in Seoul, which is far so with communiting time I'll be traveling for three hours each day, which means that I'll have a lot of time to study. I'm technically inbetween the levels they offer so I have a higher learning curve so that means I should study tonight.