Leaving on a slow train

Our bags are packed, we're ready to go. Well, they're not and we're not. But they will be before we board a southbound train in the morning. First stop Gwangju, a city we've not yet seen, to see some stuff and some things. We'll follow that with visits to other places we haven't been before, and arrive home some time later than the time we left. Makes you wonder why we're teachers, not military strategists or logisticians.

Happy Holidays!

The first sign of the season in our neighbourhood. 

The holiday season

Hours away from a dress rehearsal and a day away from the Winter Performance, the Grade Three students are busy going over their lines, whilst I take an OOFALWO moment

on the company dime. We are the only elementary class not singing a Yuley tune, opting instead for short speeches about travelling to different countries for the winter vacation. Which starts exactly 52 hours and 53 minutes from now...

Field trip

Yesterday the Grades One to Five teachers accompanied this motley crew of ragamuffins to the Samsung Children's Museum for a morning of general chaos. It's a great place for an elementary school excursion, with a wide range of interactive exhibits to tire out the mini-humans.

A Separate Peace

Growing up on the mean streets of Regina's Normanview West, the closest I ever came to real danger was casting an accidentally wayward glance at one of the seventeen year old Grade Eight kids from McLurg School. This is a very different reality than some of the students I now teach at RIS. With news of yesterday's bombings in Baghdad, a few of the students are awaiting word of the safety of their extended families there. We hope with them...

O Tannenbaum

With the Yule season upon us, as evidenced by the little Chuck Brown tree on the coffee table and the already-half-empty bottle of Baileys in the cupboard, I treat Deanna daily to my own interpretation of a seasonal medley - The Little Drummer Boy (Josh Groban version)/ Silent Night (Louis Armstrong version)/ Handel's Messiah (air guitar version)/ Edelweiss (in the never to be trifled with original Captain Von Trapp version)/ Joy to the World (that dude with the really high voice from The Bee Gees version). For the fourteenth consecutive Christmas, Deanna is hoping for cochlear implants.

New post

New apartment.

New running plans.

New job (for Deanna).

New shoes.

New stuff in our new apartment.

New walk from our new apartment to work.

New coffee shop near our new apartment on our new walk to work.

New decorations on our little Christmas tree.

New tattoo on my leg.

New plans for traveling around Korea over the winter holidays.

New plans for a summer in Turkey, Hungary, and train travel through Europe.

Same old everything else.