Making Korean Food 2: Dukbokki!

Perhaps my favorite treat that I would get at the Korean restaurant in Provo was the spicy rice cakes: dukbokki. I'm a big weenie when it comes to spicy, so it totally KILLS my mouth to eat it, but it is oh so yummy!

One thing I was looking forward to when I came to Korea was being able to sit down and grab some dukbokki. For some reason, though, I've had troubles finding it. Also, no one wants it and I can't eat a whole plate by myself.

Aw, snap.

So, what's a girl to do? Why, cook it MYSELF, of course!

I set off in search of a dukbokki recipe. There were lots... and lots. So I settled on one that DIDN'T require me to gut packaged anchovies, and made me some yummy dukbokki.

The ingredients are pretty simple (well, if you're in a place that you can buy the Korean ingredients you need):

500g pack of rice cakes (I prefer the ones that look like little tubes)
Hot pepper paste
Sugar
Water
Onions

Simple, no?



I just cooked up the onions really quick (a bit of oil in the pan) and then set them aside.



Then what you do is bring 4 cups of water to a boil and then toss in your rice cakes, 4-6 tablespoons of hot pepper sauce, and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Boil it all for about 10 minutes.

Surprisingly, sugar was a difficult item to get. For one, It's kept by the SALT. Salt looks very much like sugar. Also, I must have access to crappy dictionaries because I could not find the word for sugar on ANYTHING. I finally found one... it's organic cane sugar. Whatever. More expensive, but I wanted dukbokki!



The hot pepper paste lives up to it's name. Don't taste it on your finger before putting it in the pot. It is very spicy. Also, I've washed my hands a million times since then and I'm still not looking forward to sticking my fingers in my eyes to take out my contacts tonight. Eep!



After it had been boiling a while, I added in the onions so that they, too, could get permeated with the sweet, spicy flavor. It smelled SO good while it was cooking.



You boil the thing for about ten minutes. I've been warned that this is where it gets tricky. If you don't cook the rice cakes long enough, they will be too hard. If you cook it TOO long, they will get hard again, maybe start coming apart. (This is just what I've heard, mind you.) So, I kept checking it. I let it cook until it seemed to be about the consistancy I wanted, like al dente with pasta: not too squishy but with a firm texture (look at me with my fancy cooking jargon!).

Then I let it cook some more because my sauce wasn't thickening. Oh noes!

I didn't want to sacrifice the texture of the rice cake for the thick sauce, so I stopped it and set it aside to hope the cooling would make the sauce thicker. Nope... not really. Oh well. Now I know: less water! So, out of the pot it wasn't quite as red looking. In fact, it looked downright sad sitting in my little brown 70's wannabe bowl.



Don't worry. It was still plenty flavorful. And by flavorful, I mean SPICY as all get out! Oh, so good!



I'll have to keep practicing. Next time, I will use less water, add some cabbage and carrots and garnish it with some green onions. Yum!

New Calling

Went to church today! Yay! I got a new calling, too: Primary worker!

Oh, dear.

So, I won't actually be teaching for the next month or so since we'll be preparing for the Primary Program (which will be the week my dad is in town... I'll have to let the president know I might not be there that week). I'll either have 4-5 year olds or 8-9 year olds.

I don't mean to complain, but couldn't they have some of the NON-TEACHERS in the primary? I mean, I already work with kids five days of the week! Now Sundays, too? And sick days will be much more difficult.

But, the kids are REALLY cute...

I hope I get the sunbeams. :)

My First Chuseok (aka A Really Boring Week)

Happy Chuseok, everyone!

Not that my own Chuseok was eventful, or anything, but it was probably better than yours (considering, you know, most of my readers don't actually CELEBRATE Chuseok).

I suppose a little background information is in order. Chuseok is kind of like American Thanksgiving in that it involves getting together with family, lots of foods, your basic harvest festival. Many families also perform a ritual to honor their ancestors. I've also heard that it's customary (particularly with children) to wear the traditional hanbok (traditional Korean dress). They had lots of childrens hanboks on sale at Emart the past few weeks in preparation for Chuseok. They are super cute. I'd love to get one just for fun. They are really pretty.

Because of the holiday, I had Tuesday and Wednesday off (yay!) but I had to teach a class on Saturday to allow students to make up what they missed (boo!).

We had plans to go to Itaewon on Tuesday. Itaewon is supposed to be pretty touristy. Lots of shopping, fake designer bags, postcards, etc. I just wanted to check it out, maybe get a few things for my apartment and people back home. I've heard fun things and I thought it would be nice to do something with our days off.

Unfortunately, I woke up to pouring rain and thunder on Tuesday. I mean POURING. It looked like the rain machine was broken on a movie and just dumping water instead of raining, you know? BUCKETS OF RAIN.

It's hard to see in this picture, but you can get a little of an idea of how hard it was raining. This was the view from the entrance to my apartment (see the store that I don't know what it sells?). Crazy rain!



Kendra and I only ventured out for groceries (and I needed some notebooks) but Itaewon was definitely out of the question. I was kind of bummed.

We were told that most everything would be closed on Wednesday (the actual day of Chuseok) so I spent the entire day watching movies, reading, looking up different careers, and just overall being really, really lazy.

Boring.

The rest of the week was about as eventful as my holiday. I only taught half days on the days I did teach. All of my 7pm classes are canceled this and next week because of middle school exams. I only had three students on Thursday. It was hilarious. Three girls. We had fun together, though I'm sure it was annoying that they had to continually pay attention since I only had three of them to pick on. ;)

A very boring week. However, my apartment is clean and I've started to work on my Korean. Don't get too excited; mostly just review of how to read Hangul. I'll get there, though. So, I suppose the week wasn't an entire waste.

Well, here's a few pictures for entertainment since, well, the rest of this post is admittedly pretty boring. I feel guilty if I don't send out at least one update a week on this blog. :)

These are two of the new teachers I've been hanging out with recently. Diane and Tim. Lovely couple, wouldn't you say? They met in Japan when she was teaching there a few years ago. How cute. :)



Then this picture is mostly for my friend Mindy, but there might be a few people out there who will get the joke. It's a sign on the entrance to my school. My own caption: "No smoking on the Tardis!"



Only Dr. Who geeks will get the joke. Don't worry if it's confusing... or more than a little stupid.

Well, that's it. Let me know if you have any ideas or requests for post topics. Culture, life here, whatcha wanna know? I'm getting into a set routine now so things are becoming less "ADVENTURE!" and more "Hi, ho, it's off to work I go... again."

Peace out! ;)

Positive Attitude

Last night I was in a bit of a funk. I had had a wonderful day, but within a few hours of being home, I started to feel like crap. (Don't worry, I'm not sick; just let it be said that a certain internal organ hates me and the feelings are mutual at the moment. We'll be close friends again in, oh, say a week.) It didn't help that it was 2am and while I wanted to sleep, the WHUMPY WHOOSH sounds above my head made sleep impossible. Did I mention that the people above me seem to like to do their laundry at unholy hours of night? Yeah... and they seem to do a lot of laundry this week. What the heck.

So, it was 2am, I'm tired, can't sleep, and I found myself beginning to have an insane amount of negative thoughts going on. Everything bad that had ever happened in my life kept showing up in my brain: annoying students from the week, dirty dishes downstairs, smell of kimchi EVERYWHERE, that time I didn't make it to the bathroom in 2nd grade...

That's when I knew that something needed to be done.

So I grabbed my notebook and decided to make a list of everything that makes me happy. After filling up half a page, I knew I wouldn't be satisfied until that whole page was filled.



Then today I decided to play with it a little more. I love typographical art so I made my own in Photoshop. I didn't include everything from my list, of course, and I thought about maybe getting a little more creative with the font, colors, and patters, but I'm just not that patient.

All in all, though, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.



Hopefully the next few weeks will allow more opportunities for picture taking and I'll post some more pictures of lovely Seoul for your viewing pleasure.

Things I want to accomplish in the next year

I had plenty of reasons for coming to Korea. Like I’ve mentioned before, part of it was to have the experience of living in a foreign country for an extended period of time and really experiencing a culture different from my own norm. I’m also using this as an opportunity to take a break from “real” life in order to come to a decision about what I want to do for my future career and therefore make a final decision for grad school.

One of the main deciding factors for not giving up on the idea of coming to Korea is something my mom said.

That’s right, Mom. It’s all your fault. ;)

When I was first contemplating it, simply contemplating it, mind you, my mom said I would never do it. It would fall through just like all my other plans for going abroad. I took it as a challenge. I held onto the idea and doggedly refused to let go of it. Maybe it’s supposed to be my “defiance” thing that I missed out on in high school. I don’t know. But, really, that played a huge role in my decision to come here to South Korea.

What influenced me the most, however, was the anticipation of regret. If I didn’t come, I’d wonder for the rest of my life if I could have done it. How would my life have changed? What opportunities did I miss? After making the decision, I couldn’t back down because I believed strongly that this experience was important for my personal development. I’ve always been an introvert and I hoped that a year in a foreign country on my own would force me out of my socially awkward bubble.

In order to make myself step out of that self-made bubble, I have set many goals for the next year. Things I want to do, be better at, and in general try to do while I’m here. So, because I’m such a big fan of lists, here’s my list of goals for the next year (in no particular order):

1. Go to a jimjilbang (public bath house)
2. Take a picture in a hanbok (traditional Korean dress)
3. Go to a noraebang (karaoke room)
4. Taste everything on the table at least once (this rule is exempt in the case of suckers, raw meat, and intestines)
5. Get a "Korean style" haircut
6. Go to as many work and church activities as I can
7. Take at least one big bite of kimchi anytime it is offered. Hopefully learn to love it.
8. Learn Korean
9. Decide on a career (Teaching? Counselor? Politics? Designer?)
10. Decide on a graduate program/school
11. Take pictures, pictures, pictures!!
12. Find an awesome counterfeit purse
13. Purchase frivolously awesome adorable crap for me and everyone else
14. Take a trip to another foreign country that I’ve never been to

I've started on a few of these goals (numbers 4, 6, 7, and 13 mostly). Number 13 is going to be the most fun, I must say. There is lots of adorable stuff here in Korea. I've been good, though. I'm not saying these items were frivolous in any way, but they are super cute.



I got a little notebook for my purse, a nice little planner (Schedule Planner For your happy life), and an orange for my purse. The Orange actually unfolds into a grocery bag! It's awesome. They charge for bags here at grocery stores and the like. My little orange is perfect; clips right to the outside of my purse. I've seen similar items in the states for close to $10. This little guy only cost me 3,000 won, less than $3. Nice.

Also, in honor of goal #11, here's a picture of the soy sauce from dinner the other night. It's so happy to see you!



This was a totally "candid" shot, too. I looked over and it was just smiling at me! Only after this picture did I start playing with making soy sauce faces in the bowl...

I hope everyone is having a good time back home. This next two weeks are going to be kind of short for me. This week because of Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving kind of) and the next week because of middle school exams all my 7pm classes will be canceled. Kendra and I plan on going to Itaewon on Tuesday and checking out some of the more touristy areas. I have no idea what we'll find. Should be interesting. Wish us luck! :)

Education in Korea (or Jen on her soapbox)

After my first week teaching here, I talked a little bit about the education system here in South Korea. I don't think I did that great of a job explaining the system here and I have since tried to think of ways to get across what I wanted to say.

Today as I was preparing my lesson for tomorrow, I came across something that would be perfect. A paragraph in one of the readings for my Reading Par class struck me as the perfect way to explain what kind of a place I am teaching at right now (a hagwon). The passage was about the different kinds of tests as well as how students prepare for these tests around the world. Paragraph five says:

"The pressure [to score well on university entrance exams] is especially strong in South Korea and Japan, where hundreds of schools prepare students for these examinations. In Japan, parents may pay an extra $10,000 a year for their children to attend a "juku," or "cram school." Students who fail their college entrance examination may spend an extra year at special schools to prepare to take their exams again. In South Korea, 60 percent of all students who want to attend a university go to a cram school, or "hagwon." For students who want to get into the best university, the day is not over when their school day ends. South Korean student Eunjin reports, "I am in school from 8:00 in the morning until 4:00. Then I go to a hagwon all evening. I don't get home until 1:00 in the morning, and I still have to do my homework." Hagwons are so popular that many have become successful businesses. One company made a 38-million-dollar profit in 2006. The best teachers at these schools sometimes become superstars. They even sign autographs for their students, who believe this will bring them good luck on their exams."

Koreans believe that the only way to be successful in life is to get a good education. Knowledge = power! So they push their children insanely hard to do well in school so that they will eventually be able to get a good job, marry a hardworking person, and generally do well in life (so that they can, later, care for their aging parents).

All of this hard work seems to have paid off. According to the Programme for International Student Assessment (a program that tests reading literacy, mathematics, and science skills of students all around the world to allow countries see how their students compare (PISA)), South Korea ranks high in all three categories:

2000 Reading Literacy: #6 (USA was #15)
2003 Mathematics: #2 (USA was #24)
2006 Science: #7 (USA was #21)

Their performance is doubly amazing given that just 50 years ago, South Korea was considered a third world country. The South Korea I live in has all been developed since the Korean War (granted, they are technically still at war with North Korea). The fact that they went from third world to one of the top countries in the world (and still growing) is incredibly admirable.

Don't get me wrong. I still love being a citizen of the good old U.S. of A. However, I do wish that our government and the people of the USA would at least see how our education system is lacking (seriously) and look at these other countries as examples.

In great part it is many people's expectation that it is the GOVERNMENT'S responsibility to educate our children that is the problem. Many parents don't take an active role in the education of their children. The phrase, "I already went through school. Why should I have to do it again with my kids? That's what teachers are paid for." Yes, teachers should work hard to help all of their students succeed. However, it is up to the parents to ensure that their child is taking advantage of the education system. In order for that to happen, parents actually need to be parents and take part in their child's education. Whether that is helping them with homework, getting them extra outside help, or simply being better disciplinarians in the home, parental involvement is key to a successful education system.

However, I also feel that the education system here in South Korea is very unforgiving. Fail the crazy scary standardized test of the year? Might as well kiss your university dreams goodbye. They've actually been working so that the system is more forgiving as well as open to people of lower incomes. In another ten years, the job I'm working at right now might be obsolete. Who knows. But it shows they see a problem and are actively trying to fix it. Sometimes it feels like the US sees a problem, adds a new policy which costs more money and does nothing.

I wish I had all the answers; maybe a magic wand that I could wave and fix the US education system. Right now I don't. Maybe somewhere in there lies the answer to my grad-school and career choice dilemma. Who knows.

All right. I'll get off my soapbox now. I promise not to rant about politics on here too often. I'm a teacher. For some reason I feel strongly about the state of the education system. Go figure. ;)

To make you feel better after a long rant, here's a cute video of the Muppets. They always make me feel happy. Hope it works for you, too.

Weezer singing "Keep Fishin'" with the Muppets.



And one more. Because it's my blog and I can.



Hope everyone has a great week! Love ya!

Making Korean Pancakes

Many of you might remember some of my other cooking adventures back in Provo.

First, the disastrous rainbow cake: http://ferre-san.livejournal.com/171382.html

Then, the perhaps less disastrous Christmas cookies: http://ferre-san.livejournal.com/172528.html

These, of course, were followed by the sad rubbery cookies of student teaching: http://ferre-san.livejournal.com/176604.html

Less disastrous (probably because Nasa did most of the hard work) was the Mongolian khuushuur my roommate and I made: http://ferre-san.livejournal.com/176982.html

You might be thinking, "This girl should eat out more and just stop trying." Well, I'm here to PROVE that I can, in fact, try out a new recipe without explosive disaster. ALL BY MYSELF.

That's right, people. I made a traditional Korean dish.

Granted... this traditional dish was Korean pancakes. STILL. NO DISASTER!

I needed some soy sauce for cooking and I couldn't find a single SMALL bottle! They were all HUGE! I did end up finding a bottle with a bag of pancake mix taped to it for 8000 won so I thought, heck. Why not?

Let us have photographic evidence of this feat. Starting with the ingredients.



Soy sauce (for dipping), Korean pancake mix, dehydrated potato stuff, salt, pepper, garlic, canola oil, and green onions. Oh yeah.

So, there are no instructions with the pancake mix. All I know is that you add a little potato stuff, salt, pepper, and garlic to it and then mix with some cold water until it is the consistency of pancake batter. After that, you add chopped green onions (or whatever veggies you want). Make sure you wash your veggies first. These suckers are so fresh from the dirt that they brought most of it with them.



After they are chopped into about 2 inch pieces (or whatever you want, really), you gently mix it into your pancake batter.



Then you just fry it up like a pancake!



Take a look at the beauty of my pancakes, suckers!



Just kidding. They were really good, though. I think next time I'll add some other vegetables like carrots, maybe potatoes. That would be yummy. :)

Food

I like Korean food. I've known this since my old roommate, Trina, took us all to a Korean restaurant in Provo. Trina was actually one of the people who got me excited about going to Korea (she had just gotten home from her mission in South Korea when she came to live with us).

However, there is one problem with getting food in Korea: LANGUAGE. I have yet to learn Korean. I know. It's been almost a month; I should be fluent by now, right? Unfortunately, no. So the hardest part about getting food in Korea has been the fact that I can't read most menus and labels in grocery stores are, you guessed it, in Korean.

It can be kind of frustrating at times. Luckily, I have found some restaurants that have picture menus. Since I can read the Korean alphabet, I can sound it out and point and they usually get the idea. A few restaurants have English menus or, like McDonalds, speak enough English that I can order without a problem. So far the best places I've gone to have been barbeques. I talked about this in another post. They are still delicious. :)

Mostly, I've been eating a pretty uneventful diet of things I've found I like and have an easy time cooking and FINDING in grocery stores.

My first meal in Korea was interesting. We were tired from the day before and so we just went down to the convenience store on the first floor of the hotel and got some ramen, yogurt, water, cookies, and peaches. An interesting introduction to Korean cuisine, but there you go.



I was unpleasantly surprised to find that the cookies were individually wrapped. I was not expecting this.



I have since broadened my horizons, though not by much. Ramen still makes a frequent appearance on my table.

Pot stickers are an essential. Fast and easy and surprisingly CHEAP here. A small bag back home would be about $6. A large bag here costs about 5ooo won, less than $5. Nice.

I've also found these nice buns that you can get frozen and then steam or microwave into deliciousness. They are filled with... I'm actually not sure if it's beans or potato. It's purple and delicious. I like it. Jesi would too, I bet.



I also buy microwave bowls of rice (until I get my rice cooker... hopefully this weekend!) which I then cover with one of a wide assortment of sauce packets. These things are AWESOME! They have curry with potatoes and veggies, chicken with sauce, meatballs, and other, more exotic sauces. Including something red with suckery tentacles on the picture. I don't think I'll try that one, though. I like these things a lot. They are quick and simple and just the right amount for one person.


Snacks are great and easy to find, though. One of my favorite treats from home is here! I get bags of these in my stocking for Christmas back home. They are way cheaper here, though, than they are at Uwajimaya in Oregon. They are crunchy rice crackers with honey. Sweet and delicious. Another interesting thing we found were these little sandwiches with strawberry... cream stuff in them. Only had them once but it was still delicious.



There's also this place called "Paris Baguette" that has all sorts of random pastries and stuff. Most of the things are pretty familiar but some are a little stranger. Like the specimen below. It was like a pizza hot dog with a french bread bun. Interesting.



So that's food. I think I have figured out how to buy vegetables at the grocery store now so I might spend a good part of my weekend chopping and freezing servings of vegetables for stir fry later this week. I hope it works. It would be nice to have some real vegetables...

My New Place

I told you I'd get you a tour of my new place, right? Well, here it is! I have made a quick video tour of my apartment for you. Due to technical difficulties (1: Youtube has decided that it is unlawful to upload videos while in Korea and 2: For some reason adding any text text to the video post (even a title) makes it think the coding is wrong), the actual video is in another post (you'll see it below this post... or at least you should). Hope you still enjoy! :)

So, a few things I don't mention in my video:

Building: The building is called Bisium (or Visium) Oficetel. If you ask a Korean they will tell you Bee-see-uhm Oh-pee-soo-tell-oo. :)

Shoes: ALWAYS take of your shoes when you go into a Korean home! Even if it's your own! When we were moving all of our luggage into Kendra's apartment the first day we just dragged all the luggage in, shoes still on. The landlord was there and he started laughing at us and yelling, pointing at our shoes. ALWAYS take off your shoes.

Doorbell: The doorbell here is so CUTE! I love how it sounds. Also, I have a screen in my apartment that lets me see who is at the door!



It has a bunch of buttons on it so I bet I can talk to people, too. Unfortunately, I'm in Korea so the instructions for all the toys are in, you guessed it, KOREAN!

Hot water: Needs to be turned on. The kitchen sink and washing machine work fine without it on but if I want hot water for a shower, I need to turn on the hot water.



Took a few tries to get that right. I just pressed buttons until the hot water worked. Then I found a translation sheet under my sink for the washing machine and the hot water heater. Nice.

Walls: They are so BARE!! Waah! I need to do some decorating in here. Unfortunately, I need money in order to do that. I will be a millionaire as of Wednesday, though (my refund for my plane ticket is 1 million won. Yay!). Then I will get maybe a desk, rice cooker, wall art... Which I get first will depend on whether or not I can get rid of the stupid dresser...

Giant window: You didn't see it in the tour, but I have a GIANT window on one of my walls! Cool... I love it. Except that it lets in lots of light while I want to still be asleep. Oh well. That's what pink sleep masks are for. :)

Cable: I found out recently that the money we pay for maintenance and internet also covers cable! I'm paying for CABLE!! I might need to find a cheap t.v. in order to take advantage of this.

My First Week Teaching

Thus ends my first week on the job.

It's been a fun week. I was able to move into my new apartment Tuesday night. I'm so happy to be in the apartment. The place is a little bit messy right now. I'm all unpacked, though. There's just a few things that I need to get from E-mart (a cross between Wal Mart and J.C. Penny's... Mom would love it) like a laundry basket and a container for socks, maybe get some real groceries. I purchased a bunch of furniture from the previous tenant so I have a futon, a coffee table, a mattress (with foam pad! Actually the foam pad is a "yo" or Korean mattress... many Koreans just use this and roll it up during the day), full length mirror, and a big dresser. He also left me a bunch of household items like pots and pans, drying rack, and a bunch of food (peanut butter!). I got it all for 100,000 won, about $85. Good deal. I'm trying to sell the dresser and get a desk and chair. No hurry, though. I'll bend over my coffee table for now.

I had an adventure buying laundry detergent. I was in serious need of doing some laundry, so I went to the grocery store for some one night. I never realized how many choices we have for laundry detergent until now. Also, it's very difficult to tell the difference between detergent and softener just by looking at the pictures.

Oh, and unless you can read the descriptive words, you can't tell what it is. I looked up different versions of the words for "softener" and "detergent" and I couldn't find anything even resembling the vocabulary I found on any of the packaging. So either I found detergent or dishwasher detergent works just as well as laundry detergent.

As far as the actual job went, it went great! I teach two different classes: Memory and Reading. I only see my reading classes once a week and so I teach the same lesson four times a week. I see my memory classes twice a week and I have two Memory classes. So, in total, I teach six groups of kids with my biggest class containing 12 students and I only have to prep three lessons! It's great. Also, my students are amazing. The middle schoolers are super quiet. Very different from my 7th and 8th graders student teaching! I absolutely LOVE my elementary students.

All of my students are super smart and I am amazed at how well they speak! Sometimes I have a hard time hearing them (got some quiet talkers), but they are able to do things in English that I would have had a hard time doing with the kids I student taught. They work so hard. Let me give you a quick idea of what these kids do in a day.

School starts at about 7:30am and goes until about 2:30, 3pm. After school, they then go to a variety of hogwans which are like specialized after school programs. There are hogwons for everything from music to history, languages to science or even business! They go to various hogwons every night until about 8 or 10pm. Then they go home to do homework until crashing about midnight or 1am (on average students get about 3 hours of homework from school a night along with their hogwon homework). Many students also participate in sports teams and the like. That's Monday through Friday. They also attend school every other Saturday! Saturday and Sunday are also open game for extra hogwon classes.

The Koreans are very driven when it comes to their education system. It's amazing and kind of scary at the same time. I'm rather torn with how I feel about it. On one hand, I love the work ethic that these kids learn at such a young age. It's absolutely amazing how hard working they are. At the same time, such a grueling pace is frightening. I feel bad for them. I mean, I worked hard in school, don't get me wrong, but NOTHING like what is expected of students here.

As far as my own experience teaching them, it has been great. I feel so much more confident with my students than I originally thought I would. I don't have as many classroom management issues as I did during student teaching, and I feel like I really have a handle on the curriculum.

That being said, I heard some great news from my group leader and faculty manager today. My group leader, Sasha told me that my kids LOVE me! She has gotten e-mails and phone calls from parent telling her that their kids love my class and really feel like I care about them and their success. That made me feel so good. I love my students and hearing that they like being in my class made my night.

THEN my faculty manager, Helene, came and told me that not only do my kids love me, but that parents are calling and asking if their student can be transferred into my class!! She said that never before has a new teacher in their first week gotten this much great feedback from parents and students.

Let me say, I was on cloud nine all night. It also helped that my favorite memory class came back for their second night tonight. Love it!

To me, the fact that parents are asking for their kids to get transferred to my class, shows just how INVOLVED these parents are!! I mean, how many parents are so involved in their students schooling that they hear about a new teacher that other students like and then try to get their own child transferred? Wow.

To make a short story long, my first week teaching was great. I feel more confident in my teaching than ever, and I can't help but thinking back to all of my professors back at BYU who helped me learn how to be the teacher I am right here right now.

Don't worry. It's just the first week. I'm sure one of my middle schoolers (or possibly a specific elementary student I am keeping my eyes on) will drive me to distraction in the upcoming weeks and I'll be back on here ranting and raving about insane children. But right now, I'm pretty happy.

I'll try to post pictures and possibly a video tour of my new apartment soon. Love you everyone!