Snow and home cooking

When I think back to last January, sunless grey days and low energy cloud my mind. It was miserably cold yet without enough snow to play in. The days blended one into another, and on weekends I had no desire to see what was going on around town because mustering the mental motivation to get out of our place was just too difficult. The first month of 2018 was so much better!

For one thing, it did snow. Several times, and there was quite enough to play in and have fun. It happened enough that I even stopped taking pictures every time it snowed. Jefferson County had a six week holiday because of the snow and icy roads and I made a snow bunny.

Isaac had to clean the snow off his car five days in a row.

We drove around the not bad roads and enjoyed the glowing scenery.

For the month of January, I decided to make a sizable effort to cook more on the weekends. Usually Isaac and I enjoy going out once or twice on the weekends and getting whatever foods we've been craving all week that I don't make at home. Fried chicken, sushi, Vietnamese noodle soup and barbecue are a few of our favorite choices. But just to save money and maybe be a little more healthy, this past month I made sure to include weekends in my weekly grocery list/meal planning. Another incentive for cooking more was the fact that I really wanted to use my Christmas present.

I made green smoothies every weekday morning for breakfast in my fancy new Vitamix blender. My favorite mix is avocado, kale and green grapes. I just plop these on top of vanilla protein powder and water and then dance a little jig while it blends away.

Cooking at home on the weekends also meant that I felt less guilty spending more at the grocery store on things Isaac and I love like steak and avocados (respectively). We indulged a bit, having fancy bacon for Sunday brunch and buying samgyeopsal and all the fixings to have a pretty legitimate Korean barbecue after the snow melted away.

Yes, this January had many great moments and I love this feeling I have that we made them great ourselves. Falling snow and cooking at home are common and insignificant things (even despised by some!) but savoring them made this oft-sluggish month wonderful.

Holiday Wrap Up

We stayed in Louisville for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. While this meant missing out on seeing family, it also meant some much needed recharging time. In fact, not just the holidays themselves, but the months of November and December were basically all about rest and restoration. I guess that's why they passed by without any thoughts of posting here. So here is a quick catch up.

This picture of Cookie summarizes the past two months for us. We bundled up against the cold (and life outside our 2BR/1B apartment) and just kicked back.

My friend Rachel drove up here to visit. The three of us gobbled up delicious meals and enjoyed catching up as we piddled around at various places - examining knick knacks in antique malls and picking through rocks and fossils at the Falls of the Ohio.

Sifting through the stones reminded me of the countless rock cairns we saw at parks and temples in South Korea. I imagined that if this place was in over there, it would be covered with tiny towers and unspoken wishes. I made a little cairn of my own, topped off with a fossil like a star on a Christmas tree, carefully stacking a wish between the teetering stones.

The past two months have of course involved working too. This is the first time in my short education career that I've worked with such young children, being in a Kindergarten classroom. One of the perks of working with this age is the adorable drawings students make. My phone's picture gallery is speckled with their creations, one of my favorites being the stick dinosaurs below.

Autumn passed without much appreciation. The trees seemed out of sync, changing their leaves at different times. We didn't get the chance to escape for a mountain hike. Some of the prettiest fall colors we saw were in the mall parking lot (directly below).

One of the most adventurous things we did was try Starbucks' Zombie Frappuccino. It was pretty tasty - caramel candy apple with raspberry frosting.

Despite extremely chilly weather, we ended up using the grill for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. I cooked traditional dishes like sweet potato casserole, roasted vegetables and sticky date pudding, but for our entrees we chose our favorite proteins - steak and salmon. These were grilled to perfection by Isaac, our resident master griller.

I couldn't talk Isaac into a picture with Santa at this Christmas party, but thankfully my friend obliged. This may be the skinniest Santa Claus I've ever seen.

Staying home for Christmas meant gifts arriving via post. We loved this detailed packing list, I hope you can see it all right in the picture. In the end we had an admirable pile beneath our minimalist (apartment friendly) tree.

Christmas Eve there was sleet in the evening and then snow in the night, which I thought totally qualified as a white Christmas, especially since it remained on the ground for a few days afterwards.

The amount was negligible, even a snow-loving Southerner like me must admit. But it was still enough to make me feel very excited about it. We went for a drive on Christmas Eve in the snow, looking for nice Christmas lights but also just enjoying the festive flakes float by.

There's an Icelandic tradition called Jólabókaflóð (Jule Book Flood) that involves books and chocolates on Christmas Eve. We thought that it may be a nice tradition to start, so we both picked out a book and I made some fancy hot chocolate. Then we got comfortable in our pajamas and read, the silence punctuated by the occasional sip of the richest hot cocoa ever.

So we chose to end our year without much fanfare or much of anything really. Sometimes it's just better than way. I feel incredibly grateful and blessed to have spent it with Isaac, who grows even more amazing in my eyes everyday. We have big hopes for 2018, and a few plans already in the making. I'll do my best in the new year to keep this blog posted, about once a month like I've been doing. I think I'll try harder to take some pictures of Isaac and myself too, because I'm still not very good at that, am I?

Art Fair and Friends

Ever since last October, I've looking forward to repeating this experience - going to the St. James Art Fair. This year, the weekend was extra special because our friends decided to come in town to visit too! I was so excited about the fair, that I ended up going twice. Once the moment it began on Friday morning, and again on Saturday with our full crew.

Just like last year, the scenery was distractingly beautiful - century-old houses that are treasured and manicured to perfection.

We all left empty handed, because besides buying something like homemade soap or iced tea, prices are pretty high. There are some amazingly unique and memorable artists and creations here, but nothing we couldn't live without.

One house I always admired is the brick red with multi-colored trimming pictured here to the right. It just so happens to be for sale right now. And while I have to admit it's more of a DIY than we can handle, it's still nice to dream and look through the photos. Like so many houses in Old Louisville, it's bones and trimming are gorgeous. Have a look here at the listing.













Spending the weekend with friends was an even better investment. Since our apartment is pretty small, we rented a house through airbnb just over the river in Indiana for our party of 6. The place was just what we wanted, somewhere comfortable to just hangout and catch up with each other. There was a trail to a river to stretch our legs, a grill to cook together and a firepit to gather around in the evenings for long talks.

And the best moments from the weekend were those low key moments at the house together. After 7 years together and being guests to our friends, we were finally able to reciprocate and host them all here at our "home". Cooking and eating dinner and breakfast together, fawning over their adorable two-year-old, watching the fire dance and talking about life and miscellanea.

It felt like a three day recharge. Mentally, we relaxed more than we have in a while. No planning or thinking ahead towards big decisions to come. It was such a carefree time that without much urging Isaac stood beneath this gap in the interstate bridge above getting pummeled by rain water.

But as we often say to each other while trudging up the steps to our second floor apartment, home is the best. We loved playing host to our friends in a rented house, but returning back to our own cozy place can't be beat. It's the little things like my grandma-ish seasonal decor and our own velveteen-rabbit-come-to-life Cookie.

Spicy September

A month went by and I've forgiven myself for being a truant blogger. This is my favorite time of year after all. Frequent rain makes candy colored sunsets and cool mornings beg to be stretched out and savored.

Isaac and I have just been enjoying our time recently. On the weekends, we fall asleep in the living room and laugh as Cookie takes turns hopping around and over us, cuddling with us and completely ignoring us. I put on my fuzzy jacket, sat on the balcony sipping hot tea, doodling and painting. We work out and enjoy free Chickfila breakfast entrees on Saturdays thanks to coupons galore.

I've been making soups and Korean food non-stop these past weeks. Soup just makes the heartiest and easiest lunch to take to work and Korean food always satisfies some craving.













One treat we enjoyed a few times in September was a classic rainy day combo - kimchi pancake and makeoli. It's fun just to alternate tastes between the spicy savory pancake and the sweet fermented rice drink. Inspired by a cookbook we bought in Korea, I started adding a handful of sweet corn into the typical kimchijeon batter. When we tasted the new and improved kimchi-corn-pancake that first time, it felt like I had leveled up my cooking skills.

And then dakgalbi - a spicy stirfry with chicken, chewy rice cakes, sweet potato, carrot and cabbage. Wrapped up with the kkaetnip leaf, it tastes perfect. I used a recipe I found online and loved it, but the next time tweaked my ginger usage since Isaac is not keen on the stuff.

September is also Isaac's birthday month, so I cooked the traditional Korean birthday meal miyeokguk (seaweed soup). The leftover kimchi-corn-pancake went well with this calming, not spicy soup.

But of course we weren't going to celebrate his birthday with just one measly home-cooked meal! We went to Bonefish Grill for dinner on Friday, and also went to Fresh Market over the weekend where he picked out a beautiful steak specimen and grilled it to perfection.

Isaac's birthday cake was a special rendition of the J Cake - a tasty chocolate cake that my family has savored since first befriending the Jones back in, gosh, 1993 maybe?

The past weeks also featured treks to pretty woodsy places like these.

But there's plenty more of that to come, hopefully with some fall colors to speckle the sky lines.

As you can now see, we have been doing well, just enjoying our days one after another.

Fossils at the Falls

There's this park just across the river from Louisville called Falls of the Ohio. From what I heard and read, when the water is low you can see fossils all along the riverbed. It seemed too exotic and cool to be true, but it is.

It's a quick 20 minute drive - a bridge over the Ohio River, then west along the water. The riverbank falls away by the time the park sign is within sight. The Falls of the Ohio State Park has an impressive building all its own, with a mastodon skeleton statue, special exhibits and theater room. But we walked straight through and out to the back deck, which provides an easy descent into the fossil beds.

I learned the gist of this place from a plaque along the sidewalk:
400 million years ago this land was the bed of a warm tropical sea just south of the equator. What's left from that Devonian Age is a fossilized coral reef which extends from Louisville to Indianapolis. This stretch along the cascades known as the Falls of the Ohio is the only exposed bit of the reef. More than 600 fossil species of animals have been identified here. A few famous Americans ventured to the falls including George Rogers Clark (of Lewis and Clark), John James Audubon, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman.

In the visitor's center they provide brochures that show the various types of fossils, so you can enjoy finding and identifying them all as you go. On most weekends they have free guided tours of the reef too. You are not allowed to take fossils from the bed itself. But you're welcome to take away driftwood or any fossils found in the large piles brought in from elsewhere just for visitors to dig through.

There's nothing else to say besides it was just really cool. And I wish that I'd brought lunch. Those giant rocks in the shade are perfect for sitting beneath and picnicking. Next time.

I think this place is one of Kentuckiana's magical little gems. I love parks - and the Falls is one unique and very well-done. It made me very happy to find a place like this now, when we have lived here for over a year and are feeling quite settled.

First Year Teacher Reflections

Tomorrow is the first day of school for kids around here. A new start to a new school year. And it’s a fresh start for me too. This year I will work a different position in a different elementary school. I am trying my best to gobble up various experiences of elementary education. And somehow I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have supervisors who believe in me and mentors to teach me as I teach kids.

Before this school year officially starts, I want to share some reflections about my previous year. And just like when I was a student, I have mulled this over endlessly in my head, taken detailed notes, but waited until the final hour to actually get it done. Procrastination is such a harsh word, it's more like finish-phobia I'd say.

My first year as an educator in a public elementary school was a marvelous adventure. I had the unique opportunity to work with students in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grades. Sometimes I worked with small groups to reinforce math skills, and other times I led STEAM-centered challenges (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics). There are so many specific stories and moments to flood my mind looking back, but here I want to boil it all down to just a couple key things. These are the most resonant pointers from my 2016-2017 school year, the stacked moments I choose to transform into lessons to learn from and be inspired by.

Curiosity-driven learning

I’m lucky that my elementary education internship was within a hub of inquiry learning. It just makes sense to let questions and problems inspire the quest for knowledge; let the kids find it out for themselves instead of pounding it into them like the outdated teacher stereotype we all often imagine. I can’t pretend to have a grasp on the whole facilitating inquiry learning thing yet, but the overall concept has stuck with me. I want my lessons to be interesting and invite students into learning with a question or a way of applying it to their own lives.

I remember some average weekend near the end of winter; during the long stretch in February where there are no holidays to look forward to on the school calendar. I spent many week nights and a big chunk of my time on weekends planning and revising lessons. How could I hook kids into an engineering design project? What examples would best illustrate converting improper fractions to proper fractions? While stumped on some question like these, I came across a quote that made this planning perfectionist pause.

Students should be working harder than the teacher.

This thought reaches back to the heart of inquiry. I was working so hard to plan and have detailed examples. I needed to get my hands off of white board markers and props, and let those ten to twelve smaller hands take over. Keeping this at the front of my mind made the spring a lot more fun for both students and teacher. It’s something that is true for humans big and small - natural curiosity and relevance increase interest and engagement.

The power of stories

Because I mostly taught math and led smaller projects, reading books was not a regular part of the programming. Apart from math story problems (which most students do not count as enjoyable literature), there just weren’t enough minutes with my small groups to squeeze in storytime. Until it was time to say farewell.

For my goodbye lessons with each small group, I chose to share a book I love with the kids. Because I’m a total bookworm, and because I believe that stories and art can convey a desired message way more effectively than a blubbery teacher. I read Jennifer Berne’s “On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein”. Students all know his name and perhaps an equation or notorious weapon associated with him; but more than those things, this story highlights that Albert was an unusual person and a daydreamer. With quirky illustrations and bits about the famous scientist’s equally eccentric mindset, it relates a special message - never stop dreaming and wondering.

From wiggly 2nd graders to apathetic 5th graders, I saw students captivated by this picture book. After finishing the story, my students began spilling out questions about life and the world around us. Why doesn’t the moon fall down? Do birds remember the nest where they were born? Where did God come from? It was a shining moment and even with my affinity for reflection and improvement, I still can’t think of a better way to conclude the year with my 90ish students.

Sitting in this moment on the eve of the first school day, I feel the many things. The nerves and excitement of something new about to begin, the regret that summer has ended, and the certainty that my students and I are about to learn a whole lot together.