The Rest of Summer

These steamy summer months have been full of making, but obviously making myself sit down to update this blog was not one of them. We made the most of our remaining time with Isaac's little brother here - notably with two excursions I'll share below. I squeezed every minute out of a quick visit with family. Most often though, I came up with a thousand creative solutions to survive the summer heat - this easily feeling like the hottest of the three summers we have lived here in Louisville.

Despite its name, I was still surprised how resilient my sunflowers were to the scorching heat. I planted a few of the seedlings left behind in the kindergarten classroom around our front door and really enjoyed watching them shoot up each day.

We left the sunflowers behind one weekend and sped up to Chicago for some good food. The city's annual food festival - Taste of Chicago - was happening that weekend and so we let our stomachs guide us and trudged through the light rain on Saturday morning to Grant Park.

You purchase tickets at the festival and exchange them for food like you would for rides or games at a fair. Each vendor is a local restaurant or food truck and has just a few items for sale - small "taste" plates and larger servings too. One big negative is that you can't bring drinks in, and once inside you can purchase them only at grossly overcharged prices.

But the festival was worth it because like the name suggests - you get to have little tastes of everything. The three of us bought lunch at four different vendors - Chicago pizza, artisan meatballs, Jamaican and Thai food - a variety difficult to achieve so cheaply or easily if we had to visit these four restaurants on our two night weekend trip.

Besides the festival, we packed in more food and fun - walking to a few of our favorites from last year's visit while also discovering new places together. Amazing sushi at Momotaro, bargain shopping at Uniqlo, fantastic steak dinner at Wildfire Chicago, morning tea at Argo Tea which was like a magical little greenhouse garden tucked in between busy city streets. Our last day was well spent north of the city central eating seolleongtang (that mouth-wateringly comforting Korean oxbone soup) and shopping at super H Mart for Korean groceries and goods.

Isaac's little brother said it had been quite a few years since he'd been to a big American city and so it was a fun trip for all of us to eat our way through Chicago. And although this was only our second visit to the windy city, as long as we live in Louisville, we really must make visiting the city a regular event.

Our other destination was closer to home - Mammoth Caves National Park! It takes about an hour to drive there, and despite the park being an hour behind on central time, because of the relaxed Saturday morning, we just barely made it to our scheduled 9:00 tour time. The park was far more crowded than I remembered from my last visit when I rushed in to get our tickets while the boys parked the car. My heart was pumping as I waited in the back of the winding ticket line at 8:52 when a park ranger called out for anyone with a 9:00am tour time. The ranger seemed to glow and be heaven-sent, and we even had time to use the restroom and grab our bottle of water before heading out. I share this as a good travel tip and note to self - get there with plenty of time to spare, at least if you visit during peak times like midsummer!

The caves were delightfully cool on the already hot and sticky Saturday morning, and our two hour Historic Tour took us through the manmade entrance (there were no icky bugs to be seen!) and passageways both grand and narrow. The route was a first for all three of us; our group made a few stops where the ranger shared history and fun facts, but the most enjoyable part was the 1.5 miles worth of walking through the caves.

Cave selfies are even tougher than regular selfies.

One section of the caves is named Fat Man's Misery - a section where the trail narrows to about a foot and a half or so wide sliver with low ceilings to boot. It was not so bad as much as a bit gross since you could see where parts of the rock were polished from so many humans touching them with greasy body parts. After that was what seemed like the real fat man's misery - several flights (7 or 8?) of stairs up a natural and gorgeous column formation.

Ascending back into the heat and sunlight was miserable but necessary. It was too hot to really enjoy the above ground trails and so we were back in Louisville by lunchtime. A trip to Mammoth Caves is well worth it - you get that feeling of being uncomfortable and small in the grand face of nature, and also that of wonder at natural beauty.

I just want to mention a few more noteworthy things I made and learned from this summer.

I learned kimchi naengmyeon (cold kimchi noodles) is the best dish to cope with dreadfully hot summer afternoons - both to cook and consume. It is so simple to make and so refreshing and cool and light to eat. After paying a professional to teach me how to make macarons (in a fun cooking class with a friend), I learned that I really don't like them enough to bother with making these finicky and expensive cookies at home.

I learned mandu (korean dumplings) are not hard to make yourself and are worth it because of the tang of fresh chives, but that you definitely should ask a friend to help you stuff and fold all 72 of them or else you will sit there alone for two hours.

Lastly, I learned that saving toilet paper and paper towel rolls for a year to make a cabin for your pet rabbit is slightly nuts but also incredibly satisfying.

This summer has been a lot about food and relaxing. I tried cooking more new things in the past few months than I have possibly ever and feel like I might have even stepped up a skill level (fingers crossed). We got to share house with Isaac's little brother and enjoy countless silly moments together. Despite its painful brevity, I got to enjoy time with family old and new and share normal things like long car rides and, yes, more food.

Big changes are coming for us, and I am thankful to have this space to document and share the instants of our lives great and small. More coming, I promise!

Lately and Looking Back on the School Year

Lately we've been grilling and chilling, enjoying time together - Isaac, his brother and I. This has been the hottest summer since we've moved to Louisville, and save for a few days, it's been unbearable. But at least there's good food to take our minds off the heat.

Some days our desire for the specific food motivated us to huddle around the hot grill - like Isaac cooking Korean grilled pork belly to the right. Other days we got more creative - like grilling out steaks at 10:45 am on July 4th.


























Lately we can't get enough Korean food and I have added a few new dishes to my repertoire. Korean food with its many plates and bowls, and having Isaac's brother here mean that we've finally gotten into the habit of using our dining table every night. It seems silly, but our tiny tables on the floor in the living room (both in Suwon and Louisville) were enough previously and were plenty comfortable. But I'm really happy to have upgraded to using our dining table now three years into our marriage.

 Just check out a few of these spreads, I felt pretty proud of them.

Above is dakgomtang (닭곰탕), a refreshing clear soup made with chicken meat and bones perfect to cleanse the body on these hot summer days. Iced barley tea was a great sidekick too.

Here's a few favorites altogether. Seaweed soup, kimchi pancake and a spicy salad of green onions, carrots and sesame leaves.

Hot pot is loved throughout Asia, but I steered our shabushabu (샤브샤브) toward Korean tastes by making the broth using specific ingredients like anchovy, seaweed, Korean radish and red pepper paste (gochujang). Once I had the bubbling broth to our liking and all of the veggies chopped, we just set about cooking everything little by little, and eating as each thing finished. I bought fish cakes as an after thought, but was surprised by the fun and flavor they added to the meal.

We went to the fossil park (Falls of the Ohio) but were surprised to see the dam open, most of the fossil beds flooded. But it was a rare cool weekend so we still enjoyed our picnic among the rocks, and you can see below our cooler a large coral-like fossil (all of the small whitish circles). Boiled eggs and two kinds of kimbap - kimchi and cucumber, spicy tuna and avocado. We couldn't explore the fossil beds, but the high water made the peaceful slushing of continuous gentle waves which we haven't heard in a long time.

Bibim naengmyeon (비빔냉면) and odeng (오뎅) satisfied two cravings and the seemingly odd pair worked out. Bibim naengmyeon is cold noodles served with equally summer-suited toppings like asian pear, radish, carrots and cucumbers. The orange sauce is a puree of onions, garlic and asian pear with red pepper paste, giving the dish a truly unique sweet and spicy taste. Odeng just seems like the fishy version of a hotdog - a squishy texture that's fun to smack on and a salty and spicy sauce to dip it in.

So here we are midway through July, and the 2017-2018 school year is a thing of the past. Target is telling me that everyone else has already moved on and is preparing for first days this fall. I don’t want to blabber on too long about this past school year, but I am a sucker for reflection. Talking about it a little bit feels like putting the bow on a present, adjusting the book cover so it sits just right before placing one of my new favorites on the bookshelf.

I spent the 2017-2018 school year in an elementary school about half the size as where I worked the previous year. Both are title 1, meaning a high percentage of the children are from low income families. I was assigned to a kindergarten classroom, the first time I’ve worked at great lengths with children that young.

As far as academics, leading kindergarteners is full of firsts and so is extremely satisfying. We taught many of the kids their letters and numbers for the first time. Then we got to help them put these components together, learning to read words, then sentences, to add and subtract, and count to one hundred.

I was taught and I believe that regardless of students’ age, it is crucial to make them feel loved and safe if you want to teach them anything. With 5 and 6 year olds, building this sort of atmosphere and relationship is much more overt than with older grades. The upper elementary students seem to require a more subtle method of tiptoeing towards trust with conversations and expressions of empathy and care; my kiddos this year loved hugs and overt acknowledgement of every little booboo, mishap or accomplishment.

Last year I struggled a lot making math curriculum and stem activities that were relevant, engaging and effective for my 2nd through 5th grade students. It was a challenge to think of a new way to explain and practice a math concept that the kids already felt indifferent or even negative about. This year was much less about curriculum and more about making kids feel safe, comfortable and loved.

Because of privacy I am remaining vague, but I still wish to make my main point. I will just say that I spent the year with some kids that were naturally lovable - from their demeanors and behaviors to their appearance - and some that seemed to deter affection - their demeanors, behaviors, appearance and even smells working against them. Children seem so much more transparent at this age, a product of their home environments and external factors more so than when they are older and have the options and opportunities to change and decide for themselves. I had to acknowledge that much of how I saw kids act was a reflection of what they had experienced outside of school - the good and the bad. Then I needed to move past the shallow biases that felt natural to me (helping a grateful child, moving on from a child who is disrespectful and unfocused) and consciously fight them each day.

Spending my year with the same group of 20 odd kids (as opposed to last year’s 80+ kids) took me back to the roots of my teaching philosophy. As an educator, I have to believe that each child is capable of greatness and improvement, even when they give no evidence after weeks and months of teachers' hard efforts. Every day, it is still my job to show them care and support and a better way to live and learn. I take away a lot of funny and heartwarming memories - blue icing cupcakes that led to messy blue stomach aches and worse the following day, surprise hugs around the waist at just the right moments. But this is by far my biggest take away - the importance of believing and acting out every day that every kid is capable and worthy of love and success. It is something more easily done from a distance; daily practicing that belief up close and personal is wearing, but in the end it rewards the heart. Thinking back over the year, it is easy to see that tying soggy shoelaces or repeating directions for the umpteenth time are nothing compared to knowing those students left the classroom with the memory and certainty that their teachers cared for them.

Churchill Downs and a Sweet Summer Start

This May marked the beginning of our third year in Louisville. That also means it was our third Derby season here, yet we made no plans to partake in any of the derby events here. We did watch some of the weekend's races on TV, and loudly cheered Justify on as his hind legs coated the competition in mud. But even without planning on it, I managed to catch a bit of the horse racing bug.

A week after Derby, my friend offered me her extra ticket to the Sunday races at Churchill Downs. And thinking about it now, I can't believe I hesitated a few hours before responding with a mighty "YES!"

All summer long there is horse racing at the historical race track here in Louisville, mostly on weekends and Thursdays nights. Best of all, they offer a similar experience as derby weekend but for a fraction of the price and just a pinch of the traffic and crowds that clog up the place every first week of May.

The outside of the venue looked unremarkable, but once our tickets were scanned, we walked into the inner courtyard and saw the place's famous twin spires and also the paddocks where the horses are kept just prior to their race.

Our tickets were for Millionaire's Row, which takes you up a few escalators, past several uniformed employees whose polite gestures do make you feel a little more uppity each time you ascend and flash your tickets.

Millionaire's Row means you get a place at the table in what feels like a banquet hall. One wall is lined with a lunch buffet, another with bank-teller style counters for placing bets, and a third is all windows and doors leading out onto a tiered balcony overlooking the tracks.

So you sit inside munching on the herb-roasted chicken and rosemary potatoes, sipping the sweet tea, the white table cloth tickling your legs - and then you hear the bugle sound. That's your cue to drop your utensils and walk out to the balcony for the next race is about to begin. The horses do a warm up lap around the track, and within just a few minutes the race is started and through. Everyone files back inside to resume sitting and sipping and chatting.

The whole process repeats, with races staggered out about every 40 minutes. A booklet handed to us at the door had tons of details about each of the day's races (more information about horses, their histories, their jockies - even their birthdays - then we knew what to do with!) as well as a handy guide about placing bets and the associated terminology. The booklet also came in handy since I didn't wear a derby hat - keeping my face out of the bright sun and reminding me of the ridiculous name of whichever horse we arbitrarily chose to cheer for in the upcoming race.

And the basic bet for a race - where you pick the winner - is $2. It's such a small amount, making it easy to part with - no big loss if you lose, lots of excitement if you win.

It was a lot of fun. Now I think I truly start to see why horse racing is so popular here. It is technically a sport, but it's also just an enjoyable past time. An hour at the tracks means about 10 minutes of focusing on the races and 50 minutes relaxing and chatting and indulging in food and drink. This is the kind of sport all types can enjoy.

I came home gushing with enthusiasm about the event, sharing everything I just wrote here and some of the silliest horse names that slip my mind now. I hope that before summer is done, we get the chance to venture out to Churchill Downs for another day of races.

Besides that fancy outing at the tracks, the past month has been full of good times because Isaac's brother is in town. And there's nothing like company to get you out of a rut and off your butt! We went for the 40 minute drive across the river, through rural Indiana to Huber's Farms.

We picked around five pounds of strawberries - which were savored plain over the next week, and also transformed into strawberry milk, smoothies and our new favorite dessert - strawberry cobbler!

Plucking strawberries was a sweet start to our summer, and really whet my appetite to cross a few more of those "oh, I heard that was good" places off of our bucket list.

We also celebrated my last day of school/work this Monday (with generous helpings of strawberry cobbler of course) which means I should definitely be able to pick up the slack and resume posting monthly!

San Antonio

February and March featured more snow days (the last being on the second day of spring!) and a few countdowns - days of just working hard and looking ahead to upcoming days and deadlines. I'll share about one of these countdowns today - our get away to San Antonio, Texas.

Isaac had written a professional journal paper and would be presenting it at this conference in San Antonio. So we decided to make it into a vacation, arriving the weekend before. His sister and brother-in-law flew in for the conference as well, and together the four of us had a great time catching up and eating tasty food together.

I knew nothing about the city, but after our trip was a sure thing, I began asking friends and coworkers for recommendations. Again and again, I received two answers: the Alamo and the Riverwalk. In retrospect, they were two of the city's highlights, and definitely its two most distinctive features.

To my surprise, the Alamo is in the heart of the city, surrounded by tourist attractions like a wax museum and souvenir shops. There is a law that prevents any building from casting its shadow on the war memorial, which give the Alamo grounds a wonderful verdant park feeling different from anywhere else we visited in the city.

You're not allowed to take pictures within the building itself, but I think it is well worth a drop in. I walked through on a quiet morning - especially touching to me were the flags which lined the inner walls, each tagged with a number representing the victims of the Alamo and their home states or countries. From what I saw, Tennessee and then Kentucky had the largest number of people there, but I was surprised to see flags from Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Scotland and England too.

Most of the city's landscaping featured arid plants like the cacti and palm trees above, so I was surprised to see mature stretching oaks shading the Alamo's gardens. I wish Isaac would have been with me, the park bench below is just begging for a happy couple to sit on it!

The Riverwalk is the San Antonio river with a series of canals built off of it. In some parts it provides scenic alternative through the business district and in others it lends a festive atmosphere to (and at times treacherously narrow walkways through) the restaurants and bars that squeeze up against it. Everywhere it provides depth and much needed green contrast to the surrounding city.

Over our handful of days there, we walked many miles along the calm waters, as it more or less cuts through much of the city and is a much more relaxing stroll than the streets.

I was excited to spy the USAA building perched along the edge of the river. After seeing San Antonio listed in the footers of so many of the bank's documents and websites, it made me happy to see the building in person. Isaac first spied USAA ATMs too, another first for us.

The city has a pretty rich military history, being home to an air force base and to a medical training center for all branches as well. Sadly, I can't remember anymore than these fuzzy details from our taxi driver's informative introduction as we rode into the city.















Another highlight we found for ourselves was the Pearl district. An almost defunct brewery and its surrounding neighborhood have been revitalized and turned into millennial central (our cabbie's assessment, perfectly accurate).

We walked up the riverwalk for 45 minutes, stopping to eat lunch at The Luxury, an outdoor restaurant made up of train boxcars and tin roofing.

Then we emerged onto the streets of Pearl, our eyes greeted by astro turf littered with a menagerie of dogs, children and a couples' yoga class.

I'm joking a bit with my description (which is totally accurate but kind of snobby sounding). The area was much more inviting than the touristy parts of downtown San Antonio, with more interesting restaurants, independent shops and consumer friendly prices too.

Another favorite we happened to walk by after lunch one day was the San Fernando Cathedral.

It is one of the oldest active cathedrals in the U.S. and is beautifully situated on the calmer side of the San Antonio river. It's here that the Alamo heroes were laid to rest with this beautiful and simple memorial.

I want to share just a few more favorites from our trip:

Seeing Isaac's name in the conference booklet (halfway down the page, T40.7).

Observing grackles. These birds are about the size of a crow, but can make a broader range of sounds like a mockingbird. They are clever and rude and very entertaining to watch.

A bakery called La Panaderia serving European style pastries but with a uniquely Spanish style dough which they long-culture for 48 hours. You walk through with a tray and tongs picking your own breads just like so many Asian bakeries, but the atmosphere is much more modern and warm.

This fun cocktail Isaac tried - a prickly pear cactus margarita.

The charming small Italian restaurant where we ate dinner the night before I flew back to Louisville. It was delightfully fancy (our waiter had an accent, there was a tray of fruit slices for our water, a rolling cart carried an entire wheel of parmesan cheese, anchovies were mixed in with the olive oil) and the meal was slow paced and perfect.

The restaurant is within the historic Fairmount Hotel which is over 100 years old. It was actually moved several blocks down the street after the Marriott bought it and and wanted to build a high rise hotel on its land (where we happened to stay for the conference's duration).

The weather was wonderfully warm while we were there, a welcomed break from our many snowy and icy days back home. It rained a bit, but for the most part was in the upper 60s and sunny. I still had to tote around sweaters though, in part because of a cool breeze, but mostly because Texans love to blast cold air conditioning!

Below is our hotel view looking west over the city. We had a wonderful time catching up with family, exploring a new city and just getting out of our end-of-winter working rut. I remember sitting on our bed looking out the tall windows at the cityscape, trying to enjoy the view but already thinking ahead to our next countdown back home. That one will have to wait for next month's blog!