Soju Boy Tell 'um

That 70s Show

2011-01-14T14:46:00.003-06:00

This is a shorter blog entry. I loved this show in college when I understood a bit more of what was going on in the show (and gave it more of a chance than I did when it originally aired on Fox). I generally have grown to dislike shows that use laugh tracks and all and this show is really cliche, so I shouldn't like it...but I do. I made a recent post on House and I could see where some could think Dr. House has become a cliche of himself over the seasons, but I still love it. Just like I still love That 70s Show.

That said, and I remember making this point to my girlfriend, Jenni, a few weeks back when I saw it, but why is this show on ABC Family? I don't watch ABC Family all that often so I guess I don't know the content of all the shows on the network, I am only watching it as I channel surfed and saw that this show was on. I just wonder who thought it was a great idea to put a show about pot smoking, rebelling teenagers on a show with 'family' in its title.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy it, I just wonder if there has been an outrage brigade from overly protective parents out there.

Animation Domination

2011-01-10T00:32:00.002-06:00

That's the name of the Sunday night lineup on Fox, has been for a few years, not sure when it really started. The Simpsons of course has now been running for something like 30 years and while it's heyday is behind it, still is good enough to watch. Family Guy, people either love it or hate it and while its peak was shorter than The Simpsons, it's still a show that I find interesting and will continue to watch.

Futurama used to be on Fox and they really need to look into bringing that back for a 3rd AD show. I believe that American Dad is now done for as Bob's Burgers debuted tonight.

The death of American Dad is a welcomed decision. It definitely made sense to give Seth Macfarlane a shot at another show with the cult success of Family Guy on Adult Swim, leading to a delayed outbreak for what is now network tv's second most popular cartoon. That said, American Dad was just not funny. It was too similar to Family Guy in setup. Dad in power role of the show, him being out of touch with reality the driving force of the comedy. There's a wife who doesn't add much to the show, two kids, again with the daughter being older and then Stewie is replaced by a less funny goldfish and Brian with a very annoying alien, Roger. After the first episode, I wasn't sure, but figured I'd watch a few. But my opinion never changed. It just wasn't funny and Roger annoyed the piss out of me. I'm sad to see AD now on Adult Swim.

Also now on Adult Swim is former Fox show King of the Hill. I loved the idea of the show, thought it had potential, but never felt it really lived up to what it could have been. Mike Judge did the best he could with the way MTV screwed his career. Judge's Beavis and Butthead was a popular MTV cartoon in the 90s, but MTV took ownership of the show and shut it down, not allowing Judge to take it anywhere else to profit. While this was another hit or miss show, it was Judge's creation and shame on MTV for not allowing him to take it elsewhere considering all MTV did was shove it into a storage room to collect dust. I think I've seen some episodes on a cable channel over the past year or two, and it wasn't MTV, so maybe now they're letting it out a bit, but there will never be new episodes. That tangent about B&B came of course because Hank and Peggy Hill from King of the Hill were younger versions of B&B's overly annoyed at the stupid teenage Beavis and Butthead. That had potential for more, it just didn't connect.

The Cleveland Show is just awful. Take it off tv now. At the time it was announced, people said really...the most boring Family Guy character gets a spinoff? I get that it was a bold move and a creative idea to go against the show's more popular characters, but man, is that show just painful to watch. It's less fun than American Dad and on equal ground with King of the Hill. I would much rather see a spinoff of Joe's police career before moving to Quahog as a spinoff. Quagmire would be interesting, but I think it'd be the same thing over and over again. I'd watch it for a while, but I think it would have less potential than a Joe spinoff.

That brings me to tonight's new show, Bob's Burgers. Yawn. I'll tune in another time or two to see if they attempt to change the humor around at all, but color me not impressed with the pilot. The kids are very annoying, the wife is dull, and Bob is...eh, that's why I'll watch a few more before deciding. If my prediction is correct, Fox has another dud animation comedy on their Sunday night lineup. What are they going to do when it's finally time to put down The Simpsons and Family Guy?

As I said above, bring back Futurama. It had a short run on Fox and is a great show. I love it more than Family Guy.

There really aren't any other animation shows out there that would find success if Fox picked them up. A few people I know love Aqua Teen Hunger Force, but I'm not one of them. Just can't get into it. The Oblongs was interesting for an episode or two, but I got tired of it. I really liked Home Movies, but I could see how that show could get stale fairly quickly and it wouldn't transition well to a nationwide audience. God, the Devil, and Bob was a fun show, but was only around for a season, I believe. I think it could transition to mainstream if given a chance, however.

Bring back Clerks? I'd be behind that idea, especially with the movies seeing commercial success.

My only other suggestions would be to make a cartoon spinoff of Trailer Park Boys, one of the best shows few people have ever heard of. I'm not sure if you could bring back the real cast for a mainstream show, it's more suited for a cable network with its content, but I just felt like plugging it anyway.

Anyway, that's my thought of the day after watching some Sunday night cartoons.

House

2011-01-08T22:56:00.002-06:00

It's funny how happy I get when I am browsing through the guide and see a House marathon is on tv. Oh, thank you Bravo!

It's strange how much I have become obsessed with this show. Each episode is nearly identical in structure. Opening shot of patient having problem. House and team bounce ideas around, come up with diagnosis. Strange problem pops up making case befuddling. Team runs around, test after test, lots of medical jargon that I'll never understand but man they sound smart! House makes quips about Cuddy's female features, generally acts like an ass to most people while his sarcastic personality leads to FTW jokes throughout the episode.

The only difference is of course there is an evolving storyline with the characters. Over the years, it was House begins working with team. House's addiction to vicodin. House and Cuddy's love/hate relationship. After Season 3, they bring in a new cast, including Olivia Wilde as 13 in one of the greatest ideas the show has ever had. ;) Sadly, she begins to become famous and leaves the show to pursue a movie career. Taub's personal life, Cameron/Chase, Foreman/13, Cuddy and motherhood...all side stories.

SPOILER ALERT FOR SEASON 7 (or is it 8...whatever the end of the last season into the current season is)!!!!!

Every show gets to the point where it has 'jumped the shark,' of course the phrase made famous when the Fonz literally jumped a shark, showing the end of Happy Days was upon us. I feel that House is at that point, as much as I love the show now. I think when House and Cuddy finally start doing it, it ends the biggest 'will it ever happen' questions on the show. From here, it's riding out that story to a desirable end so the show can also end. I definitely do not want the show to end, I'd probably watch it until Hugh Laurie dies of natural causes if he wanted to keep up with the show.

I wonder how much longer this show will continue. I think that it could move on to another season without much problem, but from there...it will be hard to justify the plot lines they will surely have to come up with. House is still one of the highest rated shows of its kind on TV, Laurie is still nominated every year for lead role in a drama series, so there is an appeal to keep it around as long as Laurie wants to do it. I don't really remember Laurie in anything before House and it will be hard to picture him in any other role from here on, but I know that time will come.

I am of course typing all this up as I sit here on a Saturday night watching the last few episodes of the House marathon on Bravo. In visiting my parents, a House marathon really helps pass the time late at night.

Off the top of my head, 5 of my favorite shows:

1) Three Stories: Cuddy makes House fill in and give a lecture to a group of med students. His lecture is three diagnostic stories that develop over the course of the show. In the end, we find out that one of those cases was House himself and what led to his dead leg. I love this episode, the next to last of Season 1.

2) Unplanned Parenthood: This is my favorite episode of the newest season where House is forced to babysit Cuddy's child and Wilson gets dragged along.

3) The season 4 Finale, which is really the last two episodes combined, House's Head and Wilson's Heart. This is the end of the season where House picks his new team, which was a lot of fun in itself. In these episodes, House awakens in a blur and knows that he is supposed to save someone's life that was on the same bus that he was on when it crashed. He pushes his body to the limits in trying to remember. The ending turns tragic for a few of the cast members.

4) Both Sides Now: Season 5 finale where House finally breaks down due to his vicodin addiction.

5) Frozen: I believe this is the highest rated episode of House, fwiw, but this is the episode where a woman in Antartica falls ill and House and team must treat her through a web cam.

There are probably a few episodes that rank really highly up there, even higher than some of these, but these are the ones I can remember off the top of my head by the episode name. In any case, if you're reading this, you got to read what entertained me for the past half hour during the commercial breaks of House. Thanks!

Merry Christmas

2010-12-26T01:03:00.001-06:00

More frequent updates coming, I promise (for real this time!).

Illini Coaches Part I

2010-03-25T13:41:00.003-05:00

I'm going to try and begin blogging more often now and I can't think of a better topic to start off with than my biggest passion, Illinois sports.

I'll begin with Illinois basketball, since the Illini's season ended yesterday.

Talk about a disappointing year. Illini basketball has been extremely surprising if nothing else these past three seasons, in other words, the post Dee Brown and James Augustine era for Illinois. This also marks the first season in which Bruce Weber coached a team full of his own recruits.

2007: Illinois squeaks into the NCAA Tournament as a 12 seed, though it could be argued that they should have been seeded higher. In fact, Illinois as a 12 seed compared to the seeds of other teams (like Purdue, for example, who I believe received an 8) was a comic fail of epic proportions by the selection committee. But the Illini were rewarded with an incredibly weak 5 seed, Virginia Tech, and a team they should beat, to be perfectly honest. The Illini went on a run and gained a 10 point lead in the second half before choking down the stretch, allowing the Hokies to win the game. It was very reminiscent of 2006, when Brown and Augustine as seniors lost to Washington, a game where the Illini blew a sizable lead (also one of the worst screw jobs in the history of the tournament, just awfully biased officiating in favor of Washington, so I'll let Weber off the hook on that one).

2008: Two years after Brown and Augustine are gone, it was known that the Illini didn't have lots of talented recruits. Turned out, they had a complete shit sandwich for a team. They were awful and finished the season with a losing record. Outside of the 1999 squad which was in a total transition phase, this was the worst season in modern Illinois history. For a program that had just made the championship game three years ago, this was beyond unacceptable.

2009: Weber had lowered the expectations of the Illini fan base after his horrific 2008 season, which helped for this season. The Illini surprised, turning things around with mostly the same players as the season before. The Illini won over 20 games, finished third in the Big 10, and claimed a 5-seed in the NCAA Tournament. I'll give Weber credit for this season because this team definitely overachieved. On the other hand, I'll only barely give him credit because three years removed from an NCAA Runner-Up team, there should be no reason for the lack of talent the Illini had. The Illini were upset by Western Kentucky, a 12 seed, in the first round of the tournament. Weber supporters point to senior PG Chester Frazier's injury as the reason for this and I admit that losing Frazier was tough for the team, but they still had more than enough talent to beat Western Kentucky. That one's on Weber.

2010: For fans that grew frustrated of Weber, tired of seeing late game meltdowns, tired of seeing the stall offense lead to these late game meltdowns, tired of seeing no recruits that we had grew accustomed to getting at Illinois, tired of everything else Weber, this was the season that Weber supporters pointed to. Two top 100 recruits, DJ Richardson and Brandon Paul along with a guy that was a borderline top 100 recruit in Tyler Griffey were added to the roster. Weber was finally going to have talent. He also had three very good juniors retuning after breakout sophomore seasons in Demetri McCamey, Mike Davis, and Mike Tisdale. It was said they lacked athleticism the year before, no longer with the new talent coming in.

The early season against some bad teams got many fans excited. Richardson and Paul looked like future stars. Many fans were convinced Illinois basketball was back, I was a bit more hesitant. I said, sure, the freshmen looked good against SIU Edwardsville, but wait until they get to the Big 10. I hate to say I was right, but I was right. The freshmen ran into growing pains, though DJ Richardson did play well for most of the year, earning Big 10 Freshman of the Year honors by the coaches, which is more admirable than by the media, which went to Northwestern's Drew Crawford. Paul, didn't seem to improve as the season went along. He does have loads of potential as he can be explosive and has athletic ability rivaled only by a few people in all of the NCAA.

This team was so frustrating as a whole. In the pre-season, they beat Clemson on the road. Great win, but they were down by 23 points in the second half before a miracle comeback. They were down 20+ points against Gonzaga in Chicago before coming back to force overtime. They lost that game. Too many times they were finding themselves down big early and forced to come back. The coaches say they didn't give up, which I suppose they didn't, in coming back so many times, but on the other hand, they simply weren't bringing it from the game's tip off and that's unacceptable. They were blessed to beat Michigan State and Wisconsin on the road, though both times the team's star player, Kalin Lucas and Jon Leuer respectively, were out with injuries. They lost to Missouri, ending one of the few things Illini fans felt good about, a long winning streak against the Tigers. Illinois had already lost their good feeling about playing at home, thanks to embarrassing losses to teams like Tennessee State in previous years. The Illini would lose 4 of their last 5 games at home on this season, getting embarrassed by Ohio State and Minnesota (fake rally not-counted for Minnesota, the Illini scored 14 points in the first half in a must-win game, a loss that likely kept them out of the NCAA Tournament). In another must-win game against Wisconsin, they could not get the win on their home court. After beating an overmatched Kent State squad in the second round of the NIT, they were dominated and overmatched against Dayton, from the Atlantic 10. Just another thing on the year that is unacceptable.

So, that leaves Weber and the Illini without an NCAA Tournament win in four seasons, the longest stretch for the Illini since the 1970s. This year was supposed to be different. They had talent returning, they had good recruits coming in. Weber supporters said this was the year to get back to being a higher seeded NCAA Tournament team. While the Illini deserved to be in the tournament more than Utah State, UTEP, or Florida, the selection committee went with those three teams instead. The Illini can only blame themselves with their inconsistent play all year long along with not taking any of the chances they were given down the stretch, losing key games at home.

To state my position on Weber, I believe his seat should be pretty hot. Historically, Illinois is a top 15 program. The Illini were on the verge of being Elite as the 1980s came to a close, but probation knocked them back, though even in the probation years they were not as bad as they have been in Weber's last four years. Lon Kruger and Bill Self rebuilt the Illini program and Weber benefited from Self's talent, taking them to the NCAA Championship game. But since Self's talent has left, Illinois has won only 60% of their games and has won 1 NCAA Tournament game in five years. That simply isn't good enough for this program.

I'm willing to give Weber one more year, but I will continue to be critical and point out his shortcomings. I am hot happy with the direction he has taken this program and feel we can get a coach who can do a better job. A few years ago, Weber supporters looked to 2010 as the year for the Sweet 16 and then when more talented recruits, namely McDonald's All-American Jereme Richmond and the guy who may end up being the best recruit in Weber's era, Meyers Leonard, coming in, the 2011 team would be competing for the Final Four. Well, Weber has managed to lower expectations of the fan base, but he should be held accountable. Next season's team is a top 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament in talent and should not be upset in the first round. Next year's squad at minimum needs to be a higher NCAA seed and win at least one game. Anything less, and Weber should be shown the door. He was given a gift horse program and has taken it no where, other than down, and you have to pull the plug before it's too late.

So, next year, boom or bust for Weber. I actually hope it's boom. I hope he does well, takes this team to the NCAA Tournament's second weekend and see what happens from there. Then, he needs to continue to bring in high school talent that is good enough for Illinois' standards and rebuild the program back to the point that it was given to him and hopefully one day, win the first National Championship in the program's history.

Thoughts on Korea

2010-01-24T06:04:00.002-06:00

Term I: November-February: Wonder
Song: Superman by Norazo
Hailey

What a scary, yet exciting time this was. I almost felt bad for the emotionless departure I had from my parents at Lambert Airport in St. Louis that morning. It wasn't that I would not miss them, because that would be false, I did miss them. I actually probably finally realized just how proud of me my parents were in the year I was away from home. How did I let that happen? I don't know, but I sure as hell appreciate them more now than I ever did. I of course did miss them, but I was so excited to see a new world. I had visited Canada and Cancun for spring break...wow, talk about world traveling and experiencing culture!

I never thought I'd look back once coming to Korea. The first week went by so fast, the week of training. When I think back, despite all the work and not getting out to see any of Seoul, this may have been the best week I had in Korea. There I was, taking a chance, doing something I never thought I'd do. I was about to have my first real-world job. I was going to get paid like an adult. I was going to do something worthwhile. I was going to do something that very few people in the grand scheme of things would ever do. The hope, the anxiety, the feeling of being free, the feeling of responsibility, the wonder, the fear...

My second night in Cheonan, exactly one week after touching down at ICN, was my worst night in Korea. My first night in Cheonan, I had stayed in a love motel with another co-worker, a cheap place that our bosses put up all the new teachers in while we wait for departing teachers to move out of their apartments. The hotel was in a grungy, red light-type district of the city and I wondered if Korea was really as conservative as I had heard.

After a night's sleep, I spent most of the next day at CDI, waiting for the teacher whose apartment I was moving into to leave. I finally moved in that night after running out of things to search for on the internet at work. I began to settle into my room. I accidentally plugged my computer into the wall without putting it through a transformer and fried it. No internet, no music, just a quiet apartment on the other side of the world. Dead silence. My phone was capable of calling the US for over two bucks/minute, but that wasn't really a good option. For the first time in my life, I felt lonely. I felt scared. I wondered what I had gotten myself in to. I felt isolated from everything I had ever known. I don't know if I ever told people that because I wanted to put up a strong front and say everything was great, but that second night in Cheonan was hell, about as low as it has ever been for me.

Things got better the next day, a co-worker and the husband of a co-worker came by in the afternoon, they were on their way to play some soccer and asked if I wanted to go. I was bored as hell, so I went and had a great time. They also told me how close many PC rooms were, so I could easily go to them and get back in touch with loved ones from back home. From there on, my time in Korea got better each day.

One of my co-workers made sure to invite me out to downtown Cheonan for drinks on the weekend and Wednesday night, which I had off for as long as I was there. I began to make friends and I quickly became comfortable teaching in front of a classroom. I wasn't a great teacher, I was nervous, too soft on the students, probably not prepping enough. The work environment was more relaxed than I had expected and I probably took a few too many liberties with how laid back it was. Still, though, I wasn't the worst teacher in the world either. Some students liked me, some students didn't. Most just saw me as a teacher from America. The way most teachers are probably looked at.

One student that I'll remember from my first term is Hailey. I would go on to have her in at least one class a week for three of my four terms, but she is one of those students that stands out, for better or worse. Her skills were above average for her level for the most part. She was a joy to have in class because she was the antithesis of most middle-school students; she was outgoing, talkative, and seemed to have fun in class, she wanted to learn. That said, I know some teachers that didn't like her because, well, she is VERY talkative. You'd almost always have to spend five minutes in class getting her to be quiet or answer questions that she asked, taking me on a tangent from the day's class material. She was the first student to write a "Handsome Joe Teacher" essay, more on those later.

"Superman" was the first Korean song I became obsessed with. I listened to it all of the time. My initial feeling upon coming to Korea was that I was Superman, able to leap countries in a single flight and do whatever I wanted to do.

Term II: March-May: Comfort
Love Generation by Bob Sinclair
Mike

My second term at CDI was really my coming out party. I wasn't the rookie teacher anymore. I had more confidence in myself and was beginning to really settle in. I had met more friends, really settled in with a good group of guys to hang out with. With respect to those I'm leaving out from everyone I met, I spent most of my time with Yun, Jay, Lee, Kevin and the girlfriends. There were beer pong games where I continued with the domination I had in the US (!) and I finally did some things that I had wanted to do since coming to Korea in the first place. I spent my first weekends in Seoul, I went to Busan. My best friends from back home will never be replaced, but that group was now my Korean best friends and life began to move along just like it had in the US for me. The only real difference was the whole language thing, which admittedly was a huge difference. But overall, I was comfortable, really comfortable.

I improved as a teacher. I spent more time preparing for class and the result in the classroom was obvious. I began to think that I could be someone that could win the Teacher of the Term Award, back when I thought it meant something to get it. In the end, there were no winners that term because everyone made at least one critical mistake somewhere along the line, obviously including myself, but again, I now had the confidence to go out and make Term III my best one yet.

When I came to Korea, I never thought I'd be there for more than a year. I was just going to go travel, do this, get some experience, some money, and then return to the US and begin my life. In my second term, I began to think that I really liked it there and I could see myself staying for a second year. I still had time to think about it, though, that decision was three months away.

For the first time in my life, I had my own pet. I waited for a little over a month to adopt a cat from a friend of mine, but when that never really happened, I went to the local animal shelter one weekend and adopted a fat white and black cat that I would eventually name Shades, due to the black on her face appearing like aviator sunglasses. She was a good kitty to have, made being at home fun. Turns out that I don't like having to clean out a litter box, but I did enjoy her company. Before I left, a friend of mine adopted and re-named her. I haven't checked in recently, but I assume she is doing well and being well taken care of, even better than I was probably doing!

I began doing more and more on weekends. The aforementioned trips to Seoul and Busan. More time with friends on the weekend. My e-mail updates back home, which had been weekly, sometimes every other week, began to go out once every three to five weeks as I never made the time to just sit down and type out all that I was up to. Those in constant e-mail contact with me can tell you that I was not very reliable in responding to personal e-mails either. I was living a completely different life from anything I ever had thought of before. It was different, but it was good.

The student I'll never forget from my second term is Mike. Oh, Mike. Mike, Mike, Mike. Everyone had a student like Mike in their class growing up. I had shades of him, but not to the extreme that he was. Mike was a naturally intelligent child. His English ability was very good for his level. He was new to CDI that term and I was his first teacher. He had questions. LOTS of questions. While his English skills were good and he had knowledge on the topics we discussed, his comments never made sense with what we were talking about. He would constantly raise his hand in the middle of my lecture to more or less repeat what I had just said. I would ask him a question about the material the class had just read, and he'd look at me and guess what HE thought about it, instead of telling me what the book told him (because he hadn't read it). Like said, he did know some information, but he had problems focusing on what he needed to do. He quickly became hated by other students in the class, some of which were very mean to him. I always did everything I could to protect him from the other students, but you can't always save someone who so willingly (though unintentionally) throws himself on top of grenades. I'll also always remember his mom, who brought me ice coffee from Starbucks all the time, along with a handful of cakes from Paris Baguette. I always felt bad for Mike when he didn't get an A on his work, though. He knew that not getting an A on his homework or test meant he would get beat when he went home. In Korea, that can be the standard. These kids even get hit in public schools for not doing their homework. The life of a child in Korea is so much different than the life we had growing up. Had I known what it was like in places like this in the world when I was a kid, I certainly wouldn't have bitched about my life. I'll always use that as a tool to tell my future American students about how good they have it.

"Love Generation" became one of my most played songs on itunes. "Don't worry about a thing, it's going to be alright....got the love, got the love" I was definitely not worried about life in Korea any more. I felt the 'love.' Everything was alright. I was definitely happy.

Term III: June-August: Confidence
I Don't Care by 2NE1
Susan/Steve

If Tern II was my coming out party, Term III was my masterpiece. Everything that got better from Term I to Term II improved that much more in Term III. I spent even more time prepping for class, I was a natural in front of the students. My confidence in my teaching ability was at an all-time high. My most hated student from my first term became one of my favorites. Susan, who I recall having these cold, black eyes of death just piercing through my soul every time she looked at me during that first term, had a whole new look. There was a glimmer in her eyes. She laughed at my jokes, she would even participate in class! She was still always late and almost never did her homework, still to the point where I was really shocked when she did complete it, but there was always a joke to be made about her homework status that she didn't loathe.

"Handsome Joe Teacher" essays began to come in for students that had to write A+ Hunter (detention) homework. They always had the choice of a one page paper on the topic of the day, or of the topic of my great looks (sic). Even if these papers were full of lies, it was easier for students to write that than the topics, but they gave me some good laughs, so I let them write them anyway.

My student survey results had become very good. My first term, I had lots of "boring" remarks for personality and overall average marks from them. Second term, less boring, but still some while I had students that either really liked me or really hated me. I'll never forget that Bridge Reading class on Tuesday from Term II. Those kids could be so frustrating and I probably let it show too much in my body language. I had to get on to them a lot and half the class just hated me. The other half thought I was great, but no teacher ever wants to have students hate them. That said, when some of those students found out who their teacher for the next term was, they all the sudden realized they were going to miss me.

Term III brought great remarks on the student surveys. Lots of funny for personality, only a handful of boring and most students gave me very good scores on teaching ability. It was one of many factors that led to me achieving my goal of Teacher of the Term. 5 months later, I see that the award doesn't mean as much as I thought it did at the time, but it's still a nice reward to have. So was the 200,000 won ($170) prize money, which per CDI tradition, went directly into drinks for all my co-teachers at the bars. I love that, regardless of who wins the award, everyone gets a little something from it. We're all teachers on the other side of the world from our loved ones, we all should get some free drinks from time to time.

I was having the time of my life overall. Teaching was going great. Friends were great. Weekends were great. Everything was great. Still, after a lot of thought, I had decided that I was going to return to the US after Term IV after all. I'd leave with fond memories, but no vacation time and the upcoming college football season were really pushing me back to the US. I was coming home, just had to get through three more months!

Steve was a fun student, he started in EC2, our lowest level, even though he could have started at least one level higher. He was definitely a Type A personality and he was the student that I joked around with the most. He was bright, always did his homework, studied and did well on his tests, and understood sarcasm, a lost trait on many Korean students. We would spend down minutes in class trading insults to each other, it was fun, we both enjoyed it.

"I Don't Care" doesn't really have any special lyrical significance to me. For one, save for the chorus, the entire song is in Korean and I have no idea what the girls of 2NE1 are saying. Actually, I do know that the song is a liberating song for a girl who was burned by her 'playboy' boyfriend, but as far as specifics go...I heard a "yoja chingu (girlfriend)" in there, so I know one of the Korean words. During my third term, this song was always played at the bars when we were out and it also had frequent spins on my itunes. I never knew I could listen to a song so many times when I didn't know what any of the words were. At least with "Superman", I mostly watched the youtube video which had English subtitles (which show that the song is actually a parody of Superman). With "I Don't Care," I guess I sat around, listening to a girl band's pop song and just didn't care what anyone else thought.

Term IV: September-November: No Regrets
Hey Ya (OutKast cover) by Obadiah Parker
John/Nicole

My fourth term ranks right up with Term III as far as my most interesting three months in Korea. Now, I was one of the senior teachers on the staff, fresh off that award that I felt so good about, and confident and eager to help out the new teachers who had arrived. Instead of following other, more experienced people around to bars, weekend trips, etc, I was one of those leading others around. I've never been a natural leader and I wasn't exactly excelling in that role in my fourth term, either. I only knew about 40 Korean words and I still hadn't mastered Seoul's subway system, though I would by the time I left.

I finally got the chance to teach high level classes. None had opened up for me in the first few terms as we didn't lose many teachers after my first and second term, but we lost some teachers that taught those levels after my third term and I had improved to the point where I could be trusted/rewarded with those classes. It's a badge of honor, more or less, to teach those courses. There were some real brats in that Eagle Reading class, but there were also some good eggs. John is a student that I'll remember fondly. He transferred out of the bigger Tuesday class full of girls to the Wednesday class, which had three boys in it. I could see signs of myself at that age in John. Shy around girls, not confident, but hard working, a kid that you enjoyed having in class.

As the weeks began to dwindle, I tried the best I could to go do the things that I had not done in my first 10 months. I finally went to the DMZ. I went to a soccer game at World Cup Stadium. I didn't get to any of the hot springs or climb any mountains. I didn't go snowboarding. But I'd like to try and not focus on what I didn't have and instead on what I did have. That was a life I was really enjoying in Korea. Much like I am right now in the US, with only a few weeks before my scheduled return trip to Korea, I wasn't wanting to give up what I had. I was happy and there was a lot more to accomplish. I was going to regret it if I didn't come back and give Korea another year of my life, just to see what would happen. Home would always be there, family and friends will always be waiting for me to come home, but if I went home to that after just one year, what would I be passing up? I went back to my motto, No Regrets. At the end of my third term/beginning of my fourth term, I had the phrase tattooed onto my arm because I believed in it so. No Regrets, I had to give it a shot. I went to my boss, told him I had changed my mind, and after taking a break, I wanted to come back. After about a week of negotiating, I was scheduled for a three month vacation and set to return the last week of February, 2010.

I was excited for future travels. On my three month vacation, I was going to Mexico City with co-workers from Korea for a week, followed shortly after that by a solo trip to Amsterdam. After relaxing in the US, I was going to go to Thailand on my way back to Korea. I was going to jump over to Japan for a week or weekend sometime in my year in Korea. After Korea, I was going to fly to Egypt to see the pyramids, then hop on down to Kenya to go on a safari. I felt that I was doing everything I wanted to do in life, everything was so perfect. I was so happy, I couldn't be contained.

I said temporary goodbyes to my co-workers on Monday, November 16th. I'll always remember that day, what was going on in my head, what was going on in my heart. Myriad emotions and I had no idea what to expect when I left. I stayed at CDI until they began a workshop and then I took off back to my friend's apartment to collect my things and head downtown to the bus station. As I boarded a bus from Cheonan to Incheon Airport, everything hit me. I was emotional. I had tears in my eyes, I was going to miss Cheonan and the people. So many great memories to think about, so much to look forward to when I returned. It had been such a great year, it had finished with very strong pro-Korea feelings. I was excited to go on vacation, but I was still upset to leave.

Nicole, who was great for me one term, then great when she wanted to be the next term, gave me two of her English story books as a parting gift. I did not tell the students I was coming back, but also stressed them not to give me any going away gifts. Still, a handful of students had things for me in our last class together. Inside of Nicole's book, she had written little notes in hard to find places and on the book's last page, asked the question, "How many memos did you find?" and included her e-mail address for me respond to. I haven't done it yet, but I will one day respond to her.

Hey Ya (cover) got many, many spins on itunes. "Thank God for Mom and Dad for sticking two together 'cause we don't know how." Over the course of the year, I had realized just how much my parents had sacrificed to get me to where I am today. I've had every opportunity to do what I want and it's all because of what they've done for me, I've had it so much better than so many people ever will. Really makes me hate how I acted sometimes when I was younger. "Shake it, shake shake ah shake it" - definitely did that. "If what they say that nothing is forever, then what makes, then what makes love the exception?" My time in Korea had been great, maybe I had fallen in love with it after all. I changed my mind from going home to coming back. I wasn't ready to start life in the US after all. I needed more time to experience other cultures and people from around the world. I had more to see and do in Korea, more traveling to do. My best shot at that was to keep on going as is in Korea. But as you'll see in Term V, love indeed is not forever.

Term V: Vacation
The Taste of Ink - The Used

"We get together, oh we get together, but separate's always better when there's feelings involved."

First, I'll continue on with the Hey Ya lyrics for my post Korea thoughts/transition. We is Korea and I. I went, I conquered, I experienced, I didn't regret. We got together for a year and it was arguably the best year of my life. I'd rank my experience in Korea right up there with the best things to ever happen to me. The decision to go was the best decision I've ever made and I learned a lot about myself, both good and bad. All the things I experienced that I never thought I would...it's just incredible when I think about it all. I haven't done much in the way of world traveling when compared to the others, but from my life in the flatness of south-central Illinois, the peaks of Korea's mountains were new heights for me. I was just beginning my ascent to everything I wanted to do and nothing could hold me back now.

I know the video is fake, but the "Where the Hell is Matt?" video on youtube is a personal favorite. I'd LOVE to do that. See every country, do something special, stand out. I fell in love with the song "Praan" that fits so perfectly with the video. I only went to one country while I was away for a year, but it was a way to experience a country in a much more thorough way than any vacation would ever allow. It is fitting that that very song began playing as I typed out that last paragraph. I've since added another Mexico experience to my resume along with the Netherlands, always a dream destination for me. But still, that feels so insignificant to me. Here I was, this kid from a small town in Southern Illinois, seeing the world. Seeing the world? I'm a novice. I've been to three countries other than the US, outside of connecting flights which don't count. I look up to one of the friends I made in Korea, Jay, for all of his world travels. He's been just about everywhere that I want to go already and he's currently spending a year traveling through South America. Last I heard, he was walking on volcanoes and swimming with sharks and dolphins and turtles. That's what I want to be doing. I want to go on an African Safari, I want to go to Antarctica because no one goes there, I want something unique to hold on to that separates me from others. I don't want to be lost in the shuffle.

About a month ago, I was approached about the possibility of cutting my vacation short to go back to Korea to replace a teacher who had a personal issue. I gave it a lot of thought. I collected as much information as possible from both Korea and here and told my boss what it would take to get me back early. In the end, we agreed that I should continue to enjoy my vacation. If he had given me what I wanted, I would be back in Korea right now, maybe.

I really began to look at the pros and cons harder around the time of that decision. I tried to decide if I still felt the personal attachment to Korea that I had when I left. As it turns out, things had changed. I wondered if I made the right decision. I made a very hasty decision to return, all of it in about a week's time. I probably let factors influence my decision that shouldn't have. I couldn't help it. I wish I could go back and give myself more time to think with a clear mind, with months to think about the decision instead of just a short week. My feelings tend to come and go a lot, so making hasty decisions is not a good idea for me.

"But separate's always better when there's feeling involved"

Distance can do crazy things to people. We long for what we're so far away from, while at the same time forgetting about it. Absence makes the heart grow fonder? I guess sometimes that's true, other times it's not. I wish I had been able to come home and decide while back here on whether or not I'd return to Korea, but as the nature of the business, that wasn't possible. I made the best decision I could with the information available to me at the time. I gauged how much I missed the USA vs. how much I wanted to be in Korea, then more importantly factored in that it was better financially for me to return to Korea, and my decision was made.

Now that I've been away from Korea, those thoughts and feelings have changed. Where I was once excited to return to Korea, I now cannot help but feel emotionally detached. There are parts of Korea that I want no part of, things that are so much better in the US. There are good people in both places, but now I have to ask myself...where do I feel the most comfortable? Right now, that is 90% USA. I'm not as confident that the money is better in Korea, so Korea really has two big strikes working against it. I was really struggling when making the decision about going back early, not just early, but to even go back at all. After talks with many people, I concluded that I was going through a normal phase that happens during absence from one place, seeing what it's like without, seeing what else is out there. I would feel better about it later and be happy once I got back, so man up and get it done.

But that's not something that is happening for me right now. I'm very uncomfortable with thoughts of returning to Korea right now. One of my co-workers from Term IV was new to Cheonan, coming in from a bigger, more fun area in Seoul. He was clearly having problems with the adjustment. He was bored, he didn't want to be there. He wanted to go home. Sometimes my emotions are hard to read, but when I'm really upset, I tend to wear my emotions on my sleeve pretty obviously (and do things like type 20 page essays on my emo-ness). I don't want to be like that. If I go back and feel miserable, what am I going to do? It will affect my teaching, making me less effective in the classroom and less enjoyable to the students. It will be obvious that I don't want to be there. It will be obvious when out in social situations that I'd rather be anywhere but there. I don't want to do that to myself, I don't want to do that to other people. I don't want to rain on their parade, get in the way of their enjoyment. I don't want them to worry about how I'm feeling, I want them to enjoy Korea and have the experience that I did. I won't get in their way.

It's not like I have anything set up here in the US that's a better job alternative to teaching at CDI. While I do have some concerns about another year there, the job is a good one and would allow me to pay off loans, save up for travels, etc. That said, I can't let money be the deciding factor. How I feel, where I'm comfortable has to be the deciding factor. People probably blocked my status updates on their news feed because 90% of recent status updates have been on the topic of me bitching about my current, temporary job. On one hand, I'd love to be finished with that job in two or three weeks. On the other hand, now that I'm trying to have a better mood going into work, it hasn't been so bad. I talk to people there more now, making some friends, etc. I won't always have to work 6 or 7 days a week, so it will get better.

I can continue to live at home for a while, which is free rent and near free food to save money. The job won't be forever and I handled it for three months the summer after my senior year of high school. At the latest, I can start something new in the fall, maybe move to Chicago like I'd like to eventually do and start teaching up there.

I'm kind of looking into full-time jobs in the US right now. Currently waiting to hear something about teaching in a tiny town next to my hometown, they might take me on without a teaching certificate while I go back to school to get it. I've been thinking about going to the police academy, becoming a state trooper. I wouldn't even rule out teaching ESL again somewhere, maybe South America, maybe Africa, maybe Thailand...hell, I could even go back to Korea. I wouldn't do that until later this year, or maybe even after Christmas, though.

What is all this? What's going on in my head right now about my future. I need to do one of two things this upcoming week. I either need to decide to stay in the US or buy a plane ticket to Korea. This long, long note is my way of getting all the thoughts out of my head, onto paper, hoping it will help. If I decided to stay in the US, I would feel horrible about backing out of my contract, letting down my boss and other teachers that would have to pick up the slack if a replacement cannot be immediately found. If any of you have been crazy enough to read this from beginning to end...1) get a life! :D 2) Thanks, I'll listen to any advice that you have, I could use it 3) Sorry for taking up so much of your time, but I do appreciate the effort you have given.

It seems like I've made a final decision on returning to Korea three or four times already, but here I am again; the Brett Favre of ESL teaching, a big attention whore, requesting, needing the spotlight. Well, I hope that's not what you think. I am torn, I really am. I really don't know what to do, what I should do. In the end, I will go with where I'll feel the most comfortable with both my immediate and long term future. There will be one more, this time for real, FINAL decision by next weekend.

Been a long time since my last update

2009-09-08T00:12:00.002-05:00

My bad, I'll get back on that soon...rant about Illini football some, etc.

In my world, just started week 2 of my final term (13 weeks) in Korea. Actually, I'm leaving at the end of week 12, so I only have just under 11 weeks left. I achieved my goal...winning teacher of the term for the last term...I'm going to get a nice cash bonus for that on Friday. Drinks are on me this weekend! Oh wait, this weekend is my birthday, so hopefully no drinks will be on me! :D

All things lookin' up here. Booking my trip to Amsterdam this week...not a complaint in the world, east or west hemisphere. Still lovin' it here while also lookin' forward to returning home for Thanksgiving to see everyone again. It's going to be an awesome close to 2009, one of the best years of my life.

Gun bai!

Joe

3-8

2009-03-14T16:17:00.001-05:00

Anyong!

Hana do, juseyo?

It's time that I stop slacking and send out another update to everyone.

Things have been busy here the past few weeks. The last week of term one was now three weeks ago. Each day I had to go in early for training sessions on the new format of all classes. The classes I had been trained in changed so I had to be completely re-trained on how to administer them. Then I also picked up two classes that I wasn't previously trained in, so I had to learn them.

We're getting new teachers for this term. One went home at the end of last term, which I mentioned in the last e-mail. One of the new teachers, Jonathan, is here now and just finished his first week. The next one, Alice, got here this weekend and starts on Monday. Their classes had to be on the schedule, though, which meant we had to fill in for them until they got here. The first two weeks, I had to teach Alice's classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 'morning' (4:30-7:30). While I did that, our sub-teachers taught my classes. If that sounds weird, it was done because they wanted the sub teachers to only teach one level, in this case EC4 while the CDI teachers covered the random classes. I didn't like doing this at first, but it turned out pretty well.

One of the classes I was teaching for her was EC2, the lowest level we offer at CDI. Now, the EC2 kids are not just beginners to the language...so it's not like I have to play charades when teaching...they know enough that we have a lesson and the skill lecture is on some of the easier English rules. I was really nervous before that, though, because my biggest area for improvement was to slow down my delivery. Considering the lowest level I had taught was Memory Mega (a reminder, EC2, EC3, EC4, Memory Mega, Giga, Tera, Reading/Listening-Bridge, Par, Birdie, Albatross are the levels in order...albatross being near fluent), it was going to be a challenge to drop down to the level where speaking slowly is imperative for their comprehension. Also, those kids can be the toughest to control because they are young and have so much energy. We teachers jokingly call them 'the little ankle-biters.' That said, the class has gone great. I was able to speak perfectly to their level and I had a lot of fun teaching them. It's so much easier when they really want to learn and it makes me feel good when I know they understand the skills I'm teaching them. They knew that I was only going to be their teacher for 2 weeks and many of them were sad to see me go. On their words-to-chunks review test on the week's second class, a few of them told me to pick their test up last because they wrote notes to me on the back. I wish I had taken a picture because I'll never forget the feeling when I read them. Their English of course isn't all that great yet, but the basic things they said were:

"Joe Teacher,
I don't want you to go.
I really like you as my teacher.
You have taught as a lot and you are very fun.
Please don't go"

Not going to lie, I was trying pretty hard not to tear up right there in front of the class. One of the greatest compliments I've ever had. The class that I was so nervous/challenged for turned out to go so well that the kids didn't want me to leave. Even the girls, who were at first excited that they'd be getting a female teacher, didn't want me to go. I also was going to miss them a lot. They had easily been one of my top 2 classes so far and I didn't want to lose them.

So...I went to talk to our principal (basically), Jeon. I told him about the notes that the kids wrote for me and how much I liked that class. (I also found out last night from one of the staff girls that some parents had called in saying their kid liked me and didn't want to get a new teacher) I asked if there was any way that I could keep the class and let Alice take the classes that would have been mine. I think Jeon probably doubted me more than I did about speaking slowly...he's always reminding me about it but I think he knew things were going well. He agreed to let me keep the class! That was great news that I received on Friday. Since the class is Monday-Wednesday, the kids do not even know that I'm going to continue being their teacher yet...so I'm really looking forward to seeing them on Monday and telling them that they get to keep me after all.

Unfortunately, the second class on Friday brought me back down to earth a little bit. This term, I have a class on Monday-Friday night (middle-school kids) that is Memory Mega. Mega is a low level course, so when middle-school kids are at this level, it becomes very difficult to teach. They don't want to talk/participate because it's not cool and their ability isn't very advanced. I end up talking even slower than I do to the EC2 kids, though I shouldn't have to because they are smarter than they act...they just don't want to do anything. They will even know the answer...and just sit there and not say anything...often times just playing dumb. This makes it very hard to get through all the material that we're supposed to do. Hell, on the first day, when trying to give them English names, they didn't even respond as I listed every English name I could think of. It's actually harder to give an English name than I thought...I run down a list of friend's names and them family names and then just anyone I can think of. I give them all the common names like Ryan, Andrew, Tim, David, etc. but none of those sound good to them. I end up with a class with Chelsea (a boy, despite me telling him that's a girl's name), Irene, Brown, etc. They have been by far my worst class at CDI. I used to look forward to the last class of the week because that was my favorite class last term...now the last class of the week just puts me in a bad mood.

So, there's the background on this class. Friday night was the typical class. Silence, playing dumb, we get behind on material. They don't want to work, no matter what kind of threats I give. I talk to my co-workers about how they handle these classes during our dinner break and usually the protocol is I send the worst students to the office to be lectured by Jeon about their expectations in the class room, etc. I come back from dinner break realizing that something has to be done. I have yet to send any kids to the office, even though some have deserved it. I have only had a few stern lectures to classes on how to behave, but after a few minutes of the usual playing dumb, I lecture them about how their attitudes are going to have to change. I move on to the next skill activity...listening/taking notes. Here, they listen to a short passage from the chapter that we read...no new material at all, it's the same thing they've been reading for the past hour and a half. After talking about notes, I have to call on a few of them to give me an oral summary using their notes. I call on one girl who usually is a bit of a problem, but she had some notes and did fairly well. I then call on the worst offender of playing dumb/not trying in class, Morgan. I ask him to give me his summary and he just sits there in silence for about 10-15 seconds. I move closer and ask him again to tell me anything about the passage he just heard. I see that he has no notes at all written down and he remains silent for another 10-15 seconds. I tell him he has 10 seconds to say ANYTHING...anything at all. He just continues to ignore me and look at his book. An example needs to be made in this class, so Morgan just became the example. I tell him if he's not even going to try, then quit wasting my time and his and get out of my class and talk to Jeon in the office. He looks up at me like I'm not serious, but I assure him that I want him to go to the office. He just continues to sit there despite me continuing to say he has to go to the office and talk to Jeon about why he doesn't even try in class. I open the door and tell him that I'm not starting class again until he leaves. This will usually get the student's attention and they'll leave...but he still wouldn't get up from his seat...and he still hasn't said a word. I keep talking to him for about a minute before Jeon walks into the classroom, likely hearing me talking to him since my door was open. I tell him what happens and then John tells him to go wait in his office and lectures the whole class for about 10 minutes. He leaves and we finish class with no further problems...the kids got the message.

Morgan doesn't return to class the last hour. The bell rings for everyone to go home. After all the kids left, Morgan walks back into the room. His eyes are bright red and he's still sniffling. He had been crying for probably the better part of 20 minutes with Jeon talking to him. Kids cry a lot, especially at the lower levels when they don't understand something. I hadn't had any criers yet, though, until this one. Education is taken very seriously over here and these kids know that they will be in big trouble at home if they don't do their work or get in trouble at school. Jeon puts a big scare into them, too. Morgan just comes up to me and says "Sorry teacher." I of course feel bad that he's been crying, but he really needed some kind of wake up call for this class to get any better. Someone had to be the example, he was the best option to be the example. I just patted him on the back and told him. "It's not that I don't like you..and I'm not trying to pick on you, but you have to try in class. It's really hard to teach when kids aren't even trying and there's no way that I can evaluate them and their progress if they are not putting any effort into it. I told him that all I want from him is to start trying in class and everything will be okay." I didn't have his respect before, but I think he now understands that I'm the boss in the classroom and if I say he has to do something, then he has to do it.

So, after all of that, I was in a bad mood. I was upset from that class going horribly for the 4th time in a row and the actions that had to happen for any hope of it getting better. Jeon talked to me and told me everything was alright, sometimes classes are just really hard. I was again feeling like I needed to fight back my own tears because I try so hard to be the teacher that the kids like and joke around with and it hurts me to discipline them. I'm better at acting out to get the kids involved and that has made most of my classes better, but this one has been really hard and I think Jeon understands that I'm trying my best and was just dealt a bad class. Most of those students are new and they're even worse than veteran middle-school classes because they don't know what's going on. Usually, the low-level middle-school classes are saved for teachers in their first term because even the staff knows they are horrible and difficult. Hopefully I won't have any more in my third term...maybe even get one of the advanced classes.

So, those are the good/bad of my term schedule. Last term, I had mostly memory level classes. This term, I have fewer of those. I have the aforementioned Mega class on Monday/Friday night. I have a tera class on Thursday night and another Mega on Friday morning, both of which I split with another teacher. Then I have one listening class, Bridge, on Thursday morning after having two last term. I now teach two Bridge reading classes on Tuesday. The Tuesday/Thursday reading/listening class is a pretty good one. Half the class is from a tera class that I had last term that leveled up. I'm not sure how a couple of the girls leveled up, but whatever. I'll try as hard as I can to bring them up to speed in that level. My other class is the EC2 class that I now get to keep. I again have Wednesday evening off, thankfully. I love having that time off...perfect way to get a rest in the middle of the week. So, like I said...the EC2 class is pretty good and the reading/listening combo is pretty good and the M/F mega is pretty bad...but the rest are right in line with what I've had so far. The reading class on Tuesday night can be pretty frustrating, though. There are a couple of good kids, but the room is packed with 16 kids and I have some troublemakers...two of them which got caught cheating on their review test this week. I can deal with them by sitting them on opposite corners of the room.

I am definitely spending more time preparing for classes now. I was not satisfied with my overall ratings by the students and know I can do better, so I'm trying harder to master the material before class starts. I need to remember that my job is to teach these kids, not show up and have fun with them for three hours a day, which maybe I was guilty of too often in the first term. I like it, though, I feel much smarter when I spend more time preparing and I think the confidence I have with the material allows me to act out a bit more which helps to engage the students more. So, I believe my teaching is getting better and I'll see those results at the end of the term. Hard work pays off and I need to remember that more often. Now that I have a term of experience under my belt and have seen the level up tests, I have a better idea of just how I need to advance the kids' skills and what things are more important than others during the lesson.

One of the kids in my reading/listening combo class brought me a cake this week. Well, I guess his mom technically brought it for me, but that was really nice. He's a kid that has a hard time paying attention in class. He's a good kid and really pretty smart, but I think he's a little ADD. He likes to raise his hand and comment though it gets frustrating because he'll go off on a tangent about something not too closely related to the material. I see the other kids roll their eyes when he starts talking (I usually give them an evil glare if I catch it) so I'm sure he doesn't have many friends, so I just try really hard to listen to what he says and offer a short comment while transitioning back to the required class material. The new structure has really added a lot of material to the class, so we have to hustle to get through everything (which makes the silent classes that much more frustrating because we lose so much time while they are sitting there and playing dumb...or if we have a kid like Mike that goes off on tangents). I think Mike likes me, though, and must have said something at home for his mother to bring in a cake for me. Or...she could just be trying to bribe me. I don't care, whatever gets me more cake. :) I had a similar kid last term, Edward, whose mom had him bring me a couple packages of a Korean snack.

In non-school news, you might remember me saying that the week where I sent the last update had been my best in Korea. Just a great week, lots of fun, lots of good things happening. It was definitely making me lean towards staying longer if those kinds of weeks continued. Then, the following week went to hell more or less. My best week was followed by my worst week here to bring me back down to earth a little bit. I'm not sure I can really pinpoint one or two reasons that made it so bad, but it was just not a good week. It was the first week of the new term, so I was going into work very early to prepare to teach the new classes and then I had some drama in my social life that I had to correct. For the most part, I've met a lot of good people but as my dad reminded me after that update, there will always be those with ulterior motives that you don't see immediately. Turns out he was right, again. Don't get me wrong, nothing serious or really bad happened, just some unfortunate events which will make me focus a bit more in the future. Things are starting to go well again now.

I just want to say it again, in case I haven't said it enough already, that no matter how well things are going here, I miss everyone from back home a lot. I have friends here, but none of them can replace those of you that I've shared many good and bad memories with over the past 5-10 years of my life. I also think I have maybe under appreciated just how much my family has done for me to get me where I am today and I hope to make that up to all of them when I return.

I forgot to mention in the last e-mail that if I do stay for a second year, that I will be asking for two weeks of vacation in my contract with a guarantee that I get to use one of them on the week surrounding Christmas '09. I do not want to miss two straight Christmas days and that would be the best time for me to see as many people as possible since most people will have time off work. I'll probably be there about 5 days, starting with the Monday of Christmas week. Someone had better be sure to get me tickets to the Braggin' Rights game because I'm also strategically planning my time in the US around that too! This waking up early in the morning or staying up really late at night to watch games is too frustrating...especially when the end result shows that I should have just stayed in bed like the Illini's game against Penn State (either of them). The bright side to my work schedule is that I should be able to watch just about the entire NCAA tournament without missing any time at work, though I will probably be sleep deprived those first two weekends. So, as I continue to update everyone from over here, I look forward to seeing everyone this Christmas!

...and if anyone can afford a plane ticket to Korea for a week/weekend, all of your food/drinks are on me while you're here ;)

Until then, take care and keep me updated on your lives!

2-20

2009-03-14T16:16:00.001-05:00

Anyong!

I am able to type out this update this morning/today because I actually got to bed at a decent hour last night. I had a lot of late nights this week doing nothing in particular and it finally caught up to me. I was beyond exhausted when I crashed at 11:17 last night. Usually I have some kind of mental block that tells me that I cannot go to bed before midnight, but I know that is something I will one day have to push up to about 10 PM at least if I plan on teaching in the US.

It has been a pretty eventful few weeks for me, but in a good way. These past two weeks have been arguably my best in the Republic. There have been some downs to go with the ups, but by and large the ups have a more lasting impression. I'll try to detail as many of those as possible here. I actually wrote a few things down this week so I'd remember them when it came time to type this e-mail up.

I had my first event of being carded over here when buying alcohol. It caught me off guard because I hadn't been carded at all, bar or store, over here. I think most would see a westerner and easily assume we are post-college grads here teaching. At least I haven't met any that have come here to study. On top of that, the drinking age is 19 which I think I clearly look older than. This happened at Lotte-Mart when I was buying my white russian supplies. The lady looked confused about something when scanning the kahlua. I had my wallet out to dig for money and after a minute she looked at my ARC and I guess then decided it was okay to sell me the liquor. I guess the birth date is on the ARC...I see numbers on there but none of them are my birthday though. Lots of Korean with a few numbers that are similar to a driver's license #. Oh well, whatever she saw must have been good enough.

Last Tuesday, I got up early and took the KTX to Daejeon to visit a friend and attend her graduation. While I knew I wouldn't be able to understand a single word of the event, I thought it would be cool to see a graduation over here. This definitely turned out to be one of the weirdest experiences for me over here, though. I met my friend outside the school and walked around with her and a few others for a while. I got many, many wide-eyed looks when walking around. I was the only white person there and it almost seemed like some had never seen one in person. Many girls would walk by and say 'hi' and when I said 'hi' back, they just giggled and ran away talking to their friends. Everyone kept asking Phoebe (my friend) if I was her boyfriend (I'm not) and mostly couldn't take their eyes off me. It definitely was a little uncomfortable but I said if she was okay with it, then I was too. During the ceremony, I just walked towards a corner of the gym to stand and watch. A few girls (I keep mentioning girls, it was an all-girls school) gave me a program that was all in Korean. I tried to look like I fit in as much as possible by looking at it for a while, pretending I could read it. Afterwards, I guess they like to throw flour and eggs at each other. I was dressed for work because I was going to be getting back just in time for parent teacher conferences, so I had to try pretty hard to avoid getting hit with something. I've said before that there are very few times in life where I have been a minority, but that was definitely the most out-of-place moment I've ever felt.

Speaking of parent teacher conferences, I have now done my first set on the teacher side! It wasn't too difficult. I had a list of four students whose parents (moms) were going to be coming by to talk to me via translator so I prepared reports on each student before hand. Only two of them showed up and they were two students that I liked, so it was pretty easy. We sat down in my room and I would talk about my notes for a minute or two, then wait for one of our staff members to translate, then repeat and/or answer any questions the parent had. It was over and done with fairly quickly, probably about 5 minutes for the first student and closer to 10 for the second whose mother had a lot of questions about how to improve her girl's ability.

Sticking on the school theme for a while, I had a meeting with our principal this week to discuss the results of student surveys from class that rated my teaching ability. I was pretty disappointed with my scores, but most of my bad ones were from my worst classes that really just don't care and don't want to be there. I think it's a little unfair, for students that don't care, to just mark me down. The effort is there on my part, but it's hard to have an entertaining class with kids that prefer to just sit there and do nothing for three hours. Things I need to work on are showing more energy/enthusiasm. Most of you know my personality, my emotions are usually pretty laid-back and even...I don't get too up or down in any situation. These kids really react to energy so I need to work on being more visual in that energy. Along those lines, I need to speak louder sometimes, which is more difficult than I anticipated. I will also need to continue to work on the speed of my delivery, especially since I have lower-level classes next term.

Today is the last day of term 1, so I guess that officially puts me here for 1/4 of a year. It has definitely gone better than I thought it would. I am sad to say goodbye to some of my classes as it looks like I probably won't have many repeat classes next term. Some of my students, I believe, will miss me while others, naturally, won't. In any case, after one term, I have a good idea of where I need to improve and get better. I also know things that I do which the kids like, so I will try to continue to do as much of those things as possible. Next term, I still have 27 hours with Wednesday evening off. The big difference, though, is the classes that I'm teaching. As you may or may not recall, I taught mostly 2nd level (memory English) classes this past term. Next term, I only have one Memory Mega (lowest of the three) class and then I have one split Tera class. That's down from one mega, two tera, and a split tera class. I will again teach one bridge listening class on Thursday while now I also will teach back to back bridge reading classes on Tuesday. I think this will mean that I will get many students from my bad listening class again, but this time in reading as most of them leveled up in listening and not reading. I will also now have one English Chip (the lowest level) class and a split EC class. These classes will be a challenge because I will have to work even harder on slowing down my delivery and collapsing my vocabulary.

I've had to go in early each day of this week for more training due to the class structure changes across the board for CDI. 1.5 hour training sessions before work haven't been much fun and frustrating since I just trained in a few of these 3 months ago. I do get a break today, though, as I do not have to go in for the workshop. Today's workshop is high-level reading which I currently do not teach. That said, these past few days have been much easier than usual. For the last day of class, we have a pizza party during the last hour of class where we watch a movie. All of that pizza is on me, so I've spent 75,000 on pizza the past two days and that will go up to about 110,000 after today's classes. I don't mind paying for the good classes, but the classes that sit there and make my life hell for three hours a day don't exactly get me in the mood to be all giving. I've now watched Harry Potter three times and will get to do it again twice today. I'd rather be watching Harry Potter than teaching the third hour of class, though, so I get a break. I brought in some of my own DVDs to show the kids...one of my classes voted to watch Ghostbusters which would have been a lot of fun, before I found out that my computer doesn't have a DVD drive.

Today is the last day at CDI for my co-worker, Steve ("Steve-uh" to many students). Other than Alan, whom I came here with at the same time, Steve has been the teacher I've hung out with the most. It's good that I've met some other friends recently so I'll continue to have groups of people to hang out with. Steve will be returning to Arkansas and his departure of course means many drinks will be had at a local watering hole tonight. I'm predicting another 5-6 AM taxi ride home.

I am looking forward to hanging out with my new friends in the future. They always have questions about life in the US and it's seemingly Korean nature to be very complimentary. It's almost hard not to be vain. The group I hang out with on Wednesday nights (Andrew, Sady, Hyun-A) all seem to think I'm handsome and like to tell me this every time they see me. I also heard "You look smart" for the first time in my life. It's been nice to be here and seemingly be respected and thought well of by everyone. I have no enemies or people who would only look to exploit me. I'm starting to learn a little more Korean though I have much to learn. I'm going to buy a couple of beginner workbooks and have some of them teach me the basics. In return, I teach them American slang. Juice, the bartender at Metro, loves to call his necklace 'bling' now that I've told him that's what his jewelry is. His wife brought in some chocolate covered strawberries one night last weekend and he gave one to me. He also always makes sure to pour a shot or two of bailey's in my guinness. Now that Steve is leaving, I think I'm becoming the new favorite westerner there by the bartenders. I'm learning the Korean words to a song, Superman by Norazo, that they dance to during their 'magic show.'

Let's see...otther things...it was Valentine's Day here this past weekend. In Korea, Valentine's Day means the women get things for the men. That said, the men get women gifts on White Day next month. They have love-related holidays on the 14th of every month in order to help boost the birth rate over here. I received Valentine's from my parents and aunt, which were much appreciated. :D I bought some candy for my kids and staff last week. I didn't do anything special, I just used the day to sit at home and relax. I received four packages on the same day last week and attempted to carry three boxes home after work. Food is heavier than I thought and I had to stop a time or two on the way back to rest. It was a good work out, though. I think I'm going to start going to a fitness club here with Andrew to work out. He prefers swimming, but I want to lift weights and run. It will be nice enough outside to run soon, though it snowed last night and today. I don't have good swimming stamina. I'm still at the weight I was when I came over here so at least I haven't gained any despite not really improving my body much yet.

Another new experience that I had this week was going to pay my bills. I went to my bank and they have a machine which scans the bills. I swipe my account book and it deducts the bills straight from there. I then go to the desk and get receipts for the bills. It's definitely different than the US way of paying bills. I still wire home about half of my pay-check each month to pay bills from back there and build a little savings. I do not even use the remaining half of my paychecks from here so I'll have a decent amount to wire back whenever I decide to return home. I sure hope the exchange rate gets better, though. I lose 300,000 from each paycheck by wiring money home...it's currently around 1400/1 USD. Steve wired money home for the first time yesterday and lost $6,000 USD from his year here. That's a painful pill to swallow.

That just about concludes all I have to say. I'll save a little more for a later update. As I mentioned above, things have gone really well this first term and that has led me to start thinking about staying for longer than a year. I highly doubt I stay more than 2 years, but there's closer to a 50/50 chance that I extend my contract for another year when that time comes. With the money I'm saving and the fun I'm having, it's something to think about. I still miss everyone from back home and I hate having to look around to find Illini games online, but those will still be there when I return. I have a long time before having to make the decision. I'll decide within a month or so after returning from Japan this summer. I have to let them know by the end of August to give them enough time to find a replacement for me. I'm just going to keep it on the back of my mind and see how things go at work for these next two terms and then negotiate what it would take to keep me here for a second year. In the meantime, I'm going to start working harder on learning the language which would make a second year more fun.

P.S. I recorded another video last week in a cafe in yawoori. Alan has started to date the woman who owns the place, which is cool. Nothing special at all in the video, just saying hi! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeW94NFS9Rs

Also, because it took me an hour to type this e-mail, I've become too lazy to spell check. Sorry for the mistakes.

Take care, hope everyone is doing well!

Joe

P.S. I'll leave you with a story that one of my friends from training e-mailed me. It's a story that I couldn't possibly have since I'm a male, so just a different look at an adjustment/funny experience that a westerner had over here.

Who knew that going to the bathroom could be so complicated.

First off, not all bathrooms in Korea have traditional toilets. Many have "squatters." They are sort of like urinals in the floor.... you drop your knickers and squat over the hole in the ground and do your thing. This is not easy when wearing slacks, tights and heels.... imagine the consequences of losing your balance.

Second, many apartments, including my own, dont have a shower stall. There is a flexible metal tube connecting a shower head to your sink. You turn a knob and water is redirected from your sink to the showerhead (which by the way is not high enough to actually act as a shower... it hits me about chest level). There is a drain in the middle of my bathroom floor. When I shower, everything gets wet.... walls, floor, sink, toilet, (toilet paper... if i forget to move it) etc. Since yours truly is often a moron, I regularly forget to turn back the knob. Several times a week, I go to wash my hands and whammo! I blast myself with water from the showerhead. Fun!

Recently, I went to the ladies room in a restaurant. After using the potty, I stood up and looked at the toilet... I wanted to flush, but I didnt know which button (all in Korean) to push. So, I chose the big important looking button. Whammo! This was NOT the flush button. It was the bidet! The toilet started blasting me with water. I jumped to the side, but it continued to spray massive amounts of water at the bathroom door... splattering everything, including me, in that bathroom stall. I frantically pushed other buttons, as water pooled around my feet. Mind you, this was not a gentle stream of water.... it could have been used as a pressure washer. Finally, God stopped laughing and turned off the bidet.

I shared these stories with mom. I told her I needed to learn at least enough Korean to operate a public toilet. She said, "Or, you can start wearing a raincoat." I am still chuckling.

A new video...

2009-02-08T10:34:00.001-06:00

Nothing special, just saying hi!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeW94NFS9Rs

2-3

2009-02-07T01:33:00.000-06:00

Anyong!

Some of you have been on my case that it has been quite a while since the last time I wrote home. Like usual, I probably won't cover all the reasons why in this e-mail because I'll surely forget half of the stuff I've done while I'm sitting here trying to remember it. I've been here for about three months now and it's crazy to think that I've already been here that long. That's potentially 25% of the time I'll be here! I feel like there is so much more that I have yet to see and do!

It's been pretty busy here the past few weeks. Last week was level-up testing for our students. Level-up tests are the most dominant statistic going into whether or not a kid moves up to the next level. They can do great in class for 13 weeks, but if they bomb the level up test, they're stuck. For the most part, they went as expected for my students, some doing better than I thought they would while some of my best students froze up and struggled. Neither they nor I will know the results until the end of next week and I'm probably just as anxious to find out as them. I kind of feel like a parent now since I've been around them for so long. I feel personally responsible for advancing their skills and will be happy for them when they move up and feel sad with them if they're stuck in their current level for another term.

The process is pretty much the same for all the students, with everyone being divided into two levels. All of my memory kids are in level one (tera being the highest level) and my listening kids are in level 2. They are tested in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Reading and listening are filled out by scantron so that is why I don't know how some of them have done. I grade the writing section while they take one or both of those sections and then grade the speaking on the fly. The speaking is the last component and the part where kids most often freeze up just because they are nervous. The teachers switch rooms and we bring them in one by one and ask them a question and they have 15 seconds to write notes, organize thoughts, then 45 seconds to respond. A couple of my par-listening girls didn't answer the question asked so even though they gave decent answers, probably won't level up because of it. I felt bad but I had to grade them the way we are told to.

We had last Monday and Tuesday off as part of a 4-day weekend for the Lunar New Year which most Asian countries go by as opposed to the Solar New Year you all celebrated while being hungover and watching bowl games back home. The lunar calender is shorter thus Koreans have different ages than us. Here in Korea, I'm 26 going on 27 this September instead of 24 going on 25. I thought about traveling around someplace but didn't really iron out plans with anyone so I spent the entire weekend in Cheonan catching up on rest. I failed in finding the motivation to send out this update last weekend. That weekend will be the most time I have off at once before my week long vacation this summer. I've narrowed my choices to spend that vacation to Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, and Australia (probably in that order). They have some traditional stuff and the New Year is definitely a family holiday that involves lots of eating...I hear 9 AM, noon, 3 PM, 6 PM are all just about full meals while the males start gravitating towards more and more soju as the day goes on. They have some traditional games they play and then a signature rice-pattie cake/soup they 'have to' eat in order to actually get a year older.

Anyway, I spent most of my weekend watching tv and movies. I went to see a couple of movies, Valkyrie (staff event for work) and Changling. You can probably guess, but the movies are in English with Korean subtitles. Part of Valkyrie actually had two sets of subtitles on the screen, German at the bottom and Korean on the right hand side. It was my first time in a Korean cinema and I'll probably start going more often on weekends.

One thing I really don't like about the way CDI does things is their holiday policy. We don't really get holidays off because we have to make them up with weekend hours. So, I had to teach the 4 classes I missed last Monday/Tuesday this past Saturday. So, I went into work at 9:30 and taught from 10:30-10:30. It was every bit as brutal as it sounds and I was pretty much brain dead the last few hours. The worst part was just having one day of recovery before getting right back at it yesterday. As a reward for staying quiet and working hard on level up tests, the teachers throw a pizza party for their students the last week of class. So, I will be buying pizza for about 60 kids here in a few weeks for the last hour or so of class while we watch a movie instead of the usual work. I really don't mind it as I've grown attached to these kids. I'll have to profile some of my favorites and not-so-favorites here soon before I get new students in a few weeks.

Another reason I've been busy lately is because of progress reports that we have to type up for each kid. It's just a paragraph or so for each student that discusses their grades, effort, attitude in class, etc. I'm about 4/5 of the way through mine, I have to finish it before Friday of this week. I'll probably finish up tomorrow evening during my time off. It has gotten pretty monotonous as sometimes it's like I'm typing the same thing over and over again.

As far as classes go, like I say each time, they get better all the time. The tera kids I have each Tuesday night had their best class with me tonight. It's so hard to get them to talk and participate, but we had our most relaxed and talkative class tonight. I finally found a little trick to get them to volunteer instead of having me just call on them throughout class. I'm going to test my method in the other tough class, bridge listening, on Thursday. What is it, you might wonder? Well, I jokingly said that if I had to call on one more person randomly, that person would have to get up and dance for 5 seconds before answering the question. I wouldn't have actually followed through on it though I gave my own example of a dance for them...they laughed and then all I had to do was act like I was about to call on someone for the last hour and a half of class before someone would volunteer!

I had a pretty long day today as I went up to Seoul this morning for a training meeting with my head instructor and another teacher. It was really only a head instructor/head instructor in training meeting, but they asked if I wanted to tag along since it was on the new memory format for next term and I've kind of become the go to memory English instructor here. I figured it'd look good to my bosses if I did so...I did. That meant getting up at 6:30 and taking a bus to Seoul (the KTX doesn't start running that early) for a meeting at 10. We had a 2.5 hour meeting and then we ducked out, grabbed Subway in Itaewon, and then took the KTX back to Cheonan in time to prep and start teaching tonight. It was another full day of CDI for me by the time I got off at 10:30. I am excited for the new format, though, I like it a lot more than the current model. It is a but frustrating, however, that I trained in a few levels just 3 months ago and now EVERYTHING is changing. The bright side is everyone is going to have to be re-trained so I'll probably pick up a few more levels that I otherwise would not have taught. I'm pretty comfortable in the middle levels right now but I'll welcome a new challenge of higher or lower level students.

I was partially delaying sending this update until I recorded another video to link and send home, but I have been lazy in doing that as well. I figure I'll give a video tour of my apartment and such here in Cheonan since I'm not sure when I'll next get to Seoul or other places around Korea. I was also waiting until I got a kitten so I could send pictures, but I still haven't picked him up yet. I've been so busy that I haven't been able to get away to Suwon to pick him up from my friend. So, instead of playing with a kitten, I've spent some free time playing a PS2 that one of my co-workers gave me since he's leaving here in a few weeks.

Aside from work, though, things are going well. I'm still getting more comfortable here in town and can find my way around a bit better. We went out for a co-workers birthday this past weekend and it was a pretty fun night. I beat an English couple in darts and watched a juggling bottle fire show thing. I'm also starting to befriend a few locals to help me with language and pointing out things to do. The owner of one bar, Metro, in Yawoori where foreigners like to congregate is nice and is now on name basis with me. I've only been in there a few times, but he has a good memory I guess. It's still nice to see a familiar face that remembers me when I go someplace, makes this place seem a little less foreign to me and every bit helps there.

We went out for a few drinks after work one night last week and while sitting there, a drunken older Korean guy came up to our table and bought us another round of beer and basically just said hi as that was about as far as his English went. Then a little bit later, a couple of other guys came over to chat with us for a while. While I have heard that will happen sometimes when Koreans want to practice their English, it was really the first time I'd experienced it.

My sleep patterns fluctuated a lot over the past few weeks. Two weeks ago, I went to bed anywhere from 5:30-8 AM on Sunday-Thursday nights and then at 9 AM Friday, Saturday, Sunday nights. Following that week, though, I was exhausted and fell back into a more regular pattern of ~ 2 AM bed times. I of course say that as it's approaching 4 AM tonight and I'm typing this out. I'll be going to bed as soon as I click send.

Speaking of clicking send and going to bed, that sounds like an awesome idea right now so I'm going to do that. I'm pakimchi right now.

Hope everyone has been doing well, don't forget to update me on your lives! If you don't hear from me before then, have a Happy Valentine's Day!

1-10

2009-01-10T15:22:00.001-06:00

Haseyo!

Sorry that it's been a while since the last update, but I got the last one out later than usual and there really hadn't been enough going on to warrant more blabbering from me so I waited until I had a little more to talk about.

My buddy/co-worker Alan and I have started filming videos with my camera to talk about life over here. We're aiming for it to be like a Discovery Channel thing...where they show you what it's like living around the world. We haven't gotten out to see much yet so we only have a few up right now, but we finally recorded a few more tonight in Seoul. It was the first time I'd made it back up there since training. We didn't get much time there as he had to work today and we didn't get on the KTX north until about 5 PM. It's a 40 minute train ride there with a few stops (2 hour drive) and about a 30 minute ride back. The last train leaves Seoul heading back at 10:30 so we didn't have time to do much, just looked around a bit and ate at a Middle Eastern restaurant. I had hommos and minced lamb...first time I'd ever eaten that kind of food before but it was really good. We almost missed the place as he saw it on the cab ride into Itaewon-dong. Itaewon is the area of Seoul most friendly to westerners and really all foreign folk. Our cab driver from there back to the KTX station tonight actually spoke English! We hope to document more of the troubles of not knowing the language in the future, but for now just some short updates on what we've been up to. The link to my video is the post script to this e-mail. I'll let you guys know when there are more online, but for now you can click over to the other three (all of Alan talking) on the right hand side of the link I'm giving you. I'm sure most of you are familiar with youtube, so further explanation isn't really necessary. If you have any problems, let me know and I'll just e-mail the videos.

For further talk on Itaewon, though, it was nice. We didn't even get off the one block we were in. We first took a cab to Sincheon-dong looking for a particular bar we had heard about, but our directions weren't very good so we didn't find it. We just got a beer at Blue Moon in the Sky bar which was on the 9th floor of its building and had a nice view over other parts of Seoul. I can't wait to get up there during the day and get pictures/video from Seoul Tower...would really be a great view over the city. From Sincheon, we took a cab to Itaewon where we spent about an hour or so before getting back to the KTX. We're looking to return next weekend and probably stay overnight someplace so we can see a bit more and enjoy a few more drinks. I only had one Leffe Brune on the evening. :(

It's kind of funny that for a country that produces piss-poor beer, they have very good selection for imports. They have all of my favorite beers from Belgium (my favorite beer-making country) and lots of quality selections from elsewhere. From the US, you can usually only find Budweiser, Heineken (is that actually a US beer?), and most of the time Miller. One place had Ice House though...I don't know what was up with that. Staying on the alcohol topic, I found a brand of soju one night this past week that as horrible. I tried the second bottle to the left at the Sun Mart outside my apartment and I'll never make that mistake again. I'll just go back to the one on the far left that I like. The stuff I had the other night was worse tasting than rubbing alcohol (and really the closest thing I can think of to honestly compare it to).

I'm a bit more at home now as I purchased a microwave a few days ago. Cooking had been a little inconvenient because I always tried to figure out exactly how much I would eat without making too little or too much because work was the only place that I could warm stuff up at. I usually am not awake in time to cook lunch, so that means I really only cook on weekends. Having a microwave at home now makes things easier. It was a bit of a problem when I bought it, however, as I did so in my first trip to Home Plus here in Cheonan. I was in one in Suwon a few weeks ago, but I didn't buy anything then. There are four levels to this place and you have to pay before leaving each level, so I spent about two hours in there and all I bought was a pair of gloves, a few groceries, and the microwave. I then began searching for how to leave and drop off my shopping cart. I wen to the lowest level but that turned out to be the parking garage...and I couldn't figure out how to get back upstairs. I decided to leave my cart there and just walk out of the garage to the street...which sucked because I was carrying this big, heavy microwave and trying to balance a couple bags of stuff on top of it. I walked up the twising exit and then a few blocks around the outside until I got back to the front where I flagged a cab for the ride home. My arms were screaming at me by the time it was done, but it was a good workout at least.

One difference at shopping places here is that you have to (temporarily) pay for using a cart. You have to put in a 100 coin to release it from its lock to push around. There are flat escalators inbetween floors that are magnetic, so they lock the cart down as you go up and down them. You get the 100 coin back when you turn in the cart. The first time I used one, I easily got the coin back. This week, however, I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to get it back. It wasn't a big deal since that is pretty much the equivalent to a nickel back home, but it just added to the ordeal that was my Home Plus shopping experience that night.

Back to the food topic for a minute, I had some porridge from a place just downstairs and outside from my school the other day. The menu has the selections in English as well as Korean. I had a beef and mushroom porridge that was really good. I can't wait to eat there again and try some different kinds.

I really need to get a better handle on my par level listening class. It's me with 6 little girls and they love to tease me. They're always so happy and fun to teach for the most part, but they also are never quiet and it leads to problems in getting through all the material. It's hard to raise my voice to them or punish them, but I know I'll have to if I'm ever going to teach them everything they need to know for their level up tests later this month.

My other classes are still going well. Memory is just second-nature by now and the other listening class is slowly improving. I still struggle with the bridge listening because of one girl, Susan, who honestly scares the crap out of me. She has these dark, dark black eyes of death and whenever she looks up at me I feel there is nothing more in the world she wants other than for me to suffer a long, painful death. She has a big future in horror movies like The Grudge and The Ring, however, so at least she's got that going for her. Leah hasn't had the past few Illini scores, but I think she's going to have the Illini score for today's game against Indiana on Monday.

I had my first problem with being unprepared for class last Friday. I started my par level listening class realizing that I had forgotten my teacher's books at home. Too late to go get them so I had to wing the first two hours until I got to our other book which I had two copies of. The students never knew, even though one girl found it strange that I wanted to take a closer look at her book while they were taking review tests. I was scared but never heard anything from the bosses so I must have done well enough to make them believe nothing was out of the ordinary...or maybe they just expect bad teaching from me...I don't know. :) I'll make sure I don't get into a bad situation like that again.

I'm going to have a new cuddle-buddy here in the next week or two, his name is Clark. It was George when I met him, but he doesn't really respond to his name anyway so it's not going to matter when I rename him (probably Soju Boy). He's no more than a 4 month old kitten and we hit it off the one time we met. A friend of mine is having to get rid of her pets and I'm volunteering to take care of him. He's the least graceful cat ever and his pur sounds more like a tiger's wheeze that just gets louder each time you pet him, but I'm going to love him anyway. The next time he walks in a straight line for more than 3 steps will be the first. I've been pretty excited at the thought of getting him the past few days when I thought I was going to get him this weekend. The only problem is I'm going to have to have his favorite treat imported from the US since he hasn't cared much for the Korean kinds.

I really need to start keeping notes of what I do each week...I know there is more to say but I cannot think of them as I sit here and do this from memory. Maybe I'll remember for the next time.

In the mean time, take care and have a good weekend!

Joe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti96xgfCbqc&feature=channel_page

12-30

2008-12-31T11:55:00.000-06:00

Annyong haseyo!

Took me a bit longer to get to this week's update, last week was pretty busy over here. I know you all were busy over the holidays as well, I hope everyone had a great one and had/are currently enjoying a pleasant break!

Not going to lie, while I had a great time this past week, it was tough being away from home last week. Three events that I've looked forward to over the past few years came and went without me in attendance. First was the Braggin' Rights game in St. Louis where the Illini continued their domination over Missouri. Second was of course Christmas and its eve. Lastly was the annual Salem barcrawl with my friends that takes place in the days surrounding Christmas. I spent Christmas day with people I had known for less than a month, actually less than a week instead of with family and friends that I've known for years. I can talk all day about having fun over here, but I still would have preferred to be with you all this past week. I'm looking forward to catching up with everyone at this time next year!

It was a very good week at work. My listening classes continue to improve as I get better with the class structure. I'm now having the problem of getting to everything in a timely manor instead of worrying about finishing class too quickly. I have my last training workshop of the term tomorrow, where I will sit down with the head instructor and go over some of my teaching tapes to discuss my strengths and weaknesses. I haven't watched myself teaching on tape yet, so it will be interesting. I'd like to think I already know what will be discussed, but there is a reason for this ongoing training...to fine tune all the aspects of my teaching ability. I joked around a lot with my students this past week, I think a continuing sign that we're getting comfortable around each other. Also, though it was awkward, I couldn't help but laugh when a couple of my students called me handsome and cute on Friday! Last week was the final week for the first books we covered in memory English classes (Hamlet and Journey to the Center of the Earth). This week we started The Day of the Purple Cow and A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's funny to see these kids avoid the topic of love when it was mentioned in the latter...then they tried to get details of my personal life out of me without any success. They like to joke about 'Joe Teacher going to night clubs with girlfriends.'

On Christmas day, I jumped on a train and went to visit a new friend in Suwon. Believe it or not, it was the first time in my life that I had been on a train. I have of course been on the El in Chicago and the metro-link in St. Louis, but never an actual train. It was a bit of an ordeal to get to the train station, get a ticket, and make sure I was on the right train...but now that I've done it once I have confidence that I can do it again. I took the subway system back to Cheonan the next afternoon in time for work. The train took 40 minutes, the subway took an hour. A KTX train, one of the fastest trains in the world, would have taken less than 30 minutes. I'll be getting on that on the 10th of January for my first trip to Seoul for an overnight venture with my co-workers. We're going to the area of Seoul that has the most English-speakers. Plan is to start at a bar that offers all you can eat and drink in three hours for ~$25. I'm definitely going to get my money's worth!

I didn't get the usual Friday evening e-mail out this past week due to having to get up early on Saturday to teach. We did get Christmas day off, but had to make it up Saturday morning. It made the weekend feel really short...I would have preferred to have worked on Christmas day in favor of a two-day weekend, but oh well...it's done now. Saturday night turned into a crazy affair of soju and beer pong at a co-workers apartment. Probably my 'wildest' night over here so far..actually it was by far which speaks volumes for how much has changed for me since my college days. I might just be growing up after all. ...okay, maybe not. :)

I forgot the term for it, but I learned that Koreans are just about shocked that someone (American) actually goes for drinks without eating something with it. Every bar has food and it's available all night. They just cannot comprehend it. Even if you say you don't need/want any, they will get up and buy you food to eat with the drinks. They are definitely light weights in regards to American drinking prowess, but it's just one of those cultural differences that I've learned about.

I woke up at 3 AM this morning to watch/listen to the Bears game as well as the Illini game. That said, I also went to bed at 7:30 PM last night, which is the earliest I have been to bed since...probably when I was in diapers. I would have been better served staying in bed. The Illini won despite playing poorly (Leah had the scores for this morning's game as well as the Mizzou game for 20 CDI points...another girl, Alice, had the score for the Mizzou game for 10) and the Bears choked away a golden opportunity. What a craptacular ending to my football teams' seasons. Both the Illini and da bears didn't accomplish what they should have. I am looking forward to watching the big bowl games coming up. One of my co-workers is a big Southern Cal fan, so I'm going to represent the Big 10 against him with their matchup against Penn State in the Rose Bowl.

While I've certainly had some interesting injuries over the past few years, at least I haven't broken a nose by running into a glass door that I thought was open. I met someone who did that a few weeks ago on Saturday night. Crazy injury stories are fun. I still have a leg up on most though, I believe. I'm half-amazed that I've gone 6 weeks here without anything happening (*knocks on wood*).

Before the games this morning, I ran next door to the Sun Mart to get some sprite and nachos for game viewing. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to purchase them because the guy manning the store was passed out behind the counter. I tried raising my voice nearly to the point of yelling (EXCUSE ME!) to get him to wake up. I tried ringing the bell on the door loudly for a few seconds...all to no avail. I then had the moral dilemma of just walking out with my supplies or going down the street to the other convenient store, which doesn't have sprite. I had to settle for orange fanta instead of sprite. :(

I did some cleaning of the apartment on Sunday. I'm glad for the hardwood floor so I don't have to vacuum...makes it much easier to clean up after my shedding, which apparently I do more of than I thought.

I'm frustrated that I have an important package stuck in customs right now, but at least that isn't as bad as my co-worker J who had his luggage sent to Cairo instead of Seoul on his return flight connection in France (departing from London) this past weekend.

A guy I met Saturday night (also named Joe) is leaving in a month or so and is trying to sell me his scooter. It's a reasonable price and you don't have to have a driver's license to ride it. I've always said that I'd never ride a scooter or motorcycle, but it would be a good way to get around over here and see things that are not within walking distance (like the temples in the mountains). I might have to see if he'll accept half payment next month and a wire transfer for the remainder in February. The chances of me doing that, however, are probably less than 20%.

I'll try to have New Year's resolutions in the next update. Until then, I hope everyone has a safe holiday this week. Be crazy, but be safe!

Have a joeun day!

Joe

Update 6

2008-12-20T01:23:00.001-06:00

Annyong haseyo!

Another week has come and flown by here. I finally pushed myself to get to downtown Cheonan-city last weekend and ended up with just about everything I could have hoped for. I picked up a friend that I met during training at the train station and then met a co-worker to take a bus to Yarri (downtown) which took about 20 minutes and cost 1,100. A cab would have cost about 7,000. I wanted to take more pictures of the area, but we were running late to meet others and were rushed to get to our first bar. A guy who has been here for a while was having his last night on the town before moving back home.

The theme of the night was "hand-cuff barcrawl." The basic premise of this was that you were forced to tape yourself to a partner (selected by random drawing) and then you were with that person for the rest of the night. When they got another drink, you had to get another one. When they went to the restroom, you had to go with them, etc. I had never done something like that before and it led to some funny moments as you might imagine. The theme didn't last the entire night, which is probably a good thing. Most gave up after the first two or three bars. I changed partners at each bar, taking my restroom breaks in between new tapings. I also decided to just drink at my own pace after the third bar. The barcrawl started at 10 PM and I got in a cab to head home at 6 AM. Needless to say, it was a long night. It was like a full day of tailgating without a three hour break to go in and watch the game (and sadly of course without cookie shots). You can probably guess how I felt the next morning/afternoon when I woke up.

I hope to go downtown again tonight to get more pictures and have a more relaxed evening out.

Currently, it's Saturday afternoon and I'm at work. We have some extra courses that are offered to students. We go over full novels instead of the abridged versions that we have during the week. Depending on the level, the options are Robin Hood, Peter Pan, Harry Potter, The Golden Compass, Call of the Wild, and Lord of the Flies. I'm at the Harry Potter/Golden Compass level and have read the Harry Potter series, so it would be fun to teach it. That said, I am lucky enough to be the standby instructor today, meaning I get to go home after an hour if not enough kids show up for more than one class. In the meantime, I get paid time and a half to sit on the computer and e-mail you all! I don't think there were more than a handful of kids in the class that started at 1, so it looks like I'll be safe to go home here in a half hour.

I'm planning to run some errands and possibly get a haircut this afternoon. It's strange to cut my hair before it's even long enough to curl as in college I fell into the habit of cutting my hair short and then letting it grow until it was in my eyes or even longer on some occasions. I think my whole family noticed and hated it as I didn't chop anything off for 2.5 years. I even once went to a family reunion and the only people there that recognized me were my grandmother and one cousin!e I sometimes think about the longer hair when I see some of my kids in class with the long, shaggy hair.

This week had some good and bad elements to it. It was good in that it was probably my best overall week of teaching. I get more comfortable each week realizing what I need to be doing in order to help the kids out. I notice them trusting me more and more and in some cases respecting my authority more and more...not that I'm trying to go on a power-trip or anything because I'm probably the 'easiest' teacher in the building. I mean that because I probably let more slide (in discipline) than other teachers and I probably also give out more CDI points. That girl I mentioned from last week came up to double-check with me before leaving class on Thursday that the Illini had a game coming up soon!

It was also good in that my listening classes went better than usual. This week was practice level up tests so the first two hours of the class were consumed by taking it and then reviewing it. The last hour was really easy in doing two different listening activities which can easily last 30 minutes without much effort. My Par listening class is a bit of a struggle because there are only 3 students in the class now. I think one kid dropped from CDI and the other transferred to another class, leaving me with three. It can be hard to hold their attention because one the girls, Wendy, is just a non-stop giggler. She's one of those people that you hate to raise your voice to because she's just always in a great mood, laughing, smiling, etc...but sometimes I have to when she begins to distract me or the other two students.

This week was also good because I got a lot better in my weakest aspect of the memory classes, which is the topic dicussion review that happens during the week's second class. The first class, the first half hour is taken up by a review test from the previous week's material. The second day, we have an activity where I play an mp3 of a student's mobile-learning summary (they have to call in once a week with a prepared script and talk about a certain topic..like their favorite food) and give a couple of reasons as to why. I play that, the class takes notes, then we review their listening skills/note-taking ability. It sounds simple, but I was having some problems making it last a full 20 minutes. I did a much better job of that this week.

This week was not so good because I've been battling a cold. It started last Friday and undoubtedly got worse with my late night on Saturday. Monday was pretty miserable...talk for 30 seconds, cough for 5-10 seconds, repeat for 3 hours while also blowing my nose every 10 minutes or so. Tuesday I felt a little better, but it was more of the same. By Wednesday, things had started to clear up some and then it got even better on Thursday and more so on Friday. On Friday, I didn't cough at all during classes, but had some in the morning and evening. Still having a runny nose, but not quite as bad. The cough syrup I bought tastes just about like actual syrup...I've had worse, but certainly had better.

I'll conclude this week's update with some Illini notes...

Congrats to the women's volleyball team on their Sweet 16 run in Coach Hardin's final season. They ran into a more experienced, talented California team and went down in straight sets. They exceeded expectations this season because they were so young. Next season, they should be even better as they return all of their young talent while losing only a couple of role-playing seniors and replace them with another good recruiting class next season. They should be amongst the top 10-15 teams in the country next season.

Also, men's basketball returns to action on Saturday against Detroit at the Assembly Hall. All eyes will be on Alex Legion, playing in his first game since his transfer from Kentucky last winter. He was a top 30 recruit a season ago and just didn't fit in well with Kentucky's Coach Gillispie (a former Illinois assistant under Bill Self, for those that don't remember). Legion is known for his scoring and the Illini could use some more firepower. It should free up more looks for guys like Trent Meacham. He'll be brought along slowly to not disrupt the chemistry developed by the team in their 9-1 start. The Illini also added to the future talent in the program by securing a verbal commitment from the top PG in the state for the class of 2011, Tracy Abrams. He's one of the key pieces to what looks like the best class of Illinois talent since 1979 (Isiah Thomas, etc). He'll be one of the top 30-40 players in the country by his senior year of high school.

Finally, the annual Braggin' Rights game against Missouri is next week and it should be a great game. The games are usually very close with a number of upsets over the years and this is the most even the squads have been since the early Quin Snyder years at Mizzou. Illinois has won the last 8 games in the series, equaling their 8-game win-streak from 1983-1990. The Illini have won 19 of the 27 contests between the two schools. This will be the first time I have not been in attendance for the Braggin' Rights game since my first game in 2003. I hope those of you going cheer extra loud and have an extra drink at Houlihans for me!

Hope everyone has a sung tan chuk ha,

Josep

Update 5

2008-12-20T01:22:00.001-06:00

Annyong haseyo,

Wow, another week has just flown by over here. This could potentially be the best week here yet. While I got paid on the 5th for one week of work, I didn't actually collect on that until yesterday because the $ was deposited into a co-workers account who then gave me the cash from an ATM. He is heading out of the country for a few weeks, so he just got the chance to get it to me yesterday. I was quite happy to collect that paycheck and it will only be 1/4 of what I'll get on 1-5.

I continue to get more comfortable in front of class, am remembering more students names, etc. It's even more fun when they now come up to me to talk, goof around before class like I saw them do with other instructors in previous weeks. I hate to say I'm developing favorite and not-so-favorite students, but I think that's the nature of the beast. So long as I don't let that show in class, I don't think it's such a bad thing. Even saying that, my least favorite kid from the first week of classes pleasantly surprised me this past week and was a really good student.

I think I mentioned before that I didn't like my intensive listening classes as much as my memory classes, but the listening classes were better this week. I still have a ways to go before I feel very comfortable with them, but I at least saw improvements this week. I came into this week expecting to work the next three Saturdays, including tomorrow, but turns out I won't have to work tomorrow. I will have to work the next two, however. I will at least be a stand-by teacher next Saturday for extra classes and the following Saturday I will be around for the extra classes plus make-up classes for the day we'll get off for America's Christmas. I'd almost rather work on December 25th and have a full weekend off, but it doesn't really matter I suppose. We will possibly get four days in a row off for the Chinese New Year, but the downside to that is two 12-hour days that week to make up for classes missed on the off-days. There is no break in classes or terms here...four 13-week terms year round. I think I'll much enjoy the teaching schedule in America more when I return, giving me summers off to travel and start up a DJ business to keep me busy/bring in extra income.

Went out for a few drinks and pool tonight after work with a few of the co-workers. I'm really not good at pool, wish I had some bags boards over here! It was still fun, though. Tomorrow night will be the first time I really get out and explore the downtown area of the city. I have a friend I met during training coming to visit as well so it should be a really fun weekend.

I love having legal torrent downloading over here. I'm catching up on all the tv shows that I decided I was too busy to watch back in the states. I'm on season 2 of The Office right now and plan to move on to Weeds, The Sopranos, and Entourage after that. Any other recommendations would be welcome!

I got a local cell phone over here this past week. After having a nice, full keypad for texting back home, now I have to get used to the old system of three letters per number again. I have no English instructions with this phone, so it's really just trial and error right now. Luckily, I don't need to use a phone very often.

I realized this week how much I love living by myself. I mean this with absolutely no offense to my past roommates who are reading this e-mail because you know I have love for you all, but this is just awesome. I love being responsible for everything that happens in this place with no potential to shift blame here or there. It's quiet when I want it to be quiet, clean when I want it to be, and just having as much time as I want to myself. I continue to surprise myself with what I can do when I try to do things on my own.

I'm trying to spread the Illini nation even more while being over here. I have the Illini men's basketball schedule up in the room here at school and have a thing with my students after taking attendance and before getting started with the lesson. I remind them that the Illini played the night/morning before and ask if anyone knows the score. If they do, they can write it down and hand it in for a possible 10 CDI point bonus (that they can trade in for small time stuff like candy or save up for bigger stuff like mp3 players and bikes). My best students get about 40-50 CDI points per class for completing their homework and actively participating in class, so 10 points isn't much considering none of the other teachers have anything like this. The kids have now started clapping when I write scores like Illinois 89, Chicago State 50 on the board. It's not important that I mention how terrible Chicago State is. I even have girls who have probably never even seen a basketball writing down the dates of the next game so they can look it up at home. I noticed one young girl, Leah, doing that the other day and it just made me smile. She's a quiet little girl who is very intelligent and always volunteers as much as anyone else in the class. She stayed for a few moments after class on Wednesday to copy down the next few game dates from the schedule. Also, another kid asked me where Michael Jordan played in the NBA tonight...I was happy to offer him details.

I developed into a late nighter this past week. My average bed time was in between 3 and 4 AM, usually rolling out of bed in between 1 and 2 PM. A second shift job is a lot of fun when everyone else I know and would hang out with has the exact same schedule. It also makes for more potential on weekend nights. This weekend, as I mentioned above, will really be my first experience with that though. It's currently 2:50 AM here and I'm just beginning to get tired. That is of course almost noon back in the states. The problem will be getting up at 9 AM on Sunday to get ready for church. All that said, I have been getting up for a short time around 8 AM for all of this past week because there is some really loud construction going on right outside my window. It seems they enjoy doing the loudest, most obnoxious things in between 8 and 10 AM...grr. I may have to have a few inaudible words with them someday. I think it would have been a quieter morning on Thursday had I let them hammer nails or whatever straight into my head.

A funny moment from class earlier this week. After one of our 5 minute breaks, a kid, Mikey, asked if I had been drinking? Not sure if it was the correct response, but the first thing that came into my head was "What, today?" Apparently the only time a Korean face gets red is when they've been drinking. I think I was feeling a little warm because I wore a sweater to work.

I think that's enough for now. I now I'm leaving out a few things, but I can't remember everything off the top of my head. I really need to work on just adding to a draft throughout the week.

Peace, Love, and Annyonghi jumushipsiyo,

PS - Hope everyone in central-northern Illinois is enjoying the snow. ;)

Update 4

2008-12-20T01:21:00.000-06:00

Hello all, I hope everyone is experiencing a pleasant beginning to the Holiday season!

I want to begin with some random notes.

I had my first two slices of pizza in weeks on Tuesday night during break time at work. It left a lot to be desired, but it was pizza. One of my co-workers ordered from a place called Pizza Gut. Interesting name to say the least. The only pizza-esque things I'd had before then were these little hot pocket-like things that one can get at the convenient shop nearest my work building. A hot pocket with shrimp in it is 'interesting.'

How common is it in the US for cars to have a TV/DVD set up on the front dash? Maybe it's just me, but I find that scary and a huge distraction. I can somewhat understand taxis having them because they probably spend some time sitting around waiting for a fare, but I've seen it in a lot of vehicles over here. Just another reason why I'd never feel comfortable driving here. Getting a driver's license is much more of an ordeal over here. The total process costs about $3K...it's quite an investment. Getting a driver's license is almost like a statement that says "my family has money." A co-worker of mine has an international driver's license (he said that costs about $60 in the states) so one of these weekends, probably early next year, we're going to rent a car and go exploring the mountains in the area. I can't wait to go hiking, honestly. There are a lot of cars here, especially in the major cities, but public transportation is much bigger here than in the states. The cities are built without sprawl, which is nice. A lot of US cities could take note of this. I hope to be much less dependent on driving wherever I end up living when I return.

Maybe I should give my students less creativity sometimes...at the end of class on, we have a section where the kids basically get to ad-lib words into the blanks in sentences that I give them. It's an activity that is supposed to help them think of vocabulary they already know and use it in a story. In my Wednesday class, I had a few kids talk about their friends and dogs being terrorists and being in Al-Qaeda. I was almost surprised they (ages ~ 10) knew what Al-Qaeda was. It was all in joking of course because they're supposed to have fun with the activity...but really, Al-Qaeda is what they come up with?

I thought I had more random thoughts, but I guess I don't.

I went out for a few beers on Thursday night with a friend I've met over here. I work with his wife and they go to an (English-speaking) church that has holiday functions for foreigners. I got here too late to get involved with the Thanksgiving meal(s), but will have a place to have a Christmas potluck. Since I can't really cook, he's making sure I get on the drinks list. He is coordinating it, so that's why he has that power. I am not sure if I'll start getting up on Sunday morning to go to church or not, but it will be something I consider if for no other reason than to meet other English-speaking people. All of my co-workers have been great, but one of my goals in coming over here was to meet as many people with as many different backgrounds as possible, learn about life all over the world, etc. It seems like a good situation that I should get myself involved with. We talked about how I should use my vacation time since I only get 7 consecutive days throughout the year, instead of traveling back to the US next summer, I may need to strongly consider using that time visit another country over here if I plan on moving back home after the year is up. I have a long time to think about it as I cannot go anywhere for 6 months, but it makes plenty of sense for me to visit places on this side of the world that I would probably otherwise never get the chance to see again. I'll have plenty of time to catch up with everyone back home in the future.

Today is my first payday...I am only getting a check for one week's work, but that check is still bigger than any (week or every other week) check I have ever received. Makes it a lot easier to get through those classes of mine that I really don't care for that much. Will also be getting my airfare reimbursement. Probably my biggest fear upon moving over here was just how I'd make ends meet for the first month before getting my first paycheck, but that burden has been lessened considerably by my signing bonus and now a week's pay. The cost of living here is much cheaper and that's even before considering that rent is covered in my contract. My only real expenses are food. Many people come here to save money, pay off loans, etc and I will be doing much of the same. It is really nice to not have to worry about money for about the first time ever in life.

This week really flew by quickly. On Wednesday, I didn't realize until walking to work that I only had one class to teach that day. Then the next morning, I thought "is it really Thursday already" and then who isn't in a good mood on Friday? Next week won't be quite as fun as it will be the first of three straight weeks where I have 5-hours of class on Saturday. The bright side...OT pay! :D My first big check is going to be awesome.

I went out to play futbol (soccer) on Sunday night with some friends. It was really the first athletic thing I've done outside of just running since I broke my ankle a few summers ago. Realized that I still have no confidence in it when forced to pivot and such. It's weird knowing that something is never going to be as good as it once was. I don't notice it when walking or even running so much anymore, but when you have to pivot and move laterally, you can tell what you no longer have. I hope it gets better because I had a lot of fun and it's a great workout. I was absolutely terrible, especially compared to others on the field which is new to me...I'm usually at least adequate on a field of competition. I need to get some bags boards over here so I can show people what I can dominate in.

This week I discovered a couple of chicken joint here to eat at. Oh how I have missed chicken! I finally had some pizza as I noted above and now I know a couple of places that I can get chicken. The chicken is more expensive that most meals (usually about 14,000 but enough food to last me two meals) but there will never be any substitute for my favorite meat. At least I know I'm not eating dog!

Speaking of dogs, I realized during a skype call to the 'rents earlier today how much I miss those guys. Buddy Bowrowrow, Augie, and Max, I can picture what all of them are doing right now. I think I've seen one dog since I've been here. I'm contemplating getting a rabbit or two that are on display at the lotte-mart, but I'm held back because I'm not sure what I'd do with them upon my departure from here. I'll have to check into what the guidelines are for traveling with them as I do not want to get into a situation where I don't have someone to leave them in care of when I leave.

Speaking of skype...I just got on that this past week finally. It's a free, easy download. My name on there is joseph.deien - feel free to get on there and add me. Free calling from around the globe? Yes, please!

I keep hearing the same question from many people in individual e-mails...."what's it like over there?" I keep responding with I'll tell you more when I have a better sample size. I have plenty of first impressions, but I'm still very new to this area and have many things I've yet to explore/learn. Who knows if I can even come close to describing it all in just one year? I hope to be able to answer that question in a more acceptable way in the future. :)

Now for my thoughts on Illini athletics...so if you don't care about the Illini (why am I friends with you again?), you can skip the rest.

Women's basketball: Wait, does anyone care about this? Coach Law just signed one of the top 3 recruiting classes in the nation in November. They are really going to struggle this season as they lost some players from last year's squad that was seconds away from earning an NCAA bid, but the future is bright. Coach Law knows how to recruit and could still add another consensus top 10 player to the fold in the spring. I wish someone would make them move back to Huff Hall so they could have something that resembled a home court advantage. It really would only help, not hinder the development of the program.

Men's basketball: I've been catching games online when I can find (illegal) feeds. I will be able to see more once I get my debit card over here to order the FI.com subscription. I am pleased with the 6-1 start, though frustrated with how the Clemson game ended. I knew they would get tired but it will always be frustrating to lose a game that could have been won. Alex Legion will join the lineup in a few weeks and hopefully his presence on the court will open up even more offense for Mike Davis, Demetri McCamey and Clank Meachum.

Football: Well, it sucks that there will be no bowl game this season. Turnovers at bad times really killed them. I never knew just how painful that homecoming loss to Minnesota would turn out to be. Intelligent athletic director's at schools like Minnesota and Northwestern have inferior teams ready to be blown out in bowl games while a more talented Illini squad will sit at home. I really, really hope this doesn't damage the recruiting season because any bowl game would have helped the cause. We will again have to wait at least another two years to see if the Illini can put together back to back winnings seasons for the first time in years. There is no excuse for why this team isn't going bowling this year...and the blame is pretty equally divided amongst the coaching staff, players, and athletic director. All played a part in why this team will not be collecting a check from a bowl game later this month. I'm going to be super pissed if I do not have a bowl game to come home to next winter.

Women's volleyball: They open up the NCAA tournament as the #9 overall seed and back to back home matches where they should be favored. Going to the games as an undergrad was always a lot of fun. Unfortunately, they are in Penn State's bracket...and they haven't lost a single set this entire season. I will be interested to follow their roll through the tournament...just to see if anyone can even eek out a 3-1 loss. The Illini almost took a set from them this year...but almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades as they say. Coach Hardin, who is a great guy, is retiring at the end of the season. When I covered the women's team during my time at WPGU, he was nothing but great. I had his cell phone # and he was always willing to talk on or off the record about a lot of things. Nothing but class and I wish him well in the future. That said, future coach Kevin Hambly has unlimited potential. He is an ace recruiter that is responsible for much of the Illini's success on signing day the past few years and should do an even better job as a head coach. It's one thing to really know volleyball (I believe he played at BYU in college), but he has an edge recruiting wise in that he is a handsome young man that I'm sure many teenage girls notice when he walks into their homes on recruiting visits. His wife played at the U of I and is on the staff so I'm pretty sure he'll be content to stay here for a while. He actually has a chance to bring home a national championship someday. Big 10 Volleyball is just about the best competition in the country, if not the best.

I think that just about covers what I needed to vent about in Illini land. I really should start a blog or something.

Hope everyone is doing well and is enjoying the holiday season!

Peace, Love, and maekju,

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

2008-12-20T01:20:00.001-06:00

All,

It's mid-afternoon on Thursday here in Cheonan and my meal was three hot dogs with a few sips of coke zero...nothing quite like you guys will be waking up to. I am certainly jealous of all of you that will be digging in to turkey, sweet potatoes, casseroles, and whatever else you have in your respective households. When you think you are too full to take another bite of pumpkin pie, just remember how I'll be eating some dish I cannot pronounce tonight and force another piece down for me!

This is now day 4 of instructing for me. Yesterday was nice because I only had one class, so I was only here from 1 until 7:30. I've been coming in early to check e-mail and the like as I do not yet have internet at home. I did get my computer fixed after blowing it out when I stupidly tried to hook it up into the outlets here without a transformer. Now, I have a Korean power system in it and will need a transformer in the US. That isn't a big deal, though, as I probably will have bought a laptop by that time. I will hopefully have internet at home soon as now the only thing I need is a password of some sort to connect to the local provider. I should get that today if the staff here can find the previous guy's password or gets in touch with him soon. I'd definitely like to have it going by the weekend since I'd rather not go to an internet cafe and pay (though only ~ $1 an hour) to surf the net while being surrounded by a room full of pre-pubescent boys playing video games online with each other. I caught a couple of strange looks there on Sunday.

I have had some ups and downs with my classes so far. I have on really good Tera level (highest level) Memory English class that I have on Tuesday and Thursday at 4:30 and I have a good Mega Level (the lowest level) Memory English class on Monday and Wednesday. I also have a two tera level classes that are not so good, one on Monday/Friday and the other I luckily only have once a week. I'm hoping they will improve as they get more used to me and comfortable at this level. Today I have my first Interactive Listening class at 7:30 (Bridge, the lowest level) and tomorrow will have another (Par, the 2nd level). I wasn't trained quite as well in listening as in memory so I'm glad that I only have two of those classes a week. In the memory level courses, I'm currently teaching Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (mega) and Hamlet by Mr. Shake-a-speare. I have taught first day Hamlet for four of the past five classes so I'm ready to get to second day materials.

My co-workers are going to Seoul this weekend and it's tempting to go, but I think I'm going to wait at least until I have my signing bonus in hand. It's about $25 for a round trip train ticket and I do want to see the city, but I also will not get my first paycheck until the first week of January so I need to make the bonus last. I'm eating a steady diet of hot dogs, noodles/sauce, and what I think is ham sandwiches when I do not eat out. It is pretty cheap to eat out here, however...I almost never spend more than 6,000 (just under $6) on a meal and you get a very generous portion of food and all you can eat kimchi and select other sides. Last night I hate some really spicy meat/rice meal with two bowls of brothy soup, kimchi, radish, squid, and broccoli all for 4,000. Another thing that is different over here that will surely be one of the reasons why I continue to lose weight is there really is no option to have a soda, beer, or anything other than water with your meal. You get a small cup with unlimited refills of water everywhere and that's just fine by me. I will usually drink a glass of soda or maybe a liter of Cass (beer) at home if I feel so inclined.

While I haven't had internet at home, I've been reading a few books. I went through Bleachers by John Grisham in about two days and it wasn't too bad. For any fan of football, it's a nice and easy read. I'm working on Playing for Pizza (also by Grisham) right now and will probably finish it tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest. It is also a nice read for a football fan. I am looking forward to getting back into his usual lawyer-related books however. I'm also open to suggestions from anyone now that I seem to be taking up reading as a hobby again after 5 or 6 years away from it.

I'm becoming more familiar with the area as well. I now know how to get into the busier city district, San Yeong-dong where there are more restaurants (kimbop = korean fast food, where I ate last night) and the lotte-mart (basically the Korean Wal-Mart). On Sunday, I got lost coming back from the internet cafe that I found. I was only given the instructions that it was right up the road so I eventually wandered into it, but then forgot how I got there on the way back and had to flag a cab. I believe I mentioned before that CDI gave me a card with my address written in Korean that I can keep in my wallet and hand to a cab-driver. If I do not go to Seoul this weekend, I'll be going to downtown Cheonan-city for my first real night out on the town and may catch the new James Bond movie with a co-worker. We'll see, though.

In the meantime, again, I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving!

Love, peace, and tong-dak

Last Day in Seoul

2008-12-20T01:19:00.001-06:00

Hello all,

I'm sending out this e-mail as a quick update since this may be the last time I have an internet connection for a few days, maybe a week, not really sure.

This has certainly been a week packed with things to do. CDI has asked a lot from its trainees. It is no exaggeration to say I have had to eat, sleep, and breathe CDI since Monday morning. Had I known exactly how much work we were going to have this week, I would have attempted to get out more over last weekend to experience the night life, snap photos of Seoul. However, that will have to come some other time.

My schedule for the week was pretty rinse and repeat. Up at 7 AM local time, on the shuttle bus to take us across town to headquarters (probably ~ 5 miles, but it took us a minimum of 40 minutes to make the trip with all the traffic). Our first training class started at 9 AM and would last until noon. There, we'd get a couple hours for lunch; the time not spent eating and taking a break from the work was spent prepping for our afternoon training session. We would then train from 4-7 PM. At 7, we would generally have some sort of meeting to discuss other expectations/shorter training sessions and if we were lucky, we'd be back on the bus across the city by 8 (I didn't get back until 9 tonight). Upon arriving, there would be time for a quick dinner and then straight into homework, which consisted of lesson planning/prepping for the training sessions the next day. I have struggled some with study habits in the past, but I did not have the option to struggle this week. I would work in a constant fashion until about 1 AM before having to settle for not being quite complete but giving in to my minimum requirement of 6 hours sleep (thus having to do more prep on our lunch break). So, as I said above, my entire day has been devoted to CDI and I haven't been able to afford many breaks. I have been very stressed all week, but tried my best to relax and take everything in stride. I promise to catch up on all the individual e-mails/questions when my schedule becomes less hectic. The one bright side is that I have adjusted to the time difference now.

Today was definitely the worst day of all. I passed two of the three tests we had earlier in the week, so I had to study more for the one I "failed" - I missed a passing score of 70% by 1 question! I've always hated grammar. This was also the last night to prepare for our full training evaluations tomorrow. I will stress a little in hoping that I passed the re-test I took this evening. Tomorrow, it's all for real. Structure tests and training evaluations. Assuming all goes well tomorrow, I'll check out of this hotel in the morning and only come back to pick up my luggage at night. After that, I'll be on a train south to Cheonan where I will most likely be in a hotel for a day or two before finding permanent residence. This is why I'm unsure of when I'll have an internet connection again. I may have it at the hotel, I may have to wait until next week sometime at my future apartment. In any case, I will be very happy to have completed the week of training and look forward to really getting settled in to my regular routine.

Again, I wish I had one more night in Seoul to get out and see more of the city life, get better pictures, but fortunately I've met some friends in the training program that are staying in various parts of the city who are willing to entertain me for a weekend. I will get pictures up that I took going to and from work when I get a chance. The city does have some beautiful views, especially when passing over the Han River. A look in either direction shows multiple views of water, big buildings, and mountains. Central Illinois scenery this certainly is not. I still cannot comprehend just how massive Seoul really is. I could never drive here...it's completely different even from big city driving in the States. More on that later.

The food has been interesting here. I have no idea what I ate on Monday night, but it wasn't terrible. I don't know what the name for it is, but Tuesday and Wednesday lunches featured baby octopus and squid, respectively. Today's lunch was dumpling and rice pattie soup (and it's not the dumplings I was used to, but it was delicious). If I were in an American restaurant, I would never order these things, but I assure you they have been very good. Kimchi has also treated me better than anticipated. I did sneak in a quick Burger King dinner last night just to remind myself of what beef tastes like. I've been craving pizza like no one's business the past few days as well. Good thing I dined on Papa Dell's my last day in Champaign!

I'll talk more about the good and bad of my training later on. It's now 1 AM here and this guy needs some beauty rest for my big day tomorrow. I hope everyone is doing well and I want to hear updates on what everyone is up to!

Take care,

Greetings from Seoul!

2008-12-20T01:18:00.000-06:00

Hello All,

Just a quick update to let you all know that I have arrived safely. I was ahead of schedule for the entire trip. It has been a very long day as my parents and I left Salem at 2 AM Thursday morning so I could catch a 6 AM flight from St. Louis. Quick flight and connection in Denver and then to San Francisco where I had a three hour layover before getting on the 12 hour flight to Seoul. I thought they would fly straight across the Pacific, but instead the route took us up along the US/Canada coast, past Alaska, and down over NE Asia.

The last leg wasn't as unbearable as I was fearing. I caught a few ~1-2 hour naps along the way, which were needed since I have been up since about 8 AM Wednesday morning and am planning on staying out for a little while tonight. They had about 7 or 8 movies that played continuously and luckily ones that I had not seen. Two small meals and a few snacks also passed the time.

It took three hours to land at ICN and get to my Coatel. I do have a roommate, Zacharia, who is from Oregon but has a fancy accent that amuses me. He knew how to hook up computers on these foreign outlets, which is a good thing because I was clueless otherwise. My recruiter said there are over 50 trainees staying in this Coatel over the weekend so I am looking forward to meeting a few of them. I am already beginning to feel what it's like to be a minority and some English-speaking voices would be welcomed.

That is all for now. This city is massive and pretty at night. I'm going to try and catch a few sights tonight before passing out and then tomorrow hopefully find a place to watch the Illinois/OSU game on Sunday morning (for me). In case you're wondering about the exact time difference, it's 11:13 PM on Friday night right now.

Take care,

I'm baaaaaaaaaack

2008-12-18T12:15:00.002-06:00

For real this time...

I have an e-mail list to keep those interested in the loop with my life and times in Korea, but I'll also use this to post shorter entries. We'll see how well I keep this up, but I hope to!

Short and sweet for now, more later.

Blog Revival, Future, Etc

2008-05-06T13:38:00.004-05:00

Greetings and good tides after yet another long drought from posting. I am reviving this blog mostly due to my impending move in less than 80 days as an attempt to stay in touch with my friends that will now be 14 time zones away. This will be the lazy way to keep up with what is going on in my life, a better way would be to figure what times of the day I could be online.

This move is going to be huge. I am moving to South Korea to teach English as a second language. I was kind of randomly contacted by a recruiter after placing my resume online and after a couple of interviews, was offered the job. I thought about it for a week or so and decided to make the leap.

At first, even when I had decided to go for it, I was a little nervous, somewhat scared about moving 14 time zones away from everything that I have ever known. I have never lived outside of Illinois. I have only left the country to sight-see (Niagara Falls) or party (Toronto and Cancun for Spring Break). I wanted to get away from central Illinois due to a rush of drama that engulfed my final semester of college, but I figured getting away would mean Chicago or some random city like Seattle.

I have to commend all of my friends and family in helping me with the decision to do this. I have received nothing but support from everyone that I have talked to. I was definitely afraid to tell my parents that I was thinking of doing this, but they were surprisingly supportive of it from the beginning. There has been a definite shock factor with them and with my friends, but that shock is quickly replaced by good luck wishes and support. I cannot count the number of times I have heard some of my older friends say "I wish I had done something like that right out of college when I had the chance." I have always tried to live my life with the motto of "No Regrets" and I feel that passing on this opportunity would be something that I'd always think back to and say 'what if.' Through all of the support, I have become very comfortable with my decision and am definitely looking forward to a new world of adventure.

Just to add a little more, I will not know what city I will be living in until after my first week of training in Seoul. I will fly out there the last week of July, go through a rigorous week of training, and then be placed in an agreeable situation that benefits me and the school. I do get a preference of where to go and my top choices are Busan and Seoul (in that order). Look up pictures of Busan and tell me that you wouldn't want to visit. It's a coastal city with beautiful beaches and a picture-esque backdrop. MUCH different than central Illinois' cornfields. From my research, Busan appears to be the most liberal/laid back of the major cities in South Korea, thus my draw to it. I would also enjoy being in Seoul and have heard only good things about living there, I just want to be in Busan. Both will be packed full of people with huge populations, but that is the least of my worries.

To summarize, I'm very much looking forward to the next step in life. I expect my experience in South Korea, which could be as short as 1 year or as long as 2 or 3, to be life changing. I want to challenge myself to prove I can live on my own and assimilate myself into a new culture. I will be meeting people from all over the globe, so I will be able to learn about what life is like in other parts of the world. I will come back with a greater knowledge of what I should really value in life, what I took for granted all these years in the United States, and also hopefully be a better person. I do not expect my penchant for finding my way into good stories to stop upon my move, so I look forward to coming back and sharing all of my experiences with all of you...and learning about all the fun I have missed out on while I was gone.

fin

Illinois Recruiting Review

2008-02-03T07:48:00.000-06:00

Since I'm awake with nothing better to do at 8 AM on a Sunday morning, I figured I'd end my blog silence by looking at this year's Illini recruiting class. Signing day is on Wednesday and the Illini are about to complete another outstanding class under Head Coach Ron Zook and his recruiting dynamos.

Offense:
Jacob Charest comes from North Carolina, where he has quite successfully QB'd one of NC's best 7A schools. He doesn't have the arm strength of Juice (few do), but he can make all the throws that a QB needs to make and could have a lot of success in the mold of a Chase Daniel-type in Illinois' spread offense. Hopefully he can redshirt this season, though he will fight Eddie McGee for backup duties and the Illini are not very deep at QB, especially with Garza not returning for his final season of eligibility.

At running back, Illinois brings in two talented in-state players. Mikel LeShoure hails from Champaign and has already enrolled at Illinois, giving him a head start on Jason Ford of Belleville. Both are similar in their style. LeShoure is fast but isn't a real home run threat. Ford could be described as a poor man's Rashard Mendenhall and I think has the greater potential of the pair. While he doesn't have Rashard's frame, Ford is a bigger back with speed. Both LeShoure and Ford could see carries this fall, especially LeShoure as a compliment to Troy Pollard and Daniel Dufrene. Still on the radar is Jamie Harper, though it would be a surprise if he chose the Illini. He is arguably the top RB in the nation and is the same type of back that Mendenhall was. Harper would win the starting job by the beginning of the Big 10 season this fall if decides to come to Illinois.

Those QB and RB can't do much behind a poor offensive line, so it's a good thing Illinois is about to top off a solid 5-man OL class. Headlining the class is Graham Pocic from Lemont, Illinois. As talented as he is on the field (which is very), he is similarly talented in recruiting. Pocic has been in the ear of many players that will be signing with the Illini on Wednesday. He is probably the only one in this group that could see the field as a freshman, but hopefully all will redshirt. Connecticut's Ryan Sedlacek, Chicago's Jeffrey Allen, and Pennsylvania's Tyler Sands are all athletic, but strong linemen needed to block for a spread offense. I am also including Corey Lewis (PA) in this class as I believe he signs with Illinois. According to Frank Frangie on Inside Illini, this has been a true sleeper/late bloomer that the Illini found before other big programs did. He's going to be very good.

With Jeff Cumberland's departure to receiver, Illinois once again finds itself in a position where two freshmen will see the field. While the Hooman should have the starting position locked down, he's not much more than a blocker and short yardage TE. Hubie Graham (PA) and London Davis (IL) are both better receiving threats, especially Davis, but is further behind Graham in development right now. Graham will definitely see the field as a freshman and is definitely a blocker first, pass-catch second TE. Davis could redshirt, but also could see time as the third TE. Only time will tell.

Last but certainly not least on offense is the wide receivers, where Illinois has stocked up on talented players to fill out the depth chart. AJ Jenkins, who originally committed to Georgia Tech, headlines the class and will play this fall. Florida really wanted this guy (like a few others that will be signing with Illinois) and he will be a good one who should contribute as a returner as well. Cordale Scott will likely be a WR at Illinois, though he may have more potential as safety or linebacker. Still, he's quite the talent and was plucked out of Ohio State hot bead Glenville High in inner-city Cleveland. OSU wanted him badly. Fred Sykes (FL) is already enrolled but should still be a redshirt candidate. I figure Jack Ramsey initially gets a look at WR. The QB from Chicago Simeon is a talent at QB, but his height (or the lack there of) is going to send him to the slot or to the secondary. He is fast and should be great in the open field.

One reason why Ramsey to the secondary may not be completely necessary (his highest potential probably is at CB) is it's not going to be any easier to get playing time. Vontae is likely gone after this season, but Miami Thomas (*pats self on back for pimping this guy last season*...go back in this blog, it's there...I said this kid would be a good one) has emerged as a big time CB, Travon Bellamy isn't necessarily a lock to move to safety, and Dere Hicks and Chris Duvalt are now upperclassmen. Antonio Gully hasn't seen the field much, but he's around.

The recruiting hall is headlined by Patrick Nixon (FL), who was clearly the best corner at the Illinois and Florida camps. Both schools wanted him badly, Illinois is going to get him. Will see the field early. Tavon Wilson, who originally committed to Maryland, is really another guy that is underrated on scout and rivals. He is very talented. I'm not saying we should compare anyone, but the previous two 3-star CB we took from the DC area turned out to be a lot better than their ranking (Davis and Bellamy, for those scoring at home). Wilson will as well and likely sees the field as a freshman. There's also Ashante Williams (OH) whose body analogy to other CB is that of Rashard Mendenhall to other RB. Cordale Scott called him the best corner he's ever faced after squaring off at an Illinois camp. That may just be some in-state love for Williams, but there is certainly some potential in him. Could see time on special teams as a freshman, but more likely is a redshirt candidate.

At safety, opponents will tremble when they start watching game tape of Donsay Hardeman, who will be considered a bust if he doesn't knock 12 players unconscious, decapitating 3 of them, this season. His hitting ability is already a legend on Illinois message boards, his play in Champaign may make him one on the field. the Juco transfer has been on Zook's radar since high school and for good reason, the guy is pretty damn good and should start this fall. Jack Ramsey or Ashante Williams could end up at safety. Supo Sanni's (IL) first look will be at safety, though he has big time potential at OLB after some time with the Body by Lou plan.

Linebacker is easily the area on this Illinois team with the least depth and the Illini have not really brought in any big names this season. That said, there are many talented players and from them a few should develop into quality Big 10 LB. Justin Staples (OH) is my favorite from the group to see the field early, especially on special teams. Nate Palmer (IL) is really the only SAM in this class, though some feel he is underrated due to being injured his junior season and then an early commitment to Illinois. I think he redshirts, as does Russell Ellington (IL), though either could see the field on special teams.

The rich get richer on the defensive line (and an early look to '09 recruiting shows that the Illini aren't stopping with this class). Cory Liuget (FL) is the best player in this year's class and will be a three-year player at DL. Liuget is a monster who projects as a DT. Everyone in Florida knows this guy is the most underrated player in the nation, which says something for a rivals top 100 player. Florida, Miami, FSU, LSU, OSU...you name the school, they wish Cory was signing with them. Fortunately for us, he won't be. Whitney Mercilus (OH) needs to redshirt, but has big time potential a rush-end with some bulk. He has the makings of another Will Davis. Reggie Ellis is another very talented DT and he is already enrolled at Illinois. Even with him getting here a semester early, I think he redshirts due to the depth in front of him. Glen Foster is a redshirt candidate that has the same frame and high school alma mater as Simeon Rice, so hopefully Foster can develop at even half the rate that Rice did at Illinois. A good prospect that has not been talked about much since his early commitment. Also joining this class is Ugochukwu Uzodinma (MD), originally committed to Virginia, whom the staff really likes at DE.

Illinois looks to replace the departing Jason Reda with freshman Derek Dimke, who will walk-on as a freshman and likely earn a scholarship after winning the starting job. I think he wins it as a freshman, but it may take a year...depends on Eller and Brandabur's development).

This should be the complete Illinois recruiting class. When you count Corey Lewis as a commitment, that leaves one scholarship for the class and it's for Jamie Harper. If Harper takes it, great. If not, the Illini will make a decision on one remaining player (if you have insider on scout, you know who). Personally, I think the Illini should bank the ride for next season if Harper announces for Clemson (as expected). After a few larger classes, the Illini will not have as many scholarships to offer for next season and there is a very talented class in Illinois and the Illini will be even more of a presence nationally after their Rose Bowl appearance this season. The '09 recruiting class is off to a great start with DE/OLB Melvin Fellows (arguably the top player in Ohio next season...and one that OSU is not going to let go easily), Leon Hill (top OL in Illinois, top 3 OL and top 50 overall by Rivals), and Lendell Buckner (top DT in Illinois).

Saying Goodbye

2007-02-21T15:53:00.000-06:00

You know, I really hadn't been thinking very much about tonight's Illinois game versus Michigan other than it's a must win for the Illini to make the tournament.

I went this morning to apply for a passport for my Spring Break trip...hopefully I'll be saying goodbye to the USA for a week if it gets to me on time. It has 23 days to get here. With expediting and express mail, they say it takes no longer than 21. Let's hope.

I then head over to my cinema studies (world cinema) course early because I had nothing better to do at home other than find something dumb to waste time on for a bit. I was only listening to music and figured I could do just as much while sitting and waiting for class and not leaving any opportunities to be late to this class (1 minute late, you're absent for the entire 2-hour class...ridiculous).

As I sit down, I notice a Daily Illini on the ground (a common sight in lecture rooms). I usually just ignore it as I maybe read one Daily Illini every three months or so. But I see the sports page has something about senior night (and of course Chief stuff) and decide to pick it up. Then I see the headline of the regular paper was an interview with my friend, Dan Maloney...better known as Chief Illiniwek to Illini nation. I decide to read the article and upon doing so, a myriad of emotions became swept up in me.

First, I was thinking about how I will be witnessing history tonight. I'm going to be in the building, on the court, watching what will likely be the last dance in Chief Illiniwek's 80 year career. My friend is performing the last dance and I can only imagine the pressure and multitude of things that are running through his head right now. I've only told him that I support what he's doing and wish him all the best. Not usually a man of few words, other than when he's in the Chief Illiniwek regalia, a simple thank you and a nod was all that was necessary in response.

I'm not sure that I want people wearing black shirts and the like tonight, but I do support their ability to do so. I will likely take a black shirt with me as an undershirt and wear it if I end up being the only person on the court not wearing black. I do not like to bring attention to myself. Now, whether that shirt will be a regular t-shirt or under armor is yet to be determined...I may wear both and see how many ladies will be around to check out the gun show. :D

Lame, I know...but it seems like I tend to keep putting off the things that I need to get to. In this case, completely ignoring everything going on in the Chief situation, I'm about to sit on the court as a member of the Orange Krush one last time.

My friends have dwindled out of Krush since my freshman year. This has contributed to me usually sitting up in C-section this season with them instead of being down on the court and after waiting in line for hours by myself...that and I still am not able to jump around and go crazy with my ankle...it's not really the bones that hurt as much as it's my freakin' achilles that seems to be permanently enflamed. That said, I was the 4th highest money raiser in the Orange Krush this season, thanks in very large part to some of you outstanding people who read this. You aren't outstanding just because you donated to me or because you take the time to read my blog...you are all just outstanding people that I'm happy to know.

...again, not to get on a tangent...It wasn't until reading that article today before class that I began to think about how many great memories I've been apart of in the Assembly Hall over the past four years. I came to this school, turning down better schools, strictly because I wanted to be in the Block-I and Orange Krush. Illinois has always been my love and I will probably never be able to be as close to the action as I have been during these four years...and what a 4 years to be close to! I hadn't thought about all that coming to an end...until this morning. I suppose that's for the best as I'd rather only worry about it for about 7 hours as opposed to 7 days or weeks.

The Assembly Hall is just about the only place on this campus that I have not been drunk in. I have been drunking walking around the parking lot, but never inside the Hall. Under other substances? Of course, I have been to concerts there. That's another story. I've never had to be drunk in this building. I've had so many great memories...and the best part is...I can actually remember them! I do not have to be told or see photographic evidence of its awesomeness.

I'll be back on campus next fall and I should have student tickets, but it will be up high. I'll never sit courtside again. I'll never see the Chief dance again. I'm saying good-bye to one of the biggest reasons why I came to Champaign to begin with. I'm not going to bust into tears over this, but it's a gut-check. I'm all about not taking things for granted and I really hope that my experience in the Orange Krush and with Chief Illiniwek is not something that I have been. I sure will miss it.

For what is (hopefully) the final game this season at the Assembly Hall...I leave with a few comments.

I have loved it.

I will miss it.

I will always be loyal to you, Illinois.

Go Illini!

fin

Happy Valentine's Day!

2007-02-14T11:03:00.000-06:00

This is a day that I look forward to every day of the year, though not for the traditional reasons. One, there is a chance some people may give me candy. I don't really eat much candy, but that doesn't mean that I do not like to get it. Two, it's my day to sit down and watch horror, dark film-noir, and not-so-happy-ending love story movies. It's been a tradition of mine going back to high school.

I've only been officially dating someone twice on this day. My high school girlfriend (I got her to watch a few scary movies with me, but was forced into cooking dinner before hand and buying stuff) and also my sophomore year of college. The college girl was great as we both wanted to rebel against Valentine's Day for a myriad of reasons, so it was an easy sell for not buying anything and watching movies of love being torn apart.

I make it sound like I'm bitter towards love and so on, but that's not the case. I'm not against love should it find me, I'm just not looking for it. I'm perfectly content going through college without any attachment. One, there are lots of college co-eds and I want to see as many of their boobs as possible before I'm old enough to where it's creepy. Two, if I had a girlfriend...would I be able to spend an entire day in my pajamas, getting stoned, and watching movies/playing video games? If there's a woman out there that I can trust and doesn't mind that I do those things, then you should contact me. If not, well, that is why I'm so much better being single.

As many of you know, this is the second consecutive day that the University of Illinois has let out classes due to weather-related conditions. Yesterday was the first time it has happened since 1979. I feel like I'm a part of history. That said, it would have been tough to get to class in a foot of snow, snow drifts up to 5-6' tall, and 40 mph winds. I was annoyed by the winds the most because it made it a little hard to light my pipe when I was outside.

I'm going to listen to some more downloaded music today...I picked up a few albums over this past weekend and I'll note some songs that you should be sure to pick up.

The Strokes - First Impressions of Earth
Solid cd, especially if you like their previous stuff. I gave it an overall rating of a B-. I absolutely love Ize of the World and also find myself listening to Electricityscape, Vision of Division, Razorblade, and Heart in a Cage

Rise Against - The Sufferer and the Witness
I absolutely loved this album. It's the fast-paced pop rock that I tend to get into and find catchy. Prayer of the Refugee has become one of my favorite songs and I'm also really digging Injection, Ready to Fall, Under the Knife, Drones, The Approaching Curve, and The Good Left Undone. This album is an easy A for me.

The Thermals - The Body, The Blood, The Machine
This is a band that I had never listened to, but liked some of their samples so I checked into them. Glad I did as I found an album that I really enjoyed, giving it a B+ overall rating. Here's to Your Future and Power Doesn't Run on Nothing are my favorite songs from the album, while I also really enjoy I Might Need You to Kill, A Pillar of Salt, Returning to the Fold, and St. Rosa and the Swallows.

More to come later.

I'll finish with a question. How in the world did Deron Williams not get picked to represent the Western Conference in the All-Star game? What a shame. He's arguably the guy most important to his team's current placement in the conference (even more so than Boozer...and Okur). I understand that Ray Allen is the bigger name, but I really feel that Deron deserved that spot.

It's signing day for the Illini!

2007-02-07T09:39:00.000-06:00

But first, a quick announcement from the life of JayD!

I'm only working on 4 hours of sleep due to my roomate's music playing last night and this morning. I was very not happy to still be awake at 3:30 and up at 7:30 (I can never go back to sleep once there's light in the room). I only got 3 hours the night before while I was working on a paper and was looking forward to catching up last night. Oh well.

A side note...is it just me, or does a room fill up with light like a bagillion times faster when there is snow on the ground? There is no reason to be as much light as there was in my room at 7:30 and I even have a black curtain (albeit a thin one) hanging over my window to help prevent it a bit more.

Anyway, that's probably all that is on my mind right now, other than the Illini!

Here is a list of players that the Illini are supposed to sign today:

Josh Brent
(Central Catholic HS)
Bloomington, IL 6-3/300/5.00 12/26/2006

Anytime a central Illinois town (like Bloomington-Normal where Heath and Bev, my personal favorite Illini couple reside) produces a high quality football player, the Illini need to lock him up and they did just that with Brent. Brent is one big man, but as shown by his hoops career, he has some agility. When a man is my height, weighs 90 pounds more than me, and could likely outrun me in the 40...you know you have an athlete. Not that I'm a great athlete, but it's not like I didn't play football in high school. I'm looking forward to Brent taking over for Norwell on the line next season...and to whatever he'll bring us this season and he's surely going to get some PT, according to Shirley.

M artez Wilson
(Simeon Vocational HS)
Chicago,IL 6-4/228/4.50 12/21/2006

We often hear the term 'freak' describing the uber-athletic basketball players. It's sometimes referenced in football (see Jevon Kearse) and it should be used here. Wilson is an incredible athlete who is strong enough to play with his hand down and fast enough to play standing up on the outside. He has the potential to be the best pass rusher the Illini have since Simeon Rice (whom he's often compared to). If that weren't enough to make him a 5 star athlete, he can also move over to offense where he wowed the scouts at the All-American Combine by abusing DB in the passing game. It is said that Wilson will focus on defense, but will see the field on offense on 3rd down and red zone situations. If Cumberland improves his hands this season, the Illini are going to be scary in the red zone with he and Wilson on the outside on top of Benn running around...not to mention the QB with the rocket arm and wheels to break out of the pocket for a score if there is some minute chance those big WR cannot get open.

Jack Cornell
(Quincy Notre Dame HS)
Quincy,IL 6-7/305/4.90 12/19/2006

Big Jack had a bout with temporary insanity when he committed to the nut-job that used to patrol the sidelines in East Lansing, but after his dismissal had a change of heart and decided to join the rebuilding campaign in Champaign-Urbana! One of the biggest weaknesses on this Illini team last season was the offensive line, especially at the T positions. This means that it's open season for starting spots on the line and Cornell will have a chance to compete. I prefer linemen, especially offensive linemen, redshirt in their first season as few are physically ready to hold off college-aged defensive linemen. I hope that the Illini can get by with what they have this season so Cornell does not have to see the field.

D'Angelo McCray
(Andrew Jackson HS)
Jacksonville,FL 6-4/290/4.85 12/14/2006

Coach Zook and Disch's ties to Florida help the Illini out a great deal with the pledge of McCray from Jacksonville, Florida. One of the top DT in the nation, McCray will likely enter the fall as the favorite to start next to Chris Norwell on the defensive line. McCray is versatile enough to play both DT and DE, so I'm sure we'll see him line up in both positions. Derek Walker and Doug Pilcher are incumbants at the end spots and are not bad players, but it will be nearly impossible to keep McCray off the field, especially in passing situations. I see McCray starting out playing both DT and DE in passing situations while David Lindquist and Doug Pilcher see action on running situations. I actually pity the offensive lines that have will have to figure out a way to contain a line of Martez Wilson, D'Angelo McCray, Josh Brent, and Daryl Ballew one day...not to mention the ones that will have to figure out a way to stop Wilson, McCray, Norwell, and Walker.

Daniel Dufrene
(College of the Sequoias)
Visalia,CA 5-11/205/4.45 12/12/2006

This junior college transfer (who still has three years of eligibility left) will come in unheralded to those who don't closely follow recruiting (especially with his 2-star rating), but Dufrene should make one of the larger impacts of all the incoming recruits. He has already seen some college action and did pretty well (his rivals video is sick) in that time. He was offered by some high-quality football programs and should immediately slide into the #2 HB position behind Rashard Mendenhall. If Mendenhall cannot hold up as a full-time starter (or cannot hold on to the ball), Dufrene could even supplant him as the feature back. Dufrene may never be THE main back in Champaign with two more years of Mendenhall and a hopeful 2008 recruiting class consisting of Mikel Leshoure and/or Jason Ford, but he is a very important recruit for the Illini.

Mark Jackson
(Harmony Community School Midd)
Cincinnati,OH 6-5/290/5.20 12/11/2006

The big man from Ohio is going to be overshadowed by Craig Wilson and Jack Cornell in this recruiting class, but this man is a future starter on the Illini offensive line. Listed as one of the top 10 center recruits in the nation by Scout and as a 4-star tackle by Rivals, the kid obviously has some upside. The only thing left to determine with him is just where and when he'll be starting for the Fighting Illini!

Erique Robertson
(Maple Heights Senior HS)
Maple Heights,OH 5-11/210 12/11/2006

I love it when the Illini take players that Iowa wants. Any of their first targets that we can take, why not (assuming they're up to the talent level that Zook and the Illini are going after). Robertson will have some battles for playing time at the weakside linebacker position, but will have the added advantage of spring practice as he enrolled early to attend Illinois. We should see Robertson on the field for special teams this season and one of the front runners for one of the two OLB spots that should open up next season (assuming a Miller move back MLB after Leman's departure).

D arius Purcell
(Hubbard HS)
Chicago,IL 5-11/215/4.60 12/11/2006

The Illini made great effort to to stock the safety position in this class and Purcell was one of the final pieces that was added. My guess is that Zook loves the players in the mold/size of Purcell, Erique Roberston, Ian Thomas etc not even so much as potential starters (which any of them may be one day), but for versatility in special teams. Special teams has been a sore spot for the Illini in recent years and I see the continued recruitments of players like Purcell as a direct attempt to rectify that.

I an Thomas
(Dematha Catholic HS)
Hyattsville,MD 6-0/200/4.70 12/07/2006

Any chance the Illini get to go and grab a talented player from a football factory like Dematha is a chance that should be taken. Thomas, like Robertson and Purcell, will likely see the field on special teams early in his career and develop into a starter at the weakside LB position before he graduates. Again, inroads to a school like Dematha are very important and Ian Thomas will benefit the Illini in ways that extend beyond what he can do on the gridiron.

Brian Gamble
(Washington HS)
Massillon,OH 6-0/190 12/05/2006

Gamble is probably the recruit I'm most looking forward to seeing amongst those rated as 3-stars or lower by the recruiting services. Gamble is a great athlete that was passed over by traditional powers (like Ohio State) because of grades. Gamble single-handedly won many games for his Washington High School by his skills out of the backfield and in the defensive secondary. I feel this guy will greatly out-perform his 'ranking' and be a leading candidate to take over at one of the safety positions after the graduations of Justin Harrison, Kevin Mitchell, and Justin Sanders next spring. I also suspect he'll be an immediate impact player on special teams.

Troy Pollard
(Andrew Jackson HS)
Jacksonville,FL 5-8/175/4.50 12/05/2006

Don't be fooled by Pollard's size (read: lack thereof), he's the prototypical scatback for the spread offense. He's small and quick, which will allow him to dart right through the holes created by his offensive lineman. Pollard will be fighting with for playing time with Walter Mendenhall and Charles Bailey in their backup efforts for Rashard Mendenhall and Dufrene and will see more carries in each season he plays with the Illini.

Arrelious Benn
(Dunbar HS)
Washington,DC 6-2/205/4.50 11/09/2006

With all due respect to Mr. Wilson, Benn is the crown jewel of this recruiting class. He fills a huge position of need and it should not take long for him to take over as the team's go to WR. If this were basketball, this is a guy who would be on campus for one year, maybe two if you are lucky. In football, the Illini get to enjoy watching Regis for at least three years, maybe four if he really enjoys his stay. In any case, Benn has already enrolled at the U of I and will likely be the #1 wideout heading into this summer. Benn will make an immediate impact for the Illini and be one of the top freshman in the entire nation next season. Beyond his natural skill-set, Benn will greatly help star QB Isiah "Juice" Williams by being a reliable WR and also benefit the Illini in allowing guys like Kyle Hudson, Jacob Willis, Dajuan Warren, etc to be the role players that they are and not forcing them to be stars for the Illini to succeed. Benn's impact alone (and hopefully some better pass-blocking by the OL) should make the Illini a much more dangerous team on offense next season.

Anthony Morris
(Thornton Township HS)
Harvey,IL 6-3/200 11/09/2006

Morris is a fantastic athlete from Thornton High in Harvey, IL...a place where the Illini would like to establish a better pipeline in to. Morris will get a shot at WR due to the stone hands the current group of WR showed last season, but I expect Morris to make his mark with the Illini as a ball-hawking FS. He has great size for a FS and could be the best we've had at the position this decade. His experience at WR should only help his ability to track down the ball for INTs. I expect Morris to be starting by his true junior season, if not by his sophomore season when he'll likely be battling for the FS spot with Travon Bellamy.

Steve Matas
(Mentor HS)
Mentor,OH 6-5/255 10/17/2006

Matas is one of the least-heralded recruits the Illini will bring in this season, but his early offer shows how much the staff thinks of him. Matas could have a future at DE or on the offensive line. My guess is he ends up at the offensive line as the competition is going to be fierce on the DL for his entire Illini career (Walker, Pilcher, Antonio James, Rahkeem Smith, Jerry Brown, the incoming recruits, etc). That said, if guys like McCray, Wilson, etc end up going pro early...it would be a very nice luxury to have Matas waiting in the wings as a RS junior.

Craig Wilson
(Hargrave Military Academy)
Chatham,VA 6-5/300 08/15/2006

While Wilson will be a freshman in status, he'll be the age of a college sophomore after having to attend the Hargrave prep school when he failed to make the grades to get into Illinois as a high school senior last season. Wilson is an incredibly strong lineman and is regarded as one of the very elite OL in the prep school ranks this past season. Few freshmen have the body to compete in the trenches in college, but Wilson may have been able to last season...let alone with another added year of school and weight training. I'm going to assume Chuck Myles is going to graduate (to those who have spoken to him...amazingly enough) and will get another year of eligibility, but by no means is his job safe with Wilson on campus. In fact, the guards (I'm looking at you, Martin O'Donnell) had better improve or else we could see Akim Millington get moved inside if Wilson shows that he needs to be on the field this season. In either case, Wilson is probably already penciled into the 2-deep and will be a starter for the Illini by his true sophomore season at the latest.

Marcus Thomas
(Morgan Park HS)
Chicago,IL 5-11.5/160/4.50 08/05/2006

Nicknamed "Miami" because of his original home, Thomas is a promising CB for the Illini. He needs to put on some weight, but is fast and loves to hit (despite his small stature). I believe his tenacity on the field are great indicators of future success. I would be very surprised if he were able to beat out Bellamy, Dere Hicks, or Chris Duvalt for the starting CB spot opposite of Vontae Davis this season, but that group of players are going to have great battles for starting spots over the next few seasons. If Thomas were a year older, he'd probably be in the same shoes as Hicks and Duvalt this season...but since he's a year younger...he'll have some catching up to do. He very well could see the field, but it may be for the best that Miami take a redshirt this season unless the dreaded injury bug works its way from the Assembly Hall over to the Illini secondary next season.

Daryle Ballew
(Withrow HS)
Cincinnati,OH 6-3/285/5.40 07/07/2006

Ballew is overshadowed in this recruiting class due to being in the same class as Wilson, McCray, and Brent, but it's not because he isn't a solid player. Depth at the position should allow for him to redshirt this season to work on conditioning, but this is a guy who should start for the Illini around his RS junior or senior season and definitely be a part of the rotation in the years before.

Mike Garrity
(Batavia Sr HS)
Batavia,IL 6-6/270/5.00 06/29/2006

Garrity is a very good OT prospect who, like so many other solid players who in recent years would have been center-pieces of Illini recruiting classes, is overshadowed by higher-rated players like Craig Wilson and Jack Cornell. Garrity committed very early and those players tend to slide down the rankings a little bit as recruiting services try to increase revenue by pumping up non-committed players, but I do not believe there is much of a dropoff, if any from Cornell to Garrity. Garrity at the very worst will be a servicable backup for his career and I would imagine that he'd take a redshirt this season.

Nathan Bussey
(Dunbar HS)
Washington, DC6-2/203/4.45 09/25/2005

Bo Flowers

(Detroit Tigers)

Flowers is a walkon (whose tuition is being paid by the Detroit Tigers) and former 4-star prospect. He went the professional baseball route for a while and after spending some time in the minor leagues, has decided to come back to college to play football (straight to pro baseball out of high school). Flowers is an excellent addition because it's not often that you can add a guy who is a 23 year old freshman. He will have the body of an upperclassmen and the eligibility of a freshman. He will look for a place in the secondary, most likely at safety as Davis and Bellamy appear to have the corner spots lined up for the next three (or two) years.

Bussey was Regis Benn's HS QB and the Illini grabbing him definitely played a role in getting the stud WR to Champaign all the way from the nation's capital. That said, he wasn't a pity offer and has a future in the Illini's secondary. If the Illini do not pick up another QB in this class (after Clint Brewster elected to follow his dad to Minnesota), then Bussey may just get a shot at QB...if for no other reason than depth. Bussey's future at Illinois is not at QB, though, as he'll eventually make his way to the SS position. Bussey has good size and strength which makes his lack of offers from big time programs a little puzzling (especially those that were after Benn as well). He may not be an elite prospect, but he is pretty good. If he does start out immediately in the secondary, I'd expect him (like Purcell, Gamble, Robertson, Thomas, etc) to see the field on special teams as a freshman and then be part of the battle for Mitchell, Sanders, and Harrison's starting positions next season.

All in all, this class is going to land Illinois in the top 15 classes in the nation for this recruiting season. Local schools are up in arms over Zook's ability to come in and out-recruit them, despite the Illini's less than adequate record since their Sugar Bowl season in 2001. The sour grapes displayed by other coaching staffs that have even prompted letters to league officials and pleas for a national sportswriter to produce a spin article, criticizing the Illini. These schools realize that Illinois is every bit the sleeping giant that they feared. The one thing keeping Illinois from consistent top of the conferences finished in the Big 10 was the inability to keep the top athletes in the state home.

With Zook in charge, that has all changed. The Illini are not only locking down the Illinois borders to rivals who used to pillage the state for recruits, but are also using recruiting ties to Florida, Ohio, and the Maryland/DC area for recruits. Now that the Illini have brought in Eric Wolford to replace Ed Warriner on the offensinve line, they will soon have a recruiting presence on the west coast, especially in California. If the Illini could just get a solid connection into Texas, then they'd have the potential for a recruiting juggernaut (at least in the Big 10) if they can start putting some wins together with these talented players.

I'm as excited as I've ever been for Illini football. I've seen arguably the four worst years of Illini football in my stay in college, but I'm hoping that will all change this fall and the Illini can make a bowl game as a send-off party for me after my final semester. The only graduation present I will want this winter is an Illini bowl game.

For the first time in my collegiate career, that wish will not draw raucous laughter from my audience. Go Illini!

Thoughts on Da Bears

2007-02-05T15:11:00.000-06:00

While I was hoping to watch my team win a championship at the end of its season for the second time in as many season endings, it was just not to be.

The only positive I take from this is that I won $13 for correctly predicting the final total points (46) at the party in which I watched the game. I had my sights set on 30-16 Bears victory, however.

Rex Grossman will probably never have a season in the NFL where he doesn't have constant doubters. I'm sure it's tough having you and everyone else in the country know that you are the weak-link on a team, but it's even worse to be reminded of it in the media every single day. I do feel bad for him, but in the end you cannot make excuses for not getting the job done on the field. I have a feeling that if he ever becomes a consistent starting QB in the NFL that it will not be for the Bears. I do believe he'll be under center at next season's kickoff, but it may be his final audition to be the Bears' starting QB. Unfortunately for the Bears, they cannot expect to keep this team together for long and they need solid play from the QB position these next two seasons or they may see their window for winning the Super Bowl begin to slide shut on them more and more each season.

Ron Turner will be a name that haunts my dreams for many years to come. He haunted my dreams as Illinois head coach and now as an offensive coordinator for the Bears. His coordinating is just that...offensive. A classic example of coaches who get too much credit for success (this guy is some kind of QB guru?). He acted just as scared as Grossman did out there.

The other coordinating Ron has some 'splainin to do as well. Absolutely no adjustments and he appeared oblivious to the notion that some changes were needed. He sounded surprised that the QB known to study more film than other QB and the QB that is the most prepared in the league might just have realized that the Bears dropped safeties deep on every play? Did he think that Manning would act like Grossman and get frustrated of the short pass and try to throw it deep to something that's not there? There's a reason why one is Rex Grossman and the other is Peyton Manning. The announcers commented on the Bears defensive scheme on the first drive of the game...did he think they would figure out something that Manning wouldn't? Ugh.

Super Bowl commercials were down this year, imo. That damn robot commercial was just sad. I didn't get some others and there really wasn't a commercial that jumped out to me as being great. I think all of these companies got ripped off for paying as much as they did for those spots. Can anyone please block godaddy.com ads for all eternity? They are terrible and I have not been even the least bit interested in seeing what the hell they are. Surely there is someone else out there waiting to blow their money just as badly as that website. That person may even be named Shirley.

I'm not a big Prince fan, but I did enjoy his halftime show. I much preferred this show to shows of previous years.

Anyone else going to enjoy the Peyton Manning commercials from now on? I did like them, but will know start disliking them. We already see a lot of his face and now we're going to see him in a few more...including the dreaded Disney World commercial.

Anyone not understand the point of giving the professional athletes a car? What are the chances that Manning even likes that kind of car? Can he turn it down saying that he didn't want to waste taxes on it?

At least we won't have to listen to the story line of 'Peyton cannot win the big one' anymore as if it were his fault that the Colts weren't winning the Super Bowl. His postseason faults have not been Alex Rodriguez-esque. It's tough for any one person to be the difference in a football game, regardless of how good he is. Peyton is one of the best QB in the NFL, I just wish he could have gotten his title against a team other than the beloved.

In other notes...

Devin Hester...you have been and continue to be RIDICULOUS.

Kelvin Hayden and Aaron Moorehead...congratulations on getting a Super Bowl ring. Props to Kelvin for doing a great job of not biting on Moose's double-move and for being in perfect position to catch Grossman's errant pass. Luckily for Illinois, the announcer threw in the "2nd year man from Illinois" during the return. That's not something that is very common in this type of situation and probably was done due to a lack of other information to use on Hayden. Very ironic that he picks of Ron Turner's QB and score. In a way, he does have Turner to thank as he was not one of the few guys Turner held back from the defensive coaches in moving athletes to the defense. As a result, instead of Hayden being a no-name WR somewhere...football fans world wide got to hear his name, Illinois' name, and see him score a TD in the Super Bowl. Not bad for a kid from JCC.

Anyone here think Angelos can go in a direction that people are not expecting him to in the draft? If he does, are you going to criticize him as much as you did on draft weekend last summer? I don't think he can ignore the offensive side of the ball this year, so he'll have fewer surprises that he can pull. He may find a guy like Manning that others were not quite as high on, but he sees something in them and they turn out to be decent. What looked like an odd draft last season turned into a great one and had key players that contributed a great deal to this year's Super Bowl run. Let's hope this year's draft class can do similar things for the offense and count down to the first Sunday in February next year...and hopefully sit down and watch the Bears attempt to avenge this season's loss. There's only one more step to take...

fin

Updates on Life

2007-02-03T14:44:00.000-06:00

As those of you who come across this blog probably already know, last year was pretty tough for me. It just seemed to be one of those years where you just couldn't catch a break (or if you did catch one, you'd catch three that you didn't want). That said, the eternal optimist in me helped me push through it and things have settled down now, but I currently feel like venting a few things.

1) Last year's spring semester was not much fun. It was my first semester in history as a major and I didn't get into any classes that I wanted. I do well in classes that I'm interested in, but my short attention span generally leads me to do poorly in classes that don't. These factors on top of other bad habits that I had caused me to finish the semester back on academic probation. I needed to get at least a 2.0 in the fall semester to stay at my dream school.

2) Fall semester comes along. I was having an average semester overall before I got sick, which nearly killed me (figuratively, not literally). I got very far behind on my school work and after deciding to push on and finish the semester on time (instead of chancing the incomplete-make up the work later route), began a process that had me writing at least one paper every day for the last three weeks of school (including finals week and weekends). I had to focus myself (which mean cutting out a big portion of my social life and cut out some habits), but I prooved to myself that I can do it when I put my mind to it. After having a class-wide investigation of plagiarism hanging over my head for a month, I finally got the clear that I had done sufficient work to stay in school. I had actually pulled out my best semester since my freshman year...amazing as that sounds.

3) Of course there were a myriad of reasons why I struggled to get through the fall semester...

3a) At the beginning of the semester, I had been walking without a cast or crutches for about a week and a half. I was still struggling to even walk (walking with a noticable limp), but that got a little better with each week. Currently, it's been over 9 months since the night where I broke the three bones in my foot and I still cannot run...still in physical therapy. I really do not know when I'm going to be cleared to run again and I'm starting to get very impatient.

3b) The doctors could never quite figure out what was going on, but the biggest problem from my fall semester was this mysterious illness that took over me for the better part of 2 months. I had extreme fatigue, flu-like symptoms, problems with my eyes, etc. I went to three different doctors and had a number of tests run, but nothing was ever found. Whatever it was finally left my body just barely in time to catch up on my school work.

3c) I figured part of this sickness came as lingering effects from my concussion. Just in case you need a refresher on this story...I was at the theatre seeing Saw 3 when I began to feel nauseous. I was on a date and didn't want to get sick in the theatre, so I get up to leave. I had only been standing a few seconds and had only moved far enough to get to the aisle when the room went blurry and before you know it, I feel myself falling...then slamming my head up against the arm rest of a chair. I am told that I came to a few minutes later to mumble a few things and say that "I'm okay" before passing out again. I come to a few minutes later and see a group of people standing above me, the lights on in the theatre, and the movie stopped. When I got up to walk to the lobby, my vision was purple...the best description for this I can think of is if you adjust the tint and things on a tv where everything becomes one color, yet you can still make out some images. By that time, I was really scared because I knew that with my terrible eye-sight (negative 8.5, both eyes), any strong blow to my head could cause serious damage to my retinas. Luckily for me, I escaped the whole ordeal with only a mild concussion and a few days off work.

4) I was priveledged enough to not experience a single death in my family until my 6th grade year, when I lost my grandfather. That said, I only had 4 total grand-parents when I was born. My father's dad died a few months before I was born and his wife died when my father was 6 months old. Their parents were both dead before I was born. I then lost a great-grandparent my 8th grade year and my grandmother my freshman year of college, leaving only one great-grandparent left. As a woman with alzheimers and a general failing of health in her early 90s, she didn't have much time left entering the summer. I was lucky enough to get down in August (in my walking cast) to Dallas to visit her one last time. She past away in October, leaving me with an odd sense of no longer having grand-parents. We all know that it our grand-parents that love to spoil us growing up and I spent a lot of my younger years living with my grandparents. That caused a stronger attachment to them than my own parents and thus the feeling of losing a parent when they were gone. It felt weird to be 22 and with no grandparents.

5) My father had an operation in late summer to remove some things from the prostrate region. He's had high blood pressure and a few other potential problems over the years, so it was good to see him get through that okay.

6) My mother found lumps on her breasts and it was over a month into the whole situation that we got to find out her results. When she had the lumps removed in surgery, we got the results back a few days later saying that all were benign. I will now make sure that my mother never goes three years without a breast exam ever again. A woman of her age should NEVER let that happen when her own mother had (and survived) breast cancer. We got the good news right before Christmas which more than made up for your less-than-average Christmas without grandparents in a room and fewer gifts due to money problems as a result of all the hospital bills that the family had been racking up.

7) Alternatively, my brother also ran through a sickness similar to mine. Doctors also never figured it out, but he seems to be better now.

The other day, I had lunch with a girl that I had not seen in about a year and a half. When asked about my previous year and then recounting all that had happened (wish I could have stopped with 7 things with her...what a rough year), it was then that I finally began to give myself a break for the previous year. A lot of things didn't go the way I would have planned it, but I also do no wish for any kind of pity party. While I do not believe in fate and "all things happen for a reason," I do believe that we learn from each experience and that I'm now a stronger person for having gone through a tough year for a 21 year old who is trying to figure life out.

The broken ankle really turned out to be a blessing in disguise. In my month spent sitting on the couch, I learned how much I had been taking things for granted. I do not need to list the things that I realized I had not been appreciating enough, but I think it speaks volumes how I came out happier after this whole ordeal than I probably would have been had I not broken the ankle. My general attitude towards life needed an adjustment (no more emo JayD) and time on the couch and being restricted from doing things that I really wanted to do was exactly the medicine I needed. I am very happy to say that I'm unbelievably content with life right now and await all future twists and turns to the road.

I am not seeing anyone, but that is fine by me. I'm very content being single and even enjoy being able to do my own thing whenever I want. I do not have to explain why I want to hang out with any of my female friends, as I've found that girls have gotten plenty jealous of my female friends before. Also, I honestly do not think I have time to dedicate to any one girl in a relationship setting and continue to do well in school. School needs to be my focus right now and I think I'm doing a good job in keeping it as such.

I am back to work and healthy, which makes that a much more enjoyable experience.

I am looking for roomates again as all three of mine are moving on next year. I love my room right now, so I'm staying right where I am. Best of luck to those guys in their post-college lives.

I'm currently finalizing spring break plans. It now appears that we are abandoning the idea of going to Mexico and have set out eyes on South Padre Island. I have not had any great college vacation as of yet and am very much looking forward to getting this trip finalized and then counting down the days until takeoff.

I am now introducing all of you to my propensity to have long, rambling entries. You will generally need a few minutes of free time when you stop by and actually plan on taking in what I have to say. That said, I hope that you do take the time and are interested in what I have to say. I'll try to keep things different and interesting as best I can. No promises other than I'll give it my best shot and in the end, that's really all one can expect out of anyone.

fin

After a long break, I'm back...baby

2007-02-02T11:05:00.000-06:00

So since I last posted, there has evidently been some kind of conversion with blogger and google. So be it, I don't have any attachments to the old way and I'm sure this wasy is easier. I'll have to tinker with the new features later.

Let's see...I'll ramble about what I know best...sports.

I am absolutely thrilled about this weekend. I requested the whole weekend off from work, so since I do not have class on Friday, I'm sitting around, playing video games, sitting online, and doing other activities that I can do when I have nothing better to do. Considering I have a book that I need to be reading, I do have better things that I need to do, but that's beside the point.

Tomorrow the Illini take on Minnesota. Chester Frazier will not be playing due to injury, though I would not be surprised to see him on the court now that it appears Jamar Smith will be sitting out with the flu. The injuries just keep coming and coming for the Illini and it's too bad. I don't think they're really as bad as their record shows this season (and how lucky are we for this to be a 'bad' season) due to so many games and practices lost due to injury. This team is just not good on offense and when playing in a complicated system like the motion, you need all the practice time you can get. Since guys have sat out, they are not getting as much practice as they should and are not able to try and mesh in with the rest of the team. If neither Frazier nor Smith play, that leaves the Illini with Rich McBride, Trent Meacham, and Calvin Brock in the backcourt. McBride is a good overall player when his shot is falling (it will have to tomorrow), Meacham is a step slow for most high-major division one programs, and Brock is an athletic wing who is still developing his skill set. Against Minnesota, McBride should be able to get open, Meacham's lack of speed shouldn't be too detrimental, and Brock will have a chance to get a lot of minutes. He plays better when he knows he's going to get a lot of minutes.

Saturday evening should be fun as usual...but most of it will be spent anxiously awaiting...

DA BEARS in the SUPER BOWL!

I've been priviledged enough in my 22 years on this planet to see a lot of championships from the teams I pull for. In football, I did unfortunately grow up cheering for the Packers. I'm sorry, all those long-time, dedicated Bears fans. It's a part of my past that I have to deal with every single day...and don't underestimate how hard it is. I feel like I slept with my mother. That said, I did see Brett Favre lead them to two Super Bowls in the mid-90s, the first of which they won. That was the first Super Bowl victory my team had won and it should have been a glorious day. Unfortunately, my grandfather passed away on that particular Super Bowl Sunday. There are literally plenty of signs from God that I was denounced for cheering for the Packers.

I let the Packers go when the Rams came to St. Louis. Being from that general area, I grew up watching St. Louis sports. They did not have a NBA team (which is a big reason why I don't follow the NBA today) and didn't have a NFL team until the Rams left LA in the mid-90s. While I admit being a bit of a fair-weather fan when it comes to the Rams...I blame it on me not having a long-standing emotional attachment to the team, having other alliances, and then moving away for college. Now, DA BEARS are the team that is on the tv screen each weekend and there is no longer a Greatest Show on Turf playing in the Edward Jones (TWA) Dome. I've been a Bears fan since my freshman year of college, so I didn't exactly just jump on when they became good. Da Bears will be the only NFL I ever cheer for from here on out.

Back to the point about championships, I did get to see the Rams win the Super Bowl. Even if you weren't a Rams fan, that team was a lot of fun to watch. For all the love for the Colts, those Rams would have kicked their ass.

The Illinois men's tennis team brought home a perfect season in 2002, which was awesome. Undefeated national indoor and outdoor championship to go along with titles in the individual and doubles tournament afterwards. Fuck the '76 Hoosiers, that perfection is unequaled.

To date, the championship that has meant the most to me was this past year's St. Louis Cardinals World Series victory. I know the majority of people who will come across this are Cubs fans, so you might as well skip this next paragraph.

The Cardinals are the team that I've been cheering for the longest. Outside of the Illini, they are my team. I went to games as toddler, was in attendance for the first time that 'roided slugger Mark McGwire sent a ball to Big Mac Land in the left field upper deck section at the Old Busch Stadium. I was too young to remember the Don Denkinger 'incident,' but I've seen the replays and it will always piss me off to know that I had to wait 21 more years for a World Series victory when in reality, the Cards won the 1985 series. I could have gone through life at least saying my team has won a championship in my lifetime...even if I was barely a year old at the time. This is an obvious time when the people who run a sport should step in and reverse the final result of a game. When there is evidence that conclusive to the outcome of the game changing (that out would have been the last out and given the Cards the championship...nothing else should have mattered). Too bad no sports organization will ever have the balls to do such a thing. Anyway, after watching the Cards be at the top of the National League for the better part of this decade, yet always come down with an injury or two that killed their postseason chances, I think it was very fitting that they finally were rewarded with the World Series this season. Any of their previous three season's teams were better, but this team just found the magic that teams need during October. With Adam Wainwright's strikeout to end game 5, I've never had such a rush go through me in a sporting event.

It's that same rush that I hope to feel on Sunday. I feel like I'm going back to 2005 when the Illini were in the Final Four...the week leading up to it was like what this week has been back. All over campus, Da Bears are the topic of conversation. Girl TAs that probably don't even know what a football is made from try to start conversations to their silent classes about who is pulling for the Bears this weekend. While an Illini football national championship would be my ultimate rush, Da Bears winning would be awesome and probably check in at #4 overall in my sport fanatic dream list.

1. Illini football
2. Illini basketball
3. St. Louis Cardinals
4. Chicago Bears
5. Texas football (6 would be basketball)

You'll notice that I didn't talk about the Longhorn's national championship in football last season. While Texas is my 'other school,' they are still nowhere near the same level as Illinois in my heart. Besides, what else would go at number 5? The St. Louis Blues? Please. I guess the next sports team would be Da Bulls, but I don't care enough about the NBA to really have a favorite team. I just pull for the former Illini basketball players to do well.

Anyway, I'll cut the reading short here. I'll get back to the personal life later on, but for now you can procrastinate better things to do by reading through all of this.

See you all next week...as we celebrate DA BEARS Super Bowl Championship.

fin

P.S. - If you have yet to download "Lazy Eye" by the Silversun Pickups...then get on that. Great song.