NaBloPoMo 2014: Day 22 "Cabaret Crazed"

Tonight, tonight, tonight!

It was Cabaret Night - and it was everything I dreamed it would be. (Almost perfect, close enough!)

We raised millions of won in funds, (!!!) served a 3-course dessert menu with wine, and sang and danced our hearts out.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

CROWDZZZ

Over 100 ppl...

"Cry Me A River"

"When You're Good To Mama" as a duet

"All I Care About Is Love" - I'm in the top left corner ;), Adam's face is bottom right

Glamorous Songstresses

"Cell Block Tango" gang - I'm the blonde Hungarian Hunyak

"Uh-uh"

"He had it comin'..."

"It was a murder, but not a crime!"

"We Both Reached For The Gun" - me as puppet Roxie Hart, Adam as Billy Flynn

"Oh yes oh yes oh yes they both..."

"Money Makes The World Go Around" - from Cabaret

Lisa as Liza and me as Joel Gray

My favorite - Pulling money from our brassieres and working hard for the won

"Money money money money..."

Us, shimmying thru the crowd collecting money and banging a cowbell every time we got a bill

GPP President's thank you speech

La Presidentia

"All That Jazz" FINALE!

It was over too soon, and not nearly soon enough!

Waiting to go on

Photo booth fun with "Mona Lipschitz" from Cell Block Tango (aka, Boipelo!)

My two Jeongs: Sujeong and Hyojeong

BEST FASCINATOR OF THE NIGHT AWARD, goes to Stephanie, my coworker

The gorgeous hosts and Cabaret Directors! Heather & Julien

Billy Flynn with some ladies ;)

Pre-creepy make-up

Being attacked by a loveable Hyo Monster

Heart lips! Scary eyes! Goodnight everyone!

Enough. Bed beckons alluringly.

CARPE CABARET, forever and ever.

SQUATS: No
SPLITS: No
BOOKS: No
WATER: Yes

NaBloPoMo 2014: Day 12 "NEWS FLASH"

Attention world: my husband's famous!

I was pulled from my beauty sleep this morning by a very agitated husband. "I'm drawing a wintersuit in Panama," he said, before dashing out of the house early.

Turns out I was half asleep and what he actually said was "I'm doing an interview for Canada." Which at 7am makes about the same amount of sense.

He was interviewed at 9:30 this morning by CTV Television Network, and his interview can be found HERE! Click on the 2nd video on the right, titled "CTV News Channel: Some wanted tougher sentences" with Adam's mug right on it.

The subject matter is somber - the tragic Sewol sinking trials - but the interviewee is extremely handsome and intelligent. AND married to moi.

Tomorrow is the Korean national high school SAT test, so I get to go in to work late (10am, wheee) and Adam has the whole day off. To celebrate, I'm gracing the world with that link to my husband's interview plus the following impressive screenshots, and calling it a night. Cheers!

Lookin' fine

Lookin' legit

Lookin' smart

Carpe diem!

SQUATS: rest day, halle-fricken-lujah. Though I did 30 squats this morning before I remembered... SMH. And then I had Zumba tonight, so it felt not-so-much like a rest day. :'(
SPLITS: 2:50 on each leg
BOOKS: I'm on page 37/176! Finished "After the Race" on the subway today.
WATER: I'm still doing horribly at this. I think I need to start with warm water in the mornings, because it's been too chilly to force myself to drink cold water. Tomorrow: Warm water!

NaBloPoMo: Day 16 "Goals: Addendum"

Ok, I don't have a lot of time, because Adam is sitting in the next room with wine and Agents of Shield cued up, just WAITING for me to come join him. And holding the wine hostage. >:(

I realized today that I left out a major section of my goals in my previous posts: Korean goals in Korea.

1. Create and design a middle school curriculum. There's a large project I'm working on with several other ESL teachers here in Gwangju to create a curriculum for middle school ESL teachers in our particular program, EPIK. A lot of new teachers (myself and Adam included) get thrown into middle schools with Korea co-teachers who hand us the middle school textbooks and say "You can use these if you want. Or not. Do you like them? I don't like them. You can just do whatever you think is helpful for the students..."  And after looking at the first couple pages of the available textbooks, I have to agree that they are the opposite of compelling for a middle school student. So, I (and most other middle school ESL teachers) attempt to do... whatever I feel is useful. This leads, inevitably, to unequal lesson quality throughout the middle schools of the city (and country). And this is what our determined little group wants to change.

We've been working diligently (usually) on the project for about a year, now, and we are a couple days away from finishing grade 1 of the curriculum (or, 7th grade). Exciting and daunting and time consuming, I'm personally committed to seeing this project through to completion before leaving. I have confidence it CAN be done, but after next month, we'll have (or won't have) assurance from the Gwangju Office of Education that they'll fund the remainder of the project, which will be (HOPEFULLY, CROSS EVERY FINGER AND TOE) a huge relief and motivating factor.

2. Lead a local theatre company. In the past 1.5 years, I've participated in two theater shows put on by the Gwangju Performance Project, which was started and run by other ESL teachers for the past 4-ish years. Next year, however, the entire leadership group is leaving Korea. They've decided they'd like yours truly to be the next GPP coordinator/leader/director, and so I'll be initiating and running the show (ha, literally) starting next March. This is much scarier than the textbook project, but also waaaayyy more exciting, in many ways. I've already got a play in mind for next spring, but I'll keep you posted.

3. Be proud of Adam. This isn't a goal, but I just want to brag a little on my husband. There's a local magazine here in Gwangju that has a pretty significant readership throughout the whole country. He started out volunteering to write articles here and there, and then was quickly promoted to the Online Editor. And now... there are rumors of bigger and better things in the works.

He's awesome. You can check out the online version of the magazine here!

AAHH! Adam's starting the show without meeeeeeeeee....

Carpe November!

P.S. Abs & squats, CHECK -- rest day!
Minimalism, CHECK. Another non-challenge day, another day of uploading pics and pics and pics to my online cloud.

Thanksvember 11/9

Today, I am thankful for kisses.

All kinds of kisses, of course: sloppy baby smooches from toddlers, cheek bisous from friends, forehead pecks from moms (kisses from animals are excluded, as they gross me out a little bit. Sorry, pooches.).

But above all, I'm thankful for kisses from my love. I waited a looong time to get his kisses ...and it turns out that they were so very worth the anticipation. Sometime around the age of 12 (?) I decided that I wasn't going to kiss anyone until my wedding day. Amazingly enough, this wasn't really hard all the way up until my 6-month-long engagement. I don't think it was the "right" way to do romance, so to speak, but I don't regret it at all.

This is probably a leetle bit of TMI for some of you, but today has just been one of those days when I honestly can't get enough of my husband. To merely look at him is to want to touch him, hold him, pepper him with kisses and be kissed in return. (How many more times can I insert the word "kiss" into this post?  :D sorry folks)

And they just keep getting better and better.

(Ok, ok: I'm done with the MUSH!)

xoxo

Happy Birthday delights

My husband, the most courageous of men, has just stepped boldly into his 28th year. And to commemorate such an event, I had no doubt as to what I needed to prepare for him: a scavenger hunt.  Adam and I have a long history of plaguing each other with scavenger hunts as gifts. His favorite (before this one, of course) was probably the 1st hunt I ever sent him on, at the end of which I told him yes to entering a relationship with him.


This year's hunt was immeasurably less stressful - both for him and for me - and here's how it went down:


1.

Breakfast in bed for the birthday boy: eggs over easy, biscuits, bacon, juice, coffee, avocado slices, tomatoes, and roses for the presentation. His 1st clue was waiting on the tray as well.

2.

Clue #1 was a gift certificate for a hot shave at Aidan Gill ("FOR MEN"). This is BEFORE. *scruffy*

This is AFTER. *smooth as a baby's behind* The shave was SO close and intense that it shaved the color off his shirt, too.

Aidan Gill is a fun & swank barber shop that has old-fashioned barber chairs and uses brushed-on shaving cream and lots of hot towels - plus each customer gets a free drink of their choice :)

3.

The barber gave Adam clue #2, which was a gift certificate to his local comic book hangout. We lazily perused the shelves until Adam's hands were full o' books, and while checking out, the cashier practically had to hit Adam upside the head with his next clue (it was displayed prominently next to the checkout area, but Adam didn't notice it until the guy slapped his receipt on top of it. :D)

4.

Clue #3 was a bag of oatmeal raisin cookies from La Madeleine, one of my (and Adam's) favorite restaurants. We munched down dessert & drinks and Adam puzzled out his next clue. This was the only one that actually demanded some deciphering, though this was more due to my lack of artistic skills than cleverness. (image of clue below)

Adam: "Um... Pizza..Mouse? Car-Ribs-Peas? Westbank!"

5.  He figured out that it was supposed to look like "Pie-Rats, Car-Rib-Bean, WestBank" and we thusly set off in the direction of AMC Westbank Palace Cinema to see the new pirate flick. It's nothing brilliant, but it was fun nonetheless.

6. On the way to the theatre, we had some time to kill, so I pointed Adam down a quick detour to show him a tree I'd discovered at Audubon Park.  Apparently it's called the Tree of Life, and a popular destination for an outdoor wedding.  IT IS MASSIVE.

Add caption

7. After enjoying our cinematic experience, I handed Adam the last clue and congratulated him on making it thus far.  The clue was a menu for a swank little restaurant on Magazine St. that we'd been eyeballing for a while, and we made it just in time for our 7pm reservations.  I'd forgotten to pack a change of clothes for Adam (d'oh!), but these people were not as picky as Commander's Palace (which specifies on the website and on phone reservations that suits and jackets are recommended, jeans are not allowed.), and all was well.


They invited us to the bar to wait for our table to be ready, and when we were led to the table, Adam's BIG FINAL  gift was pre-set at his seat on the table, waiting for him.


This was it:

In its case

Out of case! Voila - typewriter!

The typewriter above was just a stand-in - I wanted him to actually choose his own typewriter, but didn't want to just hand him a piece of paper with a photo of a typewriter on it. (lame) So I rented this one from a retro-antique shop for a week. :)  He still hasn't made his final choice, but he's leaning towards a small, sleek Hermes Rocket, like the one pictured here: http://www.bluemooncamera.com/photo_essay.php?id=14


When his machine arrives, you can rest assured there will be pictures of the happy, noisy writer to follow.

We topped his birthday off with some spirited research as to what our next jobs will entail - we're both eager for the next chapter of our lives and it was fun talking through the options. Asia, France and Ecuador are among the discussion topics...Stay tuned!

One year resolutions

We celebrated the first birthday of our marriage in style.  

Happy Anniversary to us! We got off work for the night of the 31st and the morning of the 1st, and we relished every nostalgic second of our time off. The arrival of our lovely wedding photo-album only days before made the nostalgia very easy to capture.

Adam surprised me with an evening dinner cruise aboard the Steamboat Natchez, an historical steamer that has live jazz bands and a buffet dinner to accompany the captain's  tales of the Mississippi over the loud speaker.

The woman on top of the boat is playing a calliope

Adam claimed he had commissioned that grafitti just for me

I had a harder time believing him when he said he also requested to the captain that we pass by the sugar factory so he could tell me I'm "sweeter than the whole factory." Just kidding, he didn't say that.

US govt saving on docking fees by parking side-by-side

Sunset on the Mississip'

Still feelin' the newlywed bliss

It was lovely. After disembarking, we snagged some beignets at Cafe du Monde before heading to our  S W A N K Y hotel, the W.

Nom nom nom

Coolest hotel ever

We went through two bottles of wine without drinking one single glass - the first one smashed to bits on the deck of the Natchez (whoops) and the second was undrinkable. bleagh. Of course, Adam and I have no need of alcohol to party, and we had a fabulous time despite the absence of fermented grapes.

The next morning we copied the Arnold newlyweds by ordering room service for the first - and probably last - time in our lives. We ate breakfast in (our hilariously huge) bed and watched TV for hours, two other things we will probably never do again for the remainder of our year in New Orleans. But hey, one-year anniversaries only come once in a lifetime! ("Just like 2-year anniversaries, 3-years, 4-years..." Adam said with an impish grin)

In closing, it was a magical night and utterly decadent morning.  Can't wait for next year!

I love you, Adam. The song "More Today then Yesterday" by Spiral Staircase definitely applies in our case.


POST. SCRIPT.

I just would like to note that ever since August 1st 2009 and it's glory, it has become clearer and clearer every day just how beautiful and precious life is. Fast forward to August 1st, 2010 --> Now that work has calmed down to the point where I actually leave the hostel every day, I've resolved to be a better communicator. With myself, with my husband and with everyone I know. And I've been doing very well so far, though today was very possibly overkill. (In the past 4 hours, I've replied to 5 emails and 10 facebook messages before screwing up my remaining energy and writing this post. )

Life is beautiful and precious and all that, but it's the relationships I cultivate and cherish that make it so. And that's my goal for this year: cultivating the relationships I have and love. I'm in a job where relationships are created and dropped in 3 days time, over and over again. Maybe some of them will stretch into something permanent and surprising, but I don't want the short-term to become my habit.

That's enough - my brain is communicated out for now. Cheers!