Monday, May 30, 2011

30 Day Song Challenge -- in one day!

A bunch of my friends on facebook have been doing this 30 day song challenge. I'm not motivated enough to actually deal with it every day, plus I get really annoyed with how much it clutters up my newsfeed. But it seemed like an interesting idea, and I do love music. So, lovely readers, here goes a whirlwind tour through my iTunes library! 


All of the links go to youtube videos. Some of the videos are worth watching (specifically, the video for "Le Lion Est Mort Ce Soir". That is one worried hippo) and some of them are just nice music.


I thought it was only fair to do two versions of this list -- one for classical music and one for non-classical music. 


day 01 - your favorite song
Vitali - Chaconne
Sovereign Grance - To Live is Christ



day 02 - your least favorite song
Ravel - Bolero
Justin Bieber - Baby


day 03 - a song that makes you happy 
Rossini - Buona Sera, Mio Signore from Il Barbiere de Seviglia (start around the 5:00 mark to get to the part that makes me happy, although the whole thing is pretty awesome!)
Glee Cast - Blackbird


day 04 - a song that makes you sad
Rachmaninoff - Elegie from Op. 3
Ella Fitzgerald - Someone to Watch Over Me


day 05 - a song that reminds you of someone
Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps
Alexei Murdoch - Orange Sky


day 06 - a song that reminds you of somewhere
Dvorak - Symphony No. 9 "From the New World"

Camp Chazon - Matilda the Gorilla


day 07 - a song that reminds you of a certain event 
Bizet - Carmen Fantasy for Piano, 6 Hands

Coralie Clement - Mes Fenêtres Donnent Sur la Cour


day 08 - a song that you know all the words to (For the classical version, since I don't sing, I'm substituting notes for words)
Debussy - Clair de Lune
Keith and Kristen Getty - The Power of the Cross


day 09 - a song that you can dance to
Traditional English - Mr. Bevridge's Magot

The Wonder Girls - Nobody


day 10 - a song that makes you fall asleep 
Tomas Luis de Victoria - 
Victoria - Tenebrae Responsories - O vos omnes
Secret Garden - Nocturne


day 11 - a song from your favorite band 
Bernstein - Overture from "Candide" by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Paavo Jarvi

Allison Kraus - Baby of Mine


day 12 - a song that makes you feel lonely

Paart - Spiegel im Spiegel
Beyonce - Learn to be Lonely


day 13 - a song that is a guilty pleasure 
Bach - Air on the G String

Alexander Rybak - Fairytale


day 14 - a song that no one would expect you to love 
Khachaturian - Toccata in eb minor

Radiohead - No Surprises


day 15 - a song that describes you 
Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue

The Reading Rainbow - Theme


day 16 - a song that you used to love but now hate 
Liszt - La Campanella

Josh Groban - You're Still You


day 17 - a song that you hear often on the radio
Mozart - Eine Kleine Nacht Musik

Various - K-Pop


day 18 - a song that you wish you heard on the radio
Rachmaninoff - Suite No. 2 Op. 17 (Tarantella)
Barbara Hazelwood - At the Gray Havens


day 19 - a song from your favorite album
Massenet - Meditation from "Thais" by Yo Yo Ma and Kathryn Scott 

Annie Lennox - Into the West


day 20 - a song that you listen to when you’re angry 
Beethoven - Sonata Op. 57 No. 23 "Appassionata"

Hans Zimmer - The Dark Knight


day 21 - a song that you listen to when you’re happy
Debussy - Golliwog's Cakewalk

Katrina and the Waves - Walking on Sunshine


day 22 - a song that you listen to when you’re sad
Mozart - Ach, Ich Fuhl's from "Die Zaberflote"

Impact Repertoire Theater - Raise it Up


day 23 - a song that you want to play at your wedding
Barber - Adagio for Strings, Op. 11

Jekyll and Hyde - Take Me As I Am


day 24 - a song that you want to play at your funeral
Mozart - Requiem Op. 626, Itroit and Kyrie

Jon Foreman - Learning How to Die


day 25 - a song that makes you laugh
Strauss - Adele's Laughing Song from "Die Fledermaus"
Unknown - Le Lion Est Mort Ce Soir


day 26 - a song that you can play on an instrument
Liszt - Un Sospiro

Elton John - The Piano Man


day 27 - a song that you wish you could play
Franck - Prelude, Chorale et Fugue

Ray Charles - Georgia On My Mind


day 28 - a song that makes you cry
Dvorak - Rusalka

Harry Nilsson - Over the Rainbow


day 29 - a song from your childhood 
Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsody performed by Victor Borge

Martha Mier - Camilla the Camel


day 30 - your favorite song at this time last year
Elgar - Cello Concerto in e minor, Op. 85
Kurt Nilsen - Hallelujah

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

A Typical Tuesday

Some of you have asked, "What do you do every day?" So, I thought I'd walk you through what a basic day looks like in the life of an English teacher in Korea.

I wake up between 6-6:30 most days. Long gone are the days when I could wake up at 7:45 to make it to an 8:00 class. I've discovered that I have to be much more awake to teach an 8:00 class than I did to sit in an 8:00 class. So I usually get ready, drink some tea and listen to some music before I head to school.

Once I'm ready to go, I head out the door to the subway. I usually leave sometime around 7:20 for the subway station, although I can leave as late as 7:37 and still catch a train to be on time for my class. Not that I've ever done that.... I live about a 5 minute walk from the subway station, then three stops on the train, plus a ten minute walk on the other end to get to my campus. The whole commute takes about 25-30 minutes. The train is always quite full, and I usually have to fight my way through crowds of people going up and down stairs in the stations.

I get to my classroom and turn on my computer and get all of my papers laid out for the day. My students usually start to trickle in around 7:50, so we make small talk until it's time to start class. My 8:00 class this semester is pretty advanced for my university. They are doing a significant amount of writing as well as normal conversation and grammar work. Today, the 8:00 class learned about idiomatic uses for the word "sick". We talked about being sick and tired of something, sick days, airsick, lovesick, etc. It can get quite confusing to explain how one word can be involved in so many different meanings.

Next up is my IT English class at 9:00. I have to move to a different building for this class. This is probably the most difficult class I teach. It is significantly larger than my normal classes. The students have widely varied levels of English. The biggest problem is that I can't find a way to get these kids to stop speaking Korean to each other. They all talk, all the time. I've had to turn into Scary Teacher Sarah several times with this group, and it just doesn't always work. Today they were supposed to be doing presentations, but shockingly, they weren't all as prepared as they should have been so it was pretty rough.

After I'm done teaching the normal morning classes, I have a few minutes to catch my breath and figure out the rest of my day. I typically use the rest of the morning hours for lesson planning, grading, advising meetings, staff/faculty meetings, or my Korean lesson, which is every Thursday morning. All of that is TERRIBLY exciting stuff, I assure you ;)

My co-worker Renae and I always go to lunch together. We often go to the school cafeteria to try to test our luck and see if there is anything edible there. The food is fairly typical cafeteria food, with a decidedly Asian twist. I'm working on collecting pictures of the various meals, so there will be a future post dedicated to cafeteria food. Sometimes, the food just doesn't look edible, so we will go out to lunch. Within walking distance of the school, there is a McDonald's, Pizza Hut, several random Korean restaurants, and lots of street food. There will probably be a future street food post too, now that I know what most of it is.

After lunch, I have two more classes to teach. One is at 1:20, and the other is at 2:45. Both of these classes are at the same level, and they are going through the same book, so I basically teach the same class back to back. In between these classes, I tend to have a lot of students in and out of my office with questions, or just wanting to practice their conversation skills.

After the last class is over, I have about an hour before I head home. I typically get all of my copies made for the next day's classes and finalize the details for my 8:00 and 9:00 classes, and make sure that my grade book and attendance books are all caught up from that day's work. I also tend to write many of my work-related emails during this time.

When 5:00 rolls around, I'm free to go, but I have had to stay late quite a few days this semester because the grading load is so heavy. By the time I do go home, the train going towards home is usually quite crowded again. I make it home, and I'm dead tired. I scrounge up some food for dinner, and spend the rest of the evening enjoying quiet pursuits. Sometimes I'll go out for dinner or coffee or whatever with friends. I go to Bible study once a week. But my life is pretty quiet.

That's the typical schedule. There really isn't much change from that. On Friday morning, I spend several hours reading English books and trying to make up lesson plans on the spot for 2-6 year old students. On Wednesday, I don't have my afternoon classes, so it is usually a day for meetings and catching up on grading/lesson planning. Saturday, I'm free to do what I want, but on Sunday morning I have to go back to my school and teach a class for elementary school students at the university church.

All in all, it's a glamorous life here in Seoul ;)

Monday, May 16, 2011

Jeju Day Four - back to the city

Saturday morning, I was mostly a bum. I slept in, packed things up and puttered around with a book for awhile. After I checked out of my hostel, I had about two hours to kill before it was time to return the car and head back to the airport. I decided that I would go check out one more park. While I was driving to the park, I passed a beautiful strip of beach, so I stopped there first. 



There were these strange piles of rocks on one section of the beach. I've seen piles like this on the tops of mountains before. I think it might be connected with Buddhism in some way. 


This rock pile was off by itself, almost like it was keeping watch or something. 


When I finally made it to the park, the first place I came across was a set of caves. Just outside of the entrance were more rock piles. Only these had faces carved into them. 

This state was inside of the first cave. It is somehow supposed to represent wisdom. 

Speaking of statues, there were quite a few of them in this park. This was near the folk village. It is a Korean woman in traditional dress. 

Jeju wasn't always part of Korea. There are about 45 of these statues, kinda like the ones at Easter Island, that are left from the island's pre-Korea days. It has become a symbol of the island, and you can see these things EVERYWHERE now. 

There were some really adorable scarecrows in the folk village. 

If I were a crow, I don't think I'd be intimidated. 


This was in one of the vegetable gardens at the folk village. 

There was also a bird exhibit. They had some lovely birds, but every single one of them was behind a chain link fence. Do you have any clue how hard to is to see birds, much less photograph them, when they are behind a chain link fence?? ::Sigh::

There were even a few white peacocks, but I couldn't get any of them to face me while they had their feathers all ruffled. This one was particularly upset about something. I could hear him hissing from 50 feet away!

More statues.


There are several natural waterfalls in Jeju that are quite famous. I didn't make it to any of them, but I think that just about every park I was in had its very own waterfall. 

There were lots of lovely flowers in the park as well. 





After I'd seen all of the sights, I returned my car and got on a plane to come back to Seoul. I had a window seat, and I was struck by two things. I'd heard that Korea was 70% mountains, and now I definitely believe it. The whole country is covered with mountains. Pretty much every single flat space is built up. Korea is so densely populated, that even in what looked like really small towns, there were high rise apartment buildings. I'm convinced that all apartment buildings in Korea look exactly the same. They're quite easy to pick out, even from 30,000 feet!

It was also quite obvious when Seoul came into sight. There were buildings for as far as I could see. Literally. It was like looking at the ocean, only instead of it being water that ended with the earth's curve, it was buildings. Also, I was reminded again that Seoul doesn't really have a distinctive skyline. All of the buildings are tall. The tall buildings are everywhere. There is no such thing as "downtown" like there is in American terms. You always know you are downtown in an American city, because that's where the skyscrapers are, and all of the other crazy busyness. In Seoul, the whole city looks basically the same. Of course, there is a city center type of downtown, but it's entirely different. 

It was kinda sad to go sit at a bus stop and wait for my bus after three and a half days of glorious freedom with a car, but I knew I was back in Seoul when my bus ride from the airport to my apartment took nearly twice as long as my flight from Jeju to Seoul. All in all, it was a good trip, but I was glad to see my apartment again. 

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Jeju Day Three - It's a Small World!

No, I didn't run into some long lost friends on my third day in Jeju. I actually didn't even see any other foreigners unless I was at my hostel. However, I did venture out to see a "Bunjae Spirited Garden". I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from a name like that, but several people had recommended it to me. It turns out, Bunjae is the Korea word for Bonsai, which is really a Japanese word, but we use in English.

There was this one man who had, all on his own, created this breathtakingly beautiful garden with rocks and miniature trees. There were so many types of trees, in so many shapes.





I don't know what this building was for, but there were buildings shaped like this all over the island. 

This tree totally reminded me of broccoli! 








I wish there was some way to transport all of this into Seoul. 



Next, I went to a rock cliff that had been created by a volcano explosion. Jeju is a volcanic island, so there is black rock EVERYWHERE. I've seen volcanic rock before, but I'd never seen rocks or cliffs quite like this before. 


All of the rocks were pentagonal or octagonal. I don't fully understand how it happens, but I guess it has something to do with lava coming up through the ocean floor. There were a few signs, but unfortunately, just as I arrived and entire middle school from Seoul also arrived. Kids go on trips like this with their school pretty regularly here. But they were really loud, and there were a TON of them, and they were all staring and pointing and whispering about a foreigner being there. A few of the particularly brave ones tried to say hello to me, but they were too embarrassed to have a full conversation. I went to a different part of the park, and enjoyed the views in peace.  





The last activity for the afternoon was going on a boat ride. It was one of those kinda cheesy tourist things, but it was also quite cheap. The views were amazing, and it would have been quite enjoyable, except this is what I heard for the entire 90 minute ride.






There was this one smaller island that had all sorts of cool caves in it!

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