It has been OVER a year since we last updated our blog. I've made some visual changes to it and now I am going to attempt to summarize the last year with a bullet list, month by month, to catch you up. I'll start with Sept 2009, as that was the last time I really posted (besides uploading a video in October). :)
September 2009
- Leslie went to her first Korean wedding for Grace, Elementary School secretary
- Michael coached his first varsity volleyball team
- Leslie went to PYP training in Chiang Mai, Thailand for 5 days
- We celebrated Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) by going to some lovely mountains in northeastern Korea called Seoraksan for a few days, and also went to a party put on by our church
- Celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving with co-workers
- Celebrated Leslie's 29th birthday by eating at a Brazilian steakhouse with friends; went to Seoul Art Museum to see a photography exhibit
- Michael's volleyball team won the division championships!
- Michael went to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone, border of North and South Korea) Leslie didn't go because she had the flu.
- Leslie spent a week in the hospital with a flare up of ulcerative colitis after a clinic gave her medicine for the flu that flared up her colon--spent the next 4 months on steroids
- Michael became a part-time Bible teacher after a teacher left, teaching 2 classes 2 days a week and subbing the other 3
- Leslie started volunteering to administer the SAT on Saturday mornings when our school offers it, to make a little extra cash
- Leslie got her Korean drivers license and started borrowing a school car to drive places
- We went to the US for 3 weeks for the Christmas holidays. Leslie flew to Denver to be in former college roommate Jenny's wedding, then joined Michael with her family in San Diego for the week. Then we spent about a week and a half in Arkansas with Michael's family, and catching up with friends.
- We came back to start our second semester at GSIS
- Leslie started working on an M.Ed in School Library and Information Technology online through Mansfield University in Pennsylvania.
- Michael helped chaperone a weeklong HS service trip to Northern India, in the Darjeeling district, during our Lunar New Year break. Leslie stayed home to rest, shop, and work on grad school homework.
- Leslie ran her first school Literacy Week and hosted an author visit at school with two poets from the US, Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger. She also got her camera stolen out of the library one night, and lost all of her pictures of the book character dress-up day.
- Leslie got to go off of the steroids after 4 loooong months.
- We flew back to the US for a week for Spring Break: flew into NYC, met up with Michael's best friend Tim for breakfast (who just happened to be in NYC for his spring break) before taking a train to CT to see Leslie's Gramma Kukta and the rest of the family for Gram's "surprise" 90th birthday. Michael got to meet Gramma for the first time, along with most of the Kukta/Torino crew. We went back to NYC for a couple of nights and saw Mary Poppins on Broadway, walked through Central Park, went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and got to go see the Statue of Liberty.
- Leslie successfully set up and ran her first book fair at school, which was a TON of work but also made a lot of profit towards future author visits and books for the library!
- We went to see Jamie Cullum in concert in Seoul with some co-workers. He was awesome!
- Leslie went to another IB training, this time for Librarians and in Melbourne, Australia, for 6 days
- Leslie took a cake decorating class with some co-workers and learned how to make fondant icing.
- Leslie went to another workshop specifically for librarians, with her assistant Reica, to Tokyo, Japan for 5 days
- We wrapped up our first year of working at GSIS, and completed our second full year in Korea
- Leslie's mom, Karen, came to visit us in Korea for about 10 days.
- Michael's parents, Rodney & Vicki, came to visit us in Korea for about 9 days
- Michael turned 33 years old and we celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary
- We flew to Thailand for two weeks and celebrated our anniversary for 3 nights at an amazing resort on the beaches in Krabi; then we spent time in Ko Phi Phi, Phuket, Chiang Mai (and met up with a friend from college, Angela, who happened to be there on a mission trip), and Chiang Rai.
- Our school moved us into a new, much bigger and nicer apartment (since Michael got a job promotion) while we were in Thailand.
- We spent 2 nights at our new place and then left for 2 weeks in China! We flew to Shanghai and took a small tour with Intrepid Travel from there to Xi'an and then Beijing. We saw amazing things including the Shanghai World Expo, Xitang water town (where Mission Impossible 3 was filmed) Terracotta Warriors, Great Wall, Forbidden City, Tienanmen Square, Summer Palace, Pearl Market, Acrobat and Kung Fu shows, etc. We also spent some massive amounts of time on sleeper trains as there were mudslides and we had to re-route and our trains were extremely late (lost a whole day in Beijing). Then we flew to Chengdu and spent 2 nights with Michael's college roommate Mark and his family. They took us to see the pandas and out for Tex-mex, and even to Ikea!
- We started our second and current school year at GSIS. Michael is currently teaching full-time Bible classes to high school students, has one middle school class, and is an additional Student Life Minister. Leslie is still the Elementary Teacher Librarian.
- Leslie had to completely rearrange/redesign the library as there was a lot of construction over the summer and we added a 5th grade classroom in the back of the library and tore down a computer lab. It looks pretty good, though, and she is pretty happy with the way it turned out so far. She's had lots of compliments on it from colleagues, which is nice.
- Michael started coaching varsity volleyball for the second year, but this is the first year our school moved into Division 1 for sports.
- Michael started taking online courses in math, so that he can get enough units towards a teaching certificate in Math, and hopefully eventually a Master's degree.
- We hired a housekeeper to clean our house every other Thursday. :) It has been wonderful!
- We hosted a co-ed baby shower for our friends, John & Soyon, who are moving to Nepal at the end of the year.
- Michael was involved with all 3 school division's SEW (Spiritual Emphasis Week). He was the speaker for the elementary, and he helped run the middle school and high school weeks as those are his main divisions.
- Leslie started another grad class.
- Leslie went to Shanghai for the Learning 2.010 technology conference for 3 days
- We went to Singapore for a week to celebrate our Chuseok holiday.
- Leslie joined a teacher book club, discussing The Help by Katherine Stockett (which she had luckily already read over the summer)
- Leslie hosted another baby shower for her friend Katherine
- We celebrated Leslie's 30th birthday by going out to eat with a large group of friends and then going to the noraebang afterward
- Michael got to take the volleyball team to Kobe, Japan for 5 days to compete in a regional tournament
- Our colleague, Mark, passed away after having a heart attack and developing pneumonia. He was the HS band director. This was the first death within our school community and was a very difficult and emotional time. We had a memorial service for him at the end of school the following Monday.
I'm thinking of adding a slideshow of photos from the last year to the blog so that you can see photos from many of the events that I just told you about. :) We'll see if I ever get that done!
If you've read this far, thanks for taking the time to catch up. Hopefully I will do a better job from now on about communicating, as it is so hard to catch people to chat on the phone with our schedules and the time difference. Love you all!
Leslie & Michael
2 comments:
LOVED IT!! Thanks Leslie for catching us up. We tried a housekeeper only once. She stole my credit card right out of my purse. The worst part is that her parents go to church with us and she used to go too. I was 9 months pregnant and haven't had one since. You are so lucky that she is working out.
Congrats on all of the awards, and travels. I'm so glad yall are having fun. Sorry for the loss of your colleague. I hope time is helping some and we'll pray for everyone connected.
God bless!
Oh my, Dana, that's horrible!! I cannot imagine that happening to me at 9 months pregnant. That woman probably wouldn't live to tell the tale! We have some Filipino ladies that clean houses for our co-workers, so that's how we found out about ours. SO far, she's done a great job and it has been such a help with easing my stress! Plus, now i can invite people over more often. :)
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