Two Hearted

I'm a pretty reflective person, I like to think and remember and go over what has happened - good and bad. Moving and starting a career are two really great causes for reflection, so it seems I've got a lot of good material! Recently I've been thinking more about my transition as an expat and a member of my school community. A couple recent events/happenings that have caused great reflection in my life:

1) Jenn's friend Tim is here to visit from Canada. He arrived on Friday and came out with us on Saturday to celebrate Sarah's birthday. Spending time with Jenn and Tim helped me to realize how established I am/we are here in Seoul - as a community, as a friend group, as teachers, etc. As much as I never really foresaw this city feeling like home, it's really starting to (sorry, Mom!). It's just surprising how much culture, skill, and snip-its of useful vocabulary you slowly soak up here. It was really fun to go out as a giant group to celebrate Sarah's birthday, and even more fun because I started to think about it from an outsider's perspective - remembering how I saw these people 3 to 4 months ago as new colleagues. (I've gotten crap for calling the people I work with my "colleagues". They'll say "Come on, Emmalee… we're friends. You can call us friends") So I was seeing them as colleagues and now we're all friends.

2) The national music education group (for international schools) in Korea heard auditions on Saturday for our high school honors festivals coming up in the spring. The Basement Dwellers (because the music department is completely in the basement) left Wolgye-dong at 730 and arrived in Suwon around 9 am. We got all our recordings in order, found our rooms, received instructions, and set to work. The string team heard an incredible number of auditions. This incredible number caused us to go into overtime - listening until around 5pm. Uff da! 

It was really great to gain some context about how well my students are playing and to work with other string teachers in Korea! 

Anyway, the cause for reflection-

Around 3 pm when I started to go nuts, I texted Sophie and Melinda and they came to the rescue. They had finished their auditions and had some free time. I gave some quick pointers on what we were looking for in recordings and they helped us judge one set of auditions. Life savers! There were two other judges from another school who stuck around to help us, as well. This caused me to realize what a supportive and completing colleagues I have. I actually could not have finished that day without them - I barely made it out alive WITH them. New environments, stress of rankings, lack of consistency in ratings, differing opinions… lots of confusing factors. But I had my Basement Masters with me, and felt we could handle anything.

With all of the good things going on here, the sprinkling of snow made me SO excited, but also made me miss home. I'm very excited about going home for Christmas, but know that I'll be missing Seoul at least a little while I'm in Minnesota. I'm starting to settle and feel comfortable in two places - reminding me of Oberon's Two Hearted Ale. I never quite got the title until now - how could someone be two hearted? One heart loves this freedom and adventure, and another longs for comfort, familiarity, and the people and places I'm used to calling home. I'm so fortunate to be able to satisfy both of my hearts at this point in life. Can't wait to go home and spend time with my brothers and (pretty much) sisters, my parents, my pets, home made chex mix, christmas buttons, and Mannheim Steamroller.

In case you were wondering,

9 days until T.Gives

33 days until I fly back to the states!

37 days until Christmas!!!!!!

113 days since I flew to SoKo

PS - this is sort of odd, but it occurred to me that not all of my loyal readers are my Facebook friends. I've shared this with some of you (and perhaps my parents have shared this with some of you), but for the rest of you who are dying to see more glimpses of my life, here are two different youtube videos of my high school ensemble's performances at large group competition last week (#1  and #2). 

sweet

Today is November 11th - a day that would normally pass without a second thought.
Not in Korea!
Today is 11/11 - Pepero day. (As explained by Wikipedia)
Pepero is a sweet treat that is exchanged on november 11th because 11/11 looks like four sticks of pepero. Our student council sold them last week and they're being delivered to classes today, much like Candy Cane Grams or Christmas Grams from Mean Girls. I'm just hoping to be able to say "4 for you Glen Coco, You go Glen Coco" and have SOMEONE recognize it.


Nothing to interesting going on besides that - my first normal week in a while! Not sure I'll be able to handle the normalcy - no auditions, concerts, field trips, or major due dates for me or my students. Okay, I do have some additional recordings due this week, but only like 1 or 2.

From The Other Side

When I finished my first student teaching placement (in Owatonna, MN) my cooperating teacher (who was a total wizard, by the way) gave me flowers. The card in the flowers said "Welcome to the other side of the desk!". How beautiful to be going through the same experiences but from the other side - I loved that she pointed that out to me.

Today.

Today is Tuesday.
Not any normal Tuesday.
We had large group contest at Seoul International School. As a director, you bring your group to the host school at the scheduled time, perform for a group of judges, and receive written and recorded comments, participate in a "clinic" with one of the judges, receive a rating, and then go home.
This happens to be exactly one week after my middle school concert (my first concert at APIS), and three days after recordings for our equivalent to All-State were due.

We prepared our pieces.
We recorded and critiqued ourselves.
We discussed the moods of the pieces.
We scrubbed some measures.
I transcribed some parts to strengthen our minuscule viola section.
We watched you tubes to understand the subjects of our pieces.
We used many a metronome markings.
We worked. And worked. And worked.
For nearly months (one quarter of the school year) - we worked on our pieces.

Today was the day.
We took three buses of kids to another school, practiced, listened, warmed up, performed, and worked on stuff with a judge. I was with my 23 high school orchestra students from 845-3:35 and loved almost every minute of it. (The minutes I did NOT love where those when I couldn't find one of my first violins. That was fun.) Our performance was admittedly not the best we've ever played - but it'll never be 100% at the exact moment when you want it to be. They did their best and they listened to what I and the judges had to say. As a musician and as a teacher I struggle to define success. I'm a pretty Type-A person who tends to procrastinate and be a little too lenient. How that works - I'm not really sure. So going into this, I set some goals. My goals were pretty basic - I wanted to place at the same level as a school and I just really didn't want to get a bronze. (The awards given were bronze, silver, gold, and platinum).  I wanted band, orchestra, and chorus to be equally strong - which is rumored to not have consistently happened at my school in years past.

My school rocked.
My kids rocked.
We met my goals. We placed well, and so did the other ensembles from my school.

As soon as the performance was over, I felt as though I could sleep for the next week straight. The buildup and pressure I'd put on that performance had finally released and it took everything I had not to fall asleep. We returned to school and finished the school day. I had invited Meg, Meg, Becky, and Jen (all the single ladies) over for dinner, but my apartment was a mess. I hurried home and downed a Coke and got busy. Cooked up a meal, cleaned my apartment, and got ready. We had some delicious foods and great conversation. Near the end of the night Becky and Jenn pointed out to me that I've only been here for 3 months. I checked my count downs - 18 days to T.Gives, 50 to Christmas, and negative 100 days to "Fly To Korea!". I made that third countdown probably February 2nd of 2013 and it's been running ever since. I didn't really think about it from July to October… but it caught my eye on my dashboard in October and I realized it stopped counting down and was keeping track of how many days SINCE I'd moved to Korea!

I can't believe it's only been 100 days since I moved here. It seems like forever ago and yet like no time at all. I use twitter as an emotional outlet, and today I was re-reading some of  my tweets since I've moved to Korea. It's unbelievable what I've encountered and done in 100 days. Realizing the short amount of time I've been here makes me even more proud of what my students accomplished today.

So here I am, on the other side.
I remember the day my countdown to Korea went from triple to double digits (I believe I tweeted about it, truthfully).
and I've just now made the jump from 99 to 100 with my orchestra placing well at large group, recordings submitted, middle school concert completed, and christmas music ready to begin!
Can't believe this is my life - it's only been 3 months, but I think I could get used to this!
:)

What I Owe You

I feel as though I owe you some photos of my life.

So here you go - In this first photo you can see that my "bedroom" is above the rest of my apartment. I can almost stand up entirely in my room - it's really just where sleep. You can also see the stairs on the left side of the photo which are the best storage EVER. They're all closets/drawers/cupboards - love it.

This photo is my window? It's opposite the kitchen/bedroom (you can see in the window reflection). 

Washer in the kitchen - totally normal. I also manually turn on the gas every time I use my stove. So that's a little different than home.

My big fridge - with one USD on it, because I found one in my wallet after I moved here.

Someday I might get more ambitious and post more photos on here, but I mostly assume that if you're reading this, you're my FaceBook friend. I think I've been pretty good about posting lots of photos on FB, but if you've got any questions or are wondering about specific things in my life, let me know :)