My goal is to post an update here every week, but obviously I’m not there yet. This month has been busy.
(And, I’ll be honest… it’s winter, it’s cold, we got ourselves a heat pad for the bed, and I may or may not grab a book and sneak back into its fluffy warm layers for a bit when I return home from walking the kids to school on a brisk 20° morning.)
Specifically, this month we have been occupied with (1) school beginnings and (2) Aaron’s injury.
(1) After winter break, Connery started back at the international school. This time, thankfully, without the tears. He seems to be enjoying it now, especially PE days because he gets to wear the cozy PE uniform pants. The school’s student body is not very large (180?) but the property is huge and they have a lot of rooms for specialty classes, like PE, music, art, library, computer lab. Beginning next quarter, his class will also start Korean language lessons. I’m pretty excited about that.
The only downside to this school is the fact that Connery came in ahead academically. In his previous school, he was already working on 2nd grade math and phonics. We would spend at least 30 minutes doing homework each evening, in addition to special projects like speeches and presentations. By contrast, his 1st grade homework here takes him approximately 5 minutes. I chatted with his (very good) teacher about this, and she said some families here came from no-homework schools so they don’t even do the small amount she gives. Aaron and I debated for a while, and ultimately decided that living in Korea and travelling around Asia will provide Connery with enough extra stimulation and learning that we shouldn’t worry too much about academics. Plus, he’s only in 1st grade; it’s not like a couple easy years are gonna break him. And besides, the Dutch don’t give any homework in primary school and they reportedly have the happiest children in the world. So… balance, I guess.
That being said, after 3 weeks off for winter break, I noticed Connery struggling with some easy math questions:
“Hey, buddy, you know this one. What’s 6 + 3?”
“Um… 5?”
“Try again.”
“…6?”
“…”
Well… maybe we’ll supplement just a little. Aaron has started spending a few minutes with Connery every evening doing flash cards. He wants to start some father-son bonding time building robots, so he’s using that as a carrot. Apparently, they will program it with a tapeworm brain, or something like that. All I heard was: box, wheels, eyes, likes to hide in the shadows. Sounds fun.
The week Connery returned to school, Lena started her new preschool. After another lengthy debate, Aaron and I decided to put her in a local Korean preschool. It was recommended by Connery’s teacher, and there are a couple other English-speaking kids there. It’s a nice (and cute!) facility, and the staff are super nice and helpful in spite of the language barrier. I really like Lena’s teacher. We communicate via broken English and Korean when I pick up the girl, and via text message when more detail is required (thank you Google Translate). I made sure Lena knew some key words in Korean before she started, e.g., hello, goodbye, teacher, water please, thank you, bathroom.
Both schools are within walking distance of the apartment, so we have this little routine of walking Connery to his school first, then walking Lena to the preschool (a bit farther away). Of course, that all sounds sweet and bucolic, but for a family of formerly-desert-dwelling-night-owls, it’s not so much strolling hand-in-hand as it is light jogging while dragging one small child by the arm and yelling at another small child to pay attention and watch for cars before he runs ahead through literally freezing temperatures, eyes and noses dripping, hoping we make it before the school gate is locked (we usually don’t). It’s not really a pretty picture. We don’t like early mornings in the Harris household.
Right now, Lena attends 3 days a week, but I may add another day when the new Korean school year begins in March, because on her days home she is booooooooooored.
9:00 am: “When does Connery come home?”
9:15 am: “Are we going to pick up Connery?”
9:30 am: “When Connery comes home can we go to the bakery?”
9:40 am: “Can we go to the bakery now? I want a chocolate donut.”
10:00 am: “Can we go to the bakery, get a chocolate donut, then go get Connery?”
10:05 am: “Is it time to get Connery yet?”
10:06 am: “How much longer until Connery is done? Can we get him now? And then can we go to the bakery?”
10:07 am: “What are you eating? Is it a chocolate donut? I want a chocolate donut. Is Connery done yet? We should get him the donut with blueberries inside and sugar on the outside. Get him that donut, and I’ll get a chocolate donut.”
10:08 am: “Are you done eating? Can we go now? Let’s get Connery and then go to the bakery. You can get tea, and I’ll get a chocolate donut, because I love chocolate donuts. Chocolate donuts are delicious!”
Sorry, kiddo, but mommy can’t go to the bakery today. Mommy doesn’t have a dishwasher and she has to cook from scratch. But first she has to figure out which of these bottles is baking soda and which is salt, which of these curries won’t give us diarrhea, and what the heck is green pumpkin? It looks like zucchini? And then she has to tackle the strange dust problem in the apartment. And figure out how to organize the trash and recycling such that we don’t get fined for improperly sorting it into the TEN separate bins located in that hut by the parking lot. Then she has to figure out where to buy 2x4s to fix the headboard because a country of apartment dwellers doesn’t have DIY stores like Home Depot around. And at some point, she’d also like to find a nursery, because home doesn’t really feel like home unless there’s a houseplant dying in the corner somewhere.
And now Lena’s school is really making me feel like I need to up my game, food-wise. I have a bad history with processed foods, so I’ve always been a sort of homemade, non-GMO, organic kinda mom. But I tell you what, Americans could stand to learn a few things about eating habits from Asians. So many variety of veggies! Lena’s preschool includes 3 meals: morning snack, lunch, and afternoon snack. They’re served in the classroom, on an adorable little lunch tray that comes home with her for washing. The morning snack is always some kind of porridge: barley porridge, rice porridge, broccoli porridge. Lunch includes some kind of rice, some kind of soup or meat, a couple veggie sides, and either cabbage or radish kimchi. The afternoon snack is either fruit or a yummy carb (like toast or a red bean bun) with milk.
Just look at these lunches… these are for preschoolers!
And snacks… I mean, a whole steamed sweet potato. Are you kidding me?
Unfortunately, Lena recently hit a picky phase, so she’s having none of it. Just the rice. And the afternoon snacks. But I’m still making her try them, unless I know there’s absolutely nothing she would like even if she tried it. (They give us the month’s menu in advance.) So, for example, tomorrow’s lunch will be rice, fish cake soup, a pile of small dead fish, and kimchi. I’ll be sending her with a sandwich.
The other issue that took a surprising amount of time this month was (2) Aaron’s injury.
I mentioned in the last post that Aaron found an MMA class nearby. He’s been practicing it for some time now – over a year, I think? Running is boring, he says, and punching things helps him vent his frustration with bureaucracies. At first, he thought the Arizona class would be all happy, happy, punchy, punchy like your standard kickboxing class, but on the first day, his teacher pretty much showed them how to knock an opponent unconscious. Not a bad skill to have, I told him, just make sure you protect the brain.
Anyway, I was really glad Aaron was able to find a class here. It’s in a taekwondo dojang run by Korean Hercules, and not every night is MMA – some nights are judo and some are cardio. Well, a couple weeks ago, Aaron wound up going on judo night and – even though he was on the wrestling team in high school – it’s been awhile since he’s used that muscle set. And, to be fair to my husband, he hasn’t had a place to work out the past few months because of the move. And, you know, he’s starting to get a little bit older. And Korean Hercules is… well, Korean Hercules. And Korean Hercules decided it would be better for Aaron to wrestle him than the scrawny teenage boys in the class. And Aaron, being a man of pride, refused to let Korean Hercules pin him. But, in the process, Aaron forgot one important rule: when wrestling with Korean Hercules, you let Korean Hercules do whatever Korean Hercules wants to do. Be the reed. Just bend in the wind.
Aaron pulled a muscle in his shoulder. And the pain got worse, and nothing was helping, and sleep was impossible for several days, because while I prefer to weep silently into my pillow when I’m in pain, Aaron turns into angry bear. And it’s kinda hard to sleep next to angry bear when angry bear can’t sleep. Then his fingers went numb and he started having dizzy spells and I said, “GO TO THE DOCTOR!” and eventually he went to the little medical clinic next to our apartment complex. It was a fairly interesting experience, apparently. Doc said it was just a pull, not a tear, but nerves get injured along with the muscles and they take longer to heal. Then he did an ultrasound, gave him a few shots of something next to the injured nerves, put him on a heated bed, and then put some electrified suction cups all over his shoulder. (All this cost $50, by the way.) It kind of helped. I think hot pads and time probably helped more, but I was glad to hear it wasn’t anything serious. Thankfully, Aaron is much better and is even back to the MMA classes, where he and Korean Hercules had a good laugh about it all.