It is almost the end of this semester.

This blog is my 20th blog in this session. I am indeed glad to write this last one. Also, I was really happy with my clasmates and Elaine in this session. My writing has improved a lot because of bloggings. Speaking and listening are on the improve. I have made good friends.  I am really thankful  Elaine for giving this great chance of blogging. You will be ever in my mind

Today

It was a nice party to try various food and dance with teachers and classmates. I brought rolled rice by seaweed ,called Kimbab. I loved a kind of salad which Carla brought. It was creamy and light pink.
However, someone spilt soda on my shirt in front of drink desk, so I had to back to home. I dropped in my conversation partner's office  on my way home. We ate snack and went to wash her car. After that, I had to come to home since iIwas really really tired.

The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden.

This book  is a story about a cricket who moved from Connecticut to Manhattan ,Times Square subway station, by train. The cricket, called Chester,was found by a boy whoes parents have a business at a newsatnd in the subway station. The boy and Chester became  the best friends. Chester has a talent having absolute pitch so he can perform several pices of classical music very greatly. Finally, he became famous in The US and perfoming music  became a duty to sustain his fame. One day, Chester decides to go back to Connecticut. The boy makes up his mind to let him go and say goodbye. Chester promises him to come back  to Time Square next year.

This story is a heart warming, funny story. This novel won The Newvery  Honer.

I went a concert

Today, I went  Hendel's Messiah Benefit concert at Queens college Colden  Auditorium with my children.  It performed for 3 hours from  7PM to 10PM.  Central Presbylerian Church of NY which I attend  conducted this concert to help Haitian Children. Four vocal performers and a chior of 50 members performed full-length  of Messiah pieces. It was a great concert. I was really happy  with my children. It was really cold outside when we came out of the auditorium after the concert as well.

It is cold!

I went ice skating yesterday with Mitch who is one of my friends here yesteday. We went to an ice link not far from my house. It was nice to exercise for us in wintertime and have fun.  There were not many people on the ice link.  So, it was nice to enjoy ice skating. I couldn't ride skating as fast as skiing.
I was exhausted when I arrived at home.

I am excited!

 My speaking partner suggested me today to go her mom's house  located in South Calolina during Chrismas holidays!
I went to her office after class today. We went to Japaness restaurant to have sushi.  After then, we came back to her office  and  she asked me to go her mom's house with my two children and even my dog during Christmas holidays from  December 23 to January 2nd. She once asked us to go there with her last summer vacation. However, I turned down  her proposal because my babies  had to absent for  4 days if we went there at that time. For this time,  This period  corresponds perpectly to our vacation period. I said "Yes!!".
Her mom  lives alone in South Calolina  owning 5 bedrooms' house and two cars. She said her mom loves fellows to come her home.  It will be a great vacation for us.  My children  and I are excited now looking forward the vacation.  She also said " I am excited."  I am a lucky person as well.

Extreme tension in Korea Peninsula

Is Korean war going to take place again this time?  Jung-il Kim, the dictator of  North Korea, wants to pass on power to his son( Jung-Eun Kim who is 26 years old) as he recieved from his father. There are a lot of rumor about the hereditary power.  Anyway, he designated his son  as his successor lately. North Korea has some nuclear bombs and decleared that they will attack South Korea in case South Korea and The US exercise joint military training  on the West Sea of South Korea planned for this week. South Korea and The US started the the joint military  training from last Tuesday. My husband works for a government agency and has two big annual events to hold in Seoul this week. He can't  afford to apply a leave to go to somewhere where is safer than Seoul in the end of this year.  I don't know how to go through in this difficulty.

Shopping on Black Friday

My daughter asked me to ride her to the Roosevelt Field Mall with her friend early in the morning of this Black Friday. My son said  he wanted to go shopping  with one of his friend at the same time. Therefore, I decided to go to the Roosevelt  Field Mall with four of them. We left home at 3:30AM and arrived at the mall at 4AM. Some shops had opened already, so we were so busy to find out nice cheap items. I found a pair of very nice long leather boots at JCPenney for only 30 bucks. I bought them. I didn't know where my chliden were since I had to find out very cheap and nice clothes. As a result of my hard work, I bought a white shainy blouse for nine dollars, a nice scarf for fifteen bucks, a skinny jean for seven bucks and a coat for thirty three bucks. I was really tired , so my son, his friend and I came home around 6: 30AM, but my daughter asked more time to buy. I had to go to the mall again to pick daughter and her friend up at 8AM. She bought around 10 items but spent only approximately 50 bucks. It was incledible!

I cooked a turkey yesterday.

This is the second time to roast a turkey after the Thanksgiving last year. I collected a recipe which is much simpler than last year's recipe. At this time, cooking food took  just four or five hours, whereas  it took three days  last year. My daughter and I cooked a turkey, two kinds of salad, soup and mashed potato.
I gave some of roasted turkey  to a neighbor who didn't cook turkey.  Actually, I threw the rest of turkey last year after continued eating turkey.  I found  fried turkey would be a nice ingredient for good salad this time.

School of Rock

My childern and I saw this movie, School of Rock, which is a story about a rock-band on the side in a private elementary school. The main charactor is Jack Black who shows an amazing enthusiasm with his tough action for the rock-band. He is kicked off from a rock-band after his stage-dive on the stage of a night club with falling into narcissism. He has no job, but he gets a substitute teacher job  in a private elementary school with an illegal use of his friend's name. He has nothing to teach to the children but only rock-music and makes a incredible rock band.

This movie is really funny and interesting movie. My daughter saw this movie more than ten times including special features. I strongly recommend this movie for my classmates.

About speaking

I took a test agian today. I went to Manhattan to take the test.Writing might be better than last test. In reading test, I was always lack of time. Speaking was so poor today.
I have a speaking class every mornig for thirty minutes through internet phone. It started at 6:30 AM and ended 7AM. After summer-time-shift, it begins at 5:30 and ends 6:30 since the time is set to Korea. The company which connect a student to a teacher is a Korean company. I have taken this class from 2years ago when I lived in Korea. My teacher has been changed three times. They were an American, a British woman, an Angulian. The cost is very cheap for the service, around 55dollars a month.
So, I have to get up until 5:20 every weekdays.  Now,my teacher is an Austrailian woman who is cancer-surviver. She is  a wonderful teacher. We often have free talking time. It is fun and interesting .It seems to take more time to be better speaker.

My great conversation partners

I have two conversation partners in NCC. One of them became a friend of mine while we have met for more than 8 months  from last February. We went  to play poolball and went shopping together. I have been her house and I went a night club  to celebrate her birthday. Additionally, I had a chance to meet her  fine boyfriend.  She met my children as well.

I met my new conversation patner last Semtember.She is a student in NCC. She was struggling for math class.
I could help her math once. She likes Korean food. We went to Korean restaurant once. She comes to our building to meet me every Monday and Wednesday.

I am so happy with these two patners in this semester and I really thakful for all of these chances.

The pursuit of happyness

I saw many movies on DVD at home because I bought many of  DVD movies  for my children to study English when we lived in Korea. One of those movie titles is "The pursuit of happyness".
Will Smith and his real son, Jaden Smith  performed the main characters in the movie as a dad and his son.
He, named Chris Gardner in the movie, bought a bunch of medical devices with his all money. However, they are not popular to doctors. His wife left him and her son to New York since she could not get over their economical difficulties. He had to put his son in a day-care center everyday. On the wall of the day-care center, there was the words, "happyness", with a picture. Chris asked the owner of the day-care center to cange Happyness to Happiness, but the owner didn't. Finally, he overcame all his difficulties and became a stockbroker which he had dreamed to be.

My home town

My home town is a very very small and isolated  village from cities in Korea. There are all moutains around  the small village.  Buses came  just two or three times a day  to the village and took passingers to a small city.  No family had a car in the village when I was a middle school student.  We often went fishing with my brothers and friends holding torches in summer nights. One day, my friends and I went to pick and steal watermelones which were one of our neighbor's.
 (I will continue to write about this story.)

Actually, the neighbor was another my friend's mother. She got angry after she found us at her watermelon field and ran after us. It was really hard for me to run away from her because I brought my 5-year-old younger brother who couldn't run fast.  However, we escaped barely from her after several times hiding and finally we arrived  my house. We gave a sigh each other and took a rest in the house. After a while, we could listen to the my friend's mother's talking from outside, so we got scared. She told to my father about the incident that we stole her watermelons, and she went away. After that,I really felt guilty and I didn't do any stealing thing. Now,I can recall that my father naver had told  nor scolded me about the incident.

I am a mother of two children now. I don't know exactly which reaction is better for my chlidren when they do bad things. Anyway, punishing them might not be the only solution.

Watching TV

Even though I have studyed  English for such a long time,  my speaking skill is so poor. So I asked my son and daughter who are much much better than me " What is the most important activity to make English speaking  ability increase?"  Both of them  answered that it's watching TV programs and movies. They speak English to each other at home recently except me.
What they think is that interesting thing can be important fact to keep doing something. Anyway, I am a bit exhausted  because I am still struggling. Should I have to watch TV programs and movies  for my speaking ability tomorrow?  Or do I have to meet a native American to  practice speaking English?

Playing tennis

I really have enjoyed playing tennis for several months from last May to last October. Today, I went to the park where I always played, but it was too cold to play outside. Balls didn't bounc well enough and it was even windy. My tennis partner and I  dicided to go Starbucks  coffee shop  to talk about  whether we stop to play or not. He suggested to play Ping-Pong Ball  in this wintertime instead. Even though I like to play ping-pong ball and I am quite good at to play, I'd like to say goodbye  during wintertime because I am waiting to go skiing.

I am tired!

Today was so hard day! I took a test today and changed my  front two worn tyres to new tyres. I went groceries.  I am so tired now, so I 'd like to take rest watching a movie. 
My eyelids  are beginning to droop now. I had to go through several difficulties today.  My dog is barking at  my daughter who is riding a small board  in the living room.  I have to go to bed now.

Kyung Ju City

I 'd like introduce a nice city in Korea, Kyung Ju. It's located at South-East part of S.Korea. It's a famous place to visit for tuorists. Silra Kingdom  florished in that area about 1500 years ago. Kyung Ju was the capital, and the city boudary was even  bigger than now. Ancient buildings, famous temples and huge tombs  are remaining  there.

 There are several wonderful places in Kyung ju. One of them is Bomun Lake arounded many big hotels and theme parks. Also.Cherry blossom festival is held  there every spring.The restaurant on the picture was so nice since not only various loyal cuisine (food in palace) are served for people, there are traditional dancing performances every day.

My dog

I bought this dog last July from a neighbor. he is two years old and a Pomeranian. He is really  cute. He always follows me wherever I go.

He is lying down on my lap right now, while I am typing.  He is really good at standing  at the kitchen  wanting some humans' food. He likes watermelom so much. 

Hello! I came back to my new blog!

It  took a quite long time to creat a new blog since I have an old blog with the same address of Email. Anyway, it's OK.  As the session changed, things around us are changed in class. Our class room and teacher were changed. Also, the whether is getting colder. 

 Sometimes, I think why I am going  too late to learn english well, especially speaking. I got the report card which is descrived my poor pronunciation on it from Margot  at the end of  last session so that it pushes me to correct my wrong pronunciation by myself or other's help. It's too hard to pronunciate "Z" sound  such as Zoo or Zebra.  At night of the day when I got the report card, I practiced to speak "Zoo" more than 100 times, but I cannot  still pronunce it correct. My daughter who helped me said to me " Mom , you are saying "Jew" whenever you speak "zoo".