Tang Su Yook

Tang Su Yook is very similar with sweet and sour beef(or pork). Whenever we go to the chinese restaurant, we order Tang Su Yook. So, I wanted to make it at home. I didn't cook much when I lived with my parents. I guess I didn't have to. :) But, now I like to make different kinds of food to my husband. It makes me happy when he enjoys eating it. :) So, I bought a pack of thick beef. I soaked the beef into cold water for 15 minutes to remove the blood. Then I cut them into small square shape. I dipped them into egg and then dipped into flour. Then I dipped into the batter. I boiled the oil and fried the beef. While I was frying the beef, I made the sauce(it's almost like sweet and sour sauce) Here are the ingredient for the sauce: water, sugar, starch powder with onions, squash, korean cabbage, pineapples and carrot. I boiled them all together until the texture of the sauce became thick. Then, I pour the sauce onto the fried beef. It was pretty good for the first time. :)

Birthday Party

Today was Kevin's first birthday. David(my husband) and I went and we had so much fun. I already mentioned in the previous journal that Mary is very creative. She handmade everything except for food. :) She catered the food. I guess it was too much work for to make food for 20+ people. :) She made three posters using all of Kevin's photo. I looked at it closely and it was made in mosaic. Everyone was impressed. She made the video that shows the day that Kevin was born in the hospital to today. She also made the slide show. We really enjoyed it. She handmade all the decoration for the party. I wish I'm creative like her. :)

Create City

 We have three unique classes in our middle school: guitar class, piano keyboard class, and CREATE class. CREATE class allows students to enrich their knowledge of the academic areas while exploring technology. CREATE stands for "Creative Research Experiences And Technology Exploration". This year they created a create city and create city is a marketplace simulation activity. Each student has to create a product and sell it in our marketplace one day a week. They open during each CREATE Class on Wednesdays and Thursdays.You can either give $1 (American currency) to get $15 (CREATE money)
OR you can pay with fins (5 fins = $1 in CREATE money).
I took all my 6th, 7th and 8th grade students to the create city. They had lots of great product. This one student brought homemade facial product like a facial scrubs that was made of sugar and avocado. This one student made necklaces, bracelets and ribbons. They were so pretty. I bought some for my niece. She loves pink, so I bought pink bracelet, necklace and ribbon. Majority of students brought homemade cookies, brownies, cupcakes, cappuccino, coffee, chocolate filled waffles and hot wings, etc.

Invitation Card

My friend, Mary, has two boys and the younger one is turning one on September 26th. His name is Kevin. In Korean culture, the first birthday is the biggest birthday like sweet 16th birthday in the America. Mary is very creative person. She used the Photoshop software to create the invitations. It looks very professional. She created the design and she printed the invitations at a Sam's Club. She is so dedicate mom. She said she saved money. :)

youtube

Today, my 8th grade students received new piece called Toccatina. I wanted to play the recording of the piece before we rehearse the piece, but I didn't have the CD for Toccatina So I downloaded video through Youtube. We listened to the piece and I had my students to air bow (bowing without sound) and do the fingerings while they are listening the recording. This is one of the strategies to sigthread music when they get the a piece music that they have never seen. After we listened to the piece, I gave the class about two minutes to airbow and do the fingerings again. Then, we started to rehearse the piece. This really helped the students to be familiar with the rhythms and the notes before they actually play on their instrument.

Rice Cake/seaweed soup

Last weekend was Korean Thanksgiving/my father-in-law's birthday. In Korean culture, we eat seaweed soup and we eat songpyun(rice cake) on the day of Thanksgiving. Due to time, I catered some food, but I made seaweed soup and songpyun. I bought dry seaweed and soaked it in cold water for 10 minutes. Then, I drained the water and stir-fried the seaweed with garlic and sesame oil about 4 minutes. Then, I added water and boiled with soy sauce and salt for 1 hour. It came out pretty good. Then, I made some songpyun. I made a dough using rice powder. Then, I cut them in small pieces and pressed it until it became rounded shape. Then, I put a tea spoon of honey+sesame seed and closed it. It was pretty fun making it. I was happy because my family enjoyed eating it.

Piano Lesson

Today was the second piano lesson for my four year old niece, Sophie. She started last week.  The first lesson didn't go well, because she was so nervous about the piano. So I came up with a fun idea that made her feel more comfortable and fun. I taught her how to play the quarter notes and half notes. I brought variety of percussion instruments. Instead of clapping or stomping, it was much more fun to play the rhythms with percussion instruments. Sophie seemed she was having so much fun. Then, we played the piano. I asked her if she likes to play the piano and she said she likes it. I was happy to motivate Sophie to learn the piano. We both had a great time.

Polo shirt Logo

I taught at my school for 4 years and this year is my 5th year. I used to work with Cindy who used to work at our school for 15 years. She had to move to different county because her husband got a job in the different county. She created the logo for our orchestra shirt a long time ago. I used it until last year. I always wanted to create a new logo for my orchestra shirts because the old logo is pretty tacky. So I researched some T-shirt logos for middle school orchestra shirt. It took me about a month to do this. I want to put a instrument on the logo. Finally, I created a new logo with new color and I can't wait to order the shirts for my students.

Creative Store

Today, I had a lunch with my friends at Virginia Highland. After we had a great brunch at Murphy's, we walked around the area. We window-shopped today. We saw a lot of pretty dresses and jewelry. As we were walking by all these great stores, we found a store that had lots of creative items. I saw a really cute measurement cup that looks like a decoration for the house. One thing I liked about this store was that they had lots of materials that you can make many things on your own. They were selling the paper flower kit. This was very creative and so pretty. It really looked like real flowers. I had a great time today at this store with my wonderful friends.

Cello Playing Position

In middle school orchestra, it is very important that the teacher reinforces the proper playing position everyday. Every day, I walk around the classroom and correct my students' playing position as we rehearse the pieces. I found this great video that is about cello's proper playing position. Cello teachers in New York created this video. This is a rap song. Students enjoyed watching it and I think it also helps students to understand the proper playing position very well.

Something new for my guitar class

The other day, I was listening to NPR 90.1 radio station and this guy was being interviewed about his guitar class in his middle school. He was talking about that he used The Guitar Hero for the class and said it helped the students to develop the rhythm skills well. It won't help students to play the note or chord on it because it doesn't have frets on it. I think this is a great idea to use it in the guitar class. I teach the beginning guitar class. At our school, the computer randomly pick the students and they are put it the class. So, I have several kids who think that the guitar is not important. Sometime, it is very difficult for me to motivate these students. But I think that utilizing the Guitar Hero into the class will motivate students more and help the students to develop the rhythm skills at the same time.

It's a Girl(9/15)

Well, I'm expecting a baby. I had a doctor's appointment this morning. Today is the 20th week and three days. I kept all the ultrasound photos of my baby girl. I think it would be a neat idea to make a special album for my baby, like a scrapbook. I bought an album and I'm keeping up with dates and short journal with ultrasound photos in the album. I want to continue to collect photos and write a journal until my baby girl is 1 year old and I want to show it to her when she is ready to read.
Also, the first birthday is the biggest birthday in Korean culture. Some people rent a restaurant to celebrate their baby's first baby. I think the scrapbook would be very neat to show to the guests who will be at the birthday party and it would be very special for my baby girl as well. My husband and I can't wait to meet her. We named her "Madison".

Bridal Shower(9/14)

My friend, Jennifer, is getting married in January 2011 and I will be hosting her bridal shower with three other brides maids. I started to jot down different ideas in my planner for her bridal shower. Jennifer was one of my bride maids three years ago. I loved my bridal shower. One of my favorite part was Jennifer interviewed my husband, David. She met him and recorded as she asked him question. The questions were like what we wore on the first date, where we went on the first date, etc.  After she recorded the interview, she played the video at my my bridal shower. As we all watching the video, she paused the video after each question. I had to answer the question, before we watch David's answer.  The purpose of this was to see how many question can we answer with the same answer.  David and I answered about 90% with the same answers. It was really good memory for me and all my friends had a great time, too.

This idea gave me some new idea. I want to record each one of our friends and each one of them will give the marriage wishes for Jennifer. I want to create a slide show with her childhood photos to current photos, then I want to play the Marriage Wishes from friends video at the bridal shower. I think it would be a wonderful memory for Jennifer.

Guitar Class(9/13)

Today, my guitar students learned the notes on the second string(B string) and the notes on the third string (G string). First, I showed them how to draw the notes on the staff paper, so they are familiar with the notes and they are able to read the notes better. After we tried drawing the notes on the staff paper with different rhythm patterns, I wrote down all the music notes on the board: ABCDEFG. Each student had to come up with their own acronym. For example, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge(these are the line notes), FACE(space notes). Students were actually having a good time to think of their own acronym. I thought this would be a one of kind of creativity activity.