Opening Presents

Opening presents has a whole new meaning when you're overseas...

See that computer screen in the bottom left corner?

That's not us just leaving the laptop in the middle of the room...

that's our Skype date. That's a grandma getting to watch her grandson open the birthday present she sent him.

That's technology that allows us to keep close relationships with our family back home. 

That's getting to see the joy on the face of the person that you bought a present for even though he's across the world.

This is us being grateful for that technology (and those presents)!

What to do?

This picture has nothing to do with this post, but it has me in it and it's one that I have always liked. Since this is a post all about me, I wanted one that had me in it! Eric took it last summer on our trip to the zoo. 

I've mentioned before that I am planning to get my Master's degree next year. I really want to get started as soon as possible. I'm excited to learn more, expand my career opportunities, and finally start my career as a "grown up". The only problem with that is I still cannot figure out what I want to be when I grow up! I have spent the last several months doing research about which online university options I have available to me in my unique position (non-military overseas). And instead of narrowing my options, I feel I'm increasing them!

I started with the idea of "educational leadership" or "teacher leadership" (the program depends on the school). To me, these sound like great options, but my fear is that they're too good to be true. In other words, the program provides some great classes on how to be a leader in your school, but doesn't provide the certification to do anything other than teach (and maybe be a department head). Not a bad idea if I'm not looking to expand my "employability"--I'm pretty sure I made up that word!

Next, I moved onto Administration and Supervision which led me to the question of whether or not I really want to be an administrator. Good question. There are pros and cons, but I've eliminated it for now because of my lack of classroom experience. No one wants an administrator who hasn't taught. Including me.

Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment is up next. It all sounds good, but it's not going to make me any more employable in the state of Washington where good teachers with Master's degrees abound.

Special Education...a part of me has always wanted to get into Special Ed, and a big part of me still does. I think if getting certified through an online master's program was possible, I would go for it. It would keep me in the classroom, and I would be employable in Washington as well as overseas. Unfortunately, the universities that I have to choose from do not give me that option.

So, career change? I looked into School Psychology. Another degree that I'm really interested in. It sounds great, in theory. The reality is that school psychologists are being eliminated and that many high school counselors spend way too much time arguing with students and parents about schedules than anything else. With over 400 students on their case loads (in Stanwood), how on earth are they supposed to do anything to help those individual students?!

So, right now I'm thinking about Instructional Design and Technology. It's a bit of a stretch for me because I am not a natural with technology, but I am interested in it. I know it's a growing field and becoming a bigger part of education every day. It would open a lot of doors for me as far as my career goes, too, allowing me to stay in education and enhance my teaching or branch out from it if I have to. 

What to do?

Communication Clicks

For those of you who haven't seen my constant Facebook updates (I try not to put the same things on the blog that I do on FB), we are now wired and ready for communication! Last Monday, we FINALLY got our Alien Registration cards and we are now officially legal in Korea for the next year. The reason that is so exciting is that in Korea, you cannot get cell phones and internet until you are officially legal. So, on Monday, we got our new iPhone 4s (I know, we said we were NOT going to do that, but they turned out to be cheaper than they are back home and the ability to have GPS and bus and subway routes in our hands at all times seems pretty invaluable at this point!). I was especially grateful that we'd ordered them when I lost my iPod touch a week or two ago! More to the point...for those of you that we tended to be in constant communication with before (and that happen to have iPhones), we are in the process of finding apps that will allow us to continue that communication via text and voice for free. So, send one of us an email and we can get it figured out!

Additionally, we are wired via the internet at home now, too. Yesterday, we went and got a wireless router and in spite of the fact that the directions are all in Korean, Eric still managed to get it hooked up by himself, so now our 3 laptops, 2 phones, and iPad can now access WiFi at home! Yay! In the last week, we've talked to our parents and other family members via Skype and FaceTime. If you need contact information for us, let me know. We'd love to talk to you!

One more benefit of internet at home is that I am finally able to upload pictures! There are new slideshows here on the blog (remember if you click on a picture, the slideshow will open in a new window. The pictures will be bigger and you can leave a comment if you'd like!) and on Facebook. I've been having a lot of fun learning how to use Lightroom and my new camera. Hope you enjoy!

Living in a Techno World

We're living in such a time of modern technology! And, I have to say I'm a bit relieved that we won't have to learn to live without our technology in Seoul. We now have laptops, iPods, an iPad, and a Kindle. We can email, Skype, FaceTime. Our kids know how to operate the iPods and iPad. They can watch movies, play games, and color. Kennedy works on her letters and numbers and Cade learns about zoo animals. We're not packing any books for Eric and I because we just use eReaders. We're not packing a TV or DVD player because we'll just use the laptop to watch tv and movies. Seoul has one of the fastest Internet infrastructures in the world, so we should be set. And, according to the girl at the Apple store, there is Wi-Fi everywhere there (though she has never been there, she is an expert!), which is good news because we recently learned that we have to have our Alien Registration Card in order to get our Internet set up in our apartment, so it may be a couple of weeks before we have that. We are planning (at this point) to use Skype and FaceTime (for those Mac users), and of course the blog as our primary means of communication. We'll try to post updates on Facebook too for those of you who are FB addicts! Email will also play a big part as it will be hard to be available on Skype all the time. It is amazing that we will still be able to see our relatives and talk to them face to face even from around the world! We’re sure going to miss those hugs, though!