KLB - Cheesey Update


There's nothing like a 4-day weekend. You go back to work on Wednesday and it totally feels like Monday. Then before you know it, it's already Friday.

Nothing really new to report. Been doing well at the health club. I feel great. That protein stuff really works - that and eating chicken breast and boiled eggs. I already put on 2.5 kgs (around 5 or 6 pounds) of muscle weight and my strength is improving quickly. Now, if only I could motivate myself to do cardio, then I could trim down my gut. I do a lot of situps but that won't work alone if I want the proverbial 6-pack.

While my upper body is fairing well, my legs - forget it. I did a few sets of squats without any weight the other day and I'm completely sore from just that. Oh well, at least I'm trying finally.

Julie and I stopped at Walmart tonight and I noticed they're now carrying a bunch of American-made cheeses, including blocks of Monteray Jack with jalapeno peppers and a nice looking cheddar and Monetary Jack in the shape of a thick disk - both much cheaper than any of the Austalian cheeses. I bought a block with the peppers, a jar of olives, a couple of plump tomatoes (a whopping $3 for two), and a small bottle of dark beer. That should make a nice snack tonight. Cheese must be the worst thing I could eat for toning up, but whatever - you can only eat so many boiled egg whites. Yuck.

Work had been on a role until today. It still wasn't bad, but first of all I got yet more new students - two of them. You just have to love how they throw these poor kids in the class after 3 weeks into a semester. Both of them sat there completely clueless. They don't even know the sounds yet and I'm almost finished with basic phonics. Argh!

Then Bonnie popped in again by surprise. She never lets us know when she comes anymore and she seems to have a knack for picking the worst possible times. I was using the first fifteen minutes of class to check the kids workbooks finally (you have to mark all the correct answers with a red circle in Korea basically so the parents know you're checking). So I was sitting at my desk, which I rarely do, calling up one kid at a time and the kids who were finished were taking a break and coloring their workbooks. They rarely color unless it's a theme day or some kind of project but I they had little else to do while waiting for me to start the usual phonics routine.

No matter, Bonnie ended up watching the whole class and didn't say anything bad. Of course she didn't bother to say anything good either, even though the kids, in B-level mind you, were reading sentences from a phonics packet Cathy and I made. Sentences like "The fat cat sat on the mat and had a nap," and "The sun is hot but the moon is not." I think that's pretty impressive, myself, considering how little they knew before. They barely even knew the alphabet six months ago beyond singing the first 7-10 letters (then trailing off into a desperate, mumbling, alphabet song imitation). Now they can read, write and understand simple sentences. If I had followed Bonnnie's planning they'd never be at this stage now. They'd simply be memorizing things without any real comprehension.

Well enough about that. In other exciting news, I'm just about finished with A Civil Action. It's one the first books I've read in awhile where I literally cannot put it down. I read it until 3:00 AM last night, woke up and finished a chapter, read it on the way to work and back, then was tempted to bring it to the health club to read in between sets. As a matter of fact, I'm going to cut short this action-filled update and get back to reading.