Grad School Life

With my face constantly buried in my books in an attempt to bring back all those mathematical ideas that have floated away from the center (or left side) in the past eight years, Joo has been forced to take initiative and create her own social endeavors in Athens. In the above picture however, we did go together to an Indian celebration (Diwali) where the math grad students (and even professors) broke all stereotypes and dominated the dancefloor. I've been fortunate to enter with a fun-loving social group of new grad students, and we've formed a supportive community that has embraced Joo as well.

On the other hand, Joo has circles which I have scarcely even met, the best example being her English/citizenship training classes. Her teacher does an excellent job of making the interactions personal and interesting, and Joo took first prize the other night in some word game contest...


The Halloween decorations were already going up when Joo and I moved here in June, so we had an idea of just how important the holiday was for Athenites. Apparently the town of 30,000 swells to 100,000 for Halloween weekend and some of the events which transpire are legendary. We had to at least catch a glimpse of the wild festivities, so we strolled down the main street around 7:00 pm, at which time, the craziness was already starting to build.


Being surrounded by forests here on the outskirts of Appalachia, (and with it being our first real "autumn" in four years), Joo and I took several delightful walks amidst the changing leaves.


We also dug the first holes of our garden at this house in order to plant some cloves of organic garlic we had picked up at the weekly farmer's market. Having had such a wonderful experience with our first garden this past year at my parent's house, it was exciting to start mapping out our ideas for the upcoming spring on our new property.

We took another refreshing break from studying/translating a few weekends ago when the Ramers came out to Ohio for a college visit for Kathryn, and we met them up in Cambridge. The entire town was decorated in mannequins from Dickens' time in Victorian England. We spent most of the time catching up, sharing hilarious YouTube videos, swimming, and playing Taboo in the hotel room. It was a wonderful time and made me reminisce about the year when I lived with them before travelling to Korea.


One night, walking home, we were followed by a kitten who kept running out in front of us and then laying down in our path and inviting us to play. We eventually got home and went inside for dinner. About an hour later, I heard a knock at our door (yes, it was actually a knock) and opened it up to find the cat waiting on us...


I called his owner and discovered that his name was Philip and that he must be lonely because his owners had taken a trip to Columbus. Joo took the opportunity to play with him and said that it somehow made her feel ready for us to have children. Hmmm....


But the vast majority of my time has continued to be focused on my studies (and studying-related activites as shown below)...

I've taken all but one of my finals now, so after the last one on Tuesday, we'll have a movie night celebration with some of the math grad students and then head to my parents for Thanksgiving. It's been a mentally and emotionally exhausting quarter, but it's also been highly rewarding and I anticipate this next quarter (and hopefully all the following ones) as one in which I can dedicate myself to the learning process more than feeling burdened or anxious about grades. One thing I will say about some of my experiences from this past quarter is that I reflected a lot on my own teaching philosophy and the role that evaluation plays. In other words, if the ultimate purpose of education is to increase the awareness of a student about a subject (or perhaps even better their overall quality of life), how can grading be used beyond mere assessment to encourage students to learn more/find enjoyment in a subject?

Casas de carton

Here in Athens, Habitat for Humanity sponsors an annual event called Cardboard City. The basic idea is that you gather a team, raise some money through donations, and then show up to a parking lot where you are given duct tape, cardboard, and about 90 minutes to construct a building to stay in for the night. The money all goes to Habitat then and a good time is had by all. We got invited by our couchsurfing friends Greg and Regina and their new dog Gus (no, Gus didn't actually invite us but on a tangent, he did ask Regina to marry Greg... but that's a different story...)


As darkness fell, we worked feverishly to construct our home. Joo and Regina worked on an elaborate recliner while Greg and I focused on a combo box-A-frame structure and a bench for lounging on our cardboard porch.


In the end, it started to rain and two of us had sore throats so we called it a night and left the younger citizens of cardboard city to battle the elements.

John, our sometimes home resident, had a shock the other morning when he stepped out on our porch and found that his car had disappeared. While Joo got pretty worked up and upset, John stayed calm, confident that I had just played an elaborate joke on him. By the time it dawned on him that I would have had no access to his keys, Joo was on the phone with the police and they eventually found that his car had been towed. As the story unfolded, his car must have coasted from its parked position and rolled down the hill into an intersection around 4am and apparently, being against the law to park in an intersection, the tow truck came and took him away...

Mom visited the following week, bringing the year's final harvest from our first garden. We had lunch at a Middle-Eastern restaurant, grabbed a coffee and then visited some shops in nearby Nelsonville.

But that has been pretty much the summary of our last month. Virtually all of my time is being consumed by studying; even weekends are essentially just open spaces for extra blocks of studying. One of the questions I had going into a master's program in math in my 30's was whether or not my brain could handle it (math is apparently one of those grad subjects where virtually everyone goes into straight out of undergrad or doesn't go at all). In terms of the material itself, although it's significantly harder than anything I saw in undergrad, I steadily am able to grasp it more and more as I invest time. The bigger problem is speed- while my brain may be able to understand the same concepts as 10 years ago, it seems to take it longer, which is coming into play in two ways. First, I struggle to follow the teachers' pace during lectures and have to rely on my notes afterwards to truly digest the information. Which means a lot more out-of-class studying time. Second, I don't have nearly enough time on tests and end up panicking as the clock ticks by while I try to compose the necessary proofs.

That said, overall, in six short weeks, my understanding of mathematics has significantly deepened much more than I expected it to and seeing some of the intricate relationships between different concepts is truly amazing. There's also an intense satisfaction that comes from proving a theorem all on my own- even if the theorem has been proven millions of times before by other math students and professors. For tricky proofs, the moment when the final hurdle suddenly drops and I see the entire path of the proof step-by-step in my mind as I'm sipping on some coffee in my study... I get goosebumps, my eyes widen, and my heart beats faster as I scribble down a complete map and see whether it really works out. When it does, I joyfully write it all out in my neatest handwriting with my best Pilot pen and then take a minute to baske in the feeling before moving on. On a couple of occasions, I was so excited that Joo took notice and politely asked me to explain and so I went through every step of the proof with her while she took great interest (or at least pretended to- it really must have been quite boring for her!!) So those moments make it all worth it, and the class I'm teaching is going well too which is an added bonus.

Joo has been studying quite diligently herself- 4 hours of english class a week in a local program and sometimes spending 8-10 hours at the university library going through classical literature and taking meticulous notes on the vocabulary and sentence structures in order to improve her translation abilities. She has built up her reputation quite high now in Korea after two years of translation and has had some recent opportunities for bigger projects and even a book (which she turned down because she wants to pace herself and improve a bit more before she tackles a huge project like that).

Well, over a full month since my last entry... a month of you wishing I would put on a shirt or at least put down the power tool... I now continue with the adventures of Dan and Joo (and random others). Kiwi (a random but significant other) studied English increasingly diligently towards the end of his two months in America. He even brought his English teacher Yuki over to our house to do some extracurricular studying as we watched the movie Once...

Joo and I had previously had some discussions and come to the compromise that we wouldn't have any guests over to our house until the makeover was pretty much complete. Once we reached this illustrious day, we had a few guests over. The first was the aforementioned Yuki, the next was our realtor Brooks (who we introduced to fire accu-therapy)...

and after that we had some of my friends from the masters program (not pictured). Kiwi's final days (when he wasn't studying English) were filled with lots of frisbee golf and delicious cuisine.

When he left, it was a time of hawjeonhada (I believe I used that same word in the blog when Kiwi and Gyuseong left us in South America a year ago). It's a time where you can still feel the spirit of a person, but there is a heavy emptiness since they are not physically there. It was probably easier for me since I was swept up in the beginnings of all my grad school stuff, but for Joo it was a lonelier time. This was compounded by the fact that she still couldn't drive so she was more or less confined to the house. Which meant one thing... it was finally time to get her driver's license! The permit test went well for her, and so did the driving portion of the test, but the maneuverability was an obstacle. And so we practiced...

It's amazing how protective people are of empty parking lots- I don't think we found a single place to practice where we didn't eventually get yelled at or at least some threatening stares. But Joo persevered and passed on her second try with flying colors...

Once she had her license, she freely could pick up sewing supplies, library books, cooking stuff, etc. and pursue her hobbies more avidly.


I certainly was/am a fan of her avid pursuits as I now have sewed up pants to wear to classes, stashes of healthy homemade cookies in my desk drawers, and a sparkling clean house to come home to every day! Joo and I have always agreed that we didn't simply want to follow conventional patterns where the woman is expected to cook and clean. However, we have realized that for practicality's sake, it is best for whoever happens to be less busy to do these tasks in order to have quality time to spend with each other.

In order to have this time together, Joo has been waking up at 7:00 (which is a very big sacrifice if you know how anti-morning Joo generally is) every day to walk with me into class and then usually stays at the OU library all day doing various types of personal research and translating while I'm in classes. Recently she's been trying to find her sister Jusu (the artist) some venues and contests in America for her to submit her work.

As for the beginnings of my classes, my first impressions academically were a bit overwhelming. It was one of the first times I've ever sat through entire math classes and had virtually everything go over my head. Grad school style is certainly a lot different from undergrad, at least in the math department. Proofs, which used to be fringe things to give us reassurance about math laws, have become virtually the only language we use in the classroom and homework. It's even overflowed into my everyday language and reasoning! The orientation was well-designed so that we had ample time to bond together already and in particular, there is already a study group that a few of us have started up that I think will blossom into stronger friendships. The professors have very different teaching styles but I enjoy them all (and I'm not just writing that out of fear that they may stumble across this blog- I'm sure they're all too busy for that!) I really like the small class sizes because I have a LOT of questions and it's nice to have cozy atmospheres to really get thorough answers. My teaching is going well, although it feels quite different than the last time I taught in America five years ago (I can feel the age difference a bit more- much more of a formal, professional, respectful relationship between the students and me).

And that's all for now- hopefully I'll be able to get the next blog out before another month rolls by!!!

The Battle against Water

When I was 17 years old, I bought my first car, a 1988 Ford Tempo (a.k.a. "The White Stallion"). As it was quite used already, and I didn't have much spare cash, it wasn't long before I bought the Chilton's automotive repair manual. With some help from my mechanical mentors the Trosts, I was able to change gaskets, rotate tires, replace spark plugs and even put in a new water pump. It was an exciting time in my life since I was learning so much at a fast rate. I had the same sensation when I started my world travels, and then again when I went to Korea and really dove into the language, and with salsa dancing, and now this past month with home improvements.
The first projects were relatively small- just a bit of painting and tinkering. Then it progressed to putting in our laminate wood floor (the major task which came much later in putting the transition strips all around the room straight into aged concrete), drywalling, caulking (that was quite messy the first time), cutting and laying trim, and it was finally time for our final hurdle ... the roof.

It had been looming in the back of my mind ever since the home inspection when it was determined that a new roof was imperative and my home insurance contract was written contingent on a new roof being put on by the end of August. Thankfully John had agreed to help lead me through the process and Kiwi was there to lend some muscle (and of course Joo played no small part in her constant meals, drinks, and cleaning while we worked).

Our main obstacle through the course of it all? The seemingly innocent substance of water. I think fire gets too much credit for being such a powerful force in nature when water can be much more silent but strong. It was water that transformed the trees beside the house so that they were towering over our roof and needed to be cut. It was water that slowly built up in the form of moisture and rotted out a few sections of our roof. And it was water in the form of rain that made our roofing project much more interesting. I had to keep reminding myself amidst some frustrations that this is the same water that composes the rivers and oceans I love to sit beside and gaze at.

Anyway, this is the BEFORE shot of the chimney on the roof (along with the picture above where you can see the roof covered in trees. Unfortunately I didn't get any of where groups of shingles were flapping up).

The first day was quite fun- using the shovels to tear off all the old shingles. And amazingly, the tarpaper (all two or three layers that were there) was still in excellent shape underneath.

And that's where things got a bit messy. It was forecasting heavy rain and thunderstorms for the next 9 days and I had already shelled out $300 for our dumpster that we could only rent for a week. With the tarpaper on, the roof was relatively fine if it would rain, but as soon as we ripped it off to look underneath, we were on a time clock until we could get the new tarpaper on. To complicate the situation, any new plywood would need to be bought at Lowe's and since I didn't have a truck, I needed to rent one there, a process that would easily take an hour.

The storm clouds loomed in the distance, but the weather was just supposed to get worse as the week went on, so we went ahead and ripped up the tarpaper. The good news was that there were only a couple actual holes (one of which had been freshly opened up when Kiwi found a weak spot and stepped through a few inches). But due to the nearly absent ventilation over the past 50 years, the roof had sweated for a long time and a lot of the boards were fairly soft.

And then we heard thunder. At this point, I reached a low because I had to make some quick decisions. If I tried to go to Lowes to get plywood and it poured down rain, all the existing sheets would get thoroughly soaked and that would be a bad situation. But if I just covered it all back up with new tarpaper, I would know that there were holes in my roof and it would make shingling a lot more delicate. If I just temporarily covered it up with new tarpaper, it would just postpone the same situation for a little bit, but the constant rainy forecast seemed inevitable.

None of the options seemed great, and honestly I felt like just calling a contractor and worrying about the money later, but I decided to take a risk and get some more plywood. If we had any hope of completing it before the rain, we had to fully commit ourselves and so John starting opening up gaping holes in the roof by ripping off the old sheets of plywood (which of course made it even more essential that we get them back on before the rain because now it would go straight into the attic) while I raced to Lowes. Unsure of how much to get, I just had 15 pieces of 4x8 loaded up on the truck - the paperwork I had to laboriously fill out before I could rent the truck seemed endless as I could hear the thunder getting louder overhead. Finally, it was done and I zoomed back to our house where it luckily hadn't started raining yet.

We decided to replace the two pieces John had already removed and then just go piece by piece removing and replacing as much as we could before the rain, starting from the worst pieces. Since the original construction had used several awkward shaped pieces, we set up Joo and Kiwi as the cutting crew down below while John and I tore out things on the roof and then shouted down the dimensions of the next piece to the Kims.

Things went incredibly smoothly and we got more done that we had anticipated, but there was still one piece left that I really wanted to replace. The problem was it was the piece surrounding our electrical pole and by this time we could already see lightning around us. To add to the fun, we would need to nail down a metal sheet to cover a hole in order to seal it properly. I had been running on nervous energy this whole time with my mind racing fast to make sure we had everything lined up. I started climbing the latter while my mind already had me on top of the roof and the combo must not have worked out, because I found myself on the ground a second later with John rolling around in laughter shouting, "You fell off the ladder! I can't believe you fell off the ladder!!" Not finding it quite as funny myself, I went back up and tried to nail the metal sheet in which wouldn't seem to nail in since it kept bouncing up and down. Finally the new plywood and metal sheet were in, and we rolled and stapled the tarpaper just minutes before the heavens unleashed and christened our project.

The next day we started the whole process over on the other side, again with the gray clouds in the sky.

This time, we just ripped off a little tar paper at a time, replaced what needed replaced, and then covered up. It did start to rain again and so we just used tar paper to cover the small sections and then tore it off again when the rain let up for a bit and kept going.

We were much more efficient this time around and before long, we had a roof ready to shingle. We rolled into Lowes to get the shingles around 8 pm, and knew that they closed at 9 pm. It took them until 8:35 using the skidloader to put the 2 1/2 tons of shingles onto the rental truck, and they repeatedly told me I needed to have the truck back by closing time at 9 pm. With a 10 minute drive to and a 10 minute drive back from Lowes, that left us with approximately 5 minutes to unload 2 1/2 tons of shingles by hand. Somehow, with everyone's help (ask Joo sometime what an 80 pound bag of shingles feels like), we managed to get back only a couple minutes late and were ready to start the shingling early the next day.

John gave Kiwi and me a quick lesson in how to line up shingles and nail them in properly and then set some other things up to make it all run well. The shingling itself was quite fun and went quickly (although it was suddenly hot now that the forecasted rains had run away)

In the end, it turned out beautifully (the new chimney is the metal stack in the background- and yes, it is level even though it appears crooked from the picture's perspective- getting it level was quite an extensive process in itself). So this is the AFTER shot:

Now I can back to a more friendly arrangement with the elements of nature, under the protection of our new roof :)

The Giant Zucchini

I had plenty of tentative plans for this summer- camping out for several days, road trips here and there, meeting with old friends, reviewing and refreshing my math abilities, developing some new hobbies, etc. But they've been overshadowed for the most part ever since Joo and I bought our house a month ago and dove into full-on home repairs and remodeling. Not what I expected, but it's still been an exciting adventure, especially because of its positive momentum where the good feelings at all the repairs accumulate over time. We even were able to host our friends the Stricklers on a weekend visit. Together, we went to Old Man's Cave in Hocking Hills...

The Stricklers were all up for some fire treatment after their long drive and so Joo lit up several deum on their hands. The heat apparently restores a healthy balance to blood flow.

Our garden harvest has been coming in huge bunches, but none so large as the giant zucchini. We thought of several uses for it, including baby practice (no Joo is not pregnant yet, although I did wonder the other day when some Chipotle found its way back out the esophagal route) and weaponry...

But it ended up as a delicious stuffed zucchini that we polished off quite quickly despite its massive size.

The MVP of the recent weeks has been Kiwi with his dedicated English studies. He speaks slowly and repeats things often, but when he has learned something, he remembers it permanently and knows well when to use it. It's amazing to see how far he's come in just a few short weeks. We've played around with the idea of him returning here to the US to work or study after he finishes his final semester in Korea...

Lessons for Kiwi in American Life

After a nice sunny vacation from the real world in the Outer Banks, our family said our goodbyes and went our separate ways- Heather to her new home in Virginia- Joo, Kiwi, and I to our new home in Athens- and Mom and Dad back to their long empty nest in West Liberty. Of course, it was the closest our family has resided in over six years so it really didn't feel that far this time!
Kiwi returned with us, equipped with a rapidly growing base of colloquial English like "Clear my way!," "Liar, liar pants on fire," and "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring."


We had a rare and special treat of having John (and his parents for a couple days) working on our bathroom the entire time we were gone, so it was much improved by the time we arrived back (to Joo's deep relief!) While I had felt that our house in it's daily improving condition was like a castle, especially after some of the budget hotels we had crashed in on our South American journey together, Joo felt much more of a sense of urgency to have the house presentable for guests. So thanks to John, we took a giant leap forward when we saw all the work that had been done on the bathroom- the rusting window replaced, the drywall completed, the corroded sink and counter swelled from moisture damage removed, the tacky wall plastic ripped off, and the smelly linoleum tiles removed... all replaced with a beautiful tile floor and clean, new (or gently used) everything :) It still has a few steps to go so we'll save the before and after pictures, but I will say that in the first day after our return, Joo walked into the bathroom about every 30 minutes, turned on the lights, and screamed with delight!


With John back home, the three of us home repair rookies were forced to stumble through trial-and-error in a crash course of remodeling. The painting wasn't too bad of course (although apparently Korean kids aren't taught that you should never stick metal into a live electrical outlet and so Joo naively cleaned out some stray paint with a screwdriver...), but I learned just how hard it was to drill precise holes into ancient concrete without a hammer drill.

There were a few positive surprises too like when it came to patching potholes in our asphalt driveway which was actually much simpler than I thought it would be.

We slept well this past week- Kiwi and Joo especially since they were enrolled in intensive English classes. Joo found a second English class that was more for long-term immigrants and is even helping prepare her for the citizenship portion of her test she'll have to take in a couple years if she wants to become a U.S. citizen (which is good because I'm sure I don't know much of the material on the test!) She's also busy studying for her driver's license test which she'll take soon, although she still can't get why we stop for red lights in America, which I'm guessing might be a pretty key element on the driving portion of the test.

When we weren't doing home repairs, we did a lot of biking on the beautiful Hockhocking bike path, played disc golf on a couple courses, tennis and badminton, listened to some live music and introduced Kiwi to the lovely American opportunities of thrift stores, garage sales and freecycle. Speaking of freecycle (an internet website that allows people to donate items and services to each other), we needed to get rid of our sink, counter, and an old printer (hopefully without paying the $25 per item trash removal fee) and we also needed to somehow pick up a sofa we had bought at Big Lots (that had sat there for three weeks since we had no transport to carry it with). I posted it all on Freecycle and it just so happened that a girl named Jen who lived nearby needed a new sink, counter, and printer and had a huge Dodge Ram, so she met me at Big Lots, hauled our new couch back and I loaded her up with our stuff- what a win-win situation!!