My Nephew Turned 3

Oysters on the Half-Shell

Zach got a hold of bag of oysters and brought them up to Hattiesburg, We ate them raw with homemade cocktail sauce.

This semester will be my busiest yet.  I am still working with Athletics for at least 20 hours a week, and I am also teaching one class each day for the English Language Institute.  On top of that, I am also working on my practicum and final portfolio. My work with Athletics will be interesting this term since I have almost doubled the number of athletes that I am mentoring.  The guys that I am working with seem to be buying what I am selling, but the semester has just started.  It will be interesting to see if they stay motivated once spring practice begins.

My ELI students are awesome and are always demanding more work.  I am getting to test out many of the methods and activities that I have learned through my classes/research, and these students are making my life much easier since they are so willing to try anything to improve their English.

Since I graduate in May, I have also been getting ready for the job search, and I have been keeping up with ESL job openings.  I have retooled my resume, and I have started compiling a list of institutes that I will contact.  We will see how it goes. I have applied for a couple of positions, and now the wait begins.  I will probably have a few more sleepless nights before I have secured a position.

Our schedules are very different this semester, but we have made the promise that we are going to try have home-cooked dinners together as much as possible.  We started this week by cooking steak on our portable grill.  I broke out some leftover soju, and we had a nice impromptu Korean meal.

Our favorite restaurant in Korea serves a side dish that consists of raw onions with a dark sauce poured over them.  I would go to that particular restaurant just to eat the onions, and hate that I didn’t ask them how to make the sauce.   We have been struggling to replicate this sauce ever since we got back to America.  The main ingredient has to be soy sauce, but it also contains wasabi and other spices/oils.  You can see our attempt in the photograph in the bottom left corner above, and although our attempt was not terrible, there was something missing, but I just don’t know what it was.  Thankfully, everything else turned out great.

AINTS

My family and I have been cheering for the Saints for many years now. I don’t really remember the ‘Aints” era, but I do know that it is saying a lot when Saint’s fans are disappointed by a close loss in the second round of the playoffs versus disappointed with an entire season.  I hate that they did not win today, but it really was a great game, and should a team really win when they have 5 turnovers?  I think that my heart rate has finally returned to normal; I really thought thought that they had pulled it off with that  touchdown by Jimmy Graham in the last two minutes, but Alex Smith and the 49er offensive was just too strong.  I hope that during the off-season they can pick up a number of players to improve the defense. Here’s to next year, and at least that loss was from the 49ers and not the Falcons.

Just for the record, B.B. and I share the same hometown.  He still makes it back to Indianola, MS once a year for a summer concert.

Yes, we do have ice hockey in Mississippi (with real ice and everything).  In fact, we have two teams that compete in the SPHL, a lower-level minor hockey league.  Years ago, my friends and I would attend Mississippi Sea Wolves’ games in Biloxi, MS.  At that time, the Sea Wolves were coached by Bruce Boudreau, who now coaches the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks.  The Mississippi Sea Wolves were part of the East Coast Hockey League, but the team was dissolved in 2009.  In 2010, hockey came back to the coast with the formation of the Mississippi Surge.

JJ and I went to Biloxi on Sunday and were excited that we were going to be able to see an in-state match-up.  The Riverkings from north Mississippi made their way to Biloxi to do battle with the Surge.  We arrived about 15 minutes before they dropped the puck and were able to score excellent seats; we were right on the glass.  There were probably only 400 spectators, but the atmosphere was still exciting.  I have seen a number of games, but this was JJ’s first, and she got to see an excellent game with lots of action directly in front of us.  The Surge led most of the game, but the Riverkings tied it up with less than two minutes to play.  The overtime period was a special treat.  The overtime period in SPHL games lasts for only 5 minutes, but each team plays with only three skaters and a goalie.  Even though the Surge lost in the last minute of overtime, the game was great, and we both really enjoyed the fast pace of the three on three hockey.

Our tickets were $18 each, but we could have had decent seats off the glass for around $10.  It was not NHL caliber hockey, but the players really battled to the end.  I was hoping that JJ would get to see a fight, but there were only a few skirmishes.  I think this is the first game that I attended that did not have at least one fight.  JJ did enjoy the game, and I just need to figure out how I can convince her that we need to travel to Nashville, Dallas, or St. Louis to see an NHL game.  Unfortunately, I don’t think we will be able to see any of those teams play for $18 a ticket.

For more information about schedules and tickets, check out the Surge’s homepage here.

We left the casino and made our way to Felix’s Oyster Bar.  This has turned in to our go-to place for seafood.  We ordered our favorite beer and a dozen char-grilled oysters.  We also ordered a couple of shrimp-oyster Po-boys and were enjoying our dinner when suddenly we kept overhearing a group of customers speaking Korean.  The hostess had sat a group of four a few tables behind us, and it was fairly obviously that they really didn’t know what to order.  Since I have been embarrassed before by trying to help a bilingual speaker navigate in English, neither JJ or I got up.  After listening to them struggle for a few minutes, I finally walked over, greeted them in Korean, and asked if I could help.  They were happy with the assistance and my help consisted of getting JJ to translate for them.  They ordered a few different dishes and seemed to like the jambalaya, and they all claimed that it reminded them of bokumbap.  Both the Koreans and the waiter seemed relieved that JJ was their to help translate.  It brought back memories of my first visit to Kimbap Cheonguk, and the nice older lady who spoke enough English to come to my rescue and help me order. At that time, this looked like nothing but a bunch of gibberish.  I can only imagine what the menu at Felix’s looked like to the group of Koreans.

We said goodbye to the grateful Koreans and headed down to Bourbon Street for fun.  We tried to break up our usual New Orleans agenda and try a couple different venues.  We hit Tropical Isle to see if my buddy’s band was playing, and unfortunately, they were scheduled for Saturday afternoon so we missed seeing them.  We did stick around and have a Hand Grenade and listen to the band, The Hangovers.  They were pretty good, but we only caught the last 30 minutes of their last set so we left and moved down to Pazzo’s to listen to their band.  For a Thursday night, the bars were very empty, but we still had a great time.  I was shocked that the bars were so empty since there are two big football games coming up.  The Saints play the Lions in an NFL playoff game on Saturday, and the BCS championship game is on Monday night.  We saw members of both Alabama’s and LSU’s football team enjoying the Quarter and the casino, and ran into a few players hustling back to their hotel to meet their 12 am curfew.  I guess most fans were going to arrive on Friday.  Which was kind of nice since we had the place almost to ourselves.

Potent, but Tasty Hand Grenade

We stayed at Pazzoo’s for awhile even though I wasn’t real happy about paying $27 for two drinks, but the band was good so we stayed for about an hour.  We ended the night at Pat O’ Briens piano bar as usual.  We had one drink, requested a few songs, and then decided to crash out for the night.  It was a nice break from Hattiesburg, and it was great trying a few different establishments.  I actually have a list of other restaurants and bars that I want to visit, but those will have to wait for our next break from school.  We will be back in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but there is no way we will be able to visit any of the more popular restaurants/bars since the city is so crowded.

We woke up late, checked out, and made our way to the Korean grocery store across town.  We had lunch at the Vietnamese restaurant next door, made a few purchases at the grocery, and headed back to Hattiesburg.  We have a little more than a week before our final semester starts, and JJ and I are both excited about getting this last semester behind us.