Even if I try really really hard, I don't think I can come up with something more nausea-inducing than the combination of the horrible stench of raw octopus and watching people eat it.
I actually tried to describe even a little bit of the experience, but got that salivating-pre-vomit feeling, and couldn't go on. Seriously, folks, bad.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
—from "Spring" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
(No, I'm not revisiting my high-school emo days. I thought it was funny.)
Happy Spring. Idiocy and flowers and all that.
* I've heard a few references to Twitter. Do any of you use it? I am maybe slow on the uptake, but I don't know much about it at all.
* I'm no stranger to the headaches, but today I got one of the strangest ones - usually I get them on one side or the other of my head, but today it seems to be located at the base of my skull, and keeps creeping up the back of my head. I'll think I'm doing fine, then I'll move the wrong way and the shooting pain returns. Maybe I should take another dose of the good migraine drugs, but I don't feel like the pain is all that bad - it is just ongoing. I have the the usual "spacey" feeling that I get with migraines, but all of the different drugs I've taken today (Excedrin, ibruprophen, sinus meds, imigrane - the closest I can get to Imitrex here) have dulled but not killed the pain, the Aveda Blue oil hasn't helped, either.
* Looking at the list, it looks like I've taken a lot of pills, but I woke up with this thing at 6-ish this morning, and it is almost 10:30pm here.
* I had the 3rd graders for the first time today. I had high expectations of starting to talk about Earth Day stuff, mostly getting them to color and learn words like rain, tree, rainbow, Earth, recycle. It took 40 minutes to review "hello, my name is______." (Which is the first lesson in their text, and what I thought would take about 15 minutes). With the second class, I added a counting/pay attention to me again game ("clap one time. clap two times...) and stand up/sit down. I am maybe going to be lowering my expectations. I just wanted to make sure that in the first class, they knew they would have to speak EVERY TIME.
* I am in the process of re-knitting a sweater (Hopeful for you folks on Ravelry). I knit up to the shoulder join last time when I realized it was too wide and too short last year. This time, I'm using a much more appropriate yarn and am at the neck and shoulder shaping, but I think it might still be too short. I'm doing a bit more research on modifications and might rip back to the body and add a few inches, as I'm afraid I might still be too short. I'm using a cashmere/ "soft wool" blend I bought in Seoul, using 3.5mm Addi Turbos (that last bit was as a reminder to myself, so when I forget what needles I used, I have another point of reference).
* For people in Mokpo, the Denmark plain yogurt at Homeplus really is plain (non-sweet) yogurt. The kind not in the bottles (though that may be, too, for all I know). For people not in Korea, it is almost impossible to find non-sweet yogurt or sour cream outside of a big city, so for Indian food or things like that, I've been using very soft tofu, with mixed results. Though I stand behind my soft tofu/few shakes of lemon juice/black pepper/nutritional yeast pasta sauce. Yes, really.
Sen. Hillary Clinton visits Indiana
My favorite quote from the Terre Haute paper?
Adding to the interest is Vigo County’s reputation as a bellwether in presidential politics. Vigo voters have shown an uncanny ability to pick the eventual winner in the general election. Only once in the past 100 years has the county missed, and that was in 1952 when Illinois Sen. Adlai Stevenson narrowly defeated Dwight Eisenhower.
Today is my birthday. Last weekend was a party, and tonight is dinner with friends. My friends? They rock.
The most recent brain-child of the newly (and overwhelmingly) elected Korean president is to build a canal from Busan (the southeast corner of Korea) to Seoul, creating a man-made waterway that would basically cut across the entire peninsula.
To give a bit of perspective, (both on the small size of Korean and of the large size of the canal) the canal would be slightly longer than the distance between Cincinnati and Chicago. So let's say the Ohio River was the Sea of Japan and Lake Michigan was the Yellow Sea, and for some reason, someone thought it was a really, really, good idea to connect these two waterways. Only add in lots and lots of mountains and the source of most fresh water. And a propensity for oil spills. (there was a smaller spill - 13,000-ish gallons of oil - off the coast of Yeosu recently, but there is no English-language coverage of it that I can find).
This is billions of dollars spent on something senseless.
There are protests planned in both Seoul and in Busan, petitions, and (of all the useless things) a Facebook group (like, really? are you kidding me?) dedicated to raising awareness of the potential catastrophically ridiculous plan. Protests are awfully popular here, but for the most part, given how much Korean leaders tend to listen to public opinion when money is on the line, I'm not encouraged that anything good will come out of it. (But I think I just hit #18 on the list of stuff white people like.)
(I maybe don't have enough to do today. Carry on.)
Do you see the dancer spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise?
The idea is that different people will see different things. Some people can make her change directions.
Here is some info about what is actually going on.
For the record, I see her spinning clockwise, and I can't make her switch directions.
ETA: If you want some other information (and a way to see her spin the other direction) you can go HERE.
Following in the steps of Hallmark, Korea has added "holidays" to the calendar for almost every month. Some are mostly ignored (Ace Cracker Day, for example, where people give Ace Crackers to each other) whereas others (Pepero Day, where people give sticks of Pepero - basically, a stick cookie dipped in chocolate) are celebrated widely. Last fall, I saw a bakery that had dipped loaves of French bread in chocolate to make it look like enormous sticks of Pepero.
Today is White Day,which is in Korea is celebrated by men giving women presents/candy, to trade off for Valentine's Day, which is usually when women give men candy/presents. April 14th is Black Day, where single folks get together to eat noodles in black bean sauce. Though I have to admit that every time I hear "black day" I think of the Morrissy line, "I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside" (and you thought I outgrew that goth phase - HAHAHA).
Anyway.
All of this to say, looking at the candy displays in the stores makes me laugh - while women give men chocolate on Valentine's Day, it seems like men give women suckers and lollypops. Paging Dr. Freud.
Also, I have kids giving me lots and lots of candy today. Let's see if they recognize the fact that I'm recycling it once I need to bribe them into compliance.
It really is almost sad the joy I take in doing this already. In both English AND Korean.
Yellow Dust is basically pollution and dust from Mongolia that gets carried East. It means that the air over most of China, Korea, and Japan is hazy, breathing is more difficult, and Jessica is more wheezy. Joy. I guess when it gets really bad, it can also affect parts of the US. I'm the idiot who has ended up running outside on the worst days of the year both this year and last, but thanks to a friend, I have at least an idea of what the levels are: The US military has a tracker that gives you an idea of the air quality. (Mokpo folks will probably want to click on the Gwangju tab). This would have been a smart thing to look at a couple weekends ago, but hindsight, 20/20, blahblahblah.
In other news, I "lost" my wallet again. I left it in my bag when I went to a teacher's meeting, and didn't realize it was gone until I was getting ready to leave the gym to meet friends for dinner.
A few minutes ago my principal just brought it back to me, and minus the less than ~$10 that was in it, everything was still there. I was pretty sure something like that would happen, so didn't worry about canceling everything until I had a chance to retrace all my steps.
This is one of the things that is nice about Korea. While someone went into my bag because I was dim-witted enough to leave it in my room, they just took what they would be able to use and didn't take the things that would be a big giant pain to replace. Dodged a bullet, lesson learned.
This is really not kid appropriate (and is only worksafe depending on where you work...) but is getting more than a bit of attention in the blogsphere and makes me laugh.
And Jimmy Kimmel's response:
Unrelated, Stuff White People Like is a blog that is getting more than a little bit of attention. I'll leave it to you to form an opinion.
When I decided to change schools last summer, I made my decision based on the city I wanted to live in, not the grade level I wanted to teach. We all make trade-offs, and at the time I needed to list a specific school in a specific city in order to get switched out of my old school. I knew that this job was open, and so took the elementary job in order to be able to move out of the tiny neighborhood of the small town I lived in last year. My thinking was that it was a year, and how bad could it be?
Over the past few months, I've come to a somewhat disturbing conclusion - I've become an elementary school teacher, not just a middle school teacher pretending to be an elementary school teacher. I had students for the first time today (although I've been here for two days, the only kids I see are in the hallways or when they stick their heads in to say hello) and I have FUN. Maybe because I'm able to crank up the dork factor to eleven (and let's be real, I admit my dork factor is pretty high, anyway) and I'll probably be ready to crush them like grapes in a few weeks, but I like playing goofy games, making cheesy bulletin boards, and making the kids who are either low-level or annoying (or both) fall in love with me. I get to laugh a lot more than I did in middle school, and if it sometimes feels like I am teaching via interpretative dance more than language, so be it.
After years of making jokes that I could never be an elementary teacher because I don't own enough seasonal sweatshirts, wooden jewelery, or things that look like apples, I somehow have become one. At least for the time being. Totally didn't expect that one.
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Unrelated, I'm wearing a cashmere sweater my step-mother sent me, and keep petting my own arm. Am even more happy I bought that bag of merino/cashmere blend in Seoul.
I'm so annoyed my head is about to come off my neck.
Even before I took the language course, I understood a LOT more Korean than my school thought I did. I mean, let's be real here, I have lived here for more than a year and am able to live and get almost every taken care of with either English or my limited Korean - I'm not a freaking idiot.
So this morning, my principal introduces me to the staff and says that I only speak English and no Korean at all. Fine. I introduce myself to the staff in Korean and let the rest of the meeting crash over my head in a wave of words.
A few minutes later while we were waiting for the opening school meeting to start, he starts asking me questions that I answer in Korean, including things like, do I know what 감사합니다 means. I mean, really? I don't know the word for thank you? Anyway, the conversation continues, and I don't think he even realized that I was answering his broken English with Korean.
A few minutes ago, one of the teacher just walked in the room and asked if I knew where my co-teacher was. I didn't know, and he said something else quickly and mumbly, and when I asked him to go slowly, he just walked out of the room as if I didn't exist. Now, either he didn't understand my Korean or he did and is just an asshole. I'm still really annoyed by the whole thing, and sort of want to find him and tell him that while I don't speak a lot, if he goes slowly AND DOESN"T LEAVE THE ROOM I can at least understand what is going on. GRR.
Oh, and I have a new co-teacher this year. She will be leaving for maternity leave in a couple months and had to look up the word "try" in her electronic dictionary today. She is nice, but let's say I'm glad I'm not a new teacher here.
Today the weather here is flirting with the 50's, so I went for my first run outside in a long, long time. I haven't run for more than 2.5 km at a stretch in rather a long time (2.5 is a bit more than a mile and a half, and have I ever mentioned how much I loathe the treadmill?) and yesterday a friend asked if we were still on for the 1/2 marathon in June in Jeju. The training program I was looking at is a 12 week one with the first long run at 4 miles, and I was worried that I would be able to keep up with the training.
Today I ran 4 miles, which is amazing considering how long it has been since I've run anything even close to distance. So far, the only negative is a little bit of asthma (which is to be expected) and what appears to be a really sexy blister on the ball of my foot, which I'm chalking up to bad socks and over-tightly laced shoes.
So at least for the time being, I'm starting the 1/2 marathon training program. I think I'll see how things go with the training runs (it would be increasing volume pretty fast for me to just dive in right now) but try to keep up with the longer distance runs each week.
Totally unrelated, I go back to work tomorrow.
