ROST IN TRANSRATION

new blog! no one probably reads this anymore . . .

2006-11-13T08:39:00.000+09:00

so okay. it only took me four months. but i've got a new blog up and running now!

go to muchoyay.blogspot.com for all the excitement. hope to see you there!

i'm going to send out emails, too.

:)

iowa to the city

2006-07-29T04:09:00.000+09:00

thank you.

ahoy matey! this movie swabbed the pooop decks.

knock rummy. new roomie in blue.

kris and chris. the bearded ones.

kris, sharing with my camera holder.

sophie. new family dog. i had a fun day with her.

then she bit my face, so she had to go back to the humane society.

so it's been fun in iowa. i got a new apartment, saw my old peeps, played a lot-o-cards, and met with my department. best story from the weekend:

i have never taken any speech path classes in my whole entire life. therefore, one of my required classes for the fall is "introduction to speech and hearing sciences." instead of having me take the class though, they're just going to have me be the teaching assistant. kill two birds, you know. that's crazy i say. crazy. and it confirms what i once suspected about teaching assistants.

off to arkansas for the family reunion tonight. boy howdy, i'll have some good photos for you on monday. :)

home sweet sweet home

2006-07-23T14:40:00.000+09:00

(borrowed without permission and edited, slightly, from the official state of iowa website)
(and from my old blog)

i'm going home! here i come ottumwa!
yay yay yay ioway!
i thought all you peeps should know a thing or two
about the fab state in the middle.
those who don't know.
who haven't read my old blog.
so here you go.

Iowa is a great place to live and travel.
The more you know about it, the more you will come to enjoy it.
Iowa became the 29th State in 1846.
It is known as the Hawkeye State, and Des Moines is the capital city.
I was born in Dubuque, right there on the Mississippi.
Now mi familia lives in Ottumwa, a bit farther south.
On the Des Moines River. The city o' bridges.

Iowa is bordered by two great American rivers
(the Mississippi and the Missouri) on its east and west sides.
It has a rich agricultural tradition and ranks first in the nation
with corn and soybean production as well as in hog production from its 93,000 farms.
There are twice as many pigs as people in Iowa.
(6,000,000 porkers, 3,000,000 people)

That's one pig for every person in Iowa, plus one for their friend.
Who wants my second pig?
Sioux City, Iowa is home to the Twin Bing candy concoction. (??)
So says Megs.
On May 10, 1879, the largest meteorite known to have fallen in North America fell in Iowa.
Iowa was home to many famous individuals such as Herbert Hoover, Johnny Carson, Donna Reed, Radar O'Riley, Tom Arnold, John Wayne, Elijah Wood, Buffalo Bill, Ron Livingston, Ashton Kutcher, the new Superman, Glenn Miller, the band Slipknot, Ann Landers and Dear Abby, Dan Bern, and Grant Wood, to name a few.
Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper died here.

Captain James Kirk will be born here.

It was part of the Lewis and Clark expedition and many other historic events, such as the filming of Field of Dreams.
Iowa Fact: In Anthon, a man once hiccoughed for 69 years. Practically his whole life.
1922-1991, until he died. Poor fella. Name: Charles Osborne.
Iowa supports a rich and diverse cultural population and history.
The Iowa Primaries make it an important political stop as well.
Iowa is the place where family values, exceptional work ethic, first-in-the-nation education (as eternalized on our state quarter), pigs, people, and peace of mind all come together.

Iowa is for me.
Iowa is for you.
Discover how much you value a life with accomplishment, reward,
opportunity and a sense of being in the right place here in Iowa.
Whether you live here or are visiting for the first time,
you will find Iowa is the place you can always call home.
Always. heart heart heart.
(even if your parents move to Canada)
Welcome (home) to Iowa.

down home kansas city

2006-07-22T02:54:00.000+09:00

now that's what i'm talking about. now this is home. sigh.

what does it mean when someone says to you:
"they're playing music for your hair!"
and the song is by crowded house, or a-ha? or something.
megs and i are having an awesome time.
lotsa shopping.
i almost cried in the candle store because it smelled so much like home.
home home home!!!
then i got dizzy from all the sniffing i did.
we went out for tacos and there was a mariachi (sp?) band in the restaurant.
we had panera BREAD!!! for lunch.
we went to old navy and cleaned up. OLD NAVY!

i'm experiencing a lot of culture shock.
at the airport i had to take off my sweatshirt and put it through the x-ray machine after everything else had gone through, so i went to ask the man behind me if i could put my sweatshirt in his bucket. i turned to the 50-something, blond, white man in the jeans and arizona state shirt and said:

"excuse me, do you speak english?"

he just kind of blinked at me. so i thought that meant no. i began to signal putting my sweatshirt in his bucket. he then replied:

"yes. of course i speak english."

he thought i was funny.

i've had two mind-numbing trips to target, the land o' plenty.
we went out for drinks last night, and the relatively extremely low key debauchery (other peoples', not ours, of course) was hilarious and disgusting and very very shocking. all the college kids looked to be about 12 years old to me.

it's really so good to be home. i think it will still take some time to recover.
does anyone know of a place i can live in iowa city?

:)

what else we did

2006-07-19T15:18:00.000+09:00

out of arizona

2006-07-19T11:51:00.000+09:00

into kansas city!
just need to dust this baby off . . .

stuff that's been happening around here

2006-07-17T14:12:00.000+09:00

the final photos

2006-07-16T17:54:00.000+09:00

i've just put the last of my trip photos on my photo site.

i'm done with that site now, i think.
any u.s.a. reclimatization month photos i'll just put on here.
or something.
and let me just say it is so so so very nice
to control my music once again.

christie's back now, and we're going to make a movie this week sometime. probably a foreign film staring wang hao-tze, my monkey stowaway. i imagine it will be shot at the korean restaurant in town and will make use of all the korean i can remember.
subtitles included.

:)

soccer star is me

2006-07-15T17:15:00.000+09:00

ryan took me to play soccer today with a big pack of dudes.
we got majorly smashed, but i scored the only goal for our team.
boo-ya!
i don't think i've ever scored a goal before.
and i head-butted ryan.
he was trash-talking my mom.

:)

(not really, mom)

whatsawhatty? who what?

2006-07-14T18:30:00.000+09:00

some thoughts on being home.

1. never before in my life would i have said l.a. was home.
2. people in l.a. were so nice! i think i'm going to overdose on nice when i get to iowa. whoa.
3. the man at starbucks said i was a fantastic lady after he asked me casually and disinterestedly how i was and i freaked on him and told him how happy i was to be home. i made his day wonderful, he said. awww. it was the nicest compliment i've gotten since that shop owner in india told me i was fit, and that's why i had nice arms, arms like a man.
4. traffic cops. forgot about those.
5. felt weird to eat grapes straight up without peeling them. it still made me nervous. yikes! disease!
6. for lunch i had a bagel with cream cheese and reeces pieces mushed inside. so glad to be back!
7. i've now officially been wide awake for something like 80 hours. i haven't slept since koh tao. can you believe it? no sleep. at all. none. i feel a bit odd. 80 hours. huh. 80. and i'm not tired right now. i think i'll just never sleep again. i sure am getting a lot accomplished. like hallucinating and not-being-able-to-stop-shaking.
8. the package i thought was lost was really just consolidated! yay for yoga notes and indian cooking recipes! boo for indian shipping companies who open my packages and consolidate them and don't respond to my emails and make me worry about my wonderful yoga notes. ppthbb.
9. i'd forgotten how wonderful it is to flirt with everything that moves and the fact that i am a big fat flirty flirt. what i have been missing! i don't mean flirt like boy + girl + social setting = flirt and i don't mean big minnie mouse eyelash batting. i mean flirt in the sense that everyone flirts with everyone they pass on the street and wink at or smile at or buy a bag of reeces pieces from. or maybe it's just me. but i'm pretty sure i read an article in a reputable magazine once about the benefits of flirting or something and how everyone does it. it's a friendly, charasmatic, playful hello. (am i spelling everything wrong and/or making up words?) and it's not flirting to get anything from anyone else. it's not the dreaded india-barter-flirt. it's just a happy acknowledgement that the other person exists, and that we're all going to smile over our mutual recognition. i haven't flirted in months. maybe since i left for korea, even. it's hard to flirt properly when people don't get your jokes or understand your language. or mimic your body language. body language! wow. i hadn't even realized what i was missing, but it's so nice to be back in a place where i feel like people are feeling my flow and we're moving to a same-ish rhythm. and i can look people in the eye. not so much at the greyhound bus station. that's for bullet 10, though. i had a great time in the airports these past few days, hours, whatever, in america, interacting with large groups of americans. i feel so so good. and i'm charming the pants off everyone! it feels so so good to make such a mutuably appreciable human connection with strangers. oh it feels so good! i'm going to do some more of that tomorrow, boy howdy.
10. at the greyhound bus station i met a man who said "well aren't you a purdy little thing?" so i promptly left and waited around back at the airport, where there was air conditioning anyways. so then i sat on my bus next to a guy who said the new superman looks like the real superman. i said, you mean the cartoon? no. you mean, christopher reeve? no. the real superman, you know. the really really real one. okay. so then i engaged myself in a conversation with the man to the other side of me who wanted to know, loudly, about my views on politics, abortion, and religion. oh, and hispanics in the u.s. and that was fun because there were many hispanics in the u.s. on our bus. so i changed the subject back to abortion. gladly.
11. and then ryan got me at the bus station! hooray! i should really probably go to bed. now. yup. that makes 82 hours awake. fascinating.

i'm so ronery

2006-07-13T10:52:00.000+09:00

anyeong haseyo! oh the happy look of surprise on the faces of the airlines hostesses when i greet them in hangumal. sigh. yay for being back in korea! boo for long layovers. yay for internet! boo for having to change money. yay for crispy won! boo for the magazine i want costing $7. yay for having a photo cd! boo for my photo site not working.
so here's a short photo synopsis of my week on koh tao.

don't dive here . . .

elizabeth and erin elizabeth

sairee beach. all the beach you'll ever need.

running to the beach, day 1.

shot from the porch of our bungalow.

awesome.

kaboom!

an island diet.

so that's basically all i did was lay on the beach and/or eat brownies and drink lemon shakes.

elizabeth and i are good at that. we both made ourselves sick. i feel sick right now. time to detox with some kim bap. it's raining, so no korea beach for me. another boo to that. boo-urns, even. now off to l.a. i go! well, in like five hours.

all my bags are packed . . .

2006-07-12T13:48:00.000+09:00

i'm ready to go.
driving home to be with you
highway's divided, the city's in view
i'm standing here outside your door
got a ticket for my destination . . . hum hum hum
home! where my thoughts are straying
home! where the music's playing
home! where mom's makin' mac n' cheese for me . . .
i'm so far away each step that i take's on my way home
home home on the range
sweet home io-oo-oowa
i wish i was home
yeah it's been a long time, long time, long time gone
i ain't honked a horn since i don't know when
long time gone.
please come home for christmas
i'll be home for christmas
it feels like home to me
it feels like i'm all the way back where i come from
it feels like i'm all the way back where i belong
just pack your bags and get yourself on a plane
if you need her, you should be there
go home
come on man! if you need her
you should be there
go home!
i'm tired and i wanna go home
i won't forget where i come from
i'm going home
i guess i'll get the papers and go home
another aeroplane, another sunny place,
i’m lucky i know, but i wanna go home
got to go home
i think i'm gonna stay home.
have myself a home life
well, maybe that's a bit far.
have myself a home life for a few months.

it's going to take me 40 travel hours to get from bangkok to flagstaff starting tonight at 10pm bangkok time. i'm going to see if i can find my way to a beach in korea, though.
i've got an 8 hour layover there.
kim bap and sunshine could do me some good.
home home home home home home home
see you all soon soon soon soon soon soon soon
what a great year!

and hey, don't y'all go away now, y'hear?
i'll keep posting until i touch down in iowa for good, sometime mid-august.
this ain't over til school starts. dig?

beach thoughts

2006-07-10T12:59:00.000+09:00

question: is it possible to make other people happy?
subquestion: should you even try?

answer: yes. and yes.

in spanish, there are two different verbs which correspond to the verb "to be" in english. the first one, "ser," is a permanent state of being. the second, "estar," is temporary. so, for example:

soy guapa = i am hott. always.
estoy guapa = i am hott right now only.

soy aburrido = i am boring. always.
estoy aburrido = i am bored. just right now.

this is an important one not to mess up, you can see.

i figure that:
1. only you can make yourself ser happy.
2. you can make only yourself ser happy.

this kind of happiness comes from your outlook on life, or something. it comes from your soul, or somewhere. it is constant and, as anne frank says, it can only be dimmed. it is your responsibility, pretty much. you can permanently affect no one else's and no one else can permanently affect yours.

that being said, you can:
1. make other people estar happy.
2. be made estar happy by other people.

so yes. we should try. i find it rather easy to make someone estar happy, actually. pirate jokes, for instance. and brownies. even just smiling. it must become easier to maintain our ser happiness with good moments of estar happiness in our lives, right? and giving other people estar happiness makes me estar happy also. even ser happy.

the flip side of this is that:
1. you can make other people estar sad.
2. other people can make you estar sad.

this is just a dimming of the ser happiness though. they can't touch the root of the ser.

therefore, no one person can make you ser sad.
and if it so happens that you are ser sad, this is something you need to work through in your own system. but a lot of estar happiness from other people never hurt anything.

one last thing.
i suspect there are adjectives that other people can give your ser.
for example, another person can make you ser loved.
you should be ser loved by yourself, but others can do it, too.
and it's easier to ser happy when we're ser loved.

other people can also estar love us. that's like how you love pizza i would think.
or like, how you love the guy who brings you a towel when you spill your beer.
or how you love a random librarian. but the ser love is the really, really amazing kind.

so go forth and spread the ser love. and please, ser happy.
but i can't make you.

ko tao

2006-07-09T15:57:00.000+09:00

i eat a lot of brownies here.
i'm gettin' all porky. it's good.
when we do yoga on the beach, we first get barked at by a group of island dogs. then, when we don't back down, they form a protective circle around us and, instead, bark at other wanderers on the beach. and then guard our bungalow while we change into bikinis.
i'm having a bikini custom-made by an irish woman and a scandinavian. hope it turns out.
should come in handy in iowa in october . . .
i'm tan.
i'm coming home oh so soon.
i've had a wonderful year.
i've had the most interesting of weeks. laughably so.
i'm going to eat another brownie right . . . now.

yum yum yum!
home home home!

the islands, mon: a haiku

2006-07-06T14:00:00.000+09:00

i'm on the thai islands, mon.
my camera's kaput.
i'm coming home in six days.

yay! yay! yay!

2006-07-03T07:03:00.000+09:00

You scored as Carrie.

Carrie

63%

charlotte

44%

Samantha

31%

Miranda

31%

what sex and the city character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

ohmigod i love it! i scored in the order of my preference for the characters. yay!
someone pass me a cocktail, i'm going shoe shopping and, yeah, call adian. i've made a terrible mistake! :)

the final stop

2006-07-01T03:15:00.000+09:00

i'm in bangkok.

i leave for arizona in less than two weeks.

eep!

i've put a smattering of angkor photos on my photo site.

(among others)

here's a preview of the angkor awesomeness:

happy canada day!

happy fourth of july!

sweeter cambodia

2006-06-28T18:20:00.000+09:00

angkor is face-slappingly beautiful. this morning i took a little moto to watch the sun rise over angkor wat and then spent the day tooling about the ancient head of this asian empire. i got 8 hours of touring in between 5 am and 1 pm, and then i crashed. it was hard work, boy howdy! our cambodian ancestors must have had thighs of steel and really short, wide feet, judging from the steps up to all these temples. each step is about 1 foot high and about 4 inches wide. going up was painful and coming down was an adventure. i sweat through my whole t-shirt by 10 am, and still got asked to pose with people in their photos. whatever illusions of gwyneth paltrow-ness i may have had have now evaporated. obviously, they just want a foreigner. even a sweaty, stinky one. with frizzy hair. stupid monsoon.
i've got a pass good for two more days, so i'll be seeing the sites tomorrow and friday, too. but no more 5 am mornings. well, maybe on friday.
um, i can't seem to figure out the computer here, so i'm going to pass on posting more photos for now. i'll post more this weekend from bangkok maybe. i get free internet in my hostel, so may as well make good use of that. so looking forward to thailand where i will be not so much a tourist as a vegetable.

sweet cambodia

2006-06-26T17:58:00.000+09:00

cambodians are so friendly. they are like the ontarians of asia. :)
my first day in cambodia was lovely. the sky is amazing! huge puffy white clouds. bright bright gorgeous blue skies. i never noticed, but india has no clouds. hmm. the capitol, phnom penh, besides using consonants with reckless abandon, is another french creation in south-east asia. hooray for french bread and cheese once again! yay! taxis are motorbikes. the country is famous, FAMOUS, for their scarves. thus i have lifted my self-imposed scarf ban and have permited myself to buy one. oops, i mean six. i've had drinks, meals, and colorful chats with locals. i haven't had such a nice welcome into local culture yet. people here speak english way better than in lao. the roads are better, too. well, i'm in the capitol i guess. that could explain it. am i using the right capitol? capital? i don't care. the buildings are beautiful.
i love cambodia, but my heart is broken and i am ready to leave this city. when i visited halifax, nova scotia with my parents in 2003, i spent an entire day bummed out after visiting the maritime museum and learning about the halifax explosion and the titanic clean-up crew. halifax has a sad history, yes. but NOTHING like cambodia. nothing. the civil war and khmer rouge are terrifying. we're talking 1975-1980-ish. i told my new cambodian friend, sarim, how excited i am to go home to my family reunion at the end of july. how i can't wait to see my grandparents. sarim told me he has no grandparents. no aunts. no uncles. they were all killed by the government in the late '70s. between 2 and 3 million cambodians (depending on who you ask) were killed during the war. that's close to 1/3 of the population. i visited the genocide museum, which was a torture prison until the '80s. there's still blood on the floor. there is still blood on the floor. the chains are still on the walls. pictures of the torture victims' corpses hang over their empty beds. it used to be a secondary school. the fact that the building used to be a school is just perverse. all the while walking through the place i kept repeating in my head "this was a school." the khmer rouge killed the intellectuals of cambodian society. i don't know. i love school. it seems sacrilegious, a torture prison made from a school. plus, as a grad school grad, it creeps me out that they hunted down and killed their educated citizens.
today i toured the mass grave sites just out of phnom penh. i rode a motorbike under those sparkly blue cambodian skies to fields filled with grassy green pits and lots of colorful butterflies. i stood in a small room filled with human skulls and looked at the clothes gathered from the shallow graves of the victims of the khmer rouge. i stood in front of the tree used for killing babies. the paths of the field are still littered with small bones and scraps of clothing. that's how recent this stuff is. i was walking on human bones this morning. and it was a beautiful day. i can't take this anymore. i can't type about this anymore.
sarim and i went for korean food for lunch.
tomorrow morning i'm off to siem riep to see angkor.

delhi rocks my socks

2006-06-22T17:37:00.000+09:00

whoa. delhi. a lot of people and guidebooks warned me that delhi was the most difficult, dangerous, rowdy place to travel in india. it was said that as a single western female travelling alone in delhi, that i was bound to have troubles. that was a bunch of hooey. delhi is wonderful! delhi is the easiest of easies! i love delhi! it rocks my socks. in the 3.5 days that i have been here i have done just around 8 billion things. all the recent history here is cool: gandhi, indira gandhi, bahai temple. and there is an absolutely beautiful mosque and a neato old fort and the city centre is awesome. old delhi is just okay. kinda touristy. i'm staying in connaught place, which is a big, multi-layered roundabout just off the city centre. i have pictures, i'll post them later because i don't have my cord with me.
um. i guess i don't have anything interesting to say at all really. this post is boring. sorry.
i leave for cambodia tonight. yay! cambodia!

american celebrity visits taj mahal

2006-06-18T21:42:00.000+09:00

travelling americans have the problem of explaining to the world where they come from. case in point, by "travelling american," i mean "travelling citizens of the united states of america." when i lived in canada, and people asked where i was from, and i said america, i was greeted with mucho hostility. afterall, america is a continent, not a country. fair enough. so i started to tell people i was from the states. then, i lived in korea. people would ask where i was from, i would say i was from the states, and i would get a blank stare. so, okay, in korea, i have to say i'm from U.S.A. not "the" U.S.A., and not USA (the nice man at the post office chastised me for 5 minutes once about how U.S.A. needs to have dots), but U.S.A. now i'm in india. in india, "U.S.A." i guess sounds like "blurgablurgablurfg" so in india, i say i'm from america. and if i try to be specific and say that i come from the united states of america, i just feel like a gomer. and i've learned that nothing dries up a conversation with a foreigner faster than saying you're from iowa. they have no response for that state. well, except for the few who ask me about potatoes.

so i went to the TAJ MAHAL!!! LALALALALALALAA! yesterday. i'm in agra, and i can see the taj from my hotel window. it's pretty awesome. i went early enough yesterday to troll around and then take a seat and watch the sun set. apparently, the taj is supposed to change colors while the sun sets or rises. now i've watched two sunrises and one sunset, and maybe i'm just insensitive to subtle changes in the light, but i wasn't wowed by any color changes on the taj mahal at either time. it's still awesome though. i think the only thing i've wanted to see more in my life was the eiffel tower (check) and the great pyramids (uncheck). it has been a fantastic few days. there's also a "baby taj," so it's called, that's a tomb for another former indian man and wife. it was built right before the taj mahal and is smaller and more intricate. considerably smaller, actually. they are both amazing to see and i can't contain a squeal every time i see the taj mahal, which is often, because it's right in my huge hotel window.

so while i was sitting and waiting to watch the sun go down at the taj, i was trying to read a book. it was hard, because people kept asking to take their picture with me. i felt like madonna. no, gwyneth paltrow. that's it. i felt like gwyneth paltrow. at first, i said no when anyone asked to take their picture with me because, at first, it was just indian men. packs of young, pretty gorgeous, indian men. so i shook them off. then it was families, so i started to say yes. then, there was a line, a line, a LINE!! of people around my bench waiting to take their picture with me. i just sat there and smiled and answered questions about myself and my family (good old steve) and took pictures with everyone and their children and their friends and their brothers and them again. they put their arms around me. they had me stand. they had me sit. one man even had me take a professional photo with him that he could get printed up by a local photographer. it was strange. it was really really strange. one family became my sort of photo managers and they were in most of the strangers' photos and they organized the lineup and they took some pictures with my camera as well. i've uploaded a nice assortment of these photos on my photo website, but i'd like to share with you the entire collection of "angry girl" photos. i've found that many indians don't really know how to smile for pictures. if you see the photos of unni, my martial arts instructor, you'll see what i mean. sinead had to pretend to hit him on the head with a spoon to get him to smile. okay. never mind. blogger is being dumb. you'll have to go check her out on the photo site. and put some comments on there people. let me know you're out there. :)

"this is as young, and as free, as you'll ever be" -- gregory david roberts

2006-06-15T00:31:00.000+09:00

i'm reading a book right now called SHANTARAM. it's written by a man, gregory david roberts, who escaped from prison in australia and ended up working for the underlords of bombay in the '80s. and it's fantastic. this guy puts a lot of what i feel about india, and can't express, into words. and sometimes we use the same words to express india. the first chapter explains how his first impression of india was formed by the wall of smells that hit him on the walk from the plane to the exit of the airport. sound familiar? this book is excellent, if a bit kitchy/preachy/poem-ish at times, and i recommend it. because i like that kind of stuff.
of course, being that he was/is a dude, a prison hardened dude with nothing to lose at that, a lot of his experiences are quite the more adventurous than mine. more than that, though, i think that his impressions of india, more specifically the men of india, are a lot different given that he was/is a dude. he put a lot of trust in men who i wouldn't have wanted to give the time of day. not that they would have asked me for the time. that's not one of the questions i've gotten. and he got a lot of respect from men, not just indian men admittedly, but dudes in general, who wouldn't have found me useful in their dark little crime-worlds. it makes me sad. i can be useful to crime lords, too! :)
i do love india, but it's like being on mars, really. mars, where people speak english, so you therefore get a clear glimpse into the stunning array of differences that human cultures can cook up. nothing is lost in translation. that's right. that's what they meant. everything is just that unbelieveably strange. and moustached.

a girl plopped down next to me a few days ago as i was eating ice cream and reading my book outside an ice cream store in ahmedabad. we chatted it up a bit, in broken english. she thought my name was "alien". she worked in marketing. her friend from work arrived a few minutes later and the two of them tried to sell me a "sauna belt" *as seen on tv, for shaping the waist, for the bargain price of 550 rupees ($11 US). the thing was huge. i've got enough to carry. do i look like i need a sauna belt? she said that i did. i said it was just the ice cream. and she and her friend left in a huff when i resisted their repeated urging that i buy the contraption.

i have had very nice luck recently with very nice older indian men. one was the security guard at the ice cream store. too many people in india amounts to old men getting paid to be security guards at the local ice cream store. but he took care of me and insisted that i move when the sun started to come in my face and plugged in a fan for me and refilled my water bottle with ice cold water and got me a taxi home when i was done. then, another wonderful old man took me past all the touts at the train station in rajasthan to ride in a small rickshaw with me to the local, but inconspicuous bus stand where i needed to get a bus into pushkar, where i am now. i have felt well taken care of by the retired men of india.

pushkar is amazing. just amazing.

the locals think i'm spanish. cool.

i don't like to talk to strangers on trains and planes and stuff. i just like to read or sleep or stare at the scenery. it's hard in india because lots of folks want to chat you up and i can't feel good about shaking them off. so for fun yesterday i told a woman on the train to rajasthan that i was a doctor. a brain surgeon. heehee! it's not too much different than my normal train-lying. the story that i give to men travelling alone who i meet on trains: my name is stacy. i've been married for three years. my husband, steve, is an engineer or a business man. he used to be in the u.s. army and then he worked as a body guard for imporant political figures for a while. we don't have any kids yet, but yes, we are praying for sons. he is coming to meet me in (insert name of city where i'm arriving). we're arriving separately because he had a special martial arts training seminar to teach this week in washington d.c. oh that steve. always on the go.

anyway, check out the UPDATED PHOTOS!!! finally!! for fun glimpses at elephants, birthday parties, my stellar swami costume, yoga, meal times, and varpus . . . you'll see . . .

aww biscuits!

2006-06-04T19:44:00.000+09:00

so i'm in this really posh internet cafe with bollywood music and a/c, but there are no functioning cd roms here either, so still no photo upload. which is a shame, because this morning i passed a camel pulling a cart down a busy street. yay! camels!

i'm in ahmedabad, india.
i just got off a 40-hour train ride from kerala.
the five-year-old girl who slept above me didn't believe that i couldn't understand hindi. so she chatted away while i smiled and nodded and snuck her animal crackers when her mom wasn't looking. it was a very fun linguisticky moment for me. i imagine that she has met loads of people who speak hindi and not english, but none the other way around. i don't fit into her venn diagram of language reality. (shout out to the logic peeps, and brendon, who doesn't read this blog, i hope) this little girl has about five languages under her belt. fantastic. still, i couldn't get a word of english out of her, other than goodnight.
general observation about indian kidlets: the attitude towards strangers that indian kids take seems to be different than what i was raised with. they don't seem to feel any "stranger danger." it seems to be normal for kids on the train to go and lay down next to anyone, really, in their car. there's a lot of contact between the kids and other passengers, they eat anything given to them, and parents don't seem to mind other passengers disciplining their kids. this is based on only a few experiences i've had, but that's my impression.
three different indian men tried chivalrously to help me with my rucksack in the past few days, only to find that it was actually too heavy for them to deal with. i asked them to step aside while i hoisted it effortlessly (sort of) up onto my back and went on my way. haha! take that indian men! haHA!
i also find myself a lot better adapted to not taking any hooey from anyone during this solo venture through indian cities. i really like ahmedabad. it's way more chill than mumbai or kerala. the arab architecture is gorgeous, and the food is tasty. i'm catching a bus down to the farm this evening. i hope they have cd roms there.
i've been pretty crap at posting while in india. it's been kind of hard to get any internet time, for one. and also, it's hard to know where to start. everything here is so different. so i'm just going to ramble for a few minutes. first off, lots of stores have hand-painted signs and advertisements. it's very striking. things like detailed pictures of computers and accessories, and even movie posters will be hand painted. cool. everything is more colorful in india i think. the way people dress and decorate things. food isn't all that spicy in the south. korean food is the spiciest of all spicies that i've ever had. i eat a lot of tomato soup and cheese sandwiches on the weekends. very yummy. and lots and lots of coconut. there are lots of mustaches here. men wear button down plaid shirts for the most part. especially in kerala. and skirts called dhoties. but they do wear underpants under said skirts. (i know you were wondering, megs). men in ahmedabad don't wear the skirts so much, and i know nothing of their underpants. i watched napoleon dynamite twice at the yoga centre and all of your moms go to college. i spent three weeks slowly watching the movie gandhi and i've changed my mind about ben kingsly in that movie from when i was little; now i think he's kind of sucky. my blonde room mate from ireland sinead didn't feel that she got much attention from indian men while she was travelling. i thought i got too much, and our friend suki from london whose parents are indian got way way more than either of us. that being said, suki is way way hotter than us, i know sinead will agree. like fire hot. she's b-b-b-beautiful. she also does her makeup and wears pretty clothes, cheater. however, also, suki said that indian men fancy (and molester) western women of indian descent more than those blondie girls from ireland, for example. since people keep assuming that i'm part indian, i think that explains a bit how i find indian men i meet on the street treating me so obnoxiously. my swami thought i was a gujarati, so that's probably bad news for me, being in gujarat now. but i can't lie, i do love it when people (excluding random men on the street) ask me if i'm indian. i mean, i think it's pretty obvious that i'm not a local. then again, with all my awesome malayalam (the language of kerala, the name of which is also a palindrome) it must be hard to pick me out of the indian crowd. but not really. one of the best parts about being in india is that i'll finally be able to go eat at indian restaurants and understand what's on the menu. i know the breads, i know the sauces, i know the names for the veggies and the spices. hooray! no more nan and butter chicken for me, boy howdy! i also sent a huge package home full of indian cooking appliances, mostly to make all the yummy breads. according to the wood carving teacher at the centre, 60% of indian men cheat on their wives. however, if a woman is raped, she becomes a disgrace to her family and is thrown onto the street. the inequality of the sexes seems to be pretty rampant still in india and it makes me really sad. there is no way i could ever live here for that reason. i read a condensed version of the ramayana, the indian cultural epic story. in the story the main character's wife is kidnapped and held by another man/god and he almost doesn't take her back into his home after he rescues her because she may have been too friendly with her kidnapper. one cool thing about the ramayana was learning the 5 deadly sins of indian folk-lore: lust, anger, miserliness, egoism, and envy. hmm . . . interesting. there's also a lot of lore about jesus having spent time in india during his life. my swami believes that jesus was a yogi. i read the davinci code while in india, or thailand or something, and i read a book explaining the davinci code and i'm on jesus-theory overload these days. the indian newspapers are in a tiff over banning or not banning the davinci code movie. the indian prime minister only allowed the opinions of the christian camps before deciding to ban the movie or not. it wasn't banned in the country, but several states have banned the movie. notably, not the christian states, but the muslim ones. hmm . . . i don't know. and the movie comes with a disclaimer reminding everyone that it's fiction. duh. and the government is pushing right now to allow for quotas for students from OBC (standing for "other of the backward class") communities entering medical school. doctors all over the country are on strike against the quotas. so other doctors have gone on strike against those who are on strike against the quotas. i just can't believe what OBC stands for.
read more here: OBC craziness
i get lied to a lot in india. i don't know if it's just the way business is done or if it's because i'm a tourist, but i get blatantly lied to all the bloody time. a rickshaw driver will tell you that the ferry is closed and ask you to pay ten times as much for him to drive you around the island, for example. and then there's the triple pricing of everything for foreigners. the travel agent man in kerala told me that my plane ticket was arriving the next day for about a week, and it never arrived. the tailor told me my things would arrive the next day for about three days. rickshaw drivers say that they know the restaurant or store or street you're talking about, when they don't and they just drive you around and try to drop you off in the middle of nowhere. hotel staff will tell me that all the cheap rooms are full and if i want to stay i have to take the way expensive room, until i start to leave and then one mysteriously becomes available. and today a woman in an internet cafe told me that hers was the only internet cafe in the whole city of ahmedabad when i decided not to buy the $20 internet pass required to use the computers at her cafe. there was another cafe right down the street. before i left the yoga centre one of the students did a tarot reading for all the students in the yoga course. i chose the fool card, which made my swami giggle. a 30-year-old indian yogi man, giggling. one of my best memories. but it turns out the fool card is actually quite a nice card to get, so says jose-louis from chile. the tarot book said something about that card meaning something about continuing to trust people over and over and over again and how that's good because you don't live in the past or the future but now in the present. that's kind of a nice idea, but i think i'm becoming a bit embittered. and all information says that things will only get worse when i get into delhi. i'm afraid of returning to iowa city and going to target to get some shampoo and going to check out and being like, "yeah? who says i have to pay $2.75 for this shampoo? i'll give you $1.75 for it maybe. don't you know, in my country i specialize in selling shampoo and i know that this is way overpriced." or the woman at the olive garden will tell me there are no tables available and i'll kick up a fuss and storm away in a big scene meant to leave her chasing me out onto the street and offering me the table that's actually available. or i'll give a cab driver only half of what he's asking for because i know that he got lost on purpose to hike up the price of the ride and he'll chase me down and give me a good smack. so anyway. i recognize that that's the way things work here and i'm making the best of it. but i'm just tired of always having to be on my toes. then again, if my rickshaw driver hadn't stuck it to me today by taking the seriously way way far out of the way way to town i wouldn't have passed by the camel in the crowded street. yay camels!

moo.

2006-06-02T21:08:00.000+09:00

stupid crappy pants india dumb face internet poo cafes in cochin don't have cd barfo roms or usb functioning stupid harry potter pants ports so i can't upload any more photos right now. poo.

i'm leaving kerala (sniffle) in about two hours. i'm going to gujarat to pick dates and milk cows. and upload photos. i've got some doozies.

i cried my eyes out over leaving my yoga centre. it was such a fantastic month. i actually fell in love with several men with mustaches. how is that possible? and i got up this morning and did yoga on my own in my hotel room. while watching the movie hook. how is that possible? and then i went for ice cream at a secret baskin robbins and e.t. was playing on tv and i watched the whole second half and cried in the baskin robbins while the indian folk stared at me and then i ate a second ice cream cone. i forgot how easy it was to cry at e.t. also, i empathised at the end with e.t. and elliot and their sad parting. (sniffle). i was completely unprepared to leave. i am completely unprepared. i keep considering chucking all the rest of my plans and just moving back to aranmula and marrying my yoga instructor and being a yogini forever. then i remember that in kerala i'm not allowed to swim at the beach or bare my shoulders in public or ride the buses at night or drink alcohol in restaurants or wear jeans or tank tops or shorts or sing karaoke or much of anything really, so then i dry my eyes and fix my heart on visions of dancing my little butt off with beer in hand in kansas city in july and things seem a little bit better. sigh.

oh hamburgers!

2006-05-15T13:54:00.000+09:00

turns out my photo website has a posting limit that i have just exceeded. oops. please visit www.dropshots.com/eeking2 to continue following photos from the weekend, which include but are not limited to:

1. a bird sanctuary
2. the "history house" from the book "god of small things"
3. a night parade in hono(u)r of krishna

small small world

2006-05-14T19:28:00.000+09:00

my room mate sinead's
ex-boyfriend john's
best friend sean
knows my friend chris
in pittsburgh.

india india india

2006-05-13T20:40:00.000+09:00

daily schedule:

5:00 alarm goes off
5:10 out of bed
5:26 run to yoga class
5:30-7:30 yoga
7:30-8:00 breakfast
8:00-10:56 read/sleep/shop/laundry
10:56 run to yoga class
11:00-1:00 yoga
1:00-1:45 lunch
1:45-2:26 read/sleep
2:26 run to yoga class
2:30-3:30 philosophical, existential discussions
3:30-4:00 continuation of discussion post-class with cooking class
4:00-5:00 cooking class with mr. kurup
5:00-5:30 tea/snack/poking around
5:30-6:30 martial arts
6:30-7:30 shower/nap/read
7:30-8:30 dinner
8:30-11:00-ish read/watch movies/chat with sinead (roomie)
11:00-ish-5:00 sleep

we walk through the village wearing all white--yoga pants and t-shirts--and attract lots of stares. maybe it's because white yoga pants are sort of see through. or maybe it's because we're a bit stinky most of the time. we eat every meal on banana leaves with our fingers. the food is soooo good. i bought indian bread-making kitchen implements today in town. it rains every day for about 2 hours. the sky when the sunsets is really really yellow-orange-green right before it rains. people at the yoga center include a guy who does photo shoots for rock star cd covers in L.A., a girl who baby sits for oasis's children, a girl who lives in a commune in hawaii and belongs to a religious not-cult, an elderly french woman who has been here for five years studying painting, U2's physio-therapist, two girls on study abroad from boston university, an indian couple who grew up in uganda and raised their children in canada, a chilean who funds his travels by buying lots of stuff in a country and then selling it in the next country he goes to, and me. and others. my room mate is sinead from ireland who lived in pittsburgh for several years. we would get more sleep and probably function better during the day if we could figure out how to shut up at night. but it's nice to have someone to sit down and talk to. and talk and talk and talk and talk. i've read "the god of small things" which is set here in kerala, close to my center, and "eleven mintues" which didn't make me swear off paulo coehlo, but makes me wonder if other people might. i love the food, i love the people, i love the philosophical yoga discussions, i love our swami brahmananda, i love the cooking teacher kurup who thinks that lila from hungary and erin from iowa are the funniest things he's ever seen so he cuts up half a coconut for us to eat during class every afternoon. i still suck at yoga. so much so that i injured myself. good thing U2's physio-therapist was on hand. whew. i healed quickly. and then i did the plow! yay! the spiders here are enormous. i appear to be alergic to kerala. it's hard to accomplish much of anything with my schedule. we take little open air taxis into town some mornings to see the tailor or go shopping a bit. there's lots of honking on the roads. there was a kathakali dance performance at our center. everything is very colorful. sinead carved an elephant. there is an elephant parade through the village on sunday (tomorrow) to celebrate the end of the week of some festival for krishna. all week there has been music and singing and/or stories blasted quite loudly from speakers all over the village from 5 in the morning until midnight every single day EVERY SINGLE DAY to the point that i don't really hear it anymore. except at night and in the morning. and during yoga class. or when i try to nap. so i guess i hear it. next week will seem very quiet. little kids follow us to class in the morning saying hi and bye and doing yoga poses and daring each other to give us a high five. there's a living center being built close to the yoga house that will house about 10 families each in individual cubicle rooms. that entire housing complex is about the size of our yoga room. i can't think of anything else for right now. check out the new photos on my photo site and enjoy a taxi ride through mumbai and let me know what you think about keralan milk. please.

lamenting the crash of my bollywood dreams

2006-04-27T22:56:00.000+09:00

sigh. no bollywood. unless someone approaches me on the dark streets of mumbai tonight, it's a no go. and i'm not sure i'd go anywhere with anyone claiming to be a bollywood director after dark. don't worry mom and dad. so i figured out that i doesn't actually smell like incense everywhere. lots of places it smells like poo. and then there is the constant opium waft.

and now, for a brief list of what i would like to call "the culture shock chronicles" or, "erin's first 24 hours in mumbai."

1. there are probably 20 men to every 1 woman on the streets of mumbai during the day.
1.5. indian men. meh.
2. you can't get samosas in any restaurant. as if!
3. you can get samosas on the street, and they're icky. :(
4. indian people do a side-to-side head bobble to mean "yes." to me, this head bobble means, "you wanna go?!" or "you're really stupid" or "you go girlfriend." the first person i saw do this i thought maybe had some kind of nervous disorder. it's really odd when men do it.
5. the answer to "are you married?" is always, always "yes."
6. the food is ooooooohhhh soooooo goooooooood . . . except the samosas i mentioned earlier. yuch.
7. the ghettos of mumbai consist of leaning shacks lining many sidewalks of the busy streets. the people who live there have beautiful clothes. i know this because i saw them hanging to dry.

okay, that chronicle was pretty lame i guess. i can't really put into words how strange everything feels here. i have never had culture shock like this before. it's really tiresome. plus, sadly, the coolest places of mumbai are the ones in which i feel the least comfortable taking pictures. so it's going to be hard to share.

but here's a bit of sharing. indian jokes, courtesy of dave, a semi-creepy indian man who claims to be an actor but with whom, nonetheless, i would not have lunch, a drink, or even enjoy the rest of the prince of wales museum:

1. i find it really funny that when people eat bananas they never know where to look.
(okay. i don't get this joke. at all.)

2. once there were two gladiators. a rat and an elephant. they were in the ring together fighting, when the rat jumped over the elephant. suddenly all the rats in the stands stood up and cried, "get him!"
(don't get this one either.)

3. once there was an ant driving in a car. he sped through a red light and the police pulled him over. "i'm sorry officer," said the rat. "my elephant friend has been in a terrible accident and i'm on my way to donate blood for him."
(i sort of get this one, but it's not funny.)

then i told dave my pirate joke and my panda bear joke and my nachos joke and even a few elephant jokes.
he didn't get any of my jokes either. see what i mean about culture shock?

tomorrow i get on a train that i'm going to ride for 40 hours to kerala, in the south, for 30 lovely days of yoga. i suck at yoga. but i'll also be learning indian cooking. i'm good at eating, so that should balance out the yoga bit, i think.

sense and sensibility and india

2006-04-26T15:29:00.000+09:00

margaret: have you really been to india colonel?!?
colonel brandon: indeed, i have.
margaret: what's it like?
sir john: like? hot!
colonel brandon: (leaning in, oh so sexy) the air is full of spices.

when i passed through customs at the mumbai airport last night, the air was thick with the smell of incense. it continued out to the car park and all the way to my hotel. how can it smell so strongly of incense outside? everywhere? all the time?
sigh.
i love you, alan rickman.

goal for day 1, mumbai: find bollywood and get cast as an extra.

ong-bak, the terror of muai thai! and ladies with abnormally long necks

2006-04-25T09:07:00.000+09:00

the highlights of my week in thailand waiting for my indian visa to come through:

#1 - muai thai boxing! yummy!
while i was waiting to buy tickets, the national anthem started to play. everyone, and i mean everyone, dropped what they were doing, stood up, took off their hats and stood in absolute silent reverence until it was over. i had the same experience at a market in chaing mai later in the week. it's odd for the foreigners because we're just walking around, doing our own thing, buying tickets, eating strawberries, whatever, and suddenly, it's like we're in saved by the bell and zach morris has just yelled "freeze!" so he can run off and sneak into mr. belding's office or something. but i shouldn't compare it to something so juvenile. it was awesome.
the muai thai started off with some youngersters and a bit of puking. there was blood in the middle, and as soon as the guys face started to bleed, they rushed him off the stage and it was over. the "main event" so to speak, was pretty crap. for the last round they just stood there. no punches or anything. but i loved it. i've never seen live boxing. i may have to get season tickets. how does one do that in iowa? hmm. . . muai thai has 5 rounds of 3 minutes each with a 2 minute break in the middle of each round. you can do anything except head-butting. anything. it's brutal. you can check out videos at my www.dropshots.com/eeking site. before they fight, they do a ceremonial dance wearing flowering garlands. after they fight, they hug. aww. that is, if one of them hasn't been drug out of the ring unconscious or bleeding. but the whole atmosphere was very friendly. they would smile at each other and congratulate each other. "thank you, that was a right good blow to my groin, friend." "jolly good! thanks for busting my jaw with your foot. i haven't felt that in months!" "cheers mate!" they have british accents in my head, i suppose. plus, most of these guys weigh in at less than 120 lbs. yeah. not exactly heavy-weights. but they could kick my butt. there was a demonstration fight where guys in traditional dress came out and showed off the traditional moves of muai thai. looked like wwf to me. there's video of that too. the one thing that made me kind of uncomfortable about the whole experience, besides the fact that i was close enough to get hit by a flying tooth, was that no thai person was that close. all the ring side seats are expensive, even by western standards. so all the ring side seats were filled with westerners.
imagine you're at an iowa football game. or a laker's basketball game. or a leafs hockey game. or whatever. and the front five rows and only good seats are taken up by a bunch of frenchies. or japanese. or senegalese. and they all have way, way more money than you, which is why you can't sit in the good seats, and some of the women are dressed in an extremely culturally inappropriate, pseudo-slutty manner, and they arrive late. and they leave early. and they take photos of you while you place your bets and cheer on the team. and there is an explanation not in english every 30 minutes to explain what the heck is going on with the game. i felt really awkward.

#2 - long-necked ladies of burma
when i was little, i was reading a national geographic magazine, or something, and i saw a photo of some ladies with brass rings on their necks to make their necks longer. for my whole life i thought those ladies lived in africa. and i thought they were pretty interesting. turns out they are interesting, and they live in northern thailand, as burmese refugees. and they spend their days weaving pretty scarves to sell to tourists. and they still wear their brass rings. our tour guide told us that they wear those rings to protect themselves from tiger bites. yeah, right. in the (sort of) words of wayne, monkeys might fly out of my butt to protect me from tiger bites. i asked why men don't wear them. "because men are strong." not that strong, buddy. and what about small boys? "and if you follow me over here . . . i will avoid this question." who knows why they started wearing them. or why they still do. the little girls looked uncomfortable. but they were all proud of their long necks. and the ladies were surreal. i wanted to touch them. but instead, i took pictures.
also living at the camp with the long-necked burma ladies were the akha tribes women of northern thailand and lao. these ladies like to chew leaves all the time. this process turns their teeth black. it looks like their teeth are rotting out of their heads. the first time i saw this, i was seated next to one of these women on a bus. for 8 hours. she had a plastic bag and she kept picking her black teeth with a tooth pick, spitting red puss spit into a clear plastic bag she was holding, and smiling at me. i thought i would be sick. i thought she was picking out the remains of her teeth. now i know she was just chewing the leaves. still though. it's quite the sight.

#3 - getting my passport back from the embassy and getting out of thailand
lao kicks thailand's butt. coming from southern lao into bangkok was a loud, noisy, smelly, unhappy, grumpy-thai-people-who-hate-tourists shock. i'll be glad to get out of here for a bit, then come back into thailand, better mentally prepared, in june or july. off to india i go.

the story of the lao new year

2006-04-18T00:48:00.000+09:00

as told to me by the novice monk, kam, whose name is pronounced with tone so as to sound like a question, as in:

Hi, my name is . . . Kam? .

Once upon a time there lived a god with four faces. He heard of a very clever boy and became jealous. So he went to the boy and said, "If you're so clever, answer me three questions in three days. If you don't answer my questions, I will cut off your head. If you answer them correctly, I will cut off my own head." They boy said, "okay then." The questions were asked of the boy and off he went to find the answers. He spent three days searching his mind and reading all his books. He could not discover the answers to the four-faced god's questions. Sad and dejected, the boy crept away into the woods to die alone for he didn't want the god to cut off his head. he sat down under a tree, in which happened to be sitting two birds. Husband and wife birds to be exact. Now it just so happens that since this boy was the most clever boy on earth, he could speak the language of the birds. So he listened as the wife bird said:

wife: Oh, I'm so hungry.

husband: Me, too. But don't worry, for tomorrow we can eat the flesh of the most clever boy on the earth.

wife: but how can that be? He is not dead yet.

husband: Yes, but he will be dead tomorrow, for the god with four faces has asked him three questions which he cannot answer and his head will be cut off tomorrow.

wife: Oh yummy! But how does he not know the answers if he's so clever?

husband: The answers are not to be found in books they are found in the heart they are questions of the soul of the world and the heart and the universe and flowers and kittens and rainbows and mick meck mock crap like that. However, I know the answers to the questions of the four-faced god. Becase I'm a bird. And nature heart heaven blah. So there. Mwaha!

wife: well then, tell me.

husband: No. It's late. It's hard to explain. I'll tell you in the morning.

wife: If you don't tell me right now, I'm going to die.

husband: Don't be like that.

wife: I swear I will! I'll die right here!

husband: Okay fine. If you're going to be that way . . .

So the husband bird told the wife bird the answers that the clever boy sought. He heard these answers where he sat and, jumping up, shouted "Whohoo!" and ran off to find the god with four faces.

"Well, shoot," exclaimed the god with four faces when he heard the clever boy's answers, knowing them to be correct. So the four-faced god was to die by his own hand. However . . .

Four-faced god: I will cut off my own head now, yes, as you are sooooooo clever, but know this . . . If you bury my head in the earth, all the plants and creatures of the earth will shrivel and die. If you throw my head in the air, the air will become toxic and smother the creatures of the earth and skies. If you put my head in the water, the waters of the earth will be poisonous and unable to be drunk and all the creatures of the seas will perish.

With this, the four-faced god cut off his own head. So the boy figured the only option was to cover the four-faced god's head in poo and send it to the heavens, returning it to earth three days a year to be cleansed with water, then sent, re-poo-covered, back to the heavens again. And so that's what he did. Thus the three day long tradition of buddha cleansing during the lao new year, and people spraying eachother with water. regardless of whether or not they are laotian and/or reading a book and/or wearing a white t-shirt and/or a girl. probably because it's so durn hot here. i'm just glad this turned out to be a poo free holiday, even though we did get pee-ed on by a monkey in a tree the other day. no joke.

the story of how erin got new tevas

2006-04-18T00:36:00.000+09:00

it was a dark, cloudy night in lao. but the clouds were stratocumulus clouds, low the the ground, and lit by the full moon of the laotian new year. there was lightening, but no thunder. macca tried to hijack some lao beer beer bottles for 3,000 kip at another bar, open until midnight. in the four minutes it took us to be rejected from our venture, someone took my tevas as their own from the front porch of the bar. they were almost the same size. they were not the same color or pattern, an easy mistake in the dark, dark, cloudy night. i, unknowingly, put on the wrong tevas and tripped my way back to my bunglow, not discovering until i was hurrying to the boat for main land the next morning that--

1. i had the wrong tevas
2. they fit better than my old ones
3. they were in way better condition than my old ones. mine have been glued once on this trip, not all that well, and have no traction left.

or should i say, used-to-have-been-mine. i had to go. i heard from an irish girl on our bus to bangkok that an older british lady was wandering around in a stupa (lao joke) trying to figure out how she got the wrong sandals two nights ago. at least we both still have sandals. hers (mine now) may have been in better condition, but mine (hers now) were way, way cuter.

the funny thing, well, it's all funny really, is that i was going to give those sandals two more weeks and then chuck them and dish out the big bucks for some new chacos in mumbai. i have been waiting for two summers for those sandals to die so that i could justify chacos. i dont' know if i can justify the purchase now. well actually, of course i can. i need shoes to match all the awesomeness i'm buying in bangkok. right?

these boots were made for something

2006-04-11T20:02:00.000+09:00

more pictures on the photo site: www.dropshots.com/eeking
a few comments about the pictures.

1. lao is the most bombed country in the history of bombs. america did it. not very nice, considering lao was not, well, vietnam. almost $2 million dollars was spent per day. that's per day people. on bombs raids over lao.

2. the big cement jar things. circa 200 b.c.e. not a lot is known about them, but they are thought to have been used for this cool stage-by-stage burial process. one jar for decomposition, one jar for bones, one jar for cremation, etc. very cool. but this site was bombed like crazy during the raids.

3. got homemade ice cream. i think it was chicken flavored. sigh.

4. in vang viang you can add marijuana or shrooms or opium to any pizza for $1. hmm. and they play family guy and simpsons on repeat all day in the restaurants that have couches instead of chairs.

5. vientiane, the captial, is pretty cool. there is an arch de triumphe here. the u.s. gave lao a big ol' hunk of cement to build an airport. instead, they made the victory arch. the locals call it the vertical runway. huh huh.

6. buddah park. lots of cement buddahs. took 60 years to complete, finished about 10 years ago. the big circle thing with the mouth is the hell ball. if you have a pure soul, you can enter and leave. if you don't have a pure soul, well, you can never leave and you have to live in the ball forever. i didn't know this before i went in. i am writing from the ball.

7. COOL LINGUISTIC INFORMATION!! the laotian language does not have the sound "v." the french language does not have the sound "w." laotian cities like "vientiane" and "vang viang" should be "wentiane" and "wang wiang" but those darn french came in and now laotian has acquired a "v" but only in words that would have been relevant to the french colonialists. grumble.

i'm having a beautiful time. the caves in vang viang were so amazing. i'm getting a nice farmer's tan, and a monk today told me that my pronunciation of the laotian greeting is so dead on that he thought i must speak lao. oh, seriously sir, you make me blush.

okay i must go now. lao new year is fast approaching and rich and i are going to take a long overnight bus down to the south to the 4,000 islands to celebrate in style with a beer lao in one hand and a water gun in the other. more news from bangkok probably next week.

sounds about right

2006-04-03T15:38:00.000+09:00

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

china: food isn't all it's cracked up to be. especially after korea. i'm not so much a fan of beijing. very polluted and pushy. kunming, however, is beautiful and smells of flowers everywhere. took a two day train ride from beijing to kunming. yunnan province of china is beautiful. the city of jinghong reminded me of dirty dancing. don't know why. but it felt like maybe baby would come flying through the air at me at any moment and there might be a conga line around any given corner. china bus drivers are crazy, crazy dudes.

best story from china:

we rented bikes and rode them around jinghong one day. rode through farm fields and past corn fields full of buzzing bees. green green green. friendly farmers and a man gave me an orange. my pedal started to feel a little lose, so i pulled over to wiggle it a bit and the whole thing came off in my hand. i looked up to yell for rich to stop and caught the eyes of a woman standing on the street a few feet from me. without a word she smiled and pointed across to the other side of the street. i looked across the street and there, right in front of us, was a rolling bike repair stand. no way. cost about 10 cents to fix it up like new and we were on our way again.

lao: the kids here are super-fantastic. riding on the back of a tuk-tuk taxi thing facing the people walking along the road, all the kids give double thumbs up and wave and jump up and down at the sight of us. plus, it's getting close to new years here, and the kids are splashing water on everyone in celebration. i have yet to get soaked. met some kids at a stupa (temple thing) who played with large cockroaches for entertainment purposes. i squeaked and they were completely oblivious as to what was creeping me out. bug sqeamishness was beyond them. took a six hour boat ride from nong kiew to louang phrabang. had to get out and push for a bit. every day in lao tops the previous and every night i go to sleep feeling that the next day will be even better. i am having the time of my life. i have no best story from lao yet. it's all good. the boat trip was probably the most fantastic though. but that was yesterday. and tomorrow i'm going to go ride elephants.

check out my pictures at this site: www.dropshots.com/eeking

at your own risk though, mom and dad.

whew! sigh! gasp! i'm back!

2006-04-02T22:52:00.000+09:00

hey dudes!

i have just a few minutes before they're going to kick me out of this place. just to let you all know, i've married a korean pop star. haha, april fools.
update:
blogger is banned in china.
hence the lack of posts.
now in lao.
lao is the most beautiful thing i've ever seen.
more later.
being kicked out.
bah!
but really, lao rocks.
please give me a shout out! i need some blog lovin!

chal ga (so long), korea

2006-03-20T09:53:00.000+09:00

What is that feeling
when you're driving away from people
and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?

-- it's the too-huge world vaulting us,
and it's good-bye.
But we lean forward
to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.

--jack kerouac, on the road

assignment: write two paragraphs about the city you live in

2006-03-15T14:55:00.000+09:00

Daegu, Korea: by Susie (in the pink)

I live in Daegu. People here are like rabbits. There are many peoples who live in Daegu. Peoples here have a body and face. They eat delicious food, not like snails or other bugs.
My house is in Daegu. My house is always hot and warm. Our family always wears short clothes in our house. I love my house and my country.

okay susie, correction: you peoples do eat bugs.

Daegu, Korea: by Nana (in the front left corner)

I live in Daegu. There are many stores and many people in Daegu. Erin loves to play a guitar and many people goes to mainstreet. I like Korea and I think Korean people are good and many other things. Daegu has lots of strong points and a weak point. We have many inventions of thoughts and ideas.
Daegu has many peoples in houses or many other places. I think Daegu is the bestest place in the world. And bestest idea is what? Our idea!

i couldn't bring myself to correct her on "bestest" there.
it was too cute. i just left it. does that make me a bad teacher?

the hits just keep coming

2006-03-14T08:23:00.000+09:00

use the following vocabulary words in a sentence

1. steep

I steep in the mud.

2. trail

I trail doll in the toy box.
(this is one of the rare ones that i simply can't get meaning from)

3. shade

I scared of my own shade.

4. helmet

I helmet for a ride of bicycle.

i'd like to thank the academy

2006-03-13T08:32:00.000+09:00

for NOT giving joaquin phoenix an oscar for best actor when that guy couldn't speak-with-an-arkansas-accent his way out of a paper bag. ptthbbbb.

practically ruined the movie for me is what he did. stupid.

another notably sucky southern accent performance was given by ewan mcgregor (oh ewan, you are so cute though) in the movie "big fish."

the most painful part of all is that in "big fish" ewan mcgregor couldn't make southern talk, yet his character's older counterpart, albert finney, could. talk about killing the illusion.
then, in "walk the line", the careless cinematic developmental accent shift (as i would like to dub it) occured in reversed chronological order as the young j.r. cash could do southern while mr. phoenix, well, you know, pttthhbbb.

talk about having a hitch in yer giddy-up. it's as if johnnie cash fell and bumped his head and woke up with foreign accent syndrome, one language aphasia i wouldn't mind acquiring by the way.

like a true nature's child

2006-03-11T00:38:00.000+09:00

a pinch and a dash

2006-03-09T08:47:00.000+09:00

megs directed me to the site myheritage.com where,
if you upload a photo of yourself, they will scan celebrity faces
to see who you most resemble.

you can check out megs's site to see
that she got some fantastic matches.
i on the other hand, am 71% meryl strep and 62% eddie murphy.

hmm . . .

i don't see it.
please say that you don't either.

the difference a hat can make

2006-03-07T19:11:00.000+09:00

another scene from a korean kindergarten class

enter erin, with braided pigtails and stocking cap

student 1: wow erin! you look like anne of green gables today!

student 2: well, if you had red hair.

student 1: yeah, really really bright red hair.

student 2: and freckles.

student 1: and if you were 12 years old.

student 2: and had, you know, a sunlight hat, instead of your hat.

student 1: yeah, a hat with a big bow. or maybe no hat.

student 2: no, if you had no hat, you'd look like an indian.

overheard at the arcade

2006-03-05T09:32:00.000+09:00

"i say we either find guns or we go back"

"hey look! you get a prize!"
"really!?"
"well, no. but you could"

"nobody gives a hoot about me and my stupid bat"

max beats on thomas: a four part photographic study of kindergarten in action; presented by a teacher who maybe should have been stopping the beating

2006-03-04T09:28:00.000+09:00

little daniel joker

2006-03-03T20:29:00.000+09:00

does anyone remember "little johnny jokes"? the ones where little johnny asks his mommy what all the naughty words mean and she tells him they mean really innocent things so he goes and tells the priest, innocently, that his mom is doing all these naughty word things?

well, i was late for my third class today because one of my 7-year-old wunderkinds, daniel, was telling me what i can only imagine is a korean-student-learning-english's version of a little johnny joke.

it took him about 7 minutes to tell the joke and i didn't understand he was telling a joke until about 5 minutes into it. once i realized he was telling a joke, it was the funniest thing i have ever heard in my life. i think he intended it to be kind of bad, slightly dirty even, but he messed up all the punch lines.

and when i was done, he stunned me with a "wingardium leviosa" harry potter spell so i could fly easily to my next class. sigh. sigh.

it reminded me of jokes my little brother used to make up, like, for example:

why did oprah eat soap?
because she wanted to be a soap oprah.

get it?

erin, two: gross korean food, zero

2006-02-27T22:20:00.000+09:00

those faithful followers of this here blog will remember my initial freak out about certain korean foodstuffs. recall if you will the mysterious crunchy noodles and shrimp-eyeballs-and-all that lead to the creation of erin's rules of korean dining:

1. don't ask, don't tell
2. i won't eat eyeballs

overall i have extremely enjoyed korean cuisine. however. given my rules, there were two specific korean treats that i was dead-set against ever letting cross my lips:

1. bondaegi. aka steamed silkworm larvae. the smell of this stuff permeates every corner of every quaint little market in korea. i can smell it from 10 stalls away and oh barf.

2. three words: live. baby. octopus. this stuff you have to chew really really well, otherwise it will attach itself to your esophagus on the way down, and possibly choke you.

i don't know what has come over me. but i ate them both this week. i think it must be like how when i started working at burger king in high school i didn't like hamburgers, french fries, dr. pepper, pickles, fried chicken sandwiches, mustard, tomatoes, or mayonnaise; but then after working there for three years i developed a taste for all those things, to the lament of my thighs.
(sidenote: i am currently reading eats shoots and leaves and i felt like i should use a semicolon there. is it right? or, more importantly, do i care?)

to my credit, i only wanted to eat the octopus. kg made me eat bondaegi in seoul against my will, i do declare. and i would eat live baby octopus every day for the rest of my life if it meant i never had to eat or smell bondaegi ever ever again. blech!

i mean, seriously, do i look like i want to eat this? do i? seriously kg. seriously.

i ate this stuff on the sidewalk with not a chaser in sight.
it was all i could do not to hurl my dolsot bibimbap.
i kid you not, it was the grossest thing i have ever eaten. ever.

then on sunday it was off to a "whay" bar (raw fish bar) for live baby octopus with my friend david. you go in and you select the fish you want to kill and eat with your bare hands from these tanks.

so after you pick out and name your fish
(harold the flat-fish-with-both-eyes-on-the-top-of-his-head and henry the octopus, in our case)
you take your new friends over to the men with knives who nicely chop them up for you while you wait and watch. then you go sit down and good luck to you all that you chew them up properly.

it took me a while to get started, but once i did, live baby octopus is actually pretty cool to eat. you can leave it on your tongue and the suction cups will suck right onto that baby. it was so weird and so cool and possibly cruel.
it was salty.
it was an experience.
but i didn't eat the eyeballs.

video fun section!

1. erin torments a dying animal with chopsticks
2. erin's first bite of food that is still moving
3. david lets it all hang out

i sure can't wait for my dad to get here, boy howdy! . . .

kg's nephew's first birthday

2006-02-26T23:21:00.000+09:00

my happenin' korean friend kg took me to his nephew's first birthday party last week. the first birthday is a really big deal in korea, so it was a blowout. it was at a banquet hall kind of thing. a place set up with a large buffet in the middle and several small rooms off the buffet. people reserve rooms around the general buffet for their own shindig and then all the shindigs eat from the same buffet. kind of a nice idea. you reserve the room, they take care of everything else. and the food was wonderful. although kg (and other koreans) told me not to eat the kim bap because it was cheap. if you're at a buffet, you should only eat the expensive foods. leave the kim bap for the dollar restaurant tomorrow. makes sense. but i still like my kim bap. expensive or no.

the family! around the 1-year-old baby! oh! the balloons!

there is a small ceremony that takes place with the baby. first, kg took the cake and took it around to lots of different tables trying to sell the cake to the highest bidder. he "sold" the birthday cake for about $60. he tried to sell it to me, and i had no idea what was going on. everyone had a good laugh. thanks kg! then the money, a computer mouse, some doctor thread (whatever that is), and a pencil are laid in front of the kid. his hands are held up, and when released, whatever he picks up indicates what job he will grow up to have. this kid picked up both the computer mouse and the doctor thread, at the same time. computer doctor maybe? biological human parts technician? biomedical engineer? who knows.

my favorite part, besides being the only western lady in the building and getting love from kg's grandma, was this girl in the bright yellow dress who lead the festivities with some sexy j-lo songs and a microphone. she was as fantastic as this outfit.

my kidlets (heart heart heart)

2006-02-26T23:13:00.000+09:00

oh no she didn't!

don't be so quick to walk away. i want to rock your birthday. please stay.

2006-02-24T19:41:00.000+09:00

it's my friend megan elizabeth's birthday today. or yesterday. or tomorrow. depending where you are in the world and when you read this. i would tell a few embarrassing moments about her. since i know a few. one involving a balcony room in currier hall. one involving dirty dancing and broken glasses. but i'll spare her, lest she tell the details of the time she had to come pick me up behind an apartment building in iowa city early in the morning because i had a wardrobe malfunction on my way to class, and other tales of the less than glamorous moments of my life.
megs has been my coworker, my roomie, my swayze,
my therapist, my bunk buddy, my dance partner, my pimp,
my halloween-bodily-function-t-shirt-twin, and my good good friend.
we have been to key west.
we have been to kansas city.
we have been to montreal.
we have been really, really drunk. we have rented showgirls.
whenever i clean out my shoebox,
i always find it chock full of love from megs.
she is spectacular!
thoughtful, fun, smart, kind, good, and freaking hilarious.

sadly, i only have a few photos of megs on my computer.
this is a travesty.
and only one that i can share with the public. this is funny.
above, brett and alison on the left, megs's brother and sis-in-law.
erin and megs on the right. my kansas city peeps.

so here's a rockin' rendition of happy birthday song
from me to you megsly. keep it real all day long baby.

happy birthday to you!
happy birthday to you!
cry me a river! oh!
if you wanna be happy
for the rest of your life!
happy birthday dear megan!
won't you back that thang up!
ain't nobody love ya like i love ya!
happy birthday to you!
stay away! steve guttenberg is mine!

more adventures in grading

2006-02-21T18:11:00.000+09:00

1. fur

"The country and the city is too too fur."

2. poster

"The poster color!"

chal ga (so long) william

2006-02-21T01:10:00.000+09:00

i found out today that one of my favorite little kidlets is leaving. on friday!!
this was very hard for me to take. i love this kid a lot.
he used to cry every day when he started school.
so i danced a lot and buttoned his coat and pretended to be various animals.
and he stopped crying.
he loves me in a way that gets me through the day
because his is my last class
and if i ever feel like high-tailing it out of there,
i know i can hang in for this little guy.
plus he makes me laugh. see attached photos.

he's great.
he calls me "erin maschita"
which translates as "delicious erin."
this is because i pretended to eat my own hand one day.

now, let's analyze:

1. it's not just william. i'm actually in love with this whole class of kids and his leaving is the beginning of the breakdown of this whole happy zone for me.

2. it makes me so sad that i almost cry when i think that i will never see these kids again and i will never know what becomes of any of them because all i know are their fake-o engrish names.

3. i am a hypocrite because i leave in three weeks. but i was going to leave first!

4. this is the beginning of the end of korea for me.
it's slow to sink in, but oh so sad.

my first summer working as a camp counselor, my boss had to pry me from one kid who it was breaking my heart to leave. and that was just the short, one week pre-session. after many summers as a camp counselor, i guess i have learned nothing, as i don't even remember that kid's name now.

it all feels very cheese romantic like some quote carved on a brightly laquered piece of wood about "people leave footprints on your heart and i'm better for the struggle of love and walk beside me and be my friend and if you touch the life of one child bah bah bah bah."

i honestly bask in the warm glow of completely unconditional love for six hours every day. i get greeted in the morning with cheers and sincere smiles and i leave with hugs and usually candy of some sort, or at least a sticker or two. and when i can see that i have taught them even the smallest bit of english in the process of just showing up for work, it's so cliche, but it's so rewarding and makes me feel like 8 billion dollars (or 8 hundred billion won).
this is going to be hard to leave behind. especially when i think about the fact that i have to tell 25 5-year-olds that i'm leaving and never coming back. i hope they remember me at all.

ouch.

you know who will remember me is the little stinky 9-year-old girl i made sit in the hall today during class for lying to me and manipulating the boys in the class and playing with marbles and defying my authoritay who now totally hates me. she'll remember.

grading again

2006-02-20T20:13:00.000+09:00

1. feed

"I feed weed to a cow."

2. danger

"Thunder is a danger thing."

grading assignments

2006-02-20T09:09:00.000+09:00

assignment: use the following vocabulary word in a sentence.

student responses:

1. spill

"I spilled a crayon."

2. poor

"Some people is poor."

3. pot

"The soup is bowling in the pot."

molayo *

2006-02-15T02:05:00.000+09:00

i just got home from the korean movie theater.
in korea, you purchase a numbered seat ticket, like at a concert.
little known fact.

also in korean theaters, when they show "english" language movies,
they have korean subtitles.
of course.
however, sometimes, but not always, the subtitles are strictly in korean. which means that in a movie like lord of war or munich, an english speaker such as myself will miss out on a lot of the dialogue, and the epilogue.

if anyone knows the epilogue from munich, please let me know.
i saw the numbers 9 and 11 and i hope it had nothing to do with 9-11.

* molayo also translates as "i don't understand."

molayo *

2006-02-13T23:02:00.000+09:00

why is it, even with the overwhelming abundance of linguistic fodder out there, that people from any culture just end up spray-painting the f-word on the sides of buildings?

*translation: i don't know

desperado

2006-02-09T23:52:00.000+09:00

i started humming the eagles song desperado around school last week randomly and decided that i needed to hear it again. i didn't really get around to the download search until i had another bout of whatchamacallit-gastro-whatty-what earlier this week and was stretched out all sick again on my heated floor for a few days. mmm . . . heated floors.

while i was sick, i watched the movie in america on one of my sometimes socially detrimental yet always plentiful movie channels here in korea. the song desperado is sung in that movie at a kiddie talent show, so i thought it a sign that i needed to search out desperado online.

i wanted to hear the song, but not the eagles's version. don't know why, just did. after an somewhat extensive search, i have concluded that the only good version is the eagles's version. there are also a few songs called "desperado" by groups like alice in chains and crucial conflict. don't be fooled. those are not the same song.

westlife did a version of desperado. don't bother. johnny cash did a short version. i love you johnny, but your version of desperado really sucks. why has no one done a decent cover of this song? and why did i never, ever figure out ever in all my childhood years listening to this song that it was about l-o-v-e, not really about wandering cowboys, really. not really. probably the same reason i never figured out what was really going on in dirty dancing.

i've been tagged

2006-02-08T08:25:00.000+09:00

mckate tagged me with a meme. so here goes:

Four Jobs I’ve had in My Life
Burger King
Summer Camp Counselor
Resident Assistant, baby
Engrish Teacher

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over, and Have:
Zoolander
Sense and Sensibility
Showgirls
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Four Places I Have Lived:
Dubuque, Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
Montreal, QC
Daegu, South Korea

Four TV Shows I Love To Watch:
ER
South Park
Sex and the City
CSI

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation:
Key West, FL
Paris, France
The Grand Canyon
Pusan, South Korea

Four Websites I Visit Daily:
erindoeskorea.blogspot.com
gmail.google.com
imdb.com
really, there are only 3. and the third one was a stretch.

Four Favorite Foods:
dol sot bibimbap
grilled cheese and tomato soup
poutine
grammy's sausage biscuits with gravy

Four Places I Would Like to Visit:
India
Scandinavia
Easter Island
Calgary

Four People I Am Tagging With This Meme:
jen mah
rogers
buh
la bouche

things that have been happening around here

2006-02-06T12:17:00.000+09:00

my new class of kidlets who i love soo very much.
but don't be fooled by those innocent stares and grins. oh no.

booby shoes! yay!
booby is a cartoon character. either a bear or dog.
no one really knows.
and we also don't know if this thing's name is booby or poopy
as the english pronunciation of this korean name alternates.
either way, i find it funny.

innocent? i think not. these two have to hug and make up a lot.
i think they're in lo-uh-ve.

william. junn. jay.
william makes awesome faces. a comedian before his time.
junn is a darling, but doesn't understand that i no speaky korean.
and he loves that i call him ju-nuh-nuh. gotta say both n's there.
jay is fascinated by the fact that his name is also a letter.
at first it made him cry. then i told him how cool it really was.
i think that the contemplation still sends him spinning now and again.

the "security" booth in my neighborhood.
i think it might be made of a refrigerator box.
but it has a red twirly light on top. whew!
and it goes away during the day.
and there's never anyone inside.
safety first.

yay! snow day!
it was all spring-ish around here.
then, this morning i woke up to snow
and classes started about an hour late.
i was at work on time, but i still am enjoying
the snow day!

my korean angel, Ga-Eun.
i went to get vaccinations at a big ol' hospital
in daegu . . . where there was no english.
i was lost. she found me.
she stayed with me for an hour to help me.
then she took me to a korean wedding.
she is amazing!

the temple of god who is hot!! restaurant

the angry guardians of dongwha temple. spooky.

dongwha temple. duly guarded.
and absolutely breath-taking on a sunny day.

my freshman year room mate in college ruined rent for me.
she listened to the soundtrack every day. every. day.
i gave rent a real try in daegu on sunday.
vindication! i like rent now.

a big bug exhibit in daegu. very cool!
the look on my face =
take the picture before i kill you i am scared and i hate this haha isn't this fun weee! i'm going to scream again take the picture please yay!

big scary dead bugs everywhere.
it was fascinating. we even saw some live ones.
and got to touch them if we wanted.
or didn't want.
and we were accosted by a young korean girl.
"no, seriously, i don't speak korean."
she was funny.

a haiku

2006-02-05T13:15:00.000+09:00

bored out of my mind on friday and just completely exhausted from the week, i was trying to teach an older student of mine how to write haikus. this is the student who lived in canada for two years. she wasn't catching on at all, and all she wanted to write were long dramatic poems about horses and boys she hates. in the middle of my instruction on syllables and haiku structure, she turns to me and says:

when you pick your nose
doesn't it hurt your nose ring?

and i say

i don't pick my nose

and that, ladies and gentlemen, is a haiku.

either or

2006-02-04T10:36:00.000+09:00

once upon a time, i heard of a chinese immigrant to the united states of america failing his citizenship application because of a small linguistic error. as it turns out, in mandarin, there are two different words for two different kinds of "or:"

"or" 1 = inclusive (i don't know the actual terms. i'm making this up) where the two options are presented as a unit

EXAMPLE: you can't blow your nose or kiss your boyfriend in public in korea.
i just found this out, but it's true. you can be fined for kissing someone on the street in korea. good thing i was inside my school . . .

"or" 2 = exclusive (again, made up term) where you MUST choose one option or the other

EXAMPLE: do you want your kimchi bokembap spicy or not spicy?

the poor chinese fellow understood the wrong "or" on his application in the question:

Do you support the overthrow of the United States by subversion or treason?

he chose treason, as it seemed like the much less offensive offense. needless to say, that didn't go over very well with the citizenship office.

i think the same "or" problem may exist in korean.
there's a little girl in one of my louder classes who is always either singing or humming or talking. not to kill her spirit, and music is good, and i'm glad that she is talking in english, but it really distracts me sometimes and adds to the general noise level in the classroom. so i took her into the hall and asked her to stop. when i was done with my little schpeel, i asked her if she was going to sing or talk in class anymore. she was really quiet for a while.

"well?" i said . . .

her response:

"i think sing."

strange movies that i have found on korean television

2006-02-03T21:54:00.000+09:00

*batteries not included
howard the duck
la haine
anything on channel 37 past 10:30 pm
warriors
some bee movie staring kim cattrall
bring it on 1 & 2
you got served
big fish, for the eight billionth time
harold and kumar go to white castle

and did anyone else know that henry winkler was an executive producer for macgyver?
and that there was some sitcom starring jenna elfman and molly ringwald once upon a time?

i just wonder about the impression of america this leaves upon the eyeballs of korean society.
well, except for la haine. that's in french.

and finally, i remember when watching wayne's world, that cassandra says that she learned english from watching tv. or police academy or something. i always thought that that was stupid. now i understand. the korean movie channels, of which i have something like seven, plaster one corner of the screen with the movie title in korean writing. one of my favorite games is "turn on a random tv channel and see if i can figure out the name of the movie by speaking it phonetically in korean." it's really fun. no, seriously. it's fun. i swear! ryan will back me up. ryan?

PDA! PDA! turn your head the other way . . .

2006-01-27T18:51:00.000+09:00

that's PDA as in "public display of affection,"
not "personal data assistant."
(or whatever it is that other PDA stands for)

so i kissed two different boys today.
well, i should say i was kissed by two boys.
but it wasn't my fault.

the first kiss was from aaron. age 5. pictured here, standing to my left. you would think he would be standing a bit closer, since he was about to kiss me and all.

(today was the lunar new year celebration and birthday party at my school, so it was playtime all day and the kids wore the traditional korean dress again, the hanbok.)

i was puffing out my cheeks, like i do all the time, expecting to get two little fists to the face at which point i would produce a raspberry *pthbbb* sound, earning myself some giggles, and perhaps a face full of kid spit in return.

instead i got a big, fat smooch right in the kisser. whoa. did anyone else see that? no one? okay good . . . tra la la, i'm going to go stand over here now.

aaron is new to this whole, school/teacher/student thing.

i was more guarded for the rest of the day, lest another child be overcome with the holiday spirit and lay another one on me. it seems i was not guarded enough. after stuffing my face with lots of birthday cake, i spent the last half of the afternoon watching "a bug's life" in a dark room (there's my mistake right there) with a bunch of kids, half asleep.

jason, age 6, pictured below:

was asleep in my lap. or so i thought . . . as soon as the movie ended, he turned around, looked me right in the eyes, blinked a big blink, grabbed my cheeks, said "Erin! I love you!" and kissed me before i even knew what was happening.

once again i feel that i would never survive an american kindergarten.
i would be fired and then tell my story on oprah.
but it wasn't my fault!

the best of both worlds

2006-01-25T18:31:00.000+09:00

a new student in my school who spent the past two years in canada, when asked what she liked best about canada and korea respectively, said:

canada has horses, but korea has really cool pencil cases.

yup, i'd have to agree.

this one's a doozie!

2006-01-25T17:41:00.000+09:00

hey kids! i'm still alive and kicking and having a golden time in korea. sorry i've been so absent. i had so much fun with my company, i wasn't sure how to pick the best pictures to post. so here goes:

yay! ryan and christie and i had sooooo much fun in seoul.
we went to the dmz one day.

here's a picture of the dmz theme park . . . yeah . . .

and a fence between south korea and the dmz. that's me there. as we stood there, they started playing patsy cline on loud speakers. then when we turned to walk away from the walls a flock of doves flew out from under some bushes into the sky. very, very dramatic.

and the train tracks that will "one day" run from seoul to north korea. some day. maybe. it's really cold in this train station and these military police guys have to stand there all day and not talk and take pictures with stupid tourists like us.

from the korean war memorial museum, a bit of korean war propaganda . . .

ryan, accosted by jehovah's witnesses at the train station.

and the king of pirates bar in seoul! it's there where you can drink beer from an ice mug, then chuck the mug at a target when you are done. if you hit the target, you get a prize! yay! possibly the best bar on earth. except it looks like an olive garden on the inside. not a seedy pirate bar.

heehee! teenie weenie! poor bear . . .

new year's eve we spent drinking in a norebang (karaoke room) with KG, an rocktacular korean guy.

i just like this picture. we hiked one day up a hill to see a temple.

the beach in pusan. bring it on, 2006!

yay!

look! i stuck my finger straight through his head!!! baaaaah!

the spooky fish in the subway . . .

no ryan! no wag at iowa! bad! bad!!

that's right. it's stephen. stephen segall. he joined us for christmas.

ryan and christie

2005-12-31T11:28:00.000+09:00

my brother and sister-in-law are visiting. aren't they cute?

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas!

2005-12-19T15:55:00.000+09:00

megs rocks my world, and my room, by sending me christmas decorations! thanks megs!
now it looks rather festive around my apartment. i had a wonderful evening last week putting up the decorations, listening to christmas music, and eating peanut butter.

a close up of the christmas tree. i made this myself in a little tiny chair at a little tiny desk with a huge glue stick and blunt scissors. but it does the job i think. :)

satan santa

2005-12-19T15:54:00.000+09:00

it's something about the red reindeer antlers that really kills the feeling for me.

the first snow

2005-12-19T15:51:00.000+09:00

can you see it? can you?

the great thing about snow here in daegu is that it snows at night, it's beautiful, light, and fluffy, and then it all melts away the next day. this way we get the warm fuzzy feeling of the first snow every few days, but we don't ever have to walk in it. :)
however, i would like it to stick around a little for christmas. we'll see if that happens.

fun with reading

2005-12-13T20:14:00.000+09:00

the youngest class i teach is 5 year olds. this class is composed of the "i'm dumb" kids as well as kevin lee, who you may remember from the "my favorite!" posting. anyway. i like to read simple books to these guys and have them repeat back to me what i read to them, good practice with pronunciation, memorization of sentence structure, etc. the past few weeks we've been working on the present progressive, sentences like:

i'm drinking
i'm walking
i'm singing

i found this great book in the school library entitled
"hi! what are you doing!"
every other page is like this one here:

hi! what are you doing? and then a sort of onomatopoeia spelling of the action that will be revealed under the onomatopoeia flap. the book is filled with banal actions like:

i'm playing the drums
i'm writing a letter
i'm walking in the grass

as well as the following:

the kids love this book! i love it, too.
i have incorporated this book into every lesson plan i have devised for this class for the past month.

the best, though, is when i pass the toilets in the afternoon, where all the kids take a big group bathroom break, doors wide open, and i hear them talking to each other . . .

sally: hi jason! what are you doing?
jason: i'm peeing!

oh the satisfaction of a lesson well taught.
teaching is so rewarding. :) :) :)

thanks

2005-12-12T18:20:00.000+09:00

sue says that this book is about me. thanks sue.

wedding schwedding

2005-12-11T20:52:00.000+09:00

the "little genius" english academy

2005-12-09T18:52:00.000+09:00

setting: tuesday morning. math day.

erin: okay, so the answer is 18 + 18. so what is 18 + 18?

tiffany: 11!

erin: no.

kayla: 19!

erin: no.

peter: 26!

erin: wow peter. that's close, but no.

matt: 27!

erin: no matt, not close like that.

marie: (screams) no! it's 116!

erin: thank you marie. now i have something new to put in my blog.

and believe it or not, marie is one of the smartest cookies in the box.
which is really the funniest part of the story. but none of you would know that.
i really do love teaching!

i'm a low back vowel

2005-12-08T09:24:00.000+09:00

i go 'aaahhh' and express myself on occasion.
shout out to all the other low back vowels out there!

Low back vowel

100%

Alveolar

100%

Click

92%

Implosive

58%

High Front Vowel

50%

Fricative

50%

Bilabial

33%

Nasal

17%

Ejective

Rhotic

What's your Underlying Representation?
created with QuizFarm.com

cough cough hack hack

2005-12-07T15:54:00.000+09:00

blech! i got sick this weekend! it was terrible! friday to tuesday i was laid out hacking and drooling on my (wonderfully, i must say) heated floor. i missed out on about 5 awesome things, including a visit from a friend from montreal's husband!!! aw, hamburgers!! the worst part of all was that by the time i decided i needed medicine, it was sunday and the medical stations were closed. i was in a miserable bind: i couldn't sleep, i couldn't walk, i could hardly move and i had already consumed my entire tylenol stash. so i did what any girl in my situation would have done. i made my own nyquil.

1 part soju + 2 parts ginger tea = erin's emergency elixir
(soju is kind of like vodka)

after that i finally got some sleep! and what a lovely sleep it was!
then on monday i dragged myself to school for a ride to see a doctor . . . who spoke english! yay! now, i've been to see the korean doctor once before for a wee stomach thing, and not because i wanted to. that time was at the insistance of my nervous-mother korean boss-lady. so i went to make her happy and i ended up being asked to get neked in front of my slightly creepy male boss (which i refused) and getting an unidentified shot against my will. then it was off to the pharmacy where i received 15 bags of 7 unidentified/unlabeled pills each, one bagful of which i was to take three times a day. since i hadn't asked to go to the doctor in the first place and no one would explain to me what was going on, those pills took a nice whirly trip down my toilet. i didn't mind, they cost about $1 total.

i was actually sick this weekend and wanting drugs, so i intend to make use of the drugs i got this time around. i asked my boss-lady not to send me to the doctor with my man-boss this time, pleading to please let any of the other female coworkers come with me. but in the end, it was me and mr. man again, and i think that she told him i didn't want to go with him, because he made me go to the pharmacy by myself. thanks buddy, the one place where i really could have used the translation. in the end, the pharmacist and i hand-signaled it out okay. so i get to take one of these bagfuls of pills three times a day, which isn't too bad since i can read that 1.5 of them are tylenol.

and i also got this, which i think is cough syrup. and, as you can see, it comes in this handy dandy little pre-measured bottle, so i just suck out 10cc when i need it. super.

and in a related note, an interesting fact about korean floors. koreans heat their floors. that's how they heat their homes. this is left over from old korean days when they would build fires under their houses to heat them in the winter. don't ask me why the didn't burn down. i don't know. now that they have electric heat, i suppose it just made sense to heat from the floor up. and i guess it does make sense. your feet are always, always warm and that's pretty nice. and guests sleeping on your floor are also warm. yay for ryan and christie coming in 12 days! and old korean ladies say that if you are sick, you should lie down on the hot floor. it worked for me. kind of a neat idea and something i'll be sad to leave behind.

not everything is brack or white

2005-12-05T22:22:00.000+09:00

this is beautiful and you all must read it.
ryan west's take on racial identity in korea today.

oh the difference one little phoneme makes

2005-11-29T08:25:00.000+09:00

there is a sound that makes my skin crawl and sends shivers down my spine. it's the sound of little korean 6 year olds screaming "i'm done" 5 minutes into what should have been a 20 minute activity. and they say it over, and over, and over again. it's one of their favorite things to say, and in some cases, one of the only things they can/do say. and when one starts it, they slowly all start in.

I'M DONE!!

I'M DONE!!

ERIN! I'M DONE!! I'M DONE!!

I'M DONE!!

however, there is a golden light amidst the droning horror of the "i'm done"s.
i give you andrea, with a demonstration.

andrea is done

madama butterfry

2005-11-25T08:52:00.000+09:00

last night i got my first taste of opera at the daegu opera house. my coworkers told me that the opera here is really casual and i didn't need to dress up at all. um, that wasn't quite true. but underdressed or not, it was a good time.

this is the opera house, all lit up at night. the inside reminds me a lot of the hancher auditorium in iowa city and place des arts in montreal. maybe it's all standard.

(three little geishas standing in a row)

i don't know if you all know the story of madame butterfly, but the basic story line is:

sleazy white american soldier (pinkerton) goes to japan, marries a geisha (madame butterfly), leaves her alone for three years, she waits by the window for him to come back, he returns and denies her and her kid, she commits hara kiri.

so last night i watched koreans singing in italian pretending to be american. it was trippy. and to be "american" the koreans sort of died their hair (or wore wigs) a burnt sienna color and kind of curled it a bit. it didn't work for me. i kept having to remind myself, oh yeah, that guy's american. but then when madame butterfly brings out her kid, all the illusion i could muster fell apart. the kid, from the nosebleed seats, didn't have striking korean features, like the large headed lead male character, and he had on an oversized ken-doll floppy blonde wig. pinkerton could have easily denied that the kid was his at all in this case. :)
it was pretty cool overall. the singing was amazing! i wish i could do that! although i didn't have the same reaction as julia roberts in pretty woman. then again, i wasn't wearing that huge diamond necklace. maybe that had something to do with it. and i had forgotten my opera goggles.

happy thanksgiving! (the third and final)

2005-11-24T18:24:00.000+09:00

i had the pleasure of celebrating three thanksgivings this year! first korean, then canadian, and now american. i'm really feeling the love. so i realized that i never posted anything about korean thanksgiving. i'll get to that, but first, i offer a visual treat. a korean kindergarten's take on hand-tracing turkeys. does this remind anyone else of helen keller the musical?

after we were done making the turkeys, the kids asked me why we were even making turkeys at all. i forgot that that was something that i might have to explain to them! and my boss says she's not all that interested in eating turkey ever, to which peter guffawed something about the nasty things with eyeballs and bugs that they eat here. seriously rosie. it's just turkey! :)

then, last night, i had a real thanksgiving feast! there is one american kid at our school. anaka, the rock star in front of the christmas tree. a few of us gathered at her family's house to eat. and eat. and eat. it was fantastic. i even had biscuits and gravy! but not like grammy makes. and there was no broccoli-rice-cheese casserole, mom. (sigh)

so, chusok. the korean thanksgiving. our korean friend sunny invited us all over to eat good korean food and play korean cards. that was waaaay back in september or something. feels like forever. so this is a korean thanksgiving table set for four. and this was only the first round.

korean cards. very tiny, hard plastic things. i still couldn't tell you how to play. we also played gin rummy, which they call hula. but we played that game with "western" cards, of course.

and finally, the korean traditional dress: hanbok. the kids all dressed up and had a fun day playing games and eating good food stuffs.

of course, peter, niki, and i had no hanbok to speak of. so we made our own.

so here's wishing a lovely holiday weekend to all of you south of the canadian border. i hope it's tasty and fun and that you get lots and lots of sleep (megs).

no way

2005-11-22T08:50:00.000+09:00

i just found out that my spectacular advisor got my masters paper into quite a nice linguistic conference in banff for april. wow. this is of course good for my academic resume and a great scholarly experience . . . blah, blah, blah. but the TRULY fantastic part is that this means . . .

banff banff banff banff banff!! yippie!

and i may just have to swing by calgary . . .

where i'll most definitely see these folks!

and probably this guy here.

and this fisherwoman . . .

and maybe even this shifty character.

i am so excited and so happy! i get to paint one more canadian province red!
however, i can't help but feel that this would be just that much more fun for me if i cared at all about skiing.
hooray for everything! :)

antidisestablishmentarianism

2005-11-09T19:18:00.000+09:00

julie

good job kevin

peter refuses, marie accepts

go kayla go!

caught matt by surprise . . .

yay billy!

tori does the best job of the day!

korean pears taste like nyquil

2005-11-07T20:55:00.000+09:00

and i don't know which is more odd:

the fact that korean pears taste like nyquil

or

the fact that when it dawned on me that it was in fact nyquil
that korean pears taste like, i realized that i really enjoy nyquil

pardon the profanity

2005-11-07T15:57:00.000+09:00

but this shirt is pretty funny

guess who's coming to dinner (with absolutely no class)

2005-11-01T14:59:00.000+09:00

Katharine Hepburn

You scored 21% grit, 28% wit, 57% flair, and 4% class!

You are the fabulously quirky and independent woman of character. You
go your own way, follow your own drummer, take your own lead. You stand
head and shoulders next to your partner, but you are perfectly willing
and able to stand alone. Others might be more classically beautiful or
conventionally woman-like, but you possess a more fundamental common
sense and off-kilter charm, making interesting men fall at your feet.
You can pick them up or leave them there as you see fit. You share the
screen with the likes of Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant, thinking men who
like strong women.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 45% on grit
You scored higher than 50% on wit
You scored higher than 90% on flair
You scored higher than 0% on class

Link: The Classic Dames Test

halloween!

2005-10-31T18:58:00.000+09:00

when i was little, a friend of mine had chicken pox on halloween. i thought that there could be nothing more terrible than being sick on halloween. afterall, it only comes once a year. i still feel the same way. i spent my halloween weekend in bed and crawling to my toilet. but it was still good, since i had a rockin' costume and i got to spend the day at school today with the cutest kids on the planet. the best part had to be walking to and from school today dressed like a bat, since koreans don't really celebrate halloween. that or carving a pumpkin and finding it to be full of maggots. one, or the other.

and finally, more fun with video!

bunny rabbit snow white

i am batman

jun's costume

billy's costume

sing for your candy!

i'm not a candy!

smell my feet . . .

stuff that's been happening around here

2005-10-29T19:24:00.000+09:00

YES! THANK YOU HAT!

2005-10-24T16:14:00.000+09:00

when i got to school this morning wearing my rocktacular new hat
(and, incidentally, a peacoat i bought at a vintage store in daegu),
all the korean teachers cooed at me and said that i was the actress from love story.
they even hummed the song.
and said something about rolling in the snow.
now, i've never seen love story, but thank you new hat! :)

i've still got it!

2005-10-24T00:16:00.000+09:00

i had given up on finding any quality yarn in south korea . . .
and then i wandered down an alleyway yesterday
to look at wigs for halloween,
got lost on purpose,
and wound up in yarn heaven!
after getting past language barriers that led the folks in the store to think that i wanted to buy a knit hat and then figuring out the type of yarn i needed and discussing price, yadda yadda . . . the end result . . . voila!

my first hat.

it's a small world after all

2005-10-23T19:29:00.000+09:00

last night i met a very tall boy named peter.
peter is from davenport, iowa.
peter went to st. ambrose university in rock island, illinois.
despite this, we had, really, nothing to talk about.
peter is, as rogers would say, a well traveled redneck.
(sigh) at least i'm here keeping it real
for all the good iowa folks back home.

sad movie

2005-10-21T19:34:00.000+09:00

1. go here
2. click enter
3. click on the green box where it says "go"
4. scroll down and watch the movie preview

this is one of the reasons i wish
english subtitles were an option
in korean movie theaters

the title of this movie, in korean letters, is sad-uh moo-pee
aka, sad movie

hangulmal arayo! (i understand korean!)

2005-10-21T15:14:00.000+09:00

hallelujah! i understand this much korean! yay!
when i first moved into my apartment, i was frightened by the scary male voice coming over a megaphone early every morning that sounded to me something probably like:

"all foreigners stay in your houses! anyone found on the street will be hung by their toenails with the rest of the kim chi!"

or

"warning! warning! gas leak! get your gas masks everyone!"

or

"rabid kitten attack! beware all kitties!"

or

"your building is going to self destruct in 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . "

this was very unnerving, as you can imagine.
eventually a korean friend of mine explained that really what was being said was:

"watermelons! get your watermelons! $5 watermelons!"

so then, though equally scary sounding, i understood what was going on and didn't feel the need to make the decision to either flee or stay in my apartment at 7 am.

then, this morning, i woke up to the sound of the fruit vendor guy on the street and i UNDERSTOOD what he was saying! oh it was so exciting!
something like:

"here! here are grapes! delicious grapes! $5 grapes!"
"here! here are oranges! delicious oranges! $4 oranges!"
"ladies and gentlemen thank you very much"

what struck me initially was that the voice no longer sounded menacing.
then i realized that it was because i understood what was being said.
it was amazing. it was the same voice, the same words, the same tone, but because i understood it, it no longer sounded scary.

i wonder if english sounds scary to people unfamiliar with any of the sounds.
i wonder if language sounds scary to all babies.

2 months, and i still like my job. yay!

2005-10-18T00:51:00.000+09:00

as it turns out, i'm not too crappy of a kindergarten teacher after all. of course, every day is an incredible learning experience. i teach the exact same stuff to two different classes of kids every morning, which means the second class always gets the better deal, of course. for example, in class one i learn that if you want them to pay attention, you can't give them their pencils before they read the instructions, so class two actually reads the instructions and does the worksheet correctly, etc. however, a few weeks ago, i was waiting to get a new set of books for my youngest class and had to wing it the first three days. turns out the three activities i made up on the fly were the exact, exact same three activities that the workbook had, when i finally got them for my class. that made me feel really good. so good in fact, that i learned to use the laminater and made a sign reminding the kids of the correct structure of the english sentence for asking how to spell a word ("how spell = wrong" "how do you spell = right") as well as this science gem:

if anyone asks why you can put your finger through jello or if pudding is a solid or a liquid, they're getting sent to the hallway.

an email i sent to meg about thrift stores that may just be the most intelligent observation i have made yet about south korea

2005-10-13T08:55:00.000+09:00

hey meg!

i noticed that you said that you like garage sales and goodwill stores. these are also things that i like a lot and i was really excited to experience them in south korea. except, it turns out they don't have anything of the sort here. i've spent weeks pondering why this should be, and it finally dawned on me that it's because koreans don't throw things away until they are completely trashed and they don't get rid of things that still have the slightest tweak of use in them. in order to have decent garage sales and goodwill stores, you need to be in a society where the citizens get rid of things that may still have some worth to others, and that just doesn't ever happen here. ever. but i like other people's old stuff. it has character! and i'm sure old korean people's stuff has lots of character! there's one store downtown here that pretends to be a thrift store, but anything that looks old and interesting is actually not for sale. this bummed me out, as i made a special trip there to purchase two specific items for my advisors as thank you gifts, and had the funny experience of pacing around the store picking up items, mumbling "how much" in korean, and getting a big fat "yeah i won't sell that to you" from the rather unfriendly lady who works there every time. humph. anything old and with character here is actually very rare and valuable.
this is a situation that i never had thought of before. i've thought that for the excess and wastefulness of american culture to change, we could all shop thrift for clothes and furniture, etc. but now i see that it's not actually true. without excess and wastefulness, there is no thrift! what a sacrifice to make! but i think i'd have to take the loss of excess along with the loss of thrift stores.
korea is quickly becoming a consumerist society and i think that things like thrift stores may be popping up in the near future. apparently stuff has changed a lot in the last ten years, and our generation may have some good clothes to throw out. not that any of that will fit over my ginormous rear end. however, they will probably never have a goodwill. they don't have welfare here. it's sink or swim as far as the government is concerned. and people who sink are really frowned upon by society as a whole. you rarely see homeless people on the street. i have seen maybe 3 all together in all the cities i have been through so far, including seoul. so thrift stores would mainly be there to serve tourists and korean hippies and rastas, and well actually i don't know who would shop there. i don't know the culture well enough to know whether or not it would be taboo for your average joe to shop at a thrift store in korea. hmm . . . this is going to tickle my brain now for the next few days.
so enjoy your goodwill and garage sales! they sure are wonderful in montreal.

:)
erin

nevermind . . .

2005-10-13T08:07:00.000+09:00

turns out niki's not a blogger at heart.
she'll still be around though.
peace out homey, niki.

masters of the linguistics

2005-10-10T14:55:00.000+09:00

hooray! mcgill has finally approved my graduation. whew!
yay! it feels good to be a master. of the universe. :)

my favorite game

2005-10-09T19:33:00.000+09:00

name: graveyard

rules: lay down, close your eyes, don't move

objective: stay completely still and silent

kiddies: erin! please can we play graveyard!?! please please please!?!?!!

erin: okay, maybe if everyone is REALLY good for the WHOLE class,
. . . . . i'll "let" you play for the last 10 minutes . . .

it's okay to have favorites, right?

2005-10-07T00:08:00.000+09:00

in case you were wondering

2005-09-30T01:40:00.000+09:00

this is my good friend, kim bap.
'kim' means seaweed.
'bap' means rice.
the rest of the ingredients are your creative option.
we had a field trip to the world cup stadium on monday
and all the moms sent kim bap with their kidlets for a picnic.
it was sooooo gooooooood. mmm.

the kid on the right had the best kim bap in the school.
go andy's mom.

axl rose enjoys a bite of kim bap. oh so good.

all things inappropriate

2005-09-30T01:25:00.000+09:00

jigga wha?

2005-09-27T18:11:00.000+09:00

so i get into a cab. first thing the cab driver says . . .

the cab driver: are you from canada? do you speak french?

erin: sure. oui. vous parlez francais?

so i'm thinking, great!
i will be able to communicate with this man to get where i want to go!
and in french even!
yippie! how fun! then . . .

cab driver: no.

that's the last communication we had before i got out.
i mean besides the usual grunts and hand signals.

i'm not sure what to make of this.

do i realy look french canadian?

another cool thing about korea

2005-09-25T00:09:00.000+09:00

there are no halloween sale aisles.
halloween aisles have not been pushed aside to make room for christmas items already.

has walmart started stocking for christmas yet in north america?
i just read that australian department stores are hanging wreaths these days.
that's poppycock!