Christmas Cookies!

Mad thanks to recipe-providing cookie heroes Cousin Lis (via Facebook) and my mom (via telephone call at 6:30 AM EST). The sugar cookies on the left are my great-great grandmother's recipe, which, according to my mom's calculations, have now been made in three different centuries on three different continents. Asia, represent!

East Coast, Day 3: The Beach

At last, the third and final installment of our East Coast photo posts. Amazing how easy it is to get behind on these things when you're actually using your free time to do something other than sit around and watch slingboxed college football while trying to recover from last week in time for next! We've also got some photos from our Royal Asiatic Society trip to Yeoju, but on that count I'll have to keep you in suspense . . .

Anyway. The third and final day of our Thanksgiving excursion to Sokcho/Yangyang was spent, for the most part, trekking back across the country, though this time by the faster and less-scenic southern route. However, as we drove south along the beach, my lovely wife reminded me that I had never touched (any branch of) the Pacific, so we persuaded our convoy to stop for an impromptu romp at the seaside.First, we spent a while scampering about some rocky tidepools at one end of a small harbor, where your very own Nana suddenly transformed into amateur marine biologists, while I hovered above, furiously clicking the shutter.
The finds included some starfish and one particularly pointy sea-urchin, which Naomi said would have been delicious, had we not already had our fill of half-dead sea creatures earlier in the weekend.
After the tidepools, then, we took a stroll on a lovely beach, where the brilliance of the sand and the beauty of the waves were marred only by the rusting barbed-wire encircling another of the ubiquitous bunkers--long-disused since defection became the popular avenue of infiltration for North Korean spies (though they still keep the beaches spotlit at night).



Still, even this reminder that we were only a day's march from the edge of the free world couldn't keep us down on this bright, clear November day. See how Nana throws geopolitical caution to the wind as she frolics in the waves!
Now, it was all fun and games until Nana stumbled upon a chilling sight while searching for seashells by the seashore . . . Nefarious instrument of the international communist conspiracy, or innocent pair of nail-clippers? You be the judge:Also, the day did NOT end well for the four delicious ducks our party ate for lunch. YUM.

East Coast, Day 2: Seoraksan

Finally--the much-awaited, much-belated second post on our Thanksgiving trip to the East Coast. We've been caught up in the last big push towards Christmas lately, plus our internet was down for a few days while we switched to a new provider. (Yes, our old, awful ISP has gotten the boot. Woohoo!)

Anyway. Our second day at Yangyang, we woke up to overcast skies that looked like they could blow off by noon. Our plan was to take a cable-car ride up one of the nearby peaks of the famously-beautiful Seoraksan National Park, and while many of our group (Dr. Kim especially) were a bit bummed that the weather actually worsened as we drove to the park, I had high hopes for some dramatic photos, and Seoraksan did not disappoint.First, the cable-car up the mountain, which probably would have brought back some Austria flashbacks, if it weren't for the excruciating K-pop ballads they pumped into the car. Though the rainbow across the valley, which sadly didn't photograph, was a very nice touch.

At the top, then, after donning a few hastily-purchased ponchos to ward off the sleet and the rain, we climbed up to an exposed cliff-top with some spectacular views of the adjoining valleys.

Below, we have our fearless leader, one of the valley views, and then us (aw!), with my hair thankfully covered this time.







































After a very cold thirty minutes at the top of the world, we rode back down into the valley and paid a visit to the park's landmark ginormous seated buddha (at right). This turns out to have been an excellent idea, because it was right around then that the rain really hit in earnest. I can only imagine what it must have been like at the top, what with the sleet/snow and freezing wind.




In any case, the weather, while inclement, did provide some extremely photogenic vistas, which I humbly hope I have captured adequately (below).


















And a final treat on the day (no, I'm not talking about the sundubu, or "uncurdled bean curd," which is both much tastier than it looks and much less oxymoronic than it sounds): When we got back to the resort, what else did we find to welcome us, but our second rainbow of the day! It was a good one, too. Take a look:

East Coast, Day 1: Naksansa

As promised, here's the first of three photo-posts on our Thanksgiving trip to the East Sea / Sea of Japan (don't get me started). This one covers our visit to Naksansa (Naksan Temple). Details about Seoraksan, Sol Beach, and our impromptu seaside cavorting, along with some sweet, delicious photos, will go up sometime later this week.

Now, without further ado . . .


Our intrepid band (see below) left Seoul around midmorning on Thanksgiving Day and, after a few hours spent winding our way through some startlingly underpopulated mountains (plus a generous lunch break for some back-country Korean barbecue), the East Sea suddenly materialized before us, doing its darnedest to look like California. The weather was cool and clear, too--gone was the snow and haze we'd had the previous week in Seoul.

After settling us in at the hotel (more on that later), our fearless leader marshalled us off to Naksansa, a nearby Buddhist temple complex that, while devastated by a wildfire a couple years ago, still offers some interesting sights and spectacular views.

You can see our group below: from left, it's Dr. Kim, Ms. Linklater (music teacher), Ms. Ko (aka Mrs. Dr. Kim), Lia Kim, "Ms. Massie," "Mr. Goff," Gia Kim, and Ms. Anno (Japanese teacher).


(Note: Yes, I ran out and got my hair cut within sixty minutes of seeing how awful it looked in this shot.)

Word on the street is that Naksansa is one of only a few temples in Korea that overlooks the sea, and the effect overall is quite stunning. The view from the peak of the main hill, where a 16m statue of Gwaneum, the goddess of mercy, resides, offers 360 degrees of eye candy, from the nearby mountains (see the photo at the very top of the post), to the deep blue water, to the picturesque and relatively desolate coast.

























But the views aren't the only thing worth seeing at Naksansa--the temple is also home to an antique set of larger-than-life temple guardians. The figures pictured below can be a bit hard to find--they're tucked away in a dimly-lit gateway next to the big bell outside the main shrine, and I saw several people walk right past them without a second look--but once noticed, they're mesmerizing. The details are just incredible: so many colors, and so many precise cuts in the wood. I especially love the expression on the face on the left, and how that fellow on the right there feels surprisingly animate.



Near the gateway with the guardians was another unexpected treat: piles of roof tiles signed by visitors, apparently as a fundraising program for the temple complex's ongoing reconstruction. Surprising number of Germans among the expected Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese.





































Finally--and I promise you we're nearing the end, because this was also the point that my camera was running out of batteries--we strolled down to the bottom of the hill for a peek at the tiny prayer pavilion perched at the side of a cliff over the water. The pavilion was an unforgettable location, secluded among the roaring surf, but alas my Energizers did not, in fact, keep going and going long enough for me to get a shot of the place. I did, however, manage to get a very topical shot of the barbed wire and the guard post beyond the pavilion (they're there to keep out purely hypothetical North Korean spies) shortly after snapping Nana, possessed by whimsy, playing with a fish mobile like a cat.



Well, that's about it it for Day 1 of the trip. Stay tuned for more East Sea / Seoraksan goodness in the days to come. Though probably not tomorrow: Nana and I have a date with the Royal Asiatic Society. Free lecture on Korean folk music? Hells yeah!

PS: Using blogger to format photo posts still sucks. Ugh!

Korean Technology Update: Part 3 (I think)

Can you guess what appliance this control panel belongs to?

If you guessed "toilet," you've probably lived in Asia--or you've been reading our blog! Yes, these were the ludicrously complicated controls for the toilet at our hotel near Sokcho, where we spent the weekend (more pics forthcoming). As you can tell from the above photographic illustration, the DobiDos toilet includes all the latest options in butt-cleansing technology, from "funnel" and "manly funnel" to "skirt squirt," "gushing river," and, on the far left, "please stop, you're hurting me, let me go." Of course, we were reluctant to give any of these a go (see: fear of apartment toilet), but we did take the power seat for a spin.




Oh yeah, that seat? It's heated. Now, if only we could have figured out how to flush the darn thing . . .

In other news, this is SchoolofROK's 100th post! And you can expect more well-documented shenanigans in the near future.

PS: Mike, did I fool you on this one? I was trying pretty hard!

Who needs cranberry sauce when you can have sea cucumber?

For Thanksgiving break, our principal figured out a way to get a group of us to China for only $500, plus visa fees. Sounded great! Justin and I were in.

Unfortunately, the school needed fifteen people to be interested to get the rate. Well, it didn't turn out that enough people wanted to go all the way to China, so that plan went away.

So, for Thanksgiving break, our principal decided to host a Thanksgiving potluck. The school would provide the turkey (these are very expensive over here – the one at Costco clocked in at $70) and everybody would bring a side dish. Sounded great! Justin and I were in.

Unfortunately, the school needed enough lucky potters to pull off the potluck, and not enough people wanted to get together for dinner. So that plan went away.

Finally, for Thanksgiving break, the chairman of the board of the school offered to take us to Sol Beach, a resort on the Pacific coast of Korea. The school would pay transportation and lodging. All we had to do was go. Sounded great! Justin and I were in.

We were, it turned out, almost the only people in. The music teacher came along, as did the Japanese teacher, and that was it.

Okay. I can understand not wanting to go all the way to China, and I guess theoretically I can understand not wanting to cook something. And I know that some people had other plans in advance. But seriously, I have never met a group of people it was this difficult to give away a resort weekend to.

In any case, the trip was on. We bundled into the little yellow school van and headed for the coast, which I will continue to refer to as "the coast" to avoid taking sides on the "East Sea" / "Sea of Japan" debate. They take that rather seriously over here. Forty years of colonial rule will do that to you.

Justin will do another post with temple pictures so I'll leave it to him to write about that and skip straight to the dinner. I feel we have to do something to compete with Leslie's descriptions of the Taganrog meat district, so I offer to you the Yangyang fish district, featuring aquariums full of everything from a two-foot long tuna to live eel, sea cucumbers and squid, and a king crab that was about six inches away from escaping its tub and heading for glory.

So there, at the Yangyang fish district, Justin and I rang in Thanksgiving with a hearty round of Korean sushi (which, I have to tell you, does not live up to Aunt Alice's turkey and ham). The difference between Korean sushi and Japanese sushi is that with Korean sushi, the fish is fresh. I don't mean to say that Japanese sushi serves bad fish. I just mean to say that with Japanese sushi, the fish has been dead for more than ten minutes. Fresh here means FRESH. When the squid arrived on a platter, there were still some perceptible involuntary muscle spasms going on in the tentacles. Barely perceptible, mind you, but perceptible.

And here we join the scene.

Justin, man among men, takes the first bite, claps his hand over his mouth, and starts giggling. (A man among men, yes, but he does, in fact, giggle like a girl).

"What?" I ask.

"The suckers," he said. "They're sticking to my mouth and it tickles."

"They're doing WHAT?" I say, partially as a Concerned Wife but mostly as Concerned Person Sitting Next To Him If He Barfs. He reassures me that it actually tastes good. It's just tickly.

That's not possible, says Dr. Kim. It's not that fresh. He picks up one and repeats the hand clap. He has changed his opinion. The tentacles are, in fact, sticking.

Naomi, the Japanese teacher, picks one up and dips it in her soy sauce. The suckers stick to the ceramic dish and she has to pry it off with the other chopstick.

I pick one up from the dish. I'm just trying to get a tentacle, but the suckers are sticking to the adjacent meat and so that comes up with it.

I am assuming that at this point, all of you are adequately grossed out and rooting for me to put that thing down. And half of my brain told me the same thing. But the other half of my brain, which proves to me more than anything else that I really have spent the last four months in Korea, told me to go for it.

So there I am. Brain Half #1 is making some argument about only being in Korea once and seizing opportunities and Brain Half #2 is wondering abstractly what would happen if I threw up on the host. And somewhere along the line husband-related peer pressure takes over, and I pick up the chopsticks.

And I ate it.

And it suckered to my teeth. And once I got it off my teeth, it suckered to the roof of my mouth. I even ended up with a sucker stuck on my tooth after I ate the rest of the tentacle, and I had to go in and get that one off with my fingernail.

But Justin was right. It tasted pretty good. Almost exactly like Ika Geso, but fresher. And suckier.

So that was the culinary highlight of the evening. Also in contention was the sea cucumber, which looked kind of like gelatinous salsa but tasted basically exactly like regular cucumber, with a bit of red pepper. It also edged out the $250 Russian Red King Crab. Koreans, much like the Chinese when I was there, do not consider discussing prices to be impolite. Dr. Kim mentioned quite casually that he'd bought it and what it cost, and the last time we all went out back in August he said the same thing about the bottle of wine. I think it's said with the sense of, "It's just a fact, so why not say it?"

It was excellent crab. I don't know that I ever had better. And it was very large – the leg was probably two feet long, if you straightened the joint. But in my book, for $250, the damn thing had better crack itself open and dance its way into my mouth.

On second thought, no. I've had enough of that for tonight.

Thanksgiving

At the risk of sounding sappy: This will be my first Thanksgiving ever away from home. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday--all the food, family, and football of Christmas, but without the presents, which means without half the stress--so it's particularly hard to be away. My family is an exceptionally close bunch, and family holidays are always a lot of fun. So, to those of you family members reading today: I miss you a lot, and Nana and I can't wait for Christmas!

As a consolation prize, though, the school founder has offered to take us to a mountain resort near Seorak National Park, one of the most beautiful spots in Korea. Hiking, spa-ing, and an opportunity to get out and see something other than Seoul--all at someone else's expense? You can bet we're there! The only downside is that a (possible) lack of internet could keep us from calling home for the holiday. We'll do our best.

On another note, it turns out that Thanksgiving is literally a foreign concept in these parts, so yesterday I delivered to each class a throwaway enrichment lesson on the origins of the holiday. (With my 6th graders, though, it tied into their reading and their upcoming project pretty closely, so that's good.) The kids who had lived in the States understood the basics--Pilgrims, turkey--but no one had the whole story. They were particularly intrigued by the idea of eating turkey--those who had pronounced it much tastier than chicken, those who hadn't were wondering what, exactly, a turkey was--and deer, which almost no one but me had eaten. I also had the kids compare it to Chuseok, the Korean harvest festival, which replaces the "giving thanks" with "giving thanks and respect to your ancestors." Total cross-cultural moment. But hey, that's what they pay us for, right?

Bringing the Heat; and, Internet Update

So as the weather has chilled over the last couple of weeks, we've realized that our apartment heating system has been, shall we say, under-performing. (It doesn't help that Celsius makes everything feel colder. It got down to 15 C in our bedroom one night! That feels so much colder than 59 F.) Initially, we chalked this up to the inefficiencies of "ondol," Korea's quirky under-floor heating system that involves pumping near-boiling water through a lattice of pipes under the floorboards, and the fact that our corner apartment, while very well-lit, also catches a whole lot of wind. When we heard stories of people using ondol to turn rooms into de-facto saunas, however, we realized that something was amiss. As it turns out (thank you Paul!) there's an extra button you have to press on the boiler to actually put water into the floor, at which point you can literally trace the course of the pipes with your foot they're so warm (and so much warmer than the un-piped spots on the floor). Amazing how much a heated apartment can lift your spirits, eh?

In other news: internet. After months of frustration, the school has finally forced our crappy ISP into action, and discovered that the reason we have such unreliable service is that the provider has almost no bandwidth for connections to servers outside Korea. This explains why Yahoo (which maintains servers in Korea) and its affiliated sites almost always work, and why Google (which has been largely muscled out of Korea by Yahoo and local-competitor Naver) almost never does. The ISP has asked for one more chance to fix the problem (good luck) before we give them the axe. Which means there's hope that we could have ACTUAL, RELIABLE internet access within a few weeks! Though I wouldn't get your hopes up too high--there's still time for plenty of foot-dragging and bungling. But at least we're a lot closer than we were at the start of the week.

ThunderSnow!

Expect a flurry of posts today (pun most definitely intended!): we've had a few updates to write about, but a combo of no time and no intarweb kept us from updating the blog.

So! The snow. Seoul weather is notoriously wacky--hot as hell with drenching rain until September, then hot as hell and dry for a month, then cold as hell and damp (but with nary a drop of rain) for two . . . all the while, the daily weather report being about as reliable as a . . . uh . . . an unreliable thing. You come to expect the unexpected. But still, our first snowfall Monday night still threw me for a loop.

Now, I began the day Monday, as my lovely wife can corroborate, by commenting on how much colder it had gotten overnight, and by whimsically proclaiming that "it smelled like snow." (I have been convinced for a long time that a well-trained nostril can detect the  combination of cold and damp in the air that precedes a snowstorm, though I can't really describe what impending snow smells like . . . all I know is that I take a deep whiff and fell a sudden urge to ski.) Sure enough, that night, we opened our curtains (we had them closed to keep in the heat--more on that later) to a snowy downpour. Nothing unusual, right? Until a deep, rolling boom echoed down the streets. Salt truck overturning? North Korean invasion? No, this was a rare (to me) instance of what I have right now very authoritatively dubbed a thundersnowstorm. In any event, we woke up the next morning to a dusting, which had mostly melted by midday, and this morning to a much more substantial dusting that, by all indications, could last well into the afternoon.

Which leads me to two questions: 1) Frequent light nighttime snowstorms--is that what winter's like here? Not that I'd mind, of course, but 2) If so, why in the hell does no one own a windshield scraper? As if the drivers here weren't bad enough when they could actually SEE the road!

Fate Does NOT Poke Us in the Eyeball, Part - Wait, fate didn't poke us in the eyeball?

In a shocking turn of events, something we thought had gone catastrophically wrong turned out to be completely fine. Yes, believe it or not. This is a stunning exclusive and you heard it here first!

This morning, we could only find one of our passports in the drawer where we've been keeping them since we last used them to apply for our Korean Alien Registration cards (We walk among you! Take us to your leader!) We turned the drawer inside out, checked all the other places we store paperwork, tore our desks at school apart, checked the school office, and finally came back home to halfheartedly confront the inevitable. And yet, wonder of wonders, we found it on the bookshelf! Huzzah!

On the plus side, we are now experts in embassy passport policy. Or at least the web links.

And in reference to Justin's post earlier - anybody want some Pepero? We're freaking drowning in the stuff. I got five more boxes yesterday.

Snakes on an Afterlife

From the homework assignment "If I were a pharaoh, what would I put in my tomb to take to the afterlife?," by Grade Six:

- pencil ("My pencil is my friends because, it always working me.")

- "I will bring my lego box because if there is someone with children, I can give a lego box to them and they can play with that legos."

- "a watch to see the time after time."

- a television, "because I love TV"

- "bodyguard, to guard my self from saints afterlife"

- "APIS teachers, to learn more even after having death."

And of course, the titular comment:

- "I will bring snakes."

I did follow up on this one with the student - would she bring them as pets? Did she remember that they were the symbols of the pharaoh? Were they there to guard the tomb?

In fact, none of the above: I don't think Korean has a flat "a" sound (like "hat") - I've only heard "ah," "eh, and "ay" as in "say". So "snakes," it turns out, was a Konglish mistranscription of the word "snacks."

Everything tastes better after death!

Old and Busted / New Hotness

Ask and ye shall receive.

Old and busted (with expert electrical-tape repair job by Nana):


NEW HOTNESS!!!!
Nana aptly describes this shot as "emo book jacket."

Bonus: Nana acts fierce as I test the camera. Thus illustrating the perils of watching too much America's Next Top Model.


(Nana asks: Why are my eyes the size of peanuts?)

Peppered with Pepero!

Today, Nov. 11, is Pepero Day in Korea, a day when young people shower their friends and favorite teachers with Pepero Sticks, the Lotte-megaconglomerate's answer to Pocky--a delicious, chocolate-dipped sesame-cookie stick. The holiday is a stroke of marketing genius: Started in 1994 by a bunch of schoolgirls in Busan (read: Lotte marketing execs in Seoul) who thought 11/11 looked like Pepero sticks, the holiday now rakes in millions of dollars in Pepero sales for Lotte every year.

Not that I'm complaining, of course. While I spent much of my life trying desperately NOT to like Pocky and its derivatives (the Pocky-lovers I knew where all creepy and irritating Japanophile anime fans--except for Hudson, who was not irritating! I kid, I kid!), I have since developed a fondness for the little things in this country where every third thing I eat makes righteous war on my gut. And any holiday that results in piles free, unreciprocated candy is fine by me!

Spectacular!

I can't remember if we've mentioned it already, and I'm too lazy to go check for myself, but this past weekend, my dear departed eyeglasses of five years finally gave up the ghost. The scene was actually downright cartoonish, as I picked my glasses up off counter and, pop!, metal rent from metal, leaving the left lens to drop suddenly out of the frame. While my industrious and clever better half did manage a temporary fix with the aid of some electrical tape and ten fingers infinitely more graceful than my own, I was nonetheless forced to court disaster (see, I don't know, any recent post at all about us attempting to do just about anything) by going to the optometrist in our building and buying a new pair of glasses.

The good news: Though I'm not ready to write off the possibility of my new glasses spontaneously combusting or something like that, I was at least successful in getting a new prescription, new lenses, and new frames.

Now, the whole glasses-getting-experience here in Korea is pretty different from how it is in the States, which is to say it's not excruciating and expensive. First, there are optometrists everywhere. We have at least one in our building. There's one in the Homever. We pass two on our way to work every day. Second, everything is walk-in, the frames and lenses cost about half what they cost at home. Third, they're open late. Fourth, they keep tons of lenses in-stock and cut them for you in 30 minutes or less! Honestly, I was expected to be de-spectacled for at least a week, and these folks fill my order in as much time as it takes to deliver a pizza. Of course, the downside is that you don't get all the doctor stuff. But, still, that kind of service can't be beat.

On a related note, Nana is now extremely disoriented by my appearance. I hadn't quite realized that I'd been wearing the same glasses since before we met. The new ones aren't a huge departure, though--basically the same shape, but a half-frame--so I'm pretty sure this doesn't mean the deal is off.

By the way . . .

. . . after reading Leslie's infinitely more entertaining, infinitely
more informative, and infinitely more frequent blog (see the link at
right), I have unilaterally resolved to post more often, come heck or
high water (or unreliable broadband . . . or web filters . . .).

[Edit by Nana: Speak for yourself! My posts are entertaining, informative, and frequent! That's it, Leslie. It's on.]

Hopefully, though, figuring out this whole posting-by-e-mail thing
should help, so I can fire off brief missives from the classroom in
some of those rare free moments I steal during the day.

Daylight Savings

Just FYI, all you folks on the East Coast are now 14 hours behind us. Which fact I remembered in just enough time NOT to wake my folks up with a 5 AM phone call!

As for us, I'm pretty sure lack of daylight savings will actually make zero difference, since we're up and out of the house shortly after dawn anyway. Not so bad, though, compared to the kids, some of whom are busing in from two hours away.

Everyday is a holiday at Everland

Everland is a Korean amusement park - think more Disney than Cedar Point - whose slogan in "Everyday (sic) is a holiday at Everland!" In my limited experience - one day at Everland, which also happened to be a holiday, Halloween - this statement is one hundred percent true.

Instead of having a regular school day on Wednesday, APIS had a field trip to Everland. I think it had something to do with reconciling Christianity and Halloween, which apparently is difficult for some people, by avoiding the issue entirely. Personally, I think anti-Halloween parents are overreacting a bit, but then again, I have seen some pop star costumes on little girls that offend me, much less God. So to Everland we went.

I was quite concerned about the safety of the rides, but it was actually a high-quality amusement park. And I've never been to one in the fall, and I have to say that the cool day was much nicer than some of the scorchers I've been to at Cedar Point (although the water rides aren't quite so much fun). My seventh graders behaved impeccably. We did lose a couple of sixth graders for a while, and I had a crisis where the cafeteria lady said my lunch voucher was only valid for the acorn noodles, but all came together in the end. The kids got a kick out of seeing Justin in jeans.

What really amused me was the fact that on Thursday, back at school, all the kids seemed like they'd been steamrollered. I was pretty pooped, but I had to bounce back to teach, so I did. Aren't kids supposed to have faster recovery times? The difference probably came from Justin and my 8:30 bedtime. Amazing what eleven hours can do for you.

And on a last note- thanks so much for all the wonderful birthday wishes! We had a party last night at a fellow teacher's apartment and I baked cupcakes from care-package cupcake mix. No Korean birthday soup for me! Two students actually gave me small presents - a lavender aromatherapy pillow and a picture frame - which I thought was very sweet. And tonight, Justin took me into town for a birthday hamburger at TGI Friday's. Hooray birthdays!

The Land of Murphy's Law

I'm not really feeling "Land of the Morning Calm" for Korea these days, and I'm really leaning towards Murphy's Law as the defining characteristic of life here. For instance, our really anticipated outing today? Toast, due to slow breakfast service at McDonald's, constant transit problems, and directions to go to "Yongsan Post Office" when there are at least three post offices and the only one that shows up on the map is very evidently not the one where we were supposed to be. So we got up at 6:30 on a Sunday for absolutely nothing.

Really, it's been frustrating. I know you've seen our posts about how the Internet refuses to work (both at home and in our classrooms), about the fact that the recycling pickup is on Saturday mornings before 10 AM, about how I can't eat the food without getting sick, about the month-long delay in our shipment... it just seems like nothing will go right here, even the stuff that honestly shouldn't be that hard. And I know that once you get in a funk, you always pay attention to the negative and forget the stuff that's going right - for instance, my care packages from my mom have gotten here great, and the slingbox is working right now and has provided us with football and an amusing new show called Pushing Daisies on top of our beloved House. But even typing that, I want to point out how I can't use some of the stuff in the care package because we're the only school apartment without an oven and how the slingbox still cuts out for no reason, sometimes in the middle of shows.

Anyway, we were pretty bummed to miss that trip today for yet another stupid reason. I'm going to send an e-mail and see if we can get some refund or at least apply the money to a future trip.

Now, back to Slingboxed college football...

The Royal Dorkiatic Society

Last night, Nana and I went to our first-ever meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, an old and respected club of shameless dorks who want to learn more about Korea. We've had our eye on joining the Society for a while now, but not until yesterday could we muster up the time and the energy to trek all the way downtown for a lecture.

Thankfully, it looks like the RAS could be well worth the effort (and the 80,000-won membership fee--discounts for married couples! finally, my motives become clear!). While last night's lecture certainly didn't earn any style points--the speaker could barely speak English and was completely shackled to his hideous Powerpoint notes--the content was very interesting: a history of Korea's representation in Western cartography. (Apparently, we white folk took a good three centuries to notice that Korea is, in fact, a peninsula, not an island. But, hey! At least we knew by then that it existed!)

What's more, we signed up for a day trip to Ganghwa Island with the RAS this Sunday--Ganghwa-do being one of Korea's UNESCO World Heritage Sites, on the strength of its fortresses, its temples, and its prehistoric dolmen tombs. We've been wanting to visit Ganghwa since we learned about it, and sweet serendipity caused the RAS to reschedule the trip for precisely the weekend we're able to go. Plus, apparently we'll get to visit a certain RAS member's swanky Ganghwa-do pad. (Nana says: "Bonus for networking, eh?")

But the real news, I suppose, is that Nana and I are finally finding/making the time to get out and do something, other than sit around and work all the time. Slowly--very slowly--we're getting this school thing under control and carving out little pockets of dorky leisure. If only we could wrangle some Korean lessons somehow. Though that may have to wait for the summer.

Ah! It's too bad that we live so far out of town--the RAS adjourns for a round of ale after every meeting, but our long train ride back to Nowon gets us home pretty late. Though maybe we'll just have to suffer through some sleepy Wednesdays here and there.

In other news, Nana and I got to share our bus home with an utter lunatic tonight. Tourettes or schizophrenia or something. Shouting, flailing. Totally weird.

OMGHOLYCRAP Part II, or the continuing adventures of my name in romance novels

You may remember that about six weeks ago, I posted about Carla Kelly, one of my favorite romance novelists, deciding she liked my name and using it in a book. Well, today, I got an e-mail from her asking for formal permission to use my full name (duh!). In the event that I declined to give permission, she was willing to change the character's name to Nana Marlowe. Horrors!

She also gave me a bit of information on the character as well as the first chapter of the book. According to Ms. Kelly, "Nana is a delightful character" - how could she be anything but? - "and she gets an excellent man, a post captain in the royal navy named Oliver Worthy." In fact, she says, she had so much fun with the whole thing that she's hoping to do a trilogy around the Worthy family, so I may even reappear in the future! This has to be the first time ever that I've hoped for a gratuitous cameo by the protagonists of previous novels.

I did enjoy the first chapter, although I won't distribute it because that's probably not appropriate. You'll all appreciate the fact that Nana spends most of the first chapter looking for food. The neatest thing by far, though, is that Nana is her character's nickname, too, and her real name just happens to be Eleanor. Eleanor, for those of you who don't know, was the name of my maternal grandmother, a wonderful, brilliant woman who died just a couple of years ago. I did not tell Ms. Kelly this, although I did write back to let her know. It is just a lovely coincidence.

Now I need everybody to send positive vibes to Carla Kelly's editors: Buy this book! Love this book! Pay Carla Kelly all the money in the world for this book! Don't change the names of any characters in this book!