mobot

Today I went to the Missouri Botannical Garden - one of the true jems of St. Louis. It was fantastically beautiful. The weather was quite hot, but that kept the crowds away. I had a wonderfully relaxing, rejuvenating time. Pictures are here.

Vacation

Last week I vacationed in Busan with my lovely girlfriend and Tremendous and his lovely girlfriend.

This week I am back in the US, and vacationing in Ft. Meyers beach, FL.

Homecoming - Dallas/Fort Worth

Flight was super long. Had Taco Bell. So-so. Still sick, so I can't taste much. Ears are totally blocked up from descent as usual. Got Benadryl and Big Red. Got hat. Feeling pretty comfortable now...maybe good seat or meds. Culture shock is low. Really irritable some time ago, but met some nice folks, so okay. Two other dudes in Dallas airport with mowhawks. Jet lag seems minimal or absent at this point.

Homecoming - 東京 (Tokyo)

Landed in Tokyo. Checked in. 39 minutes 'till take off. Thirsty, but no ¥. Not terribly tired. Want shower. Really not happy about next travel leg.

Homecoming - 인천/서울 (Incheon/Seoul) to 東京 (Tokyo)

Big line at airport. Luggage is heavy. Will have to check in at every stop. Will have to transfer luggage in Dallas. Finally got to ride in double-decker plane. Right ear won't pop. Why half the time do I catch a cold before I fly? Can't taste anything yet.

Minutes later...

The onboard monitor is showing live camera footage of the ground from the belly of the plane...cool!

Video!

Work and New Year's

Okay, first blog of the new year. Started our Winter Intensive term today. Seems good so far, though it's a lot of classes. Also, there seems to be a lack of material for some classes, so I'm going to have to work hard to provide filler. Previously, I didn't like having to rush through books, but they do provide an easy, if sometimes artificial, structure. Mainly, lately, I've just been sick. Normal flu. Didn't work last Wednesday and Thursday. I'm at about 95% now, but I got really depressed being stuck in my apartment, and also not being able to taste much of anything I eat. I did manage to give my apartment a thorough cleaning which was pretty nice. I'll try to post some current pics of my apartment soon. Also, I'll be moving to a new, bigger appartment in a couple months. The biggest benefit of the new place will be having two windows, as opposed to my current one, and therefore some nice airflow.

Let's see, New Year's I did go out a bit. I met a nice girl named Ann a few weeks ago. She came to visit me, and then we went to her mother's restaurant and ate a kind of beef sumgyupsal - basically cuts of fried sirloin, some marinated in a delicious garlic* sauce. It was delicious. The other specialty of the night was cow's small intestine, which I hadn't really believed when Ann first told me, although in fact I'd recently seen an advertisement of "intestines cooking" at a restaurant in Busan. Nope, it was for real, and one of Ann's favorite foods. After we ate sirloin, they heaped a big pile of cow guts onto one of the griddles, and fried them up. Really, once you got past the fact that it was guts, it wasn't too bad. Ann was just delighted to have some, and was surprised when I told her I was surprised how good they were. I just told her I wouldn't normally eat that back home. I just couldn't really see a way of explaining to her that it was even more strange for me to have eaten "chitlins" than the san-nak-ji (still-moving octopus tentacle) side-dish we'd had at our last meal.

After that, we went to JRock for a little bit. We were both recovering from flu, so we didn't stay out late, just long enough to wave sparklers (IN the bar), and drink a little champagne. Typical New Year's.

*Interesting footnote:"Korea is the largest consumer of garlic, ahead of the rest of Asia (particularly China and Thailand, excluding Japan) and the Northern Mediterranean (mainly Spain, Italy, and Greece)." (from Cuisine of Korea on wikipedia.org)

Well, golly

OKAY! So, I am now currently typing a new blog from home. How is the feat of wizardry possible? Did I somehow acquire a laptop lightning speed? No. Did I miraculously ressurect my dead machine? Not quite. Some time ago in Colorado I visited an Internet room at a small hotel which had free copies of a linux install called Ubuntu. In the packaging were two CDs: one for a full install, and one which claimed to run straight from CD. I remember trying this second disk on two machines: one worked, one didn't. I was always impressed that it worked at all, and I've carried the disks around with me more for the sake of marvel than any real application. Well, now that demo is really shining. On an otherwise dead machine, I can temporarily load an OS, equipped with Firefox browser, that recognizes all my hardware sufficiently to allow my Internet to function. Presto! Updates from home! I still need to work on getting a permanent solution for writing and file-saving, but at least I essentially have a "terminal" now, if not a full-blown PC. Aint that something.

I'm back...sorta

Heyo, so soorry so long no posts. I still don't have a working machine at home, which makes regular posting pretty difficult, and picture posting almost impossible, but anyway, I'll try to get back on the horse here for awhile. In the next couple weeks, I'll have a new laptop if I can find an English-speaking one.

Let's see, it was Christmas last weekend. That was pretty nice. Things were pretty Christmas-y here. My Vice Director had a nice Christmas party at his place with real turkey, and fixings, and such. On Christmas Eve, our favorite bartender downtown let us bring eggnog ingredients over, so she could try to make us eggnog. Better than that was Christmas Eve dinner which JJ and I spent at a legitimate upper-scale Italian restaurant (Cin-Cin). The food was prepared correctly, the staff spoke excellent English, and, for awhile, it was like being in any fine western restaurant anywhere in the world. Definitely a jewel.

This weekend is up in the air. For the past several days except for today, I've been laid up with flu (not avian, just regular ol' pain in the neck flu), and, after I leave here (pc bang), I'm likely going to continue to rest through to Sunday. Anyway, I would love to type more, but in my current state the unfiltered cigarrette-laden filth they call air in here is killing me. Will try to type more soon.

Funny story for the day

Hey, they came up with the sentence, not me.

I AM bending as far as I can

Did yoga today. Now I'm running in the evenings around 10 or 11, and yoga-ing MWF morning's at 10. Works out pretty well. Evenings are much cooler, plus I'm a night person, and I run quite a bit farther and faster. Yoga seems like it will be a nice start to the day mentally. Physically, I can't touch my toes or keep my leg straight in many poses, but other than that these intro classes don't seem too bad, maybe even too simplistic. I assume I will get more out of it as time goes on.

Incidentally, the yoga instructor, who was very supportive and understanding, never gave me reason for the title of this post. That honor goes to the various school nurses, gym instructors, coaches of my childhood. Thanks for being so helpful. :P

Funny story for the day

What did your family do when your wagon became stuck in the mud?
(Colleen) We pushed it out.

What did you do when you saw a buffalo for the first time?
(Colleen) We caught the buffalo.

What did you do for fun?
(Susan) We threw the buffalo into the ocean for fun.

It's a lot funnier when you know how dull sentence writing in class can get.

Daecheon Dam Marathon

Some pics from the marathon Sunday...




It went well. I finished somewhere in the top 25% I think. I didn't catch my time, but met my goal of never stopping to walk. The next event is in Seoul in March, and I may upgrade to a 10K. I doubt I'll get more serious than that, but, with all the kids and walkers, the 5K was maybe a bit too casual.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong was awesome. Will try to get pics posted soon.

Nachos and Aussie Rules

Quick post: Last week was long with monthly tests and such. Today I've got to scramble to finish grading, and finish my upcoming monthly syllabus. Also, we're supposed to do something fun today with the kids, so I've got to figure that out. Anyway, around 9:00PM it'll all be over, and JJ and I will be on our way to Hong Kong. Thank goodness. I need a break.

We did have some fun this weekend. Friday, being still sick, I went to bed early, but enjoyed being an off-and-on relay man of text messages from all my friends who were out until about 2:00AM. We then went to a ginseng fair Saturday outside of the city. It was exactly like it sounds - a lot of ginseng all over the place. Obviously, the the only reason for the town's existence. Saturday night we went to a few different places, and ended up having a good time at my favorite bar...which I now, after five months, know serves NACHOS (why didn't somebody tell me!). Sunday, because of Dingo, we watched Aussie rules (Australian football) finals at Keith's place. This itself deserves a little more explication, but I don't have the time.

Unfortunately, I didn't run Saturday and Sunday, but I did have a good run Friday. Today, I was sucking though. Then again, I'm not yet over this cold, so at least I was out there. Two weeks to the marathon. Hopefully, there will be some nice paths in Hong Kong.

That's it for now.

Incidentally, if you don't keep up with Joe's blog, and for those of you who know me, you may find this kind of funny: http://recklessegghead.blogspot.com/2006/09/gerken.html.

Looking forward to 추석 (Chuseok)

Gave a bunch of midterm-type tests today. Pretty boring. Now I have to grade them. I ran terribly this morning. There's definitely a little cold in the back of my throat, and I didn't get enough recovery rest anyway. I'm going to go home and try to convince myself to fall asleep, but I'm in a mood where I don't know if I'll be able to. Anyway, I can't even think of a funny story comment for today. Oh well, vacation next week. Yay!

SleepyTown

Super-tired again today. Yesterday, I went out to Troy's dong to nab my winter stuff instead of getting to sleep early. His area is pretty cool. It's kind of like a suburbs, although the buildings, and establishments are all the same as ours. His dong just has more space, and more kids wandering around at night.

Ran again today, and continue to see improvement. Feeling a little sick tonight, but I may be able to just sleep it off. Classes went reasonably well today. My funny story...what is my funny story? I don't know. My 3A(M) kids did presentations today, and they were pretty creative. One girl had something about her father's pet worm, and then an uncle's pet turtle eating the worm, or something. I'm fading here. Well, hopefully, I'll be more awake tomorrow. All in all, I had energy through the day, but I just need some rest...

Tired

Today was a long day. Didn't feel like getting up this morning, but I did and I ran anyway. It sucked, but I ran further and faster than Friday. Need to figure out just how long 5K/3.3 miles is.

Like I say, it was a long day. Kind of normal, but I was tired. I can't think of much funny, but a couple of my students from earlier today just found me, and asked me to cheer up when they found out I was tired, so that was nice. I think that's about it for today.

Sutonggol (수통골)

Today, Jeff, Tracy (our new foreign teacher), and I went hiking around Sutonggol (valley) and Dodeokbong (Mt.) (도덕봉, 440m), another facet of Gyeryongsan National Park. I didn't run yesterday or today, but I think the two hours of scrambling up and down the rocks today made up for it. Will run again tomorrow. I'm registered for a 5K in three weeks. Tracy's going to run the half marathon. I don't think I'll end up anywhere near the front of my race, but I should be able to finish.

My beetle did die. I think maybe a lack of humity did it. On the other hand, a large ant moved into the terrarium. A sadder possibility is depression brought on by captivity, and lack of social interaction with other beetles (if they are even social). It might've just reached the end of its natural life-cycle too.

No funny stories today. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

ROCKY

C'mon, it's true -- But that don't bother me -- I just wanna prove somethin' -- I ain't no bum... It don't matter if I lose... Don't matter if he opens my head... The only thing I wanna do is go the distance -- That's all. Nobody's ever gone fifteen rounds with Creed. If I go them fifteen rounds, an' that bell rings an' I'm still standin', I'm gonna know then I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood...

http://www.awesomefilm.com/script/rocky.html

Running and yesterday's funny story

Ahh, a little slow this morning. Fourth run. Hurt worse than the second day, but ran farther than the previous days. I take a Tylenol, and don't hurt too bad during the day, so that's a good sign - don't seem to have injured myself yet, so my pace must be okay.

Funny story for yesterday wasn't all that funny for non-Korean speakers, but it was hilarious to my 3B(M) class. Apparently, the way I pronounce dokboki sounds like chicken. As one student put it, "Teacher you can't even think of this!" Apparently, the word I create is somewhere between chicken string cheese, and rubber. Like chewy chicken. Anyway, it was a topic of high-interest for about five minutes.

I think my beetle might have croaked. I'll have to check it again later.