I hugged my first Korean man. I’m not sure he appreciated it. I had just been badgering him to let a friend and I spend the night at his house or at least eat dinner with him and his family. It was a no go, but he took it all in good spirits. Chicken soup for the Korean soul. They have the highest suicide rate in the world, by a pretty large margin so I probably saved his life. I climbed the highest mountain on mainland South Korea, Seoraksan. It was occasionally warm and moist, occasionally cold and moist, but always [View Full Entry]

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Things have been pretty tough thus far, mostly due to my poor language skills and the fact that I still haven't forgiven them for Pearl Harbor. I arrived alive and well obviously. Korean Air is crazy nice, I watched four movies and the stewardesses were geishas who could've been air hostesses in the 60's. Plus I was in the middle of the middle aisle so I could pick what side I wanted to get my food and drinks from. Would I like a pack of peanuts even though I just got one from the other side? Absolutely. Is anyone else reminded [View Full Entry]

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FedEx Clerk: We don’t accept cash for prepay items. Me: You mean you don’t accept cash for post pay? FedEx Clerk: No, prepay, you need a credit card or we can’t send your package. Oh, or a fedex account. Me: Can I set one of those up without a credit card? FedEx Clerk: No. I used to believe that credit cards represented an amount of actual money/cash/legal tender that we had or would have in the future but apparently I was wrong. Cash is now a poor and not universally accepted representation of one’s credit cards. Don’t think this is just [View Full Entry]

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I’ve been kind of scared that salmonella peanut butter might have made it’s way down to Colombia, and due to a gross deficiency in health standards, organization and concern for human life might not have been properly recalled. Then after extensive research (Wikipedia search) I find out all salmonella does is cause typhoid fever, which I’m super immune to.* Do you think people who are immune can get those recalled jars of PB on discount? Tangent: the genus Salmonella was named after Daniel Elmer Salmon, an American veterinary pathologist. While Theobald Smith was the actu [View Full Entry]

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It became quickly apparent my father hasn’t forgotten his days as a Nixon staffer as he dropped peace signs on about 4500 people while he was here. He reminded me of that old guy in Lawrence who just walks around throwing peace signs at passerbyes, paying it forward. I got to know both him (my father not the Lawrence guy) and my little sister much better. I don’t think I’ve spent that much time with him since I was in 2nd grade. Second grade was pretty awesome, all star wars and art class. I called in sick to work Thursday and [View Full Entry]

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I sometimes forget the awesome power of Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer. I played it for my students and they’ve been since testing my enduring love for the tune by requesting I put it on repeat for entire hours at a time. There’s not even a dissenting voice who agrees with me that we should occasionally change the song. Welcome to 2009. I spent Christmas like I imagine most of you did, salsa dancing until four in the morning. Christmas truly is the season of giving for me as each year I never receive any presents other than the ones [View Full Entry]

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I’m not sure exactly why but at times I still feel like I’m in college. On Saturday, loathe to leave the apartment due to pure unadulterated laziness I was searching for a mulled wine recipe in order to prep for the holiday season that is upon us. Unlike the higher latitudes the holiday season here rides in on gale force winds that blow the non holiday gloom out of the abjectly poor and discontented rich alike. On the recipe’s webpage there was a sidebar indicating that the author of the “How to” make mulled wine was also the author of the [View Full Entry]

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I’m not exactly sure what being intimate with someone who has children has to do with precipitation but in the parlance of our time it’s raining like a mother f*&%#@ here. Something to do with being caught in some late hurricane business. Good news though, they cancelled an after school meeting to accommodate driving home earlier in the mad watered roadways. Two weeks ago Adam, Josh and I went to an island in the Caribbean off the coast of Cartegena and slept in hammocks in a little place named Paradise and ran by a woman who rocked the handle Mama Ruth. [View Full Entry]

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First let me say that I haven’t been this proud of my country since the first time I saw Rocky IV. I know some of you hate me to espousing my personal politics on here but what’s awesome is that none of you can stop me. I feel bad for McCain, Bush screwed him in 2000 and managed to do it again this year. Besides getting a black man in the top office in the nation I’d say the second biggest step forward for race relations was CNN hologramming a black man during their coverage. It would have been a bigger [View Full Entry]

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So I’m home, overlooking Jesus once again.* Operation ‘Don’t Die in a Fiery Plane Crash’ was a success. Only in Latin America have I heard the passengers clap when the plane lands. The trip home was a mixture of awesomeness, best exemplified by having my arm around a black man while singing Dixieland Delight at Bob’s wedding and the not quite so awesome inability to score a QuikTrip hotdog prior to the wedding. Thanks to those who aided my poorly planned blundering by driving me places (mostly Madhu), lending me cell phones (mostly Matt), lending me a place to [View Full Entry]

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