I am home... lately everywhere I have ever lived seems to be home. I kept referring to Madison as home and Korea as home and Minnesota as home. I am in Korea again. I got to my dormitory and got off the elevator to the 7th floor and saw that the dorm management had installed a keyless entry lock on my door(while I was gone), which happened to be broken since there were pieces laying on the floor. I'd just traveled around the world and I was tired so this was not a good beginning to the day. Oh yeah, the code is something they came up with so they can come into my apartment anytime they want without telling me. Can I say how much I look forward to moving out?

I'm going to take a nap and then go figure out my VISA issues.

I am at my mother's home in Madison. I have done a lot of clothes shopping in the last two days. I think my allergies have come back. One bonus for Korea, no allergies. I think my jetlag might be over, I managed to go to bed before 1am last night and not wake up at 4am.

Dan comes back today. We've never been apart longer than 9 days since we started dating in 2005. This two weeks crap isn't sitting with me very well.

I've eaten sweet corn, holy shit is it sweet. I can't get sweet corn back in Korea. It's just not very sweet.

I went to the Madison Public Library and got a new library card and checked out 10 hardcovers. Hurray for Suzanne Brockmann. Also got the most recent LKH Merry Gentry book, Kim Harrison, Sarah Monette and an older book by S. L. Viehl. I know I won't have time to read them all, but I will try.

I made a stop to Penzeys and got some spices to take back. I went grocery shopping and got a few things, but will need to return and get more things to take back.

I will not be heading to Minneapolis since I am flying out on Tuesday at 1am. However, Dan will be. Yet, I have two little things I picked up while on vacation overseas. One is for purplesquirrel and the other is for mattmn's boyfriend. If I can get your addresses gentlemen (email them to me if you can), I'll just mail it out to you. They're very little things, but your names just jumped into my head when I saw them and I felt like I should pick them up.

Tomorrow I get to go to the Madison farmer's market and I am excited about it. I had prime rib last night and managed to only eat about 1/3 or 1/4 of it. It was delicious, and about the last time I will eat a hunk of steak until I'm back in the States again.

This trip is much too short, but my former students are emailing me to tell me they want to see me. That makes me feel good.

Oh yeah, I got a massive haircut. It be short now.

I definitely haven't missed the presidential ad campaigns while I've been in Korea
Since I'm watching the Olympics I'm catching some of them

That's Illinois, about 45 minutes outside of Chicago.
I landed around 6pm and it was a decent flight. Asiana is a good airline. They let me change my return flight without a fee since my flight was H code. When you buy tickets they all have codes. If you buy K often they're the cheapest and you aren't allowed to change the reservation without a fee. However, the Asiana employee changed and confirmed my flight without any fees. FUCK YOU TRAVELOCITY who told me it would cost me $145 for Asiana and another $45 for Travelocity. Yeah, I'm never booking a ticket with them again.

Back to Asiana. They upgraded since last year, or their flights are different coming from Korea vs. going to Korea. Each seat had their own TV screen which was just a little smaller than my current laptop screen. There were six movies I could choose from, 12 episodes of various shows, Korean music concerts, games, etc. I played a couple rounds of Sudoku.

The first thing I did when I got back to the States? I went shoe shopping and spent $250 on five pairs of Clarkes. This is about $150 and 3 pairs more than I was expecting to buy. However, I did save myself the $200 which I was expecting to pay for changing my flight.

I've been married for a year. It feels longer than 365 days. My husband is across the world from me right now and it's still Sunday where he is.

In one week I will be in America. I just need to get through five days of teaching and I'll be fine. I can't wait. I really can't wait for this to be over. I just want to get out of here.

My weekend involved me working almost all day Saturday getting ready for today. Sunday involved sitting in front of my laptop watching 14 hours of DVD downloads and cross stitching. Oh and making chili. I managed to give myself a nasty and huge cut on my middle finger of the left hand. It hurts.

Name: Tae
Age: 31
Location: South Korea
Favorite TV Show: can't choose
Other Shows Watched: Bones, Alias, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG1, Battlestar Galactica, House, CSI: Miami, CSI New York, CSI: Las Vegas, Criminal Minds of course, Law & Order SVU
Favorite Quote: ugh... get back to me later on this
Favorite Color: black or blood red
If I was a criminal, I'd be... I'm not the type of person who would be a criminal

Okay, mostly I joined because I have a request. I'm sure that someone has one created, and after browsing through Fandom Icons for a while I gave up. I would really really really appreciate it if someone could point me to, or create an icon for me with a picture of Reed reading "Spencer Reed is my fictional boyfriend"

I think he's the only reason I really watch the show. I love me geeky boys. Okay not true, I like mystery and cop shows too.

All right in four days Dan is heading out to Madison. I'll follow in two weeks. I can't believe I'm coming home in 2 weeks!!!!

One of the things we're looking forward to is buying new DS games. I'm almost done with Picross, we finished Professor Layton and Puzzlequest. I've gotten burned out on Planet Puzzle League and Tetris for the time being. Dan already mentioned in his journal that I'm looking for a Sudoku game. I had always avoided Sudoku because I tend to become addicted to puzzle games, and I wanted to avoid it. Well two weeks ago I started and now I'm hooked. I think I saw a game similar to Professor Layton advertised, except it was in an asylum? Someone please tell me what that game might be. The problem with getting DS games in Korea is that they're all in the Korean language.

What I'm looking for is other puzzle games that I might enjoy.

The rain has finally hit Daejeon. Dan had wanted to go hiking, but it was a downpour so we opted to go into Seoul to catch a movie instead. Why Seoul? Why spend $42 for the train ride up and another $26 for the bus ride back? Well, it's because there is one theater in all of Korea that offers ONE Korean new release with English subtitles. It was the newest Korean blockbuster which just opened up on Thursday. I think that was our first mistake. Our second mistake was not deciding to go to Seoul until about 10am. We got to Seoul around 3pm and even though this movie was on four screens, only one was subtitled, every single one was sold out except for the 8:50pm. We ended up getting seats in the second row (in Korea your ticket has a specific seat number attached to it - which I actually like very much). The movie was called "The Good, The Bad, and the Weird." Yes, it is a remake of "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" with Clint Eastwood in it. I've attached the poster for the film. It's a Korean spaghetti western that takes place in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation of Korea in the 1930's. When it comes out on DVD I'd highly suggest some of you check it out.



With the train tickets, dinner, bus, coffee, taxis, and snacks we spent about $130. The 8:50PM film got out at 11:16pm, too late to take the train so we ended up taking a deluxe taxi (think twice as expensive as a normal taxi) to the bus station. We got lost at the City Center and ended up at a different bus terminal at 11:40pm, but managed to find another bus company that came back to Daejeon which left at 11:55pm. Of course this one brought us back way across town from where we live. Next time we go into Seoul, we're going to walk around the City Center and figure out where both bus terminals are so that we can take the bus home that's 2km away from our apartment.

We had a good time, the movie was great, we had good Thai food at the mall, a huge mall by the way, freaking huge mall where we kept getting lost. We'd definitely do it again in the future. They only plan on having about 4-6 films a year subtitled anyways. We did see many "round-eyes" in the theater, so I think westerners are definitely interested in watching Korean cinema.

I think Dan looks super cool.

For those of you who do not read dandrake's journal or our piratesrok, he got the job. He is now an assistant professor, instead of a lowly postdoc. This means twice as much money and twice as much work for him. Of course my first thought was, "does this mean that we might be able to save up enough money to go to South Africa for FIFA World Cup 2010?" and I think it might. At least we're going to try and get tickets in February 2009 for it.

In other news, I am forcing my listening classes to watch Stargate and will start watching the Atlantis series next week :) Gateworld is fantastic since they've put up the scripts, in a decent format, which I can copy and print out for all of the students.

This has been a tough week for me. Apparently I fucked up the grades of three of my students. One of my kids wrote down his ID number in a way that I couldn't read it very well and I mixed his ID number with another student in class, which put three names out of order on my list. When I filled in the grades I just went down the list. I fixed one last week, thinking I had only screwed up two grades. I found out after I changed one student's grade to a C+ from an A, that I had fucked up three people's grades. So I had to go fix it, fill out paperwork, go back again to clarify and write an essay about why I was changing the grades nearly a month after finals. The student thought he got an A, actually got a B+. My fault, partially his fault, but he'll have to deal. One student thought she had a B actually got a C+, but I emailed her and let her know. One student I gave a C+ actually got an A, so I think he's the only student whose happy about the grade changes.

It looks like Dan and I might stay in Korea a little bit longer....

I am correcting the journals of my writing students, and my feels like it's going to explode.

I want to visit Japan I like Japan culture and interesting too Especially I like Japan's temple and castle. Of course, I like Japan animation. Japan is very close to korea, but sometimes two country's distance feel so far. Because history problem, that is important and sensitive problem. Anyway, Japan is bigger than double of korea's size. And Tokyo is capital of Japan and Tokyo tower, Fuji mountain and various temple and castle. Temple reveals silence of character of Japan. I like it. Last, sushi is my best food and represent food of Japan. If I have chance to go Japan I want to study more about Japan and enjoy Japan culture.

or

The capital of this country is Washington D.C. Frankly speaking, I don't know precisely where Washington D.C. is. But, I feel that in Washington there are only white skin people, German birth. I know that It is clearly not and black skin, OBahma is the candidate of the president, of course. What I say is Washington is somehow likely to be businesslike.

the food of U.S.A. maybe greasy. I heard The main dishes are made from bread or meat. Food which I expect the most is rost turkey. But I want to enjoy foods from many countries.

or

I'll feel the atmosphere of Paris street eating crunky macaron.
To be fair, Korea has a candy bar called a Crunky Bar. It's chocolate and crispy like a crunch bar.

I'm only supposed to correct their writing, not their cultural impressions, but this makes me want to ask my kids what the fuck they think America is all about.

I biked 215km in two days. That's roughly 130 miles or so.
I thought I could do it, and the were very few hills, so it wasn't that hard to do.
The rest of the time I mostly sat on my ass and read or played my DS since I figured I had deserved it.
Had excellent Indian food as well. Found the best coffee shop where the nice barista gave us free refills on the Latte. He also gave me a free mango smoothie when I had finished my strawberry smoothie. It was a book-coffee shop. The walls were lined with shelves of books, mostly in Korean, but there were six books in English and one of them was Monkeewrench which is a mystery set in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and a very good book. For some odd reason in British, the title is called "Want to Play a Game?" and I don't like this alternative title.

Pictures of Loveland are forthcoming.

I'm teaching two classes on listening comprehension this summer starting June 30th.
I am trying to come up with 30 songs per class. One is intermediate level and the other is advanced level. I need suggestions from people for songs that might be a little difficult for non-native speakers to understand. Don't give me anything by someone who mumbles or screams. I was thinking of something like Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire or Bare Naked Ladies One Week for the advanced class. The intermediate class I'm thinking Ice Cream by Sarah McLachlan, Book of Love by Magnetic Fields.

So... I need titles of songs and by whom. I'm going to see if I'm getting room with a computer or just a television. If I can't get access to internet, my ability to select songs might be severely limited.

From Neil Gaiman, because he's awesome

Everyone else seems to think I'm missing the point. Maddy's sister on the phone from the UK told me I'd lost. Even Maddy's mother does nothing more than smile. Sigh. I wish that the dog could talk. He's male. I bet he'd back me up. (Actually, if he could talk he'd just say, "You're going away? When there might be thunderstorms? You know no-one else can protect me from thunderstorms. Whoa...I forgot what we were just talking about. Can we go for a walk now?" because he's a dog.)

I finally got around to seeing Prince Caspian tonight. I have to say that it has one of the best movies I've seen this year. The writers and directors and everyone who put it together did fantasy right. I didn't feel like anything was lacking, like I do when I watch the Harry Potter movies. It's sad that the Golden Compass was so horrible, because it could have been such a good movie.

It's been a very long time since I've read the CS Lewis books and I feel like I may want to go back and re-read them. Then I might feel like they left out something, but for now, the movie was brilliant. Prince Caspian was pretty hot too.

( more pictures under cut )

Free Hugs! what more can you say?

Okay how come no one told me it's this easy to make homemade peanutbutter?
Seriously, canola oil makes a decent substitute for peanut oil and using honey roasted peanuts = genius

Now I can eat pb again. I'm not so big on the Skippy or Jiff stuff, and organic or natural pb is about $10 bucks a jar to about $16, and I'm too cheap to buy it. The big jar of peanuts that would make about the same amount of pb is about $8, which i can deal with.

I just put $4,000 on my non-dividend credit card. Ouch.
I forgot Dan has a Citibank Mastercard that gives him dividends.
Anyways my airfare home was $2050 and Dan's was $1950. We are coming to America on different days, and apparently leaving America on the same day, 12 hours apart, on different airlines. I will be arriving back in Incheon, South Korea Monday, August 25 at 4:50am. I will catch the 6:20am bus back to Daejeon, which will get me back about 9:30 and I start teaching at 12:00pm. Yeah....

My itinerary is:
Saturday August 9 - arrive in Chicago, hopefully spend 2-3 days there
Madison - spend about 5-6 days here
August 17/18-20 visit Dan's parents
August 20-22 Minnesota
Back to Madison and then Chicago August 23rd
Flight leaves 1AM August 24th.

Dan is coming back to the states Wednesday, July 30th to attend two conferences.

Yesterday was the Masai barefoot marathon. In Korea Marathon = 13 kilometers. Yeah, I don't understand it either. Our bus left 5 minutes early, while we were walking towards it, and about 20 other people showed up on time, which meant that they too missed the bus to the marathon site. A representative from the race called another bus to pick us up, but that took about 45 minutes. We were dropped off about a 1/2 a kilometer past the point where we were supposed to be dropped off, then had to walk up hill another km just to get to the site where we dropped off our shoes. Than it was another KM in our bare feet to the starting line. We were late so we missed the official start time, but then so were several hundred other people. The first four km were fine. The path was clay and cool under the shade. They lined speakers along the course playing various types of music. The starting line had a brass band playing for us.

There were two food stations along the entire 13km course and the first water station after the start was 3.5km into the course. It was more of a walking course than a running course. When the clay ran out we walked barefoot over hard dirt paths up a mountain full of little pebbles. Therefore, instead of enjoying the scenery, my eyes were glued to the path so that I didn't step on anything that would hurt. Lots of people cheated, of course, by wearing shoes. I wasn't feeling very charitable towards them since I was under the impression that you had to go barefoot or wear only socks.

By the 10th km my ankles and ligaments were screaming in pain at me. I wasn't tired, but my feet were sore - not from the walking, but from walking on that path and all the pebbles we'd stepped on. We probably walked about 15km barefoot. I was under prepared that day and didn't bring along any snickers bars or granola bars or trail mix.. or anything else. I was so hungry when we finished and all they gave us was a box of juice, some duk (rice pastry) and two bottles of barley soju. Oh yeah, we got a big wooded medal in the shape of a foot to wear around out necks.

Feet still sore today. Not likely to ever do the barefoot marathon again. Would like to hike up the mountain with our shoes on however.

We don't have any pictures because Dan wouldn't take any.