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Mini Me Mod


jinyu
Age. 37
Gender. Female
Ethnicity.
Location Denver, CO
School. Other
» More info.
Sprocket's Training Milestones
Came home (Aug 2, 2014)
Asked to go outside (Aug 5, 2014)
Slept 4 hours straight (night) (Aug 5-6, 2014)
Crane Count
7/3/13 - 8
7/4/13 - 30
7/5/13 - 36
7/10/13 - 54
7/11/13 - 57
7/18/13 - 67
2/17/14 - 83
(cumulative)
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Moon Mod!
CURRENT MOON
To Read:
- Carrie
- Dream of the Red Chamber
- Time to Kill
- Scent of the Missing
- Stiff
Nano mod!
"Hello Blue Pencil!"
Friday. 10.1.10 9:52 am
I always knew that he was an imaginative child. True, the monstrous figures on every drawing sheet with their round bellies and stick arms looked remarkably the same, but after a couple of scattered explanations in English I usually got the idea of them: "Well, this is my house and this the bathroom and the kitchen and the kitchen from the other direction" or "This is a monster and this is a baby and the baby is eating the monsters and there will be lots of babies eating the monster."

But I was not prepared for "Come here pencil!"
"Hunh?" I said baffled. I am always a little slow on what the rules of the games were. I have been a grownup an awful long time, after all.
"Where is my pencil?"
"In your hand," I explained.
He looked at his pencil, "I don't need Teacher! I need pencil!"
He grabbed my arm, "Come here pencil!"
I started to laugh, "Do your work! You have one more sentence left!"
"Pencil where are you?" he said (I was wearing a blue shirt) "Come here blue pencil!"
I burst out laughing. He continued the skit for a couple more minutes until everyone was in a regular uproar.
"Okay, back to work," I said reluctantly. With an impish smiles he turned back to his Phonics.

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

Airplane Ride (RATED G)
Thursday. 9.30.10 8:46 am
Kids like laps. They are places that they can identify with relative ease: "She is sitting, there is a lap created for me". Once they know they can sit in a lap, they will try to sit in it at every available opportunity and so I taught them the "Airplane Lap Ride" game. It goes as follows:

Child sits in lap. Child put out arms. I put my arms around Child's stomach and make a plane noise, "Mmeerow!" we hit some turbulence "bump-pa, bump-pa, bump-pa", we bank left "Neerow!" bank right "neeerow!" turblence "bump-pa, bump" landing "ba-bump" "ba-bump" and then... repeat five more times with all the kids in my class.

Comment! (5) | Recommend!

Heyri and Paju - Part 2
Thursday. 9.30.10 8:03 am
So, I have been watching this Korean Drama called "Boys before Flowers" 꽃보다 남자. It is pretty awesome. My favorite kind of humor: absurdity. Anyhow, so it's about this school with the richest kids in all of Korea. Their houses and apartments are three times the size of all the apartments I have seen in Busan... put together, and they eat lunch in a place that looks like a four star restaurant. Now, it did occur to me on several occasions to ask "Where on Earth did they find sets for all this stuff?"

Answer: Heyri!

I get into the elevator my first night and there, on the elevator wall, is the photograph of all the characters. This love motel, picked because my new foreign friends said that it was supposed to be nice, was the set of my favorite Korean drama! The room WAS nice. It had a tub, which I had been dying to get a hold of, and bubble bath stuff that made my skin feel so nice. The bed was HUGE, too!

After a lovely night of relaxing, I headed out to Heyri. Once I found the tourist office, I rented a bike and started peddling my way around the city. It was so nice to be out of the city, to not hear any more cars, to not hear anyone competing to be heard and there, the whir of my bicycle beneath me. I even rang the bell a couple of times, just so I could hear its sound playing theatrically against the backdrop of quirky modern houses.

The eating hall was in a restaurant: one that looked too expensive for me. In the same place, there was the library they used and everything.

Hrm... Well, it was really a great trip. The food was great, I had this kimchi, rice and corn dish which was divine and just got out of there before the tourist rush. I'm going to go back.

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

Heyri and Paju - Part 1
Saturday. 9.25.10 7:17 pm
The trip to Seoul was obligatory. My boss needed someone to go to the conference about the new books they were making available to their students and that someone was me. I decided to make the most of it, though, and lengthened my stay in Seoul over night and on until morning. That way, I could venture out to Paju Book City and Heyri, which were featured in my guidebook for their "small scale contemporary buildings". It brings me within spitting distance of the South Korean/North Korean border, which means, ironically, it brings me closer to nature, peace, and solitude.

I arrived in Heyri about seven o'clock. I had rather enjoyed the bus ride, which consisted primarily of me looking out the window as the highway whipped by. As we got closer to Heyri, more and more people pressed the button to get off and I was forced to assume my role as the bumbling travel, spewing Engrean phrases out onto the floor hoping that someone was fluent enough in Konglish to understand my dialect. They were. In fact, I was soon to find out that, while the Busanites were rather fluent in Enlglish, they did not hold a candle to the people in Heyri.

I looked up my survial phrase in my Korean phrasebook: "Hotel odi issoyo?" Which means "Where is the hotel" or "Hotel, it is where?" I was very proud of myself for having stowed it temporarily in my brain and set out to find a restuarant on which to use it. The restaurants were combination swanky food joint and gallery. This was, of course, the day I happened to be wearing the fat shirt and the wrinkled pants, something that made me look even more touristy than I already was. So, it was not all that surprising that when I came in, babbling my one Korean phrase, the waitress simply smiled politely at me and ran to get someone who spoke better English.

"Hotel odi issoyo?" I asked, cluthing my phrasebook.
"You can speak English," the Korean man said in even, unaccented English.
"Oh," I said, "Where can I find a hotel."
"Do you see those lights?" he said, pointing out of the village, "The red light?"
It took me a while to see them, but I did and nodded.
"Just go up there, turn right and walk for thirty minutes."
Great. I thought, banished from Heyri my first night here, but after asking a very nice family coming back from dinner, a family which reminded me mysteriously of ones I had grown up with, I found out that there really were no hotels in Heyri and I'd have been luck thirty minutes walk down the road.

As I started to get my bearing, I could not help but realize that was fresh and good. My nose and throat, which had rebelled so violently against me herein now opened up and took large gasps of the surrounding air without protest. My shoulders relaxed, my eyes opened and all the misery and discomfort who had been my constant companions for the past four months, lifted without effort or thought.

But this was not the only good the air carried. The roar of traffic, construction and murmuring voices had dissappated. It was not quite. There were still cars, still people, still Korean, but it was not so crowded, angry and rushed.

I had walked almost ten minutes when I ran into three foriegners and their dogs (a dachshund and some kind of mix, I think). I was so glad to see them that I stopped and smiled a little at the dogs.

"Hey," I said, trying to recover from staring, "Do you know where a hotel is?"

"Yeah, sure," they said, "Just go up this road a little ways and you'll find a whole row of them."

They were a little surprised that I was up in their area of the world. What on Earth would provoke me to leave the city to come and visit them? I realized that the shoddy description of Heyri and Paju had very little affect on my decision, it was this cool and calm I was feeling right then.

"I wanted to get away," I explained.
They nodded, perfectly satisfied with the response, "Well, there isn't much around here. The Koreans think the buildings are pretty cool, if you're into architechture. Then there is Odusan Observatory."

I didn't really want to leave them, they seemed like such decent people, but I ended up heading out anyway. I waved goodbye and headed up to the hotel they recommended, but I will leave that half of the story until tommorow.

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

Lifting Children
Friday. 9.24.10 8:10 am
"Um," Amy says, reaching up her arms.
"Hrm?" I ask.
"Up!" Amy says, jumping a little. I reach down and we count, "1, 2, 3" and up she goes, swirling around in the air!
"Me next!" Mimi shouts.
"Hrm, okay," I say and then "1, 2, 3" up in the air, we swirl around and then I put her back down. Then it goes on to the next kid and the next kid until everyone has been spun in the air at least once and everyone has been set back down on the ground. Everyone is laughing, everyone is smiling and I think to myself: this is one of the best parts of my day.

Comment! (1) | Recommend! (2)

I'm In Korea
Monday. 9.20.10 7:04 am
I've been in Korea for almost four months now. My hamsters, Jay and Wok are rustling through the apple scented woods chips at my feet and my computer is running a marathon of "Boys Before Flowers".

I know enough hanguk now that I have had numerous successful conversations in the last couple of days. Not deep thoughtful ones, or especially accurate ones, but I have conveyed: "Where is the subway?" "I speak a very, very tiny amount of Korean." and "What time?" in a mixture of real Korean words and heavy pantomiming.

Things I have done in the past week:

1. Gone to a baseball game (wore orange plastic bag on head).
2. Ate shabu shabu
3. Took lots of cute pictures of my kids in hanboks.
4. Went to the Busan Art Gallery to see the most recent exhibition for the Biennale.
5. Went to the library: got a library card.
6. Went to the Busan Aquarium
7. Bought my first clothes in Korea that actually fit! (and a sleeping bag)

So... this has been... a rather successful week! Now, I am going to get back to my Korea dramas...

Chai Ga!

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