To Escape a Blackhole, You Must Travel Faster Than the Speed of Rice

Cousin Brad in his place of employment--i forgot the name, but it is a cute little cafe that sells vegetarian and vegean cusine, Carbondale, IL, USA

myself on the Tancheon which means valley or something, along the river trail. it leads from Bundang into Seoul. Bundang, South Korea. {this is supporting evidence to many of my students as to why i am an grandma--grandmas ride bikes like these. grandmas also wear hiking t shirts with skirts and dorky tennis shoes, much like me. and they wear backpacks. the only people that have backpacks here are older people who hike!]


and lastly this is a photo of my friend kelley. she is not always making that face, only when she is hanging out with alligators. i just wanted to put some photos of friends and family from the states to show that i am thinking of you. all of you are in my heart even though i am far away. miss you lots!


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Faster than the speed of rice. This nicely sums up the ability of a certain foreigner, more specifically my next door neighbor, to round up a Korean girlfriend.

A few weeks after he arrived, he purchased a used cell phone and then got a phone call from a woman asking to speak to some Korean dude. He said he wasn't the dude, obviously, and then somehow they got to talking. He said he was from America blah blah and then somehow finagled a date or a meeting out of her. She spent the night and the rest is history. Now, I am getting reports of him talking to her while at work (I do not work with this gentleman) and him saying on the phone, "Baby, you don't need to be doing my dishes! Baby, I love you too honey sugar..." Mind you, this is all within a week of meeting her.

What!?
So, this all happened faster than the speed of rice.


This quote happened today while one of my 11 year old students (13 years old in Korean age) was giving a speech about blackholes. He said that blackholes and whiteholes are connected. And in order to escape a blackhole, you need to travel faster than the speed of light. But it sounded like, the speed of rice. I think this is mostly because Korean kids pronounce 'r's like 'l's and so when he said 'light' it sounded like 'right' in my head, but then he kind of mumbled the word so 'light' sounded more like 'lice' and when they say 'lice' they are trying to say 'rice.' So that is how we got to the title of this blog entry and therefore, the new code name for my neighbor.

Other presentation topics for kids in my class included Is eating dog ethical?, the Israel conflict, Blue Antelope from the Ice Age existing in South Africa, Why learning english as a second language is important, Inventions, a science experiment involving putting gold fish in cups with varying amounts of nicotine in the water, and a presentation on how north and south korea should unite.

Furthermore, one of my classes made up a nickname for me besides "Jennipoh" which is my korean-ized name... it is "E.T" which is short for English Teacher. How clever!

Things here have been settling more into 'real life' or something like it. The daily routine and such even though we just switched our schedule from working 10am-6 or 8pm to 3-10pm. I like working later in the day b/c this means my first classes don't have to deal with me being a complete and utter bitch because i have not woken up yet. I think that working for a public school out here may be interesting because you get all the national holidays off plus 3 months vacation, about. But on the other hand, it is by grade so you have all this kids from the basic level to intermediate english in one class. this could be distressing. this is one good thing about avalon school. i was talking to one of the head guys at avalon and he said they are opening two new branches in the next year. avalon is, from what i hear, quite a prestigious institution. we have the kids writing essays at age 8-11 in a second language. this is outstanding because i never did something like this until i was a junior in high school. at this point it was my fifth year of a foreign language.

what is even more crazy is the pressure these kids are under. not only do they go to school every other saturday, but they attend many academies at night after school. one of my students is a speed ice skater and i believe she trains most days. some of my other kids go to math academies at night on top of 3 hours of english (and often an extra hour and a half of detention) and school. sometimes they also do sports and practice musical instruments. they are going to take over the world soon. the size of the county will not matter, it will just have the most driven, hardworking and genuis people in it.

ok, other news in my life. i have been biking on my lean mean green machine practically every day 5-10 miles. sam and i recently found a FREE outdoor fabricated climbing wall which has been great. we have been 4 times in the last week! we also hiked up to this hill/mountain and found a cemetary with the korean burial mounds. they are like half-spheres covered with grass. it is a pretty unusual sight for westerns. i will conclude with this tonite.

Complacency Breeds Non-Blogginess

Getting Closer Every Second, But the Definition Keeps Changing

some kids we ran into at a kimbap place in mokpo. they were on a bike trip from seoul to mokpo, and then they were going to take a trip to jeju-do island to bike around. man, we should have gotten their numbers because they seemed like some cool kids. yo, if you out there, email us!

the first yogwan we stayed at in mokpo. 40,000 won for one night. that is about $10/person with four people. this place had a huge blood stain on one of the yos (floor mats to use as a mattress). they also had some lotion called "Man Touch". HA. and they give you free plastic wrapped toothbrushes and there is a tube of toothpaste and a brush that is always in the room. ALL the guests can use it. ieewwww.


a little spot we came upon in our hike outside of Mokpo in Yuldasan Park. I love to hike.

a backyard in mokpo

a foot massage path that just about killed our american pansy ass feet. notice the man on the left who is just lapping everyone like nuthin!

a lady selling crazy sea life that is so fresh it's still alive. she'll crack open the shells and chop it up so you can scarf it asap. one of the things she has look like uncircumsized penises that swim around. i think they fry em up like corn dogs.







i'm talked out. enjoy the photos. today was just a day of work but now it is again the weekend. last weekend we also had mon, tues, and wed off--this is how we could afford to head to mokpo. sooooo... i hope you all are well. sorry i have not written guys.

Island Hopping in Hongdo and Heuksando, S. Korea

July 30 & 31st, 2006

Just a few photos from the past weekend. I hope to upload more but right now they won't go through. Highlights of this five day weekend
1) i ate mantaray for the first time. raw it felt like chewing on someone's ear. well, not just nibbling, but chewing enough to break cartlidge.
2) swimming in the ocean. i got my first sunburn in ages!
3) learning how to say "how do you say _ _ _ in korean?" in korean fromm a few kiddos playing in the water
4) almost getting seasick on the 2.5 hour ferry ride
5) watching how fast the clouds moved over the island mountains
6) our friend joe getting gum stuck to his ass on the ferry ride out, so he went up to the ferry attendant and motioned to his ass, the attendant looked horrified and swiftly used some turpentine to clean it off his pants as well as the seat. he had to go splash water on his butt later to try to rid himself of the chemical burns he was maintaining by sitting down. he proceeded to lie face down for the remainder of the trip.