This is a still from the video I made of my bike ride today.  Went out some county road I found and explored a little.  It was impromptu, so I didn't carry any water and had to come back early. 

My PC main drive is whacked, and I think, from the sound it's making, that it's physically broken.  So I'm working on the Mac for a while.  My bike ride video is a series of clips, so when I put it on iMovie, it made a nice seamless video, but the audio doesn't come across on iMovie from my Sony camera.  I'll keep playing with it.  Macs are just the most stubborn, difficult things to work with since they are incompatible with almost every piece of hardware on the market.

I found men's deodorant at HomePlus!  Nivea.  First time I have ever seen men's deodorant for sale at a Korean store.  Also found a can of Blue Sky organic ginger ale stuck on the top shelf of the drinks section.  Korean stores only sell colas, ciders (like Sprite/7UP), and Fanta orange and grape.  So when I saw the ginger ale, I grabbed it.  Once it's gone, they won't restock it, so it's nice to have a little ginger ale squirreled away for a special occasion.

Sushi Rolling

This is the statue of General Kim on the top of a hill over in the park near my place. Today was the first time I'd ever gone up the hill to see it, though it is lighted at night; I've seen it from afar before. I have a video, but haven't done any work to process it into anything yet.
Went looking to buy a new motorcycle helmet, but the shop is closed on Sundays apparently. There might be other shops, but advertising isn't really a Korean thing. You do see advertising, but not how you think it would (should) be. I'll check the motorcycle shop out tomorrow. I don't work Mondays... though I need to do some lesson prep. After meeting my students last week, I'm discouraged and need to alter my lesson some. Last spring when the semester ended, my students and I had a nice rapport, but now, only a few of this batch are my students from spring semester (freshmen take two semesters of English). They and I had a good time this past week, but the others who don't know me just sat there like dullards.
Had lunch at a 'kimbap' restaurant. (Kimbap is what they call a "sushi roll" back in the States, 'makizushi' in Japan. In Korea, sushi rolls usually don't have any fish in them unless you ask for it.) Anyway, I will eat kimbap if I'm dying of hunger, but that rarely happens, so today I ate spicy pork and rice instead. Good stuff.
It was a nice day out on my bicycle. Rode along the river mostly.

Rat on a String

I was running around town trying to find sheet music for Korean traditional songs (no luck, really), and I saw this "prize" in one of those arcade-type games where you pay 50 cents and have a few seconds to use a hook to grab something from inside the glass case. It's right out there on the street. Wonder if the kids know what it is.

I did find a book teaching a few traditional songs using the traditional bamboo flute. Eh, it'll do for now. I have a traditional flute, so maybe I'll learn something! heh heh
Sat on the edge of the run-off creek/drainage canal... whatever the hell it is... and made a little video for my YouTube site. Other than all that, I didn't do much... Washed ALL the dishes in my sink, though. Quite a feat. Had to rest afterward, but the sink is clean and smells good. Either tonight or in the morning, I'll be making banana nut muffins. My bananas never got eaten, and I can't let them go to waste, so I'll make them go to my waist instead. Oh, behave!
Got kitty litter and a ropey-thing toy for the cats... they don't like it, of course-- the toy, not the litter. They have been pestering me all evening to play "fake rat on a string" with them, which I did, but no matter how long I play, it isn't enough.

Party Poop

I was on a website this morning, and they asked me to type in some figures in order to weed out spammer programs. As you can see, I think I typed the correct numbers, but I got a specific rebuff saying I had entered the figures incorrectly! I never could get my information uploaded, so screw it. If they want to play games, they'll have to play without me. There is no website on the Internet that is so important or crucial to my life that I feel the need to keep trying to convince them to let me in.
I listened to some of the Nazionalist Party speeches from St. Paul. Exaggerations and outright lies for the most part. So far, they haven't addressed any of the specific things Barack Obama said at the Democratic Party convention. The Nazionalists had better start addressing the issues, because their convention ends soon! Obama outlined specific plans, but nothing like that has come from the St. Paul crowd. Nazionalists usually rely on scaring the shit out of the mostly ignorant American public. Effective on the nescient, but pathetic to those of us who can think for ourselves.
Beautiful day today. Oh, Vaughan wrote and invited me to join the gang on a motorcycle ride up in Gyeonggi-do a week from Saturday! Can't wait! It's Korean Thanksgiving that weekend, so it might end up being a pleasant ride since the Koreans will mostly be at their ancestral homes eating fancy food. My experience riding with others is... well, I have no experience riding with others, so this'll be a new thing under the sun for me. Might get a good video out of it.

Armature

You can see here that I have made my first claymation armature! I followed what some guy did on YouTube, though I didn't have all the same stuff he had. I told the guy at the hardware store I needed wire to make a puppet. He just stared at me. I thought I had the wrong word for puppet, so I just repeated the Korean word for wire. He grunted and walked down the aisle and stuck his thumb out at the rolls of wire as he walked past them back to some crap he had apparently been sorting before I interrupted his day. I needed a vise, too, and lo! he had a nice little one just perfect for making armatures!
I have clay, but probably not enough for a claymation puppet. This weekend, I'll go look for more of the same type of clay.
Any ideas what I should make? I was thinking of a TVangelist so I can make fun of the christians and republicans. What about that convention, eh? Those republicans are just plain nuts, if you ask me. I guess people actually do buy into all that foolish nonsense after all.
My one class today went well, just another introductory class. Each of my classes only meets once a week, so I have to go through this intro crap six times. Next week we'll get into the lessons and some fun stuff.
I'm weighing options for the next academic year already. The semester will go quickly, as they always do, and I need a plan either to stay here or take another job up in Gyeonggi Province. This university doesn't seem to care whether we stay or not; they haven't thanked us for our service, offered incentives to stay or anything.

First Day

I went in to the university late in the morning to try to get ready for my first day of teaching in many weeks. The weather seemed unsettled, so I wore rain gear, but didn't really need it. My first class was at 3:00, and I had a little presentation as an introduction to the course, but it was made on OpenOffice, and the Microsoft Office on the classroom computer wouldn't open it. What a disaster! So I had to do it all from memory on the whiteboard... boring!
Between that class and the one at 6:00, I downloaded and installed OpenOffice in the classrooms I'll be using the rest of the week, plus we had a faculty meeting for just us English Conversation teachers. The university is hiring at least seven new teachers for next year, but they're really looking for people who are already in Korea. So in October they'll advertise, and in November they'll interview candidates.
I discovered that I missed the deadline for signing up for Fall classes at NAU. For some reason, I thought I had lots of time. I had agonized over and organized what I wanted to study, but all for naught, since I didn't read the webpage properly. Live and learn, though. Next time I will be a lot more on the ball.

A Kind of September

There's a nightclub in town called "Ho-bahk Nah-eet-uh". Ho-bahk means pumpkin, and "nah-eet-uh" is just the English word 'night' with a Korean twist. Anyway, they have a small fleet of these vehicles with the pumpkin on top, apparently just for advertisement. They'd be great at Halloween, but Koreans don't do Halloween unfortunately. Wonder if they rent them out... hmm.
Went to the university and picked up my class lists. They come with pictures already on them! Cool. Tomorrow I have two classes late in the afternoon and early evening. Never did get my syllabus translated into Korean, but I don't know anybody who can do that anyway. Not around here, that is. Eh, it's good practice for them to read English. Some of the teachers have such complex systems of grading and homework and what-not that they need to tell the kids in Korean what's what. My system is rather simple. I'm having them do homework online to save paper and hassle. Their weekly homework is just an email to me about a topic I assign, and they have to use the grammar and some of the new vocabulary of the week. They have until every Sunday to get me their week's homework. If it's late, they get a zero, but I will read it and comment on it all the same, for their edification... maybe. Depends on whether they're serious learners or not. Some of these kids could not care any less about learning to use English.
Rained most of the day. The humidity was oppressive even though it wasn't hot. My laundry is having a hard time drying on the rack.
Oh, have to make a jab: Focus on the Family, the radical religious group in the U.S., prayed for rain to ruin the Democratic Party convention last week, but it looks like God got all confused about whose convention to ruin. Too bad Louisiana has to suffer, though. Damned Republicans.