Shazam!

Is this guy awesome or what!? He's the Siberian Santa Claus...and he will totally pwnzrr your sorry butt. Looks like a Jack Kirby-era Avengers villain, eh? No wonder them Russians is so durn tuff...

Korea hoooo

Off to Korea tomorrow! I'm all packed and ready go, and we are looking forward to the trip. Gonna see Jema, gonna eat meat...it's gonna be cool.

We'll be thinking of all of you, and as always, if our plane packs into the side of a mountain, we here in the LotRS love you all! KANBE!

On the way home tonite, I saw a barber shop with a sign declaring "This shop is safe". I can't imagine why one might be led to think otherwise.


On a brighter note...or at least less ominous, I've yet to permanently injure myself in almost two months of judo. Yay! It's a heck of a workout, and I've come to enjoy being hurled to the mat.

We're headed to Korea next week...kimchee farts and cheap beer ahoy!

OOUUUUCH!

Been along time...seems like a lot of my posts start that way....but heck, its been hot and I`ve been busy-ish.

Just got out of the dentist chair this evening.　Went in last week and he routed out about three of my teeth because they happened to be touching. I was supposed to get fillings or caps or whatever put in the gaping wound in my jaw today, but after twenty minutes of prying on what`s left of my molars, he decided that they had mis-cast one of the caps, and now I have to go back in two weeks to get the other. Yay. And you wonder why people hate the dentist.

Other than oral agony, ther has been a bit of news since July. First and foremost, the trip back to the States in August was wonderful. To everyone we saw, a true deep and heartfelt thanks goes out. K had a wonderful time meeting you and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing you again. I can report that the namesake of this blog is alive and well and quite a bit thinner than when last we met...lurking in the basement is doing wonders for him.

Speaking of that basement, an extra special thank you goes out to Uncle Richard for putting us all up and for putting up with all of us. Thank you thank you thank you.

We did have a blast though. K has taken to wine in a big way after hitting the wineries in Virginia, and is eager to go back to Tennessee, and to visit the donkey out in Alabama. Who`da thunk it...the girl who never owned a pair of shorts before this trip has taken to life in the rural south....a testament to the fine folks down there.

Back in the school groove here...not much is new on that front. The kids have been practicing relentlessly for the big sports day they had last weekend, so I`ve mostly just been watching them marching to ad fro. This week was my first kinda real week of actually teaching. I`m tired.

I`ve also taken up Judo. I have a Canadian friend here in the LotRS who just happens to be a martial arts enthusiast, has a 2nd degree black belt in judo, and has offered to show me the ropes, as it were. It is a heckuva workout, and fun on top of that...and very pragmatic. No high-kicking wannabe ninja type stuff...more like wrestling blended with a bit of tai-chi. Its all about balance, and falling down. Alot. That in fact was the entirety of my first lesson. If you can`t fall down correctly, you`re gonna get hurt, and if you get hurt on your first day, you`ll probably walk away from the sport (or limp away) with a bad taste in your mouth. I`ve gotten better at falling.

Other than that, I`ve managed to successfully stand up wakeboarding, and had my great white butt towed all over the bay. It was almost as fun as it was terrifying. Got me a nice case of swimmer`s itch in the process (google it, it rocks!). K and her father were extremely proud of me...I think I prefer judo, tho. We`ll see though. I`ve got judo on Saturday night, and then we`re headed out on the water Sunday afternoon.

I`m gonna leave it at that for tonite. Look for a report on the school sports festival here in a few days.

TYPHOOOOOOOOON!!!

I'm home alone and our first typhoon of the year is bearing down on us. K is off playing with her friends, and I'm eagerly awaiting the torrential rains and gale force winds that will whip the bamboo grove next door into a writhing screaming privet of doom!
Actually though, where we are, all we'll get is the rain. All weekend. All three day weekend. And yesterday. And Thursday. And Wednesday. Weather is awesome. K did laundry thursday morning. It ought to be dry by monday or so. Damp, I say.

What a day.

Not too terribly busy today, but I taught what has to be the worst class I will see this year. Its a group of 4th graders who are consistently off the freaking wall. Most of these kids were really good last year, but they seem to have been mixed together with the right combination of intelligence, rambunctiousness, and irreverence that a good teacher can harness and channel into a really crackerjack bunch...unfortunately the teacher they got has chosen to let her class run her, as opposed to running her own class. The result is absolute chaos...the wilder ones mill about the classroom actively ignoring any attempts to impart knowledge to them, they fight in the aisles...and that class also has one of the two socially retarded kids who wander in and out of the classroom screaming and kicking and crying and generally disrupting everything.
We were trying to play a game similar to musical chairs today, and so the kids were sitting in a circle, I was in the middle, explaining the rules, when one of the little bastards decided to "kancho" me, which means jamming his index finders into my rear end. The Kancho is great sport amongst the elementary school kids, boys especially...but is clearly out of bounds for perfoming on the teacher....except for these kids apparently. Their teacher did NOTHING, so I decided to mask my rage by playfully pretending to sit down on the little bastards lap. He squirmed, the chair collapsed, and we spilled into the floor. I felt like an ass for having lost my temper, but the little bastard was more subdued for the rest of the class, and the kids geehawed and did a good job with the game, so I guess I won a round. I guess.

Yup. Its hot.

The rainy season is in full effect here in the LotRS, meaning horrid humid muggy fatmans underpants weather until about the middle of July. We're enduring it as best we can, but the weather makes for difficult sleeping. We have AC in the living room, but the bedroom is au natural. After a week of waking up dripping wet at three in the morning, we got a fan. Problem solved, right? Wrong.
Fan Death!

Its a ridiculous korean superstition, or urban myth, or what have you.... but K adheres to it as well, as does her mother. Which means that I get my fan cut off at about 3 am....so I wake up sweating at about 5 instead. It is an improvement, but not so much as I'd hoped.

We're headed off to Kobe for the weekend with her mom and dad. I'm not especially thrilled, seeing as how Kobe is a Mecca for Japanese tourists because of it's international flavor...the same flavor that makes it a bit dull for international travelers. The food should be great though, and Daddy is picking up the tab...so I'm gonna make the best of it!

Happy Happy

Happy Father's day...yesterday. Hope you all had a good one. I know we did. Had a family intensive weekend again this weekend...saturday night was the old boys barbeque...heckuva good time. Sunday evening was dinner with K and her mom and dad, very pleasant, and her dad seemed to really enjoy having us there...as he does every time we go out there.
Seeing as how my evenings were a family affair, I decided to take a short junket out to the end of the train line to see just what the heck is out there. So, on saturday morning I packed up the bike and hopped the train to Kashikojima, a little town on the Ago Bay which boasts not much other than a couple of golf courses and luxury hotels. I got out and headed around the Pacific arm of the bay to a little(er) town called Gosa which is basically a semi-deserted fishing wharf and a very lovely beach.

I kinda panicked when I got to the wharf where I intended to catch a ferry back to Kashikojima ...it looked completely out of business. I stuck my head into a small restaurant (which also looked out of business) and found out that the boat was indeed coming and the restaurant was indeed still serving lunch, so I had lunch and waited around for the boat.

The boat came, the pilot checked to make sure I was actually a customer (seemed suprised) ...and directed me to the rooftop seats where I enjoyed a beautiful view of the bay on the trip back. The bay was lovely, riddled with little coves and islands...a regular pirate paradise.

So the weekend was good...today was ok, and tomorrow's gonna suck. Super busy at the least organized elementary school on my beat. Yay.

Making a trip back to the states in August though. If you are actually cool, you might just catch a glimpse...

In Memoriam

The family dog, Napoleon, passed away yesterday. We adopted him when he was about five years old, and he gave us 12 wonderful years. We mourn his passing, but celebrate his life and the experiences we shared. He was a good dog.

And the lovely bride.

Kinda hokey, I know, the whole cat thing...but I've really taken to the heavy black line art thing...very graphic, high contrast....