Korean Kids Really ARE More Innocent

I've been reading Walk Two Moons with my 6th grade reading class and today our discussion included the revelation of a character's mother having had a child before marriage whom she gave up. My students were VERY puzzled and kept asking in different ways trying to confirm that she in fact had not been married and yet had had a child. Finally, in Korean, one of the kids opined that it was a miracle. The book has a number of unusual plot twists, so apparently, a virgin birth required no more suspension of disbelief than, say, the main character's mother dying in a wreck (which had also been revealed in the portion we discussed today). Fortunately, the virgin birth scenario seemed no less plausible to them than the rest of the story and I was able to put away my jazz hands. :-)

A Happy Foreigner in Korea

God Bless America! :-)

To Be a Cat Lady or Not To Be a Cat Lady

A couple of years ago, I discovered a baby yarn that looks like terry cloth. Of course, not in Korea, just online. Since it was not locally available, naturally, I lusted after that yarn in an unnatural way. The only thing that stopped me from ordering a sweater's worth (as in, adult sweater, for me) was that it was only available in hideous baby pastels.

Then, last weekend, at Dongdaemun, I saw something even better. What could be better than terry cloth yarn, you ask? Mink blanket yarn! It looks like gigantic pipe cleaner yarn, but feels like a mink blanket. And! It was available in a purple/ lavender/ white variegated colorway. I snapped up a sweater's worth without even asking the price (so, undoubtedly got the foreigner/ rube "special"). Well, it IS NaNoSweMo, right? Right. and if it's knit on 10mm needles, I can get it done in a month. Or a weekend. Whichever.

I will not take a photo, because it is a sweater which screams, "THIS IS WORN BY A DIVORCED CAT LADY!" I will say that it is an over-sized cardi and it took me about 10 hours to knit. My kind of sweater.

In addition to my sweater success (I thought I would run out of yarn, but I finished with about 1/2 a row's worth left over), my weekend was full of surprises. One of which was unexpectedly having a favor for a friend turn into 350K with a promise of future paydays. :-) A little something to offset the won's swan dive. I also used Korean today and... actually had a conversation. About politics. Okay,the guy obviously was experienced with foreigner Korean, but still...

AND I put off the church lady that has decided to be my friend, at least for another week...

I'm Ready to Have Something on the Needles

I haven't had anything on the needles in a few weeks, since I finished this:

Like the error right there in the middle? It's my nod to the Amish. ;-) I know you are also in awe of my ghetto lace blocking style. It works, though. This scarf was super-easy. It's just two repeats of the tilting blocks stitch pattern. I did around 30 repeats. The yarn is Filatura di Crossa, I can't remember the colorway, but it's a nice autumnal blend of rusts and olive-y greens. It's for my mom, as soon as I get it in the mail...
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We had another contest on the SeoulPodcast, and here was the grand prize:

Not one, but two earpickers, an Englice dictionary, a "V-line" face massager, Korean stickers, some socks with gambling card images on them, and some random Korean candies.

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We had Halloween at work this week. I forgot to take my camera one day, but here are a few kids from Wednesday.

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I went to Yuldong Park to check out the foliage this past weekend. It was definitely not a date. :-( It was fun, anyway.

If you look closely, you can see that the bungee jump faces a huge church (above and slightly to the left of my head).

Don't know what it is? Me, either.

Even the port-a-potties are nice. :-)