Alice is right!

Alice, my personal shoulder-angel, has oh-so-kindly nudged me in the direction of posting again. While there is too much to get you all exhaustively caught up on (Ummmmm...I went to Hong Kong to run a marathon, I took my kids to a Model United Nations Conference, I got my brown belt, I spent the weekend in Cheonan dodging snow and taking pictures of myself on circular matresses and among giant anthropomorphic bottles of soju...for starters), I will give you an offering:

New photos on Flickr! Yay!

I still have many more to upload (and when will someone gift me a paid account--ahem! mom and dad...just kidding!), but right now I am limited to 200 viewable photos at a time, so I figure they can wait. Until that day...Check out the crazy pictures from Hong Kong (floating trees, fat greedy pig-men, ferries, laser light shows, something is afoot at the Circle K...).

I've started a list of post-marathon goals, one of them is to update this blog TWO times a week! Wow! So...we'll see how that works out.

An anecdote, to get the ball rolling:

In Korea, the customary gifts to bring to a house-warming party are laundry detergent and toilet paper. This is not because detergent and TP are useful (though no one can deny that they are), but because Koreans love symbolism and puns. Laundry detergent represents wealth, because by giving someone a box of powdered Tide, you are wishing that their money multiply like so many bubbles in a washing machine. Toilet paper, on the other hand, is for mediating problems. The word for "unroll" (as in unroll a roll of toilet paper) is the same word, phonetically, as the word for "solve." So, my giving someone a roll of bathroom tissue, you are saying, "may all your problems be as easy to solve."

Also...last weekend in the hotel Diana and I stayed at in Incheon, there was a gigantic vending machine containing snacks, beer, condoms, underwear, and panty-hose. Oh, Korea!