The bees' knees (or is it bee's knees?)

Yesterday I was kidnapped by a Korean family and taken on a sightseeing tour. Sighting of the day:

A man standing on six (six!) crates stacked on top of each other (tottering like the Leaning Tower of Pisa) wrangling with a swarm of bees in a tree (and swarms of concerned people down below). I wish I could have stayed to watch that one unfold...

The blooming flowers (with newlyweds stopping to take their pictures every 25 meters or so) and meandering river were nice, too.

The cheese stands alone

There's nothing better than receiving a care package...except receiving a care package that contains cheese! This wondrous event happened to me this week, and I have an update:

The cheese is good! The cheese is good!

Tillamook Cheddar: delicious

Smokey Gouda: decadent

Colby and Cabot Tomato Basil Cheddar: still chilling in the freezer, but I have high hopes

So, thank you Paul for sending it (expertly wrapped in foil). Now I just have to plan out my consumption...

Thanks for trying...

Every single time I had a math test in high school I secretly hoped that I would walk into class and the teacher would say, "Surprise! No test today! I just wanted you to study and learn the material, and I knew telling you we had a test was the only way to ensure that you did."

Did it ever happen? I'll give you a hint...NO! (To set the record straight, my junior year finals were cancelled for a day due to a snow storm, but that one we can chalk up to divine intervention and not teacher generosity.)

But never, ever ever, would I have had the nerve to do what one of my students did yesterday. She walked into my classroom right after lunch, with a grin like she had just snuck into a second movie after the one she paid for finished, and said,

"I have bad news. You aren't going to like it, but you can't do anything about it. Well, you will just have to accept it, but..."

I was going for mock shock, but I think I accidentally a heard of elephants from my eyes to trample her instead.

"It's about the math test. None of us are ready, and we don't want to take the test."

This is the point where I asked her where she was going to be seventh period. In math class? Well, yes. Problem solved.

Also, a different student returned a book that I leant to her, First They Killed My Father. She clandestinely left it on my desk with this post-it note:

Thank you for the book! I really x 1000000 enjoyed it. P.S. Sorry for making it Dirty.

Many of you have heard me talk about the poor morale that surrounded me during the summer I spent at NASA's Glenn Research Center, but this incident makes all the complaints and grumbles pale in comparison:

"Police said Saturday that a bad performance review may have led a NASA contractor to fatally shoot his supervisor and take another employee hostage before killing himself."

Am I allowed to say that I am glad I am not working for NASA anymore?

This is why I don't get up early...

I was on track to be significantly early to work. I really was! But then I spilled my cereal all over the floor.

The moral?

Early bird doesn't get the worm; or does, but then watches it splatter on the linoleum in a shower of browning milk, soggy chocolate flakes, and battered banana slices.

So it all evens out in the end...

Today, my life unfolded in run-on sentences:

After learning how to fend off attackers via pressure points in hapkido (you know, the usual knuckle jab to the ribs and chin thrust to the collarbone, a twist of an arm or tweak of the neck here and there), one of my classmates gave me a piece of gum that tasted like my grandmother's bathroom: lavender and frost blue soap seahorses and clam shells, rosebuds swimming in a potpourri pool.

I spent my evening at the happening intercity bus terminal (a hub of culture and transportation), debating to travel or not to travel over pizza, burpalo (buffalo) wings, and sealed-for-freshness sweet pickles.

Urban Nature

Here's an article from Grist about the Olympic Sculpture Park which just opened in Seattle. My family and I had a chance to walk through while I was visiting over spring break. We, being a family of cynics, laughed at the park's artificial natural habitats, but this article puts it into perspective, and reminds us that so many city dwellers (even in the Emerald City) never touch the world outside the urban.

Astronaut completes her own Boston Marathon

And without the undulating terrain OR the gravity!

(Or the nor'easter.)

Got to break a few eggs...

Ok, so continuing in the trend of more traditional news-blogging (and skimping on the personal stuff), here's an article about letting corn-to-ethanol fuel plants release a tad-bit more pollution, as long as their net contribution is still in the green.


U.S. gov't eases pollution rules at ethanol plants

I'm having a my physics kids do an energy and resource assessment of our scool. We found out that about one-fourth of the food our cafeteria buys gets wasted. At least in Korea it all gets magically whisked away and becomes pig-feed.

Happy Boston Marathon!

IT'S MARATHON DAY! Awwww, I'm sad to be away from Boston for my favorite day of the year.

To honor the event, I did get to watch a great Korean movie called "Marathon." It's about an autistic man who trains for, you guessed it, a marathon. It was very heartwarming and funny.

More censorship...

I was talking with K.T. (future librarian and one of my all-time favorite people) about an article linked from the Bookslut Blog about the censorship of the novel Kaffir Boy. K.T. said that the author, Mark Mathabane, lived in Portland and worked for Catlin Gablin (my high school's rival)! Why do they get all the cool literary connections?

Earth Day...what to do?

Any ideas on what I should do to celebrate Earth Day (April 22) at my school?

I have approximately 0.5 hours to prepare for it, and no budget. Suggestions? My students are chronically environmentally ambivalent.

National Poetry Month makes everything better...

I had quite the epic weekend, but before I write about that, it's National Poetry Month! Here is a link to one of the best poems I have read recently:

Eavan Boland, 'Atlantis--A Lost Sonnet'

Enjoy!

Updates on the cities versus suburbs debate from Cambridge, MA:

Cities are the Answer

"The old paradigm of the pollution-filled city as a blight on the landscape and the leafy-green suburbs as the ideal is outdated and does not lead us to a future of energy independence, clean air and a stable climate. Cities are the best hope to realize our need for a bright, sustainable, and promising future."

Springtime = Shearing

In Korea, springtime is the season of shearing. Sharing, you mean? No, shearing.

Coming back from a week in the states, I barely recognized my students and co-workers because everywhere I looked I saw new hairdos. Bobs, crews, mullets, you name it. (Anything goes here.) Even the forlorn spaniel that lives in a blue plastic dog-house in the gas-station adjacent to the school was shaved.

I went for a run around the nearby man-made lake (the one around which once, during the winter, I ran 25 times in the dark). The limbs of the trees lining the pavement were lopped, like hands reaching towards the sky with fingers severed at the first knuckle.

Pruning is a drastic and vicious art here; in the spring the plants have their tops and middle removed. I never caught the act in progress, I am only witness to the amputated trees and shrubs.

The weather is beautiful now, though.

Short but sweet

Last night I saw a shirt (pink, long-sleeved, with a collar) that said:

Hysteric Gender

Modern Vintage

Again...

Oh, Korea...