otoh

“Why the Hell am I Going to South Korea Anyway?” or “More Than You Care to Know”

So, I realized that almost no one in this space has any idea why (other than the adventure of it) I’m planning a trip to South Korea….

A couple years ago one of my nephews got a Fulbright Scholarship and went to South Korea. He went through a few weeks of training in the language and customs and then was sent to Jeju (sometimes written as Cheju), an island southwest of the Korean peninsula. He lived with a local family and taught English in a middle school.

He liked it. A lot. So when his year was up and he returned stateside he began looking for opportunities to go back. He ended up writing a grant that allowed him to go to Seoul and study at the University there. My trip in June will be during his break between spring and summer classes.
I didn’t go when he was there before and it seems that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity has presented itself a second time. I get to travel to a faraway, exotic place where there is someone I know well that is already established who can act as travel guide and translator. I’m not the brightest crayon in the drawer, but this is just too good to pass up.

MCO - ORD = 1005
ORD - NRT = 6274
NRT - ICN = 787

Those are the hops from Orlando, Florida to Seoul, South Korea (via Chicago and Tokyo), 8066 miles. I bought my ticket today and I’m going in June. Do I really want to spend all day and night (literally about 25 hours from the first take-off to the last landing, plus [or minus] a 13 hour time difference) traveling in a big metal tube? Well… no, but HELL YEAH! That’s half way [sort of] around this big rock.

Oh, I’ll be having adventures….

Go here and read Heather Anne. I got nothin’ that comes close to this good.

When the house of cards crumbles do you feel sorry that it’s gone or relief that you no longer have to maintain the facade?

Do you ever think that at any moment someone will burst in on you at work (or at home, but usually at work) and reveal that you are a fraud and a total incompetent? Then they drag you off in a public display of shame for your inadequacy? How dare you take money knowing you couldn’t do the work?

Nah, me neither. Because that would be just silly. Or insane….

Usually posting these quotes is a relatively easy process — I just copy and paste the format from the last time and copy and paste the new group of quotes from the script that puts them in the header. But I discovered that the conversion to Wordpress reorganized all my archived posts. They’re all still there, but you wouldn’t find them with the old links. So [I know you want to know this] I went through and updated the links in all the previous installments of this series. You’re welcome. [smirk]

What I really should say is what I mean. I take a breath and continue before the air changes over what I said. ~ anonymousgrrl

People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering. ~ St. Augustine

Will I still respect you in the morning? Who says I respect you now?

A cheerful attitude may not solve all of your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! ~ Henry David Thoreau

I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you’re an idiot. ~ Steve Martin

At first you feel that you may die, then you worry that you won’t.

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same. ~ Audrey Hepburn

Life is just blog fodder. ~ Elle of True Blue 4ever

It doesn’t take strength to let go, it only takes understanding.

Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens. ~ Malcolm Cowley

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. ~ Confucious

All science is either physics or stamp collecting. ~ Ernest Rutherford

There are no degrees of uniqueness. ~ William Shawn

People forget years and remember moments. ~ Ann Beattie

The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn. ~ David Russell

The difference between plutonium and me = plutonium has a half-life more than I do. ~me

I get a different answer at midnight than I do at noon. ~ Sherwood Smith

You looked hotter on MySpace.

The previous parts of this series are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. (If you’re keeping track, there are 259 quotes in rotation now.) Two of the quotes in this group are from other blogs that I read. You can find them in the list over there —–>

You’ll think I’m making this up…. Part of our faculty meeting yesterday went something like this:

Beginning in the fall of 2007 there is a new graduation requirement for health and physical education. The new course is called HOPE. We will have to offer HOPE to ninth graders beginning next year. Current students will continue under the old requirements so we will not offer HOPE to them. The curriculum is still in draft form so we don’t know for certain what HOPE includes. It won’t be ready in time to offer HOPE in summer school (when many students opt to take the current health and P.E. requirements).

So there will be HOPE for ninth graders in the fall even though we don’t know what that means, there will be no HOPE for current students at all, and there won’t be any HOPE for summer school until next year.

Yes, there really is such a course requirement (Health Opportunities through Physical Education). And the administrator that was speaking intended to make light of the situation. That’s just as well, since we have too many disgruntled people around there right now. But that’s another story.

Is it just me, or has there been way more comment spam than usual the last couple days?

Anyway, I got nothin’… so I’ll offer you this:

I’m told that it was on 15 January 1831 that Victor Hugo finished his novel Notre-Dame de Paris, known to us as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. That reminds me of a story…

Quasimodo was planning to retire and began interviewing for a replacement bell-ringer. [Yeah, I know. Just go with it.] So one of the candidates was shown up to the bell tower. “Pull on this rope,” he was told, “and put all your weight into it. You’ll hear the bells ‘DING’ but don’t look up until you hear the bells ‘DONG’.”

So he pulls on the rope, putting all his weight into it. He hears the bells ‘DING’ and then looks up only to find that the bells were swinging straight back at him. He was hit in the face and knocked out of the bell tower to the ground. Dead.

Just then two men walked by. The first pointed to the body of the unfortunate former hopeful bell-ringer and said, “Do you know him?”

“I’m not sure,” replied the second, “but his face sure rings a bell.”

As if that weren’t bad enough [as it certainly should be, but it's not]…

The next day the dead man’s brother applies for the bell-ringer’s job. He’s taken up to the bell tower and given the instructions about pulling on the rope, hearing the ‘DING’ but waiting for the ‘DONG’ before looking up. But, like his brother, he pulls on the rope and looks up after the ‘DING’ only to be hit in the face and knocked out of the tower to his death.

Wouldn’t you know, the same two guys were walking by again and the first says, “Do you know him?”

To which the second replies, “I’m not sure, but he’s a dead ringer for the guy we saw yesterday.”

Last week a colleague sent out a link to a page of “Internet Lingo Every Parent Needs to Know“. Far down the list (it didn’t make the Top 20) is

WTH=What The Heck.

WTH? Really? WTF? Are our kids (or anyone, for that matter) really using WTH? OMFG [which didn't make the list BTW] that sounds so lame. Maybe maybe if PAW and the kids have some hope of KPC they might use WTH instead of WTF. But you know someone is going to slip up and type WTF anyway. Then they’ll try to pass it off as just a typo since, you know, the F and H keys are like almost right next to each other and all (while muttering OSIF).

But WTF isn’t even on the list LOL. I guess the parents are either SITD or NALOPK what WTH means while everyone knows WTF.

SWDYT?

I stole this somewhere on-line and need to practice posting a photo.

Everyone make up your own joke….

There’s a certain well-publicized “feud” between two very well-known people. I’m not naming any names. That would only encourage them. (And I’m cynical enough to consider that this whole debacle may only be a publicity stunt in the first place.) They call each other names. (Very mature!) Wah-wah-wah. Babies. I’ve heard it described as “hilarious.”

It’s not funny to me. It’s not entertaining to me. It’s embarrassing. We elevate these people to celebrity status and give them a public platform and this is how they use it? Shame on them. But I can’t entirely blame them when they get so much media coverage when they do act this way. Shame on us. If I wanted to hear people argue and call each other names, I’d go home to my family….