Owner: jane's daily blah URL:http://janesdailyblah.blogspot.com Join Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 07:30:18 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: The ramblings and photographs of a world traveling hermit. Current location: Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan Site statistics:Click here
A post to make Caitlin cringe 2007-07-29 07:40:00 Guess what I've been doing nearly all day? Here's a clue:That's me watching CSI Day 4 on OCN24 hours of CSI New YorkGwen and Songi partook of the CSI and the air conditioningThis meant Mia got to torture Songi a little.And then she got to sit looking cute! Gwen and I took a break from CSI to go to the hair salon.I got the back of my haircut trimmed,as it was in danger of growing out into a mullet.Look what Gwen had done:
Your advice please! Help! 2007-08-02 08:28:00 Well, while I'm still waiting on the results for whose photos will appear in JPG Magazine's Issue 12, they've already announced one of the themes for Issue 13: Passport. This is how they describe this theme:A passport is an invitation to see the world. Exotic destinations, new places, unique discoveries; travel photography is a way to bring the world home. For this theme we'd like to see photos that show us the destinations that you find most exciting in the world. Where is that special place that you can't stop talking about?Now, we all know that travel photography is what I live for... but how can I choose just one photograph?! Please leave me your comment and tell me which one is your choice! (Also, if you wish to see a larger version of any of the pictures, just click on them! To view all of these photos large-size in a slide show, click here.)#1 Monastery in Suzdal#2 Sergiev Posad Trinity Monastery#3 Sergiev Posad Trinity Monastery, a closer look#4 A motorcyclist on Lake Baik
Happy Jason vs. Angry Jason 2007-08-02 07:06:00 Jason, who is now in second grade, is one of my cutest students. He totally likes to ham it up, and every now and then he does something so cute that I have to run for my camera. Like today:Happy
JasonAngry JasonAnimated Jason Read more:Jason
To Pohang and Back 2007-08-05 00:44:00 Yesterday Rob and I went to Pohang, for the purpose of attending the final weekend of the Pohang International Fireworks Festival. We decided to leave fairly early, in order to see the sights of Pohang.We took the train there. (The train to Pohang passes through the fields I explored the other day!) In front of us was seated a girl of about six. She seemed to take great pleasure in turning around and staring at us. At one point she even stared at us while growling. It was a little weird, and quite amusing. I was pretty well convinced that this little kid did not like foreigners, when she turned around and offered us candy. We each received a butterscotch and a ginseng candy. Now, I am actually a fan of this ginseng hard candy, although the taste is rather bizarre. I sucked on it for a good ten minutes or so and then crunched up the rest and said audibly and with great pleasure, "Ahh, ginseng" - and then somehow in the next breath, I managed to inhale a chunk. Whoops. So there I was, th
Happy Anniversary! (And some Siberia stuff) 2007-08-03 09:56:00 I have been in Korea for a full year now! I can hardly believe it - time has flown! It seems like just the other day I was in Russia... and now I have been here for a full year. Wow.Speaking of Russia, owing to the popularity of my Siberia
photo (er, see the previous post if you're confused), I've decided to submit a Siberia photo collection and essay to the Passport theme at JPG Magazine. Sadly, you can only submit 10 photos, so I decided to limit my photo-essay to Lake Baikal and Olkhon Island. Please check it out - and don't forget to VOTE! (Remember, you must be registered/signed-in for your vote to count, but registration is free and easy.)I would still like to submit a single photo to the Passport theme as well. I'm not sure if I should submit one of the Siberia photo-essay photos, or if I should submit something different. Please let me know what you think - your advice will most definitely be appreciated! Read more:Happy
, Anniversary
, stuff
, Happy Anniversary
Do you want to teach in South Korea? Job opening in Daegu! 2007-08-07 06:57:00 If you or anyone you know is interested in doing exactly what I've been doing for the past year, please let me know! Even though my replacement is flying in later this month, my school is looking to hire another native English speaking teacher for September or October. You must have a college degree and a passport. Experienced teachers are preferred although not required. The job is five days a week (no weekend classes!), and pays $2000/mo, plus you're provided with a free apartment, round-trip airfare, and a $2000 contract completion bonus at the end of your contract. Let me know if you're interested! Read more:South
, Korea
, South Korea
By popular opinion..... 2007-08-06 07:11:00 Motorcyclist on Lake Baikal has been submitted to JPG!While I do certainly prefer flickr to JPG as far as a photo site goes, what makes JPG fantastic is that selected photos get published in JPG Magazine - and if your photo gets published, you get $100. Woohoo. That's why I'm always encouraging you cats to vote for my photos :-) Also, JPG doesn't automatically publish the photos with the most votes, but the staff do review the ones with the most votes and favorites first, so they have a better chance of being reviewed (and selected!). So, that being said, pretty please click here and vote for my photo. You have to be registered and logged in for your vote to count, but it's free :-) Thank you, thank you! Read more:popular
, opinion
It's official - I'm coming home! 2007-08-10 10:26:00 I now have a plane ticket home to the US - Mia and I will be flying into Jacksonville at 5:30pm on September 6th! Northwest's weight limit for carry-on pets is 15lbs for pet and carrier combined; Miss Lard Butt Mia is hovering just under the limit. I've decided to curb her food intake a little (no more endlessly refilling food bowl... at least not until September 7th), and have borrowed Gwen's scale in order to keep tabs on her weight:Mia, curled up on the scale.
Leper! 2007-08-09 06:14:00 The small print reads:We suggest the premium goods cam mini kid. Fake tattoos are in these days. I kinda want this one. On an entirely different note, this week on BlogSupergroup, we're talking about casting (or re-casting) books you love to turn them into the movie of your dreams. Read about it here!
You know you've been in Korea too long when... 2007-08-14 06:12:00 My friend Melissa accompanied me on my very first trip to South Korea
back in 2001. Here's an excerpt from an email I received from her the other day:I just copied you on an e-mail that I sent to my nephew, Joseph. He is going to Korea August 10 - 23. He has only traveled in Mexico before, so I am a little worried about him since Korea is so different. I don't have the details, but I assume that he is going with a church group. If he contacts you and is lost and hungry on the street, will you please invite him to your house and give him some food and help him find his way back home? I'm mostly kidding of course, I assume that he will be just fine. But you know, he's still a baby to me, so just in case. My first thought was, What does she mean by "Korea is so different"? Korea isn't different. That thought was followed by I've definitely been here too long!
Hahoe Folk Village 2007-08-12 05:11:00 Rob and I went to Andong yesterday, with the goal of visiting the Hahoe Folk Village
. I took an enormous amount of photographs. I’ve only posted a handful here; to see the rest, please check out this set on flickr.Anyhoo, the day got off to a slightly rocky start. For one thing, I awoke at exactly the point in time when I’d planned to be leaving my house. Whoops. After scurrying around like a madwoman, I managed to meet up with Rob and head off for the bus station. When I asked to purchase two tickets to Andong, the woman at the counter asked if I wanted to leave “now” – I assumed that was a bit of language barrier thing and that by “now” she meant the next bus. Turned out that she really did mean NOW, as the bus we purchased tickets for was leaving RIGHT THEN. This meant we got to race out into the parking lot, chase down the bus and beat on its door as it was pulling away. But we made it – whew!An hour and a half or so later, we arrived in Andong. It was a gorgeous da
Conversation with a taxi driver 2007-08-11 13:31:00 Rob and I went to Andong today. It was quite a lot of fun - although the unbearably hot temperatures did me in yet again. I swear I am allergic to heat. Anyhow, I took nearly 300 photos, approximately 75 or so I'd like to put online... and that's not happening today. Instead I'll share with you what happened when I got back to Daegu. When we arrived at the bus station, I was feeling pretty sick. I had slept the entire way back from Andong (about an hour and a half), although that did nothing to alleviate the killer headache I had developed (thank you, sun). And I'd managed to awaken feeling rather carsick too. Lovely combination, topped off by bed-head-hair and sleep induced lethargy. I hailed a taxi, and had the following conversation with the driver (in Korean - which apparently I can speak and understand much better when I'm feeling too ill to actually think about it):Driver: You are very beautiful. Where are you from? Russia?Me: No, America. And thank you. (Meanwhile, I'm pre Read more:taxi driver
, Conversation
Mia pics and a Magic Bird 2007-08-15 10:58:00 Mia spent a lot of today in my wardrobe......and the rest she spent in her bag.She really likes her cat-bag :-)All the weight is in its head/beak area,enabling it to balance like this. Read more:Magic
English Summer Camp 2007-08-20 08:10:00 This weekend I agreed to attend the summer camp put on by the chain of schools which I work for. Ten kids came from my school, and a couple hundred came from Oedaes across Korea.These two are Henny and Harry from my school,in the van on the way to camp.At the camp, each foreign teacher (native English
speaker like myself) was assigned a group of 10 prebubescent kids to be in charge of 24/7. Thankfully, I wasn't assigned a group of boys. Luckily, nine of my ten girls were awesome: smart, funny, nice and super laid-back. Unfortunately, girl number 10 was psycho. As in that kid is going to end up locked up in a mental ward at some point in her future. For most of the first day she wasn't a problem - she made friends, fit in, seemed to be having fun... Then about an hour and a half after we all went to bed, I was awakened by another one of the girls, who told me that Anna was very sick. She seemed to be genuinely and very seriously ill: thrashing around on the floor, holding her head, cr Read more:Summer
Diana and the Princess have arrived! 2007-08-23 09:53:00 Diana, who will be taking over all my classes very, very soon arrived last night, with Princess
, her gorgeous fluffy cat in tow. I don't have any photos of Diana yet, although I have definitely snagged a few of Princess. She has settled in quite well, and seems perfectly (purrfectly?) at home. Meanwhile, Mia has to be locked in the living room in order to keep from killing Princess. I'm starting to feel a bit worried about how Mia is going to react to the five or so cats who live in my house in Waycross! Meanwhile, Gwen's Yorkie, Songi, needs to be prepping for Mia's imminent arrival; we'll be moving into Gwen's place on Saturday! Read more:Diana
Seriously, what is this?? 2007-08-21 23:26:00 A while back when Rob and I went to the Hahoe Folk Village in Andong, I wrote about a mysterious and rather disgusting object I found floating in my soup. Well, Rob has *finally* posted his photos (they're here), including the one he took of this mysterious object in my soup. I've stolen it and am posting it here. Any ideas as to what it might have been? Read more:Seriously
Fan Death warnings and other recent photos 2007-08-28 10:34:00 Gwen and I assembled a fan the other day. The assembly instructions also included a bunch of amusing warnings
, like this one about preventing fan death. What is fan death you ask? Well, wikipedia has an excellent article on this absurd belief, which you should definitely click here to read. Wikipedia describes fan death as an urban legend, yet Korean fan producers include warnings about fan death in the fan's packaging! I must say that if this were real, I'd have died years ago!Watch out for Evil Fan Death!Gwen's apartment has a great view!If you zoom in, you can seethat train station that I found the other day.More view from Gwen'sReally yummy Chinese food from the other day,complete with carved radish flower!Mia, atop Gwen's wardrobe, watches Songi warily!My student Tammy wore an absurd Konglish shirt today.Because no case is too sitiy or very winnobiefor Snoopy the Ahorncy! Read more:photos
Summer Vacations! 2007-08-28 02:20:00 I know I've been a slacker and haven't been linking you guys to BlogSupergroup topics regularly of late - sorry about that; I've been incredibly busy - but in order to get back into the swing of things.... This week's topic over at BlogSupergroup is SummerVacations
- click here to check it out!
The past few days... 2007-08-27 00:01:00 Blogging might be rather sporadic until I get back to the US and get my internet connection hooked up - and I'm not even flying home for 10 days! Saturday I moved all of my things out of what is now Diana's apartment and Mia and I moved in with Gwen and Samson. Gwen does have internet access... although she doesn't have AC and her computer is in the hottest room in the house. I'll try to keep posting if and when I do anything of note, but I just wanted to let you know that things will probably be rather sporadic until mid-September or so.
Not Typical! 2007-08-30 10:05:00 I heard a story from Diana about one of my old classes today which had me giggling hysterically: Billy - a second grader - interrupted Diana today in class. Apparently, Diana's teaching method is different from mine - which is fine, although somewhat confusing to the little ones. Billy interrupted her today to say: Teacher! This is not typical! In other news, I was closing a classroom window today, and saw this spray-painted in the street:At first I thought it was a lewd drawing. Then I remembered that when there are traffic accidents, what happened and where is often painted in the street in order to allow traffic to move again. Upon closer inspection, I determined that it was not a lewd drawing, but an image of a person having been knocked off a bicycle. There was also a square sketched out, denoting a car! Splat.And lastly, here's a photo with one of my former students,in which we both look somewhat insane.
Cute Korean Kids 2007-08-29 08:31:00 Even though Friday was essentially my last day of teaching, I've been at school every day so far this week, helping Diana adjust into her new role as Diana-Teacher. Today (and again tomorrow) I administered the monthly tests for the month of August, making today and tomorrow my last days teaching here at Oedae! I was able to snag a bunch of cute photos of my kids before I left for good, so enjoy!Me, with Jason and DragonThe boys in this class are always like this!Meanwhile, the girls of the class are all well-behaved.All together now!Most of the older kids didn't want their photos taken....Except for Sarah!Yulia, Melissa and Leah: some of my middle schoolersBen, Tom and Scott: middle school boys acting cool Read more:Korean
Happy Chuseok, Korea; Happy Birthday, Me 2007-09-25 16:25:00 Well.... today is my birthday and I am now twenty-nine years old. And my lovely computer chose this afternoon to stop working yet again. So it's at the shop and I'm back over at my mom's using the dial up - boo! Anyway, I'll try to have a decent birthday blog up once I get my laptop back later this week.... sigh. Read more:Happy
, Korea
, Birthday
, Happy Birthday
Weird? Yes. Quality? No. 2007-09-24 20:28:00 I just skimmed Weird
Georgia by Jim Miles, and am not left with much of a desire to examine the book any closer. I was hoping for somewhat of a guidebook (a la Lonely Planet), but with a focus on the more bizarre things which can be found in my newly adopted state. While I did realize that this book would have sections on ghosts and aliens, I hoped they would take a back seat to factual descriptions of weird places and attractions. Additionally, take a look at the back cover - there's one sentence there in particular which made this book irresistable to me:Can you guess which one? :-) Sadly, the book has been quite a disappointment. I could probably put a lot of time and thought into explaining why, but the book really isn't worth expending the energy. I'm tempted to try again with a completely different Weird Georgia, but I'd rather not waste my money. As my mom pointed out, I'll probably do a better job of documenting the weirdness of Georgia right here on my blog. Why read abou Read more:Quality
Empowering Tools 2007-09-23 21:05:00 See that door chain behind me? Installed by yours truly :-) Read more:Tools
Highly recommended readings!! 2007-09-22 20:40:00 I first discovered Eliot Pattison when I was living in Vladimir, Russia. The school where I taught had a very large library of English language books of all varieties, and I utilized it a lot. There was a book entitled The Skull Mantra which stared at me for months from the shelves before I so much as bothered to read the back cover. I know you should never judge a book by its cover (or title), but I simply didn’t think that a book with such a name would be worth much. It was after I had worked my way through nearly all of the cheesy mysteries owned by the American Home and found myself running out of options for mindless entertainment that I finally picked it up – and I’m most definitely glad I did. Here’s a reprint of the short review I wrote of The Skull Mantra at the time:For those of you who enjoy reading mysteries and/or for those of you who are interested in Tibet, I have a book recommendation for you. As you may or may not know, I've been slowly working my way through Read more:Highly recommended
Oh, the cuteness! 2007-09-22 18:18:00 Silver the KittenSilver the KittenHarry Orange KittyBlix, the ever hapless beastIsn't this thing cool? My mom got it for me, and I love it.Now I need 3 more quality vertical shots.(All my personal faves seem to be horizontal!)
On being a foreigner in my own neighborhood 2007-09-21 22:04:00 As someone who does a lot of traveling overseas, I have become accostomed to finiding myself in situations where I cannot understand 100% of what is being said around me. Depending on where I am and the context in which I find myself, sometimes I understand most, but not all, while many other time I understand fifty percent or less. When you live like that for extended periods, you find yourself developing coping mechanisms. [read the full post at BlogSupergroup]
Tramping through the brush 2007-09-21 19:54:00 So it seems that my mom is purchasing eight acres of land just outside Waycross. The closing is in about a week. The property is eight acres out of an original 40 acre tract, mainly planted in three year old timber pines. In between the pines lives an assortment of blackberry and other brambly, briary, thorny plants - it's not exactly the best for easy strolling at this point in time. Nonetheless, as the property lines have only just been surveyed, mom wanted to go out and see the actual borders of the land she's purchasing. Additionally, as we've had quite a rainy week, we wanted to see how the land holds up under rain. We knew from looking at the plat that a small area of the back portion of the land is wetland, but we didn't know *how* wet, or how far it extended into the the rest of the property. Luckily, the wetland is quite unimpressive and only covers a tiny portion of the rear of the land. But speaking of wetlands... We arrived and had to park out by the highway and walk in
Blanket the Dawn 2007-09-20 11:06:00 I spent seven months in Russia during my Junior year of college, back in 2000. One morning in early April I awoke after having a particularly intense dream. I immediately sat down and wrote the dream out in story form, then, for some reason, I folded my tale up, stuffed the pages into an envelope, and mailed them off to my mom. Over the years I had completely forgotten what the story was about, and all I remembered of it was the ending - and the fact that I'd sent away my only copy. Yesterday, as I was unpacking a box full of items of mine which had been at my mom's house, I stumbled upon my story! It was eerie reading it, as I knew the last few sentences, but could recall nothing more of the tale - yet there it was, penned in my handwriting from seven and a half years ago. I decided to type it up so that I could share it with you. I'm sure that at the time I felt I was being quite clever, incorporating Russian words into the names of people and places, although looking back, perhap Read more:Blanket
All sorts of various updates! 2007-09-19 14:41:00 First: I've been slacking lately with regards to BlogSupergroup (what with my continent hopping and all), but now that I'm settling in to my new life in Georgia, it's time for me to get back on the ball. This week's topic over at BlogSupergroup is language, the English language and variations of English dialects - click here to check it out!Second: There are only two weeks left to vote on my photo over at JPG Magazine. I'd truly appreciate your vote! (Remember, you must register for your vote to count, but registration is free and easy.) Just click on the photograph below then submit your vote, if you haven't all ready.Third: I currently have two new products for sale over at my lulu.com store - a PhotoBook, Photographs from Korea, and a 2008 calendar, Images of South Korea. Click here to check them out if you're interested :-)Fourth: I'm in the process of redesigning janekeeler.com. It's almost finished, although not all of the photographs have been integrated with flickr yet Read more:updates
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