Visitors from Another Land

Just a short while ago in Korea, I had the pleasure of eating Korean BBQ with our friends from Sweden and China. As is typical of a visit to Korea, we showed folks how to roll up pork and beef in lettuce, pick-up kim chi with chopsticks, and drink soju.

Usually, the first indicator that you've gone too far on the soju is pictures with people's heads cut off.

Drinking should end there.

But if you let other people take pictures from then on out, maybe it's okay.

What else are best friends supposed to do?*

*This is the end of cutesy posts. Tomorrow it's all about pain and terror.

Jeju Island, Part Trois!

After climbing the volcano, we sat back for a moment.

On the way down from the volcano.

On the way up.

Jeju Island, Part Deux!

I've been so busy with the move back to California that I haven't been able to put up photos in the last couple weeks. That's why we have a whole slew below. We'll start with the Jeju Island photos and then progress to others.

Here is the family playing a game of horseshoes meets arrows and a bucket. Sogee won, sending her father and brother to drink copious amounts of alcohol. I stayed out of the escapade. I could sense doom. She had a certain swagger about her.

While we were in Jeju Island, we stopped by a folk village. It had wax dummies in traditional huts.

It also had crazy bugs I've never seen. Apparently, there are several species of animals, insects, and plants that are found on the island and nowhere else.

The alien above reminded me of FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR. Remember that movie?

We also stopped by a waterfall that my in-laws went to on their honeymoon.

The prime spot to take a photo was a major clamoring pool of tourists. I thought that was more interesting than any photo of a couple, but there was an insisting father-in-law who got a shot of us before we were pushed out of the way by an older couple who had been waiting too long to wait another minute.

More photos in the next posting...

Loren Goodman's Top 500 Songs: 111-120

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Long Beach, CA

Budget Queen

Utah

We are here in Long Beach! Everything is set. Well, it took some adjusting. When we first arrived, the apartment I had rented from Korea was in a dangerous neighborhood. After we asked some police officers about safety, and they warned against talking on cell phones because children might snatch them from our hands, I made an executive decision: "We shall move says I!"

I made a costly exit from my two-day old lease, and headed east of Redondo, as I was advised, to a corporate complex with pool and tennis courts. It really was the tennis courts that made me want to come here more than anywhere else.

Now Sohee is about to accompany me for her third tennis lesson of her life. She is deathly afraid. According to her, I am too militant. That can be true. I admit it. I like to become a drill sergeant when I get a chance. I'll have to conjure my ultimate teacher now though. Sohee will learn to be a Wimbledon master, I say to myself. I will learn to be militant only when it comes to eating tacos. That seems like a safe time to be militant.

I will start posting other pics when I get a chance.

Green River, Utah

I'm in Green River, Utah in a Super 8. We have a tub shaped like a heart. Dora hooked us up. Ordinarily, we'd have had to pay an extra ten dollars.

The tub is empty now. Sohee is asleep in bed. I've just done 7 hours in the truck. My pants are sticking to me and life feels well lived.

Washington, A Dream

I had a dream I was a football player in America. I was battling this one guy on the line. He was bigger than me, but I started taunting him.

"You are nothing, Washington!" I yelled through my mouthguard. "You might as well not even get up."

"You better watch what you're saying," one of our coaches warned me. "You don't want to get this boy mad."

"Oh, I've got no worries about cream puff here," I said. "He can keep trying all he wants."

Washington got up from the ground and squat down into the puddle of rain beneath him. He cocked his ass high in the air and let it bounce up and down a few times to loosen the action. Wasington grunted and then charged. He hit me square in the chest and lifting me slightly off the ground before I recovered and began pushing him back on his heels.

That was my dream. Now I head to America in less than six hours. We will land in LA. Then fly to Denver. Then get a moving truck and drive to Long Beach. I will document the adventure. It might be strenuous. I'm hoping for delightful.