Birthday

So far, it's been a really good birthday though. I received about a dozen pairs of new socks, which are nice, I got some sort of yogurt juice, some acorn juice, a lap blanket, a bag of origami strawberries, a tupperware full of chicken curry, several colorful notes, and one snickers. When I first got to school, my teachers got me a sweet potato cake with candles. They all sang happy birthday and then we ate it together. All my classes have been singing and the students and teachers have been very congratulatory.

Also, you should watch this. It's a 14 part video series from the Editors of Vice Magazine. It's perhaps the only legitimate documentary footage to come out of North Korea in perhaps 50 years. That cannot be overstated. The vice documentary has their crew sneak into the country after bribing officials at a Chinese embassy and they then tour the country. Watch this to understand the bleakness of the country. Remember, 14 parts.
http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1438428757

Movies!

Here some some movies that I've taken. They're from varying times and at varying locations. Enjoy.

Tane fighting with a walnut roaster.


Sharks in the Busan Aquarium


After the fireworks festival; in a bar.

Gifts

Yesterday, I received four gifts.
Gift #1
One of my co-teachers made me some curry. I now have it in a Tupperware container in my fridge.

Gift #2
It is getting very cold and student gave me a chemical hand warmer. I'll try to post a picture of it later. On the front is a baby that is sitting on an inflatable duck. The baby appears to be constipated as he looks like he's straining while wringing his hands with toilet paper. There is steam coming out of the duck. The duck is sweating and also looking at a coiled pile of poop.

Gift #3
After lunch, I came back to my desk and found three small oranges sitting there. Delicious.

Gift #4
While riding the subway, a man sparked a conversation with me and I helped him with his English skills. He called me a "bull in a China shop." After telling him the meaning of different words, a traveling salesman came onto the subway. He was dressed like an Asian Michael Jackson Cowboy and was selling black lace gloves. The man I had been talking to bought me a pair of gloves.

Also, as per Danny's suggestion, I taught some of my students CPR. I'm not sure how much info they'll retain or how many lives they'll actually save, but they seemed to enjoy it. I don't have a dummy or a doll, so after explaining all the steps and reviewing with them, I would "die" in front of the classroom and they would have to save me. I would often have to come back to life to guide them to what the next step was. They took videos of me with their cellphones, so I think I may end up on the Korea youtube.

Coincidences

I'm constantly reminded of how small the earth is. My last major experience of this was in a remote village in Africa, I came across someone wearing a Klompen Klassic t-shirt. For those of you who don't know, my hometown has a fun run with the same name every year and gives out t-shirts for the participants. Somehow, one managed to wind it's way out in the middle of no-where 8,000 miles away. That man gave me some kasava roots when I pointed at him and yelled.

Well, similar incidents have been happening in Korea.

Story #1
Before coming here, my mom had told me that she had a nurse friend who had a son here. I had emailed him once and thought nothing of it. A few weeks ago I saw him at a bus stop. It turns out, that this kid from Grinnel lives only 5 minutes from my apartment. In a city of 3.6 million and a country of 27 million, someone lives closer to me than here than if we were at home in America.

Story #2
Several weeks ago, Danny, Tane, and myself went to a scarecrow festival with one of Danny's teachers. While there, we were minor celebrities just because we were the only whities in attendance. So, we were given silly objects and asked to do goofy things and people would clap and take pictures of us.
A few weeks later we went to a fireworks festival. There was special seating for foreignors and we were ushered up to the front and sat down for a while. Some other people crowded around us and we started watching a show. After a little while, the girls next to me start nudging me and show me there camera. I see a picture of myself at the Scarecrow festival which is a 3 hour drive away. So through all that time and distance, they still managed to end up right next to us at an event that had almost a million people attending.

Story #3
My friend Emily came here recently. While still in Minneapolis, the maintenance man at her apartment building told her that his nephew was in the country. I'm sure you can guess what happens next. We decided to have a birthday party for Emily and Danny and we invited a few friends to join us. Danny had been emailing some of them because we hadn't seen them since orientation and they were coming as a surprise. Low and behold, one of them was the nephew that Emily had been told to look for. He was surprised and so was she.

So remember kids, by the law of probability, the unlikely is very likely to happen sometimes.

Fun Facts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox
In probability theory, the birthday problem, or birthday paradox pertains to the probability that in a set of randomly chosen people some pair of them will have the same birthday. In a group of 23 (or more) randomly chosen people, there is more than 50% probability that some pair of them will both have been born on the same day. For 57 or more people, the probability is more than 99%, reaching 100% as the number of people reaches 366.

So, if you have a room full of 23 people, there is a 50% chance that two of them share the same birthday. We did this once in a college math class they had and it worked. One class didn't have any shares and for the other, I and someone else shared a birthday on Nov. 26.

Go Sell Crazy Somewhere Else...

We're all stocked up here.

After Exiting Beomeosa temple this weekend, we were handed a pamphlet by a group of people.

I couldn't read the cover and my co-teacher wasn't sure how to explain it. I was somewhat familiar with "Intelligent Design", and decided to investigate further.

I must admit, the space suits and jump suits had me a bit confused. I wasn't sure what was trying to communicate. I knew of the old show Mork and Mindy, but this scenario didn't seem humorous.

These books looked reassuring. But they really didn't answer my questions; they just led to more. A giant swastika Star of David heading towards the Earth? A double helix playing computer games as a child watches on? What does it all mean?

A colony? This is starting to remind me of an episode of the Simpsons.

Now we've got some faces. This is the prophet, but what does he have to say? Is he better than the contemporaries before him?

If he's authored books like this, then I hope so. I wonder if he and Douglas Adams were friends.

Oh, it's all starting to make sense now.

FYI, it's a Buddhist symbol, not a Nazi symbol. The Buddhist's have been using it for thousands of years while the Nazi's latched onto it for 20 years.

Gracious

It's been a long time since I've posted, but I've become very busy as of late. Two main things have been taking up my time.

This is one. She came to visit for 11 days and we're approaching the tail end.


And this is the other.


Look forward to future topics including: UN War Memorial, Bath Houses, Halloween, the Presidency abroad, the impending cold, DJ Shadow, and many more!