Amanda Takes Off...

I have a friend who wants to try kombucha tea. Anyone know about it?

Last night a giant cicada (매미) got stuck between the window and screen on my porch. It made 맴맴 (maem maem) noises until I thought I was going to risk letting it into my house to kill it. Finally it found the giant hole in the screen again and left. Thank goodness, because I am sure I would have scratched my eardrums out while I was sleeping had it not left.

Last week I didn't get to any taekwondo classes. Monday I got there late because my dobok was soaking wet in the morning and I had to pick it up after work. Tuesday there was no class after 1:30 and the rest of the week was vacation. So getting back to class after nearly 2 weeks off was really nice. We did lots of calisthenics and I'm sure my abs will ache tomorrow.

Grin was running the class. I asked what "thirty" was using the pure Korean counting system because I rarely need to count that high.

He said "thirty" in the Sino-Korean numbers.

"Yes, I know, but ten, twenty...?" I said using Korean numbers.

"Thirty!" he said in Sino-Korean.

I shook my head. I held out my left hand and counted in Sino-Korean numbers. "Ten, twenty, thirty..." I held out my right hand and counted in pure Korean numbers. "Ten, twenty..."

"Oh! 서른!"

I've been listening to my iPod on shuffle lately, which has made me realize a) I have some really bad music on my machine, b) I have some really good music on my machine, c) I have no idea how some of that stuff got on my iPod, d) some of the music I've never before listened to is really good. I discovered this gem while walking from the bus stop to school today.

"The Bell" by Stephen Smith.

I felt bad for Good Man this weekend. We were supposed to go out of town and then a typhoon came through and made it rainy where we were supposed to go. It was hot and even the rain wasn't cooling it down. I was just plain cranky.

Saturday we went to one of the international markets, where I stocked up on cheese (!), marshmallows and Jell-O (yeah, don't know what I'll do with that), green seedless grapes (that I am eating now), and root beer. And then I was happy. Of course then he had to go home! Oh well.

We met again tonight, after taekwondo class and had dinner and dessert. For once it wasn't ice cream proper. It was a shaved ice dessert with fruit on top. Fruit and beans. Fruit and beans and sliced cherry tomatoes.

I brainstormed a list of Chinese characters I know and wrote them on our place mat. I knew how to write nine of them, which actually surprised me.

Then I entertained myself (and Good Man, actually) by writing "Amanda and [Good Man]" in Korean inside hearts on our place mat. "This is what I would be doing if we were in middle school," I said.

While I was coloring one of the hearts red, Good Man asked, "Why do you write your name like 아만다 instead of 아멘다?" Writing it the second way would make people pronounce the "man" part correctly. Now people pronounce all the a's the same way, as if it were a Spanish name.

"Because I like the way it looks. Why do you write your name the way you do in English instead of Romanizing it the correct way?" I wrote down various Romanizations.

"Because it doesn't look right any of those ways."