Amanda Takes Off...

"Can you tell me how to use these?" I hand Good Man a three-pack sample of facial masks from FACE SHOP.

He looks at me. "These are in English. And Japanese. Not Korean."

I have been here too long.

"Don't you want to go?" I ask.

Good Man protests. "Trick question!" After a pause he answers, "Yes!"

Meanwhile, I mutter to myself. "Do you want to go? Yes, I do. No, I don't. Don't you want to go? Yes, I do. No, I don't." I shake my head and Good Man starts laughing, "You don't want to go? Yes, I do. No, I don't."

Still laughing he says, "And you say Korean is confusing!"

"Why do we answer the opposite question the same way?"

He protests again, "And you always ask questions like that!"

Some people make it a goal to learn how to swear in a foreign language. I manage to do it unwittingly.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm looking at pictures of my nephew."

"Huh?"

I turn the computer and say, "Nephew. 조카?" I mispronounce it as jok-a instead of jo-ka.

"Jo-KA, not jok-A."

"I always say that wrong. What is jok-A?"

He smiles, "F*** you."

I look horrified. "Oh! No! That's not what I mean! But I keep getting the stress wrong. The same way most non-native speakers say 'bitch' when they mean 'beach.'"

Good Man tries it. He can say "beach" properly. His "bitch" sounds correct in the middle, but the "b" is too soft, making the whole word sound too round. "Make the 'b' pop, like 빵," I say, using the Korean word for bread as an example.

He makes it pop. "Bitch." I laugh, because he said it so perfectly and accent-free I'd swear I was talking to an American. "But I don't think I need to use that word a lot."

Friday night I finally made it to class. Master wasn't in class at all, but I spoke to him beforehand, and shook off little monkey daughter in her pursuit of lip gloss.

During class I got some photos of Brave's Brother and Ghost doing target practice. All photos were shot on the D80 with 640 ISO, 1/40 sec at f/3.8. They were shot in RAW with levels lightly adjusted in Lightroom. I manually chose shutter and aperture but let the camera autofocus on the target before they kicked. I was experimenting with an exposure chart I made. I didn't want the camera to choose the setting because a) it would've been flashing all over and b) I wanted parts of the action to blur.

I was pleased that the boys just let me shoot instead of trying to cover their faces.