Amanda Takes Off...

I was supposed to get my worms for the classroom composting bin on Wednesday. And then we had a snow day. Followed by two more. And then the weekend. When I finally got the worms today, I was afraid they'd be dead. But I opened up the five containers of worms (500 worms, about a half pound) and dumped them into the bedding. They all appeared to be alive.

Except for two worms that is, who were not really moving and who looked very odd, and slightly swollen. I picked them out of the bedding, trying to see if they were alive or dead.

And then I realized they were mating.

Well.

I guess they were very much alive.

And mating.

In my palm.

I watched them for a while since it was all new to me. Then I went and showed the worms to my vice principal. "So, not only were the worms alive, but I caught them making sweet wormy love."

She burst out laughing and then looked at me. "How do you know they're having sex?"

"Well, see that swollen band? That's the sexual organ, and they're wrapped up together and have sort of a mucus on them. That's how you know they're mating."

"How do you know these things?"

I shrugged. "I read."

"You were meant to be a GT teacher," she said.

Over the winter break, I somehow talked Good Man into joining a bowling league.

"I think we should join a bowling league. I'm going to sign us up."

Good Man looked at me and sighed. "OK."

"Really?"

"Sure."

Tuesday? Out because I have class. That meant Monday was out because I procrastinate. Wednesday had no new leagues, and Good Man often has volunteer work in any case. Thursday's league was too late at night. We wanted our weekends open because Good Man volunteers every Saturday and I work every other Saturday morning. And in any case, those leagues seemed more competitive or they were adult/youth leagues.

Friday night it was!

"There will be a lot of couples in this league," I said to Good Man.

"How do you know?"

"One male and one female per team, and the name is Ball and Chain League."

"What is 'ball and chain?'"

So last week we went. The league secretary went over all of the rules and asked if anyone was new to league bowling. I nodded my head. She looked at us and another couple who was also new. "Well, just follow along. Everyone else will help you out."

If living in Korea taught me anything, it was how to just follow along and how to trust other people.

We also found out it was a USBC-sanctioned league. I filled out all of the paperwork and said to Good Man, "Now you get to be a member of a congress." I paused, "And we need a team name."

Good Man looked at me. "Huh?"

"A team name."

"I don't care."

"How about Hanmi?" 한미 means Korean-American. Good Man nodded.

The team we were up against was good. We were not. But it was a lot of fun with high fives and cheering when anyone did well. "Well" being entirely relative to the person bowling of course.

It was strange getting used to bowling over two lanes, though.

This week we returned and our opponent wasn't there. They're going to post-bowl the game later. I looked at the results from the first week.

We have the highest handicap of the league. Our handicap as a team is 205. The next highest team's handicap is 190 and the lowest is 30.

In short: we suck the most.

However, with our handicap, last week we tied one game, lost one game, and won one game. (This seems completely ridiculous to me, but I guess that's the point of handicapping, isn't it?)

I suck the most of every single person. My handicap is 106. Ha ha!

Awesome.

Tonight we did better than last week. During his last game, Good Man had strikes or spares in the first six out of seven frames (or was it five out of six?) and I actually got over 100. When we're bowling together, I rarely score under 100. For some reason at league, I'm struggling to get over 100.

Oh well! I'm just following along and having a blast while doing it!

We had a snow day yesterday. And today. And we'll have one tomorrow. Which means a) we lose our February holiday due to the make-up day and b) Good Man and I got out for a walk and some photos today.

Why didn't I watch Coffee Prince before this month? What an amazing story. In short: a man falls in love with someone he thinks is a man and struggles with his feelings.

I've finished episode nine (there are 17 episodes) and I have to force myself to not watch the next episode because if I watch it, I'm going to be up all night finishing the series.

I'm finding this series painfully beautiful.

This scene (more upbeat than painfully beautiful) is from episode four, and the Wannadies song "You and Me" fits the fountain scene perfectly.

My students are learning about ancient China, and they adore learning Chinese characters. For example, sun 日 and moon 月 together make bright 明. Oh yeah, my students were digging that.

So I showed them some books that put the characters into pictures. Then they chose three characters to illustrate themselves. Some did three different pictures, but some combined them into one picture.

One boy drew a picture of a fire-breathing dragon, and he worked fire (火) into the dragon's face. Then he drew someone throwing water (水) bombs at the dragon (to stop the fire, naturally). Caught in the dragon's claws were people (人). Around the dragon's feet were little sticks.

"I like the grass by his feet," I said, "Maybe you could work 'earth' (土) in there."

"No, those are the arms of the people," he said, "because really the person character should have arms like big (大) does. But since it doesn't, I made their arms go away. To match the character."