Toe-yo-il pah-may

I was walking to the gym today after work when all of a sudden, out jumped a leprechaun!

Actually, no. What really happened was that my toe started to hurt. Kinda badly, in fact. It only happens at one point in my stride, when my left foot is pushing off so the toes are kinda bent backward a bit. It's the big toe. It makes it really uncomfortable to walk. At first it was kinda sporadic, so I tried walking it off, but that only made it worse. So, resolved to the situation, I turned around and came home. Well, first I went to the grocery store, because...

Tomorrow we're making sandwiches in my after-school class! Whoo-ee. We're finishing up a little unit I created on Green Eggs and Ham, and of course one of the themes of the book is trying a new food. So I'm bringing in some western-style sandwichy stuff they probably haven't tried before. Like, peanut butter and jelly, ham and cheese with yellow mustard, normal stuff like that. I'm interested to see how they like it. When I asked them what sorts of foods they would need to make a sandwich, I got some really ... uh, thought-provoking answers: butter, cucumber, cabbage, eggs... I think there were a couple other pretty good ones too. But the point is, I'm not sure my idea and their idea of a sandwich are at all the same, so it might be pretty funny tomorrow. I'm also planning to have them read the story to me, which may also be entertaining. Fun day tomorrow, fun day.

After school, I'm hosting our multi-cultural dinner group, round 4! I'm making cheeseburgers (no grill of course, but they'll have to settle for the skillet) with homemade french fries. Actually, I ain't deep-frying them, so maybe "home fries" is a better word for them. But I've got tomatoes, onion, pickles, lettuce, mustard and ketchup... everything, in fact, but the buns. Which are apparently nigh-impossible to find here. I know I've seen them in restaurants, but I sure don't know where I might find some for purchase. Anyway, I'm excited about tomorrow! Lots of food-related things going on, which you all probably know I'm a sucker for.

Baseball game on Sunday -- LG Twins vs. ... well, somebody. I'm not sure it really matters who, actually. Mi Jin roots for LG, plus they're close -- just a few subway stops from the nearest bus station in Seoul. And the games are cheap here! I'm used to going to Wrigley with my cousin and seeing 80-90 bucks a seat... hell, even the bleachers are like $40 these days. Well, we're not entirely close, but we're on the 1st base side, in foul territory somewhere in the outfield. And we paid the equivalent of about $6.50 per ticket. That, is awesome. So, a little summer-time baseball, beer, and according to Emily, dried squid and roasted potatoes with sugar. Mm-mm-mmm, the taste of summer, right there. Haha...

I got something like 12 hours of sleep last night. It was so bizarre, but around 7pm I just got really overwhelmingly sleepy all of a sudden, and crashed out. I woke up at like 10:30, moved my laptop off the bed, turned out the light and went right back to sleep. Maybe 2am or so, I woke up again, and this time I was a little concerned that I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep... you know, already having gotten a full night's rest and all. So, I fired up the internet, ate some ice cream, and within 20 minutes I was done again. Crashed once again, only to wake up feeling absolutely fantastic at 7am. Which was early enough for me to do some dishes and start cleaning the place up a bit for the afore-mentioned dinner shenanigans I'm hosting tomorrow. Such a strange night, but today I felt great, so... whatever works, huh?

Also, another girl today told me that I look like Homer Simpson. I gotta say in my own defense, I don't see it. I mean, sure I'm a little chubby, but come on; Homer Simpson fat? I don't think so. Plus, I've got hair. I mean, seriously. Maybe it's my (relatively) large round eyes and my five o'clock shadow? I dunno. She did apologize later and told me that I had a very nice face (yes, in those exact words), but I can't say that made up for the hurt feelings from the Homer comment.

Korean kids are strange about that, by the way. Almost everyday, I have at least one student tell me I'm "handsome." And about half the time, it's a boy. I'm not sure where that comes from, but I'll take it, ya know? Don't look a compliment-horse in the mouth, all that...

Oh, in case you were wondering... the title of this post is the name of a K-Pop song that is real popular right now. It might not be the name, actually, but it is the only line that I know: To-yo-il pa-mae... which means, Sa-tur-day night. But you see what I did there, with the "toe" bit, cause of my ... ok. You get it. I gotta go now. For reasons unrelated to the diminishing quality of my blogging. I promise. Peace.