five things

i've been kinda crazy busy w/ work and getting stuff ready for christmas, but thanks to MB for tagging me so i have something to write about other than how frazzled i've been the past week. so here goes: 5 things you probably didn't know about me (unless you're my mom or my brother).

1. i am a sucker for condiments. 'where's the beef?' who cares?!?! just slather on the ketchup, honey mustard, chipotle mayo, sweet pickle relish, chopped onions, BBQ sauce, salsa, hot peppers, etc and i'm in condiment heaven…i don’t really even like the taste of meat if there are no condiments involved. cadence seems to be following in my footsteps in this regard. she will repeatedly dunk the same french fry in ketchup and lick it clean over and over again.

2. i have never been to europe. or africa. or south america. or australia. or antarctica. i bring this up now because my friend bokumbop and her family have already been to paris this fall and now they’re getting ready for a trip to peru for the holidays! i feel so provincial in comparison. truth be told, i am no cosmopolite. the only other countries i’ve spent any significant time in are canada and my motherland. my friends matt and laurel have been teaching english in spain for the past year, and reading laurel’s blog often makes me want to sell all my possessions and move my family to a quaint village in europe where they have things like siestas and olive groves and whitewashed walls with bright blue doors. i am neither an anglophile nor a francophile nor a spanglophile (?), but europe holds a special charm for me for some reason. even the word itself, EUROPE--the fact that 4 out of its 6 letters are vowels is something i find utterly irresistible. i will admit that i have a special interest in belgium. how such a small country could produce so much good beer and chocolate is beyond me. i’ve never had belgian cuisine, but i guess if you just add the right (e.g. copious) amount of chocolate to anything and wash it down with any one of the fine ales available in that country (esp. one brewed lovingly by monks), you really can’t go wrong. someday, our little family will make its way to belgium, i just know it...

3. when i was in high school, i was on the boys’ swim team. i have the photo in the yearbook to prove it, although i won’t post it here (all the guys were in these skimpy speedos. i think josh would kill me if i posted that photo). the funny thing is, i barely even knew how to swim back then (i’m not much better now, either). i got roped in because so many of my friends were on the team that i was at every single swim meet. the coach finally told me to make myself useful, so i became the scorekeeper. i can still recall the smell of the chlorine, the humidity, the adrenaline flowing as we cheered for our guys. to this day, i get a thrill out of watching the olympic swimming events on TV. and no, it’s not because of the skimpy speedos. yuck!

4. the month before my family moved to the U.S. from korea back in 1978, i was 5 years old and apparently too much of a distraction to have around while my mother packed for the Big Move. so i got to spend my last few weeks of life in the motherland in Wonju, a town located in the heart of the korean peninsula, where my grandfather ran a kindergarten. although my memories of those weeks have faded into a sepia tone, i can still recall the simple joy of playing in the countryside. i had a lot of freedom for a five year old and often wandered about on my own. i was SUPPOSED to be attending classes with the other kindergarteners, but since my grandpa was in charge, i basically came and went as i pleased like the wind, and the teachers never said anything. i still remember having the playground all to myself while the other kids were inside at class. and every afternoon, there would be the delicious aroma of freshly baked donuts wafting from the school kitchen. good times...

5. about 6 years ago, i spent a week canoeing with 3 other people in the canadian boundary waters just north of the minnesota border in quetico provincial park. my good friend john berton was our very able guide. i’d been such a city girl for almost all my life that i had no idea what it was like to be out in the middle of nowhere with no electricity, no running water or plumbing, no stove, no warm bed, nobody else for miles and miles. being the only girl on the trip, i was expecting john to be a little easy on me. boy, was i wrong. some of those portages were long and steep and rough, and i still had to carry my share of the load. he also made sure that at some point on the trip, i carried my own canoe, gathered and arranged wood for the campfire, pitched the tents, and did whatever else needed to be done. that week changed my life. it was my introduction to caring for the environment. i can’t begin the describe how absolutely beautiful it was up there. the mist on the lakes in the morning as the sky starts turning pink…the echo of the lonely loon calling out to its friends as it runs across the lake and flies away…the perfectly calm waters mirroring the nearby island and sky…the warmth of the sun as you bake sleepily like a lizard on a rock…holding your breath as you catch a glimpse of a bald eagle and its chicks in a nest…gliding silently across the waters in a canoe as a gentle rain envelopes you…and at night, the blanket of stars so bright and numerous like you’ve never seen them before…*sigh*…that was probably one of the best weeks of my life…

and now, it's my turn to tag bokumbop, lakeline and ESY.