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That’s what one of Andrew and Akina’s t-shirts reminds everyone. My personal favorite is the Heartbot design you can see above. There’s lots of other cool designs available at Andrew and Akina’s online t-shirt shop. You’ve heard me mention our friend Cynthia Toffey on here before…well, Akina is her daughter, and Andrew is Akina’s husband. Both are artists. They are two talented folks about to graduate from CalArts, and are keeping their boat afloat slinging these nifty designs, so I figured I’d give them a plug here.

You should buy some. They’d make a perfect Christmas gift for that special someone (as long as that special someone is a hipster, indie rocker or emo kid).

I’m hoping they’ll hand deliver ours when they come over in a few weeks and save us some serious postage.

I came across this cool, East Nashville photoset through one of my buddy Gavin’s Flickr contacts, Brittney. Seeing her photos of the old neighborhood brought on a wash of nice, nostalgic feelings. I really loved our time living there. Thanks to all of you who were a part of making it so special.

Much love to Gene’ and KC (and thanks for eternally memorable bonfires in their backyard), John and Kelsey (and Molly too!), to Brother Andy, to great neighbors Jerritt and Annie Merrit, Robert and Sandra, to Bongo East and all the hipster baristas, to the 3 Crow Bar (and lovely summer evenings with Blue Moon and friends), to the good folks at Hunan Express (thanks for filling all the closing-time orders for Kung Pao Chicken), to our once ‘ghetto Kroger’ on Gallatin, and to all who graced our cozy little cottage with your company and friendship.

Keep it the crunkest, ya’ll.

-A.

Jessica’s addendum:
The cheesy wontons at Hunan require considerable mention as does the Family Wash! Adam, I can’t believe you forgot the Family Wash! And Genesis, our dog, but she’s not in East Nashville anymore anyway. Ahh, East Nashville.

Last night we went to the Pub for Matt’s good bye party. He’s returning to Indiana. There, I was talking to Irina from Romania. I had accidentally offended her the previous day by calling her a Russian. At the pub, she started telling me all about Romanian history, the influence of communism and a dictator in her early life and the life of her family. She talked about their imminent entry into the EU on January 1, 2007. She also set me straight that Romanian is not a Slavic but a Latin language. It’s more like Italian than Russian (but they do say “da” for “yes”).

I didn’t know anything about Romania other than the fact that it used to be Soviet. She laughed and told me that it reminded her of a joke:

There was a world-wide survey taken asking people, “What is your opinion of the lack of food in the rest of the world?” The survey was a failure because…
The Africans didn’t know what food was,
The Western Europeans didn’t know what lack was,
The Eastern Europeans didn’t know what your opinion was,
and the Americans didn’t know what the rest of the world was.

Ouch.

-Jessica

I have to be careful what I say on here- we wonder sometimes, but it seems people actually are listening to us. The other day we got the following email message in our inbox:

Hi Adam and Jessica,

I came across your blog for the first time today and have really been enjoying it. I love the phrase ‘travelogue of the mind,’ it’s so descriptive.

Since you are LibraryThing fans and have written about Web 2.0 sites, I thought you might be interested in checking out and posting about a site my friends and I recently launched called Squirl (http://squirl.info). It’s somewhat similar to LibraryThing, but where LibraryThing focuses on books, we let users create archives of pretty much anything. Books, but also music, movies, comic books, and many categories of collectibles. Cataloging your collectibles is at the core of it, but it also has social networking features, including a new ‘Groups’ feature, and the ability to upload photos of your stuff a la flickr.

Thanks for your blog, and your time. Hope you have a chance to check out Squirl :)

Regards,
Kristy

Really nice email, I thought. I checked out their site, and they’ve done a really nice job with it. I think it would be a great way for people to share their passion for collecting and find others who have similar interests. Better than just keeping it on a dusty shelf, I suppose.

I’m sticking with LibraryThing, since books are the only thing I collect any more, plus I really don’t need to sign up for another web service (my list of web ID & password pairs topped a hundred a couple of weeks ago!). For those of you who have some obscure collection you wnat to share, check Squirl out.

I just found this fantastic post on a great site called 52 Projects. In my recent experience, being a stay-at-home husband and student, this hits the nail embarrassingly, square on the head. Can any of you relate? Here are some of my favorite (and personally relevant) selections from the extensive list:

Adam and I are in Myeong-Dong again. Myeong-Dong is the Santa Monica/ Beverly Hills of Seoul. Adam is teaching his weekly art class, and I am sitting in a cozy, red armchair on the 3rd floor of a 4-story Starbucks. I was sitting in Adam’s art class, but I was starting to get agitated. My teeth were chattering because it was so cold, and I felt out of place since I’m not a paying student. And though he’s a very kind person, the Korean artist hosting the class has an aggressive voice. Since I couldn’t understand what he was saying, it just sounded like he was yelling. Also, Adam went in with a clear plan for class today, and the host changed things around on him. Now that I’m here, I can see that I was being selfish and not supporting Adam by leaving, but I was irritated. I was just sitting on the couch anyway, so I wanted to get out for a while. I’m sorry, babe.

I walked down the block to Starbucks. I opened the door and felt a wave of warmth pull me in. There was a display inside the door advertising the Christmas latte’ and mocha. The entire shop area, counter and menus were a blizzard of snowflakes and red Christmas cheer. I know I’m a victim of commercialism and branding, but in this case, I love it. I walked in, and I felt cozy and comfortable. I love living abroad, but sometimes the familiar feels so good. It made me feel sad that we won’t be home for Christmas. In fact, I’ll be working at the theme park on Christmas day. It will be interesting and new, but when it comes to Christmas time, all I want is familiar and tradition—family, music, baby Jesus, gifts, candlelight, church choirs, cookies, hot cider, yellow cake with chocolate frosting (for my birthday two days before) and heavy snow. Of course I know that most of those things are not restricted to our home in the States, and growing requires that I not stay the same forever. But right now, I’m thankful for Starbucks.

-Jessica

IMG_1958.JPG
Originally uploaded by Adam & Jessica.

Happy belated Pepero Day! On November 11 (11/11), it is Pepero Day in Korea. Pepero are chocolate dipped sticks like paki. I guess it’s Pepero Day because the number 11 looks like 2 sticks. To celebrate, people give each other little gift boxes of Pepero. Adam just gave me some. Yum!

In other news, my great friend La Tisha from college is considering coming out to work with me at English Village in the Spring! Yea! I can’t wait.

Pepero!

-Jessica

I haven’t mentioned it all here on the blog, but many of you probably know that I’ve been taking classes this fall through DePaul University’s School for New Learning. I took a ’sabbatical’ from college at 19 to get some life experience and think about what direction I wanted to go with my education. Eight years later, and still not perfectly sure I know what I want to do, I figured it might just be time to get on with it anyway. I’ve really been enjoying the process, and getting some very positive feedback from my instructors as well.

This quarter ends week after next, and I don’t have classes until January, so I’ve been trying to find something to do with my self. Fortunately, a few options have presented themselves. Jess and I started a TEFL course online with Bridge-Linguatec that we never managed to finish before we came to Korea. So, I’ll go ahead and knock that out in the next couple of months. Also, Jess mentioned that I taught an art class on Tuesday. Our friend Cynthia Toffey was asked to teach an adult art class at a friend of her friend’s atelier in Myeong-Dong, but she was unable, and was kind enough to pass the opportunity over to me.

The first class was great. We began with some still-life sketching to see where everyone was coming from, and then I offered critiques. I was a little nervous, since it had been since high school that I’d done this, not to mention the possibility of misinterpretation from by my translator. It went totally smoothly, though. I then proceeded to show slides of my painting and photography and give a talk on my techniques and underlying themes. Again, this was not something I’m used to doing, but once I got into the groove it was smooth. Talking about the ideas behind my art in a way that could be easily translated was really challenging, bu all was well-received.

There has also been talk of me helping teach a children’s class up in Munsan, near where we live. All of a sudden, there are all of these art opportunities popping up. Cynthia has even offered to open up part of her studio space to me, so that I can work on my own art. I’ll definitely be taking her up on the offer.

It’s funny how life flows some times. These sorts of doors can open up out of nowhere, unbidden. When they do, though, I think we have to pay attention and be prepared to walk through them. So, this art door has opened again and we’ll just have to see what’s on the other side I suppose.

-A.

It’s so late, and I should go to bed, but I’m feeling bad for neglecting blogging duties. So, here I am.

Adam and I had a great “weekend” (Monday and Tuesday, my days off). On Monday, we went into Seoul to see a Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibit. We had a lovely evening walking around a part of Seoul that was new to us. There is a whole avenue of art galleries across from the old palace. It’s a beautiful area, but at dusk on brisk, rainy Autumn evening, it’s perfect. It reminded me of some areas of Chicago. We wandered around some shops and cafes, then we found a jazz club in the basement off an alley. It was a cozy, cluttered gem of a spot. We warmed up by the wood-burning stove, sat and sipped “hot choco” while we watched a Charlie Chaplin film that was projected above the stage (there wasn’t live jazz since it was Monday night). When the rain had mostly passed, we walked to Insadong and did some Christmas shopping. We caught a late dinner at Seoul Station and took the train home.

We went back into the city on Tuesday.

Reason 1: my hair. We met a Korean guy named Tomo who does hair for a lot of people at the E Village. I had such a strong positive response to my red wig on Halloween, I thought, why not? I’m in Asia, I can get away with it with my job, and I love red. So, Tomo took care of my hair. I got the best cut I’ve ever had, and a great red color as well. I feel like a faker now, but I’m enjoying it. It’s “permanent”, but Tomo warned me that red will always fade.

Reason 2: Adam is now a guest artist, teaching a beginning drawing class on Tuesday nights in Myeong Dong. He can fill you in on more of the details and sentiment, but this was his first week, and he did a great job. There are about 8 students, and he’s co-teaching with at very talented Korean artist named Mr. Kwon. He’s taking it as a great opportunity to get back into his art. It’s a really affirming opportunity for him.

Today, it was back to work, but things are much quieter around here since it’s the Winter season. Tonight we had another meeting of our little book study group, and then we went to see a film in the seminar room with several other teachers.

I’ve been updating my music website, and I would love for you to visit that. It’s www.JessicaLofbomm.com. That’s all for now. It’s very late.

-JLo