Happy Halloween everyone.

Just thought you'de like a look at my 'new hair'. Actually, it's just a wig for a birthday/dress-up party on Friday night. We had a good time, but a I had to wrestle a fierce pineapple on the fruit-plate to get the little mini-umbrella. (It looks better on me)

I've picked up a couple of quotes lately (okay, okay, my brother-in-law e-mailed 2/3rds of them to me ) and I thought that I'd better write down before I forget them, and now you get to read them too!

1) (Thanks, Walter) This one seems to sum up at least my style of Journal writing pretty well.

"People don't keep journals for themselves. They keep them for other people. Like a secret they don't want to tell but they want everyone to know." -Marilyn Manson ~ I never would have thought I'd be quoting Marilyn Manson, but there you have it.

2) I was a little tired coming home from Seoul a few weeks ago, and bust up laughing when I overheard this from a guy trying to impress the girl he was with...

"Oh, don't read that. That book is absolute garbage. It's not worth your time. Of course, I've never read it myself" (He was referring to the best selling novel Tuesdays With Morrie)

3) My 4 year old niece is a genius, and has managed to discern my hitherto most well kept secret....

"Does Auntie Janice live on that planet"? - Kaitlyn (while pointing to the Moon)

Sunday as Sunday should be...sort of.

What a lovely day. The sun was shining, a breeze was blowing, and I got to go to church for the first time in a while!

I went to the Gospel Service at Camp Walker with my friend Glenys. This was the first time I'd ever been to a black, southern, hand clappin' "Can I get a Witness?" kind of service. It was fabulous. The message was good and the members of the congregation were really friendly.

It was also the first time I'd been on an American military base. It was..... American. And Military. I had to go through a double guarded gate, but once I was inside it looked (and sounded) just like America. It was a bit of a shock to just walk through a gate and wind up in another country.

Anyway, it was a good day. I met lots of nice people, and saw another part of the city that I'd never been to before. I'm sure I'll do it again sometime.

As the leaves perform their gentle autumn dance and change colours, so to does my hair. Just like a diseased maple turns an unnaturally gross reddish hue, so has my hair turned a ghastly maroon shade.

I swear, I pointed to the colour swatch that was a light auburn...NOT K-car interior upholstery maroon. drat. Oh well, it's dramatic, and the cut's much nicer than that awful perm most of you had to look at over the summer. (sorry).

with the exception of me from the eyebrows up, everything here is good. My students (some of whom would rather drink than study) are sweating their way through midterm exams, and will emerge no worse for wear on the other side. My co-workers and I are enjoying cooler weather, and looking forward to our winter vacations. My kitty is spastic, and I like her most of the time.

I'm also reading a great book right now called "Still life with Rice". It's a Korean-American author, writing her grandmothers biography. It's a fantastic story, and really helps me understand a little bit more where on earth some of the older folks in this country are coming from. The generation gap here is huge. Changes that took 40 or 50 years to come about in Canada are taking place here in the span of 10 or 20 years. I wonder what the next decade will bring....

Some Good Advice

If you ever decide to ride your bike to the grocery store (because it's a perfectly beautiful autumn day), and your path is paved almost entirely in uneven cobblestones, and you plan to bring your groceries back in your Mary Poppins bike basket... don't buy eggs.

In other news, I haven't managed to kill either my cat OR my new plant yet. Both greenery and furrery are growing nicely. But my plant smells better....

And finally, I had my professional evaluation the other day. (My boss comes to observe one of my classes, and makes comments). Apparently, I have an "impeccable blackboard". I guess all those hours playing in the basement pretending I was a teacher and writing on the underside of the pingpong table really paid off.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!
I hope you're all having a lovely holiday... unless you're not from Canada, in which case HA HA!!!

I travelled to Seoul with a group of friends on Saturday. We went our seperate ways during the day, then met at the Grand Hilton for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce's Thanksgiving Dinner. As you can tell from the title, it wasn't as cozy as home, but there was some fabulous turkey and all the usual fixin's (if you count fully dressed salmon as a usual Thanksgiving fixin.) Many of the Canucks present brought Korean friends with them, and you could hear explanations down the buffet line. "That's the turkey...yes, it's really a bird that big. It's like a giant chicken." "Those are brussel sprouts... don't take any." "Oh! Beets! Like we used to have at Grandmas. Don't get the juice on you". etc. etc.

On Sunday, we had ANOTHER dinner for 7 or 8 of us who wanted to pitch in to whip something up. The atmosphere was much closer to 'homelike', but there was no turkey...

I followed up a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend (the weather was also perfect) with a flu shot today. Now my arm hurts. ouch.

I hope y'all had a great Thanksgiving, and loved ones nearby to share it (and the leftovers) with.