All Hallows Eve

So comes October to its end.  It was a fantastic month, ushering in the long-awaited fall season at last.  Soon, winter will be upon us as well.
This has been a most eventful week, indeed.  I'll begin by airing my work-related grievances, so that I can conclude with all of the nice things.
I did not have enough swim lesson instructors for Tuesday/Thursday evenings when I made the schedule for the new swim session last week, ergo I ended up putting myself as one of the instructors, at least for the next 3 weeks until one of the high school swim team girls can take my place.  This inclusion of Tues/Thurs evening lessons has me in the pool about 14 hours/week now, with my Monday/Wednesday morning lessons and my 5 water fitness classes per week..  That is so much chlorine, my skin and my sanity are barely surviving.
When I brought this up today at our manager meeting, I mentioned how we need to hire some new employees who can teach in the evenings, because none of the 3 who were hired have evening availability.. how that happened is unknown to me, as I specifically asked for people of that description.  Karen, the Aquatics Director (i.e. my boss), felt that I was being too whiny and was not justified in my complaint, and, as usual, made it into a big "Ky is an incompetent idiot" scenario.  I am not entirely certain as to how I became the one to be her punching bag, especially since I have kissed more butt than a baboon during mating season.  I do my best to avoid giving her any fodder to use against me, but some people can make anyone feel small if they condescend with enough effort.  I just recognize that she needs to do it in order to feel better about herself.
Having said all of that, between working with Karen and being immersed in chlorine 5-6 days out of the week, I have all the incentive I need to graduate as soon as possible so that I do not have to keep living and working here in Pullman.  No more swimming pools, please.
Oh, I have to mention another fun tidbit.  At the end of our meeting today, she remarked that I need to buy skinnier jeans because my ass is too flat (to be clear, this is very insulting for gays).  I just bought these pants yesterday and they were the skinniest ones I could find in my size... I thought they looked really good.  Now I want to cry a little bit.

On a lighter note, I have gotten to spend a lot of time with my Danish babes this week.  Laura, Marie, Trine, Andrew, Andrew's friend Gabe, and I all carved pumpkins together on Wednesday.  It was the Danes' first time pumpkin carving.  I thought it would be nice to give them a lot of great Halloween memories so they don't return home having only seen all of the stupid, commercialized, slutty costumes all of the university students wear out in the 35˚ weather.  Can I just say how irritating that is to me, by the way? This is an ancient harvest festival, introducing the beginning of winter and recognizing a time when the spirit world and our world have the greatest instance of overlap.  Now it is about wearing lingerie and animal ears or guys dressing up in giant condom wrappers.  Someone should tell them that they don't really need to go to all of that effort to get laid.

Andrew & I carving our pumpkins in my dining room

The end result! Mine is the evil one on the left.  I'm a big believer in keeping Halloween scary, but I think Andrew's is adorable.  Mine can scare the spirits away so that his can keep on smiling.

I seem to be on a spree of learning to make new things.  I baked pumpkin bread again tonight, this time using my mom's recipe.  I won't share the details this time, because I think that her sharing it with me now constitutes it as a family recipe.   The final product still doesn't look like hers.  I baked them for an hour, the outsides got kind of crunchy, and my testers came out clean, but the inside just looked.. not quite done.  Very moist in comparison to the last batch, which is what I was going for.  Well, I've had a slice and it tasted fantastic, so if I get food poisoning, we'll know the truth.
The other new thing I made this weekend was eggs benedict.  It is my favorite breakfast food, but rather arduous to make oneself.  They ended up being especially scrumptious, however, so Andrew and I were very pleased.  We also used SPAM instead of ham, which was really an added bonus.

The eggs benedict

Andrew enjoying his extravagant breakfast

Yesterday evening I assembled about half of the aquatic center staff, as well as Andrew & the Danes, and we all went to Haunted Palouse together.  Palouse is a precious little town about 20 minutes from Pullman.  Every October, the entire town is transformed into a sort of Halloween Town - everyone is dressed in scary outfits and they have two terrifying haunted houses, fortune tellers, and a spooky hayride.  Last year it was the most fun time I could've had, so I was a huge advocate to get everyone together for it this year.  One of our co-workers, Natalie, lives out in Palouse, so we met up at her house first.  She had prepared pumpkin and apple pies, as well as hot spiced cider for us all.  Her little home was the epitome of hyggeligt.  The warm colors, the cozy atmosphere, the pies & cider, the comfy chairs, etc.  It was just delightful.

From Natalie's, we embarked into Haunted Palouse.  It wasn't quite as thrilling as it was for me last year, but I attribute that to the fact that it was the last day they were putting it on and they may have been tired or short on volunteers.  All the same, I think we were all adequately frightened.  Marie wouldn't unbury her face from my back while we trudged through the haunted houses.  I kept saying, "Marie, you have to look! You have to look!"

"No! I'm too scared!!" she screamed.  I think this made it a memorable Halloween for the girls to take back to Denmark, so I'm happy for that.

Andrew is in Seattle now, interviewing with some major accounting firms, and will likely find out whether or not he has a job this week.  How exciting! Let's send him positive feelings for his future.

Happy Halloween everyone.  Welcome, Winter.

pumpkin magic

This is an introduction to Ky's adventures in baking.  A more daunting art, at times, than one may realize.  Here we have a detailed account of my yesterday evening's attempt at making delicious pumpkin bread.  I don't think I'm ready to tackle pumpkin pie yet (or rather, I might be now, but was not yesterday).  Commence:

The ingredients I used:

• 3 1/2 cups flour

• 1/4 tsp. baking powder

• 2 tsp. baking soda

• 1 1/2 tsp. salt

• 1 tsp nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, pumpkin spice

• 1 1/2 granulated sugar and brown sugar

• 1 cup oil

• 2 cups canned pumpkin

• 4 eggs

The result after thoroughly mixing all of the ingredients

After placing mixture into my two new loaf pans

Baked in 350˚ oven for 52 minutes

Fresh out of the oven, risen and rich with pumpkin

Cooling and waiting to be eaten, adequately filling my house with delicious smells

The end result makes for a good snack, albeit a little dryer and less flavorful than I was hoping for

I have since distributed the majority of my two loaves to friends and co-workers, much to their delight.  I left them all with the caveat that it was not the greatest pumpkin bread, as it was too dry, but the next batch would be better.  Everyone insisted they tasted fantastic all the same, so that felt nice.  Maybe they just don't know really great pumpkin bread.  Soon they will.  Now that I've bought two loaf pans, I have to use them in order to justify myself.

Still loving being in the throws of fall.  I can't get over the magnificent colors.  Here is the view outside of my dining room window:

Everyone seems to be out of town this weekend.  Even Ann has deserted Baker and me in favor of hunting.  Having so much time to myself, I find myself being infinitely more productive and creative.  This is perhaps why I endeavored to learn to bake this weekend.  A friend and I went ice skating over in Moscow, which was our first visit of the season.  I was glad to get to try out my new skates, which I bought last year but only used twice.  They're hockey skates, so too wide for my long feet, but with double-layered wool socks, the fit was nice and snug.  A woman at the rink was figure skating so beautiful, inclining me to ask her about her ice skating background.  She said she grew up in Colorado and had simply done it her entire life.  She then proceeded to offer us some pointers, should we desire them.  My friend and I were ecstatic and received a brief lesson in improving our skating form.  The locals here certainly are charming.  I now count myself among them and always do my best to uphold the image of outgoing friendliness and helpfulness.

North Korea

Diane Sawyer produced a documentary in 2009 (I believe) of a restricted visit she was allowed, as a journalist, into North Korea.  Her visit was limited to 12 days, but what I saw in the documentary truly shook how I formerly perceived North Korea.
Diane's observations opened a door of new insight into a country that has shrouded itself from the rest of the world for decades.  Contemporary North Korean society depicts an extreme, albeit draconian in its enforcement, Confucian social world.  This is observable from the amount of weight put on traditional Confucian values, such as obedience, adherence, loyalty, and being content with one's place in society.  While the current North Korean government appears to use eccentric measures to maintain their Confucian utopia, so to speak, this way of life is not unlike how many East Asian countries functioned during periods of closed trade or martial law, less than a century ago.  Examples of this would be the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and the Korean peninsula as a whole (prior to the Japanese occupation).

It may appear to us, as Westerners or Americans in particular, that the North Koreans are being brainwashed through pro-nationalistic and anti-foreign propaganda.  I cannot find grounds to dispute to the contrary, as the government diligently controls their entire perspectives.  On the other hand, the ideas of propaganda and brainwashing are completely relative.  Certainly to the North Koreans, we would be considered brainwashed.  We grow up trained to firmly believe that democracy and capitalism are the best forms of government, and anything to the contrary is borderline heresy.  I do not see how, then, that differs from the apparent oddities in North Korean thinking: anti-foreign interaction, no curiosity about the outside world, unrelenting loyalty and faith in their country, and so forth.  They grow up believing that their way is the best and there is no need to venture further.

Gettin' back in the swing

I am loving having these Danish girls as friends here this semester.  It's too bad they won't be able to stick around any longer.  It helps me realize how important my personal history is, in the sense that Denmark and Danish are actually a huge part of me and always will be.
On the note of Scandinavia and personal history, I found these two children's books on Amazon for cheap, which were my favorites as a kid in Minnesota.  "Trouble With Trolls" and "Christmas Trolls." The illustrations are very Norwegian-based, particularly the clothing & buildings in the stories, and the trolls themselves are a large part of Scandinavian folklore.  I bought them because I always think of them when winter comes around, and I haven't seen them in stores ever.  It's important to remember our childlike joys and innocence; I think it allows us to keep our own lives in perspective.

I cannot believe we're already halfway into October.  It's a good thing there's an entire winter ahead of us, because I haven't even made it to the ice rink nor to a Chiefs game, and those were the two things I've been looking forward to the most about the coming cold.  Last week I was laid out on my back with the flu or cold (I can never be sure; I always thought influenza meant nausea and vomiting too, but apparently not always), and this week I had horrible, horrible Chinese exams.  No time for fun.  I'm going to try and head with Andrew to Seattle next weekend.  I think that would be a great time.  I have a number of close friends there, and Andrew is really wanting me to come along.

Der er en fodboldskamp her imod Stanford Universitet, så bestemte Jake, en af mine værelseskammerater, at han skulle holde en stor fest herhjemme... Så nu ser hele huset ud som en dårlig frat party.  Jeg skal have nogle venner over at hygge i aften inden vi tager ud i byen sammen, så bliver jeg nok nødt til at gøre rent til huset, selvom jeg var slet ikke med til Jakes fest tidligere i dagen.  Hvor ærgeligt.  Tak for lort, man.

What a week

Contrary to all of my previous gloating about keeping healthy, I have been hellishly ill for the past 4 days.  Nothing really upper respiratory or congestion (maybe a little), but just a monster of a fever that I cannot shake.  I've broken it a couple of times now, waking up in a pool of sweat, but it's only a matter of hours before it returns with a vengeance.  I went to the university's Urgent Care, but because it's just a fever, they couldn't give anything other than a pamphlet about how to take 2400mg of Ibuprofen everyday.
I am lying in bed, underneath 6 layers of blankets, and baby Baker sleeping between my legs.  He wants to make sure I recover.  An alternative method, in addition to the Ibuprofen, I have been trying is traditional Chinese medicinal herbs.  I went to the Moscow Food Co-op yesterday and bought some honeysuckle flower extract, as well as licorice and ginger teas.  So far, I think I am pleased with the results.

In other news, Autumn has finally arrived! It's a shame that I am too sick to enjoy it right this moment, but it's been a beautiful week.  Pumpkins are only $4 each at WalMart right now - I'm contemplating snagging a couple just to have around the house.

Minnesota

Minnesota, hail to thee!
Hail to thee, our state so dear,
Thy light shall ever be
A beacon bright and clear.
Thy son and daughters true
Will proclaim thee near and far,
They shall guard thy fame and adore thy name;
Thou shalt be their Northern Star.

Like the stream that bends to sea,
Like the pine that seeks the blue;
Minnesota, still for thee
Thy sons are strong and true.
From the woods and waters fair;
From the prairies waving far,
At thy call they throng with their shout and song;
Hailing thee their Northern Star.

October

Fall, please come! In a few months' time, I will probably be shooting myself for whining about the 70˚ days we're having (ok, to be fair, it was 85˚ the past three days, which is pretty hot when you're not in the mood for that).  I am just so geared up for autumn; I've already picked out all the neighborhoods I'm going to meander to see their beautiful trees turn orange and yellow.
A sure fall favorite is the seasonal beers.  I've had my eye on the Blue Moon Pumpkin Ale and the Leinenkugel Octoberfest.

Last night, we had a little farvelfest (goodbye party) for Nate, who has been living with us here on Lower Drive for the past two months, finishing his thesis.  Jeg er så ked af at han skal fra os.  Han er et rigtig godt menneske, og har været en god roommate.  Der var to danske piger her til festen også, som jeg inviterede - Marie og Laura.  Det er altid så dejligt at møde danskere, snakke dansk, og hygge sig.  Jeg var lidt overrasket over hvor god mit dansk egentlig var, fordi jeg får aldrig chancen til at faktisk tale det (selvom jeg skriver tit på dansk).

So there were two Danish girls who came to the party last night too, whom I'd invited - Marie and Laura.  They were both really awesome to talk to; I love meeting Danes and speaking Danish together.  I think it just reinforced what I wrote in my previous post about continuing my study of Danish and pursuing further fluency with that.  I think it is important, not only because of the ground I've already lain with the language, but because of the connection I certainly have with the people and Scandinavia.  It's really a special thing.
Anyway, the girls were so very sweet, and it was a joy talking with them.  It was probably also cool to have my friends and loved ones hearing me converse with the girls in relatively fluid Danish, because everybody knows about my connection with Denmark and the history there, yet have never witnessed it themselves, I don't think.  I'm excited to have made two new friends in Marie & Laura, so I look forward to our next meeting (forhåbentligt næste weekend).  Jeg har også sagt til Marie, at hun skulle rette mig hvis jeg laver fejl når jeg snakker dansk.  Det hjælper meget, synes jeg.

Well, today is October 2nd, and I am so very in the mood for fall festivities.  If my fridge wasn't full of beer, I could try my hand at making pumpkin pie.  Any other suggestions?