Month: October 2005

  • Things I do/say/experience here that I never did in America:


    1. eat a persimmon WITH the skin (just bite into it like an apple).  when they sell it to you, they say “it’s like chocolate!  delicious!”
    2. make sangria and bring it to someone’s house in a big jar, like it was homemade moonshine
    3. eat quince and quince jam (YUM)
    4. get excited about finding 10 year old back issues of Better Homes and Gardens
    5. watch the same movies over and over and over and over again until I know random lines that noone else knows
    6. dry my laundry on a clothesline
    7. eat jam by itself, as a snack, with tea
    8. buy milk from a milk lady, then boil it myself to pasteurize it
    9. play Trivial Pursuit (my team won, but I’m ashamed because our winning question was about Beverly Hills 90210.  We had THREE questions about the show and I knew all the answers.  CON-GRA-TU-LATIONS to me.)
    10. eat hanum, a yummy Uzbek pastry filled with pumpkin, onions, and a little bit of meat.  My new friend Dilya made it. 



     



    11. have the following conversation:
    Him: Are you a foreigner?
    Me: Yes
    Him: From Korea?
    Me: Yes.
    Him: Are you married?
    Me: Yes.
    Him: If you’re married, then why are you going somewhere alone?
    Me: Well, we’re not always together.  He’s at home and I’m going out.


    EDIT: If you don’t say you’re married, you get harrassed like crazy.  Thus, the made up husband. It ain’t anything more than that.

  • Lisa G leaves Uzbekistan:


    A Musical Extravaganza of Sadness



    “Lisa, why are you leaving us!”



    “What will we do without you? I feel like a lost kitten…..”



    “Pleeeeease don’t… go!”



    “Oh, Lisa… it makes me sad to see you go..”


    “Oh, Roar… I know, but I really must go back..”



    “If you leave, if you leave, if you leave… I will make you eat this white, stringy stuff on my fork..”



    “Mui hotim shtobui Lisa octyatsa zdes”



    “I am going back to America… but I’m sadder than I look in this picture…”



    “yes, ugly porcelain doll, I am listening to you … I can’t see you… but I can hear you.. and you’re telling me…that I should sttaaaay..”



    “I’m outta… here… I go girl..I go girl…”



  • More of my favorite pictures:



    First time I ever saw a live animal killed and skinned. 
    This lamb was so quiet and calm before getting killed. “like a lamb led to slaughter…”



    Beautiful tilework in Samarkand, a great Silk Road City



    JDA team in Tashkent



    It was SOOOO hot this day when two brides were getting married (to different grooms, people!). 
    I love how the girl is peeking out from under the scarf.



    New Years Celebration with neighbors



    No caption necessary

  • One of my favorite pasttimes when I lived in the States was going to listening stations in music stores to find new music. I discovered John Mayer this way, long before he became popular. And I don’t care that he’s popular. I like his music. I saw him in concert, too, on a very rainy day in Central Park.  You should’ve seen all the people singing along.  But he’s a weirdo.  Everything he said was completely off the wall and strange.


    Anyway, this CD is another I found this way. It’s recorded in some special way (like on AC/DC or something like that) so the sound is scratchy. I think it’s the way the White Stripes record their music.  I like the way it sounds, kind of like the way music sounds on a record player. My record player, a gift from my NYC small group from Restoration Hardware (so what!), is at my parents’ house in Houston. I love that thing and wish I could’ve brought it over.  I have this awesome Patsy Cline record that sounds superb on it.





    Presenting, some of my favorite pictures of this country:



    Aren’t her glasses AMAZING?



    One of the first pictures I took when I arrived.
    I’m too shy to take pictures at the bazaar, now, though there are so many interesting things there.



    I’ve posted this pic before. I love it.  The cigarette, the Versace shirt…





    Is it weird that I’m posting someone else’s pictures from an event that I wasn’t even at? 
    Yes, it is. But it was bittersweet to see that a gang of people got together in Ann Arbor without me.  Pew. 



    There are few things better than a perfect autumn afternoon of football
     in a perfect stadium full of perfect screaming fans (victory or not).


  • 20 Random facts about me, as tagged by aimyeung.


    1. I was born in Japan.
    2. I like symmetry.
    3. My favorite movie is Babette’s Feast.
    4. I love reading cookbooks for fun.
    5. I like reading non-fiction books.  Or Anne Tyler. 
    6. I lose things a lot.  I’ve never had an umbrella for more one year.
    7. I have not been able to get through one Jane Austen novel (I apologize again to koreanhalfing)!
    8. One of my favorite songs is “Fantasy” by Mariah Carey.
    9. I used to have the following magazine subscriptions: Gourmet, the New Yorker, Martha Stewart Living, Discipleship Journal, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Harper’s.  I think I had 5 of them at the same time at some point. 
    10. My favorite book in the Bible is Isaiah.
    11. I am addicted to email.
    12. I really don’t like Ethiopian food. 
    13. I love sweet things.  Especially gummy sweet things.
    14. I went to the best undergrad school in the world – Univ of Michigan – and got a really well-rounded education.
    15. I can sing a song in Hungarian and a song in Czech.
    16. When I cook, I’m very messy.  Ask koreanhalfing about the quiche!
    17. Sometimes, I am very absent-minded. My sisters know this the best.
    18. I feel instantly “close” to someone once we’ve broached the topic of the opposite sex.
    19. I can “speak” many languages, but am only fluent in one.  Guess which one.
    20. I became a US citizen just about 10 years ago, even though I’ve lived in the states since I was 4.  That’s when I added my American name, Lana.  I didn’t start using it until just 7 years ago, when I started grad school. 


    No more tagging.  EDIT: I tag genejkim, on drtaekim’s request.  SPILL your secrets, Gene Kim. 

  • I’ve been reluctant to post this week because a few days ago, the husband of a girl I’ve known since 7th grade passed away suddenly.  They got married in March and she is pregnant with their first child.  I didn’t know him very well (I met him once and wasn’t able to attend their wedding), but I know that they were like the happiest couple on earth!  And that he made her deliriously happy.


    I wanted to dedicate this post to both of them and I’ve been trying to write a decent post for the last few days now.  I tried to write about suffering and grief; why I still believe God is good despite tragedies; why we need God so much because of these tragedies, etc, etc… but everything I wrote seemed really contrived. Stupid.  Silly.  Frivolous.


    Having never personally experienced tragedy myself, I can’t understand what she’s going through at all.  And the worst part is that there isn’t much we can do for her.  I did call her and told her I was thinking about her and praying for her.  Three of our friends were there a few days after to support her.  But her suffering and grief?  She has to go through that alone.  Another friend reminded me of how heartbreaking that is. 


    So, I looked to a couple I know who has also experienced great suffering and pain as well, and this is what they posted one time.  So I’m just posting it as well, not as a person who understands it firsthand, but knowing that they found meaning and perhaps comfort in these words during their time of need. 


        The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away,may the name of the Lord be praised. 


    Job1:21


     


    Yet when I hoped for good, evil came


    when I looked for light, then came darkness.


    The churning inside me never stops;


    days of suffering confront me.


    I go about blackened, but not by the sun;


    Job 36:26-28