You Don't Have to Read This Blog Post Since It's The Weekend

I have decided that there are few things as enjoyable as having a free morning to sit by a window while a storm rumbles outside, listening to my smooth playlist and drinking tea.

Here's how I feel about TOP's singing voice: I don't actually have any words for it, because it is just so great.

I have been researching count words in Korean lately. You may not have encountered this yet, but in Korean if you're telling someone a quantity, you usually can't just say "I have three cats" or "I'd like five tomatoes". You have to also add a count word, and the count words are different depending on what item you're counting. English doesn't usually have an equivalent, but in some cases we do say things like "300 head of cattle" and "five pieces of candy" where "head" and "pieces" are count words. Here's an example:

난 고양이 3마리 있어 - I have three cats

고양이 is cat. Since the quantity is stated right afterwards, no plural is needed (I love this). In this case, 마리 is the count word. It basically means "amount of animals". So if you were to translate it more literally, it would say "I have three animals that are cats".

I thought it was pretty confusing at first since it means a whole new set of words for me to learn just to be able to state a quantity, but actually it makes pretty good sense and it eliminates the uncertainty of where to put the number since count words always come after the noun they're modifying.

5분 나를 인사했습니다 - Five people greeted me

Here, you don't even have to say "people", since 분 is a count word specifically for people. 명 is also a people count word, and it's used more often, but it's less polite and you know how I feel about being polite in Korean (I am terrified of doing anything else).

So now you know. But there are also weird count words for random things that I will probably never have cause to remember, like 통, which is for watermelons, and 자루, which is for anything with a long handle like shovels, swords, and frying pans.

Sometimes, Korean is hard, especially when it has concepts that English doesn't have. But then I remember how Korean fascinates me more than most of my other subjects put together, even though it isn't very applicable in my foreseeable future.

I feel better about moving now that I was able to pack up all my books. I didn't have a box, so I used the next best thing, which was a double-layer brown paper bag just big enough to fit them all. I am not looking forward to carrying it down to my car. I'll wait till it stops raining.

-Amy

Watermelons

Well, heres the news.

I'm sick!

Its real great. I get to do school, and blow my nose every fifteen minutes on toilet paper, because we are out of Kleenexes.

I think this is the first time in years we have been out of Kleenexes, and its very annoying. My nose is so red I could madden a bull.

Why is that the first thing I thought of? No idea. Really weird.

Anywho, mom told me to put chapstick on the end of my nose, so I did. Unfortunately, I didn't bother looking what the flavor was, and it turned out to be peppermint.

Pain. Pain. PAIN!

Well today I was thinking about what to blog, and I got to thinking that Amy said if I would let her write about anything, she would let me write about anything, except lots of stuff about watermelons and how they are so awesome, lets see if she was serious.

Watermelons can be both fruit and the plant of a vine-like herb originally from South Africa and one of the most common types of melon. This flowering plant produces a special type of fruit with a hard green rind and a sweet pink or red flesh.

In Vietnam, legend hold that watermelon was discovered in Vietnam long before it reached China, in the era of the Hung Kings. According to legend, watermelons was discovered by Prince Mai An Tiem, an adopted son of the 11th Hung King. When he was exiled unjustly to an island, he was told that if he could survive for six months, he would be allowed to return. When he prayed for guidance, a bird flew past and dropped a seed. He cultivated the see and called its fruit "dua tay" or western melon, because the birds who ate it flew from the west. When the Chinese took over Vietnam in about 110 BC they called the melons "dua hao" which means good melon, or watermelon.

Today, farmers in approximately 44 sates in to US grow watermelons, commercially, and most all these varieties have some Charleston Gray in their lineage.

Georgia, Florida, Texas, California and Arazona are the USA's largest watermelon producers.

The now-common watermelon is often large enough that groceries often sell half or quarter melons. There are also some smaller, spherical varieties of watermelon, both red and yellow-fleshed, sometimes called "icebox melons."

In Japan, farmers of the Zentsuji region found a way to grow cubic watermelons by growing the fruits in glass boxes and letting them naturally assume the shape of the receptacle. The square shape is designed to make the melons easier to stack and store, but the square melons are often more than double the price of normal ones. Pyramid shaped watermelons have also been developed and any polygonal shape may potentially also be used. (square watermelon shown above, along with an awesome watermelon car that I WANT!)