Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Ever wonder why people wear green on St. Pattys? Well, it's really only a big thing in America, the wearing of the green to escape a nasty pinch, supposedly in Ireland they don't give any preference to green in parades or activities related to the day.

And some people wear orange and forsake the green all together! I over heard this little tidbit on accident while my roommate was talking to a friend on Skype and they mentioned that someone they knew was wearing orange for St. Pats. This automatically made them, I don't want to say dis the person, but it was definitely a fact they maybe wished they didn't know.

Turns out, Green is for the Catholics and Orange is for the Protestants. Of course, it also means a sharp division between the two, and due to the current feelings these two groups have for each other, it's a pretty important divide.

Who knew?

I've also read that wearing white is supposed to symbolize peace between the two groups and the unity of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Kind of romantic I think.

The three colors of the Irish flag.

Saaaaalsa!

Today I've learned that there are very few things better than having a jar of good salsa around. Especially when you've been without for almost 7 months!

(Thanks, Tim!)

I Miss Lubbock, TX

The Great Plains Life Building in downtown Lubbock, TX is thought to be the tallest building to ever survive a F5 tornado!

Go Texas!

On May 11, 1970, a huge tornado ripped through the business area of Lubbock. With winds clocking in at over 200 mph, the tornado destroyed hundreds of homes, schools, and businesses. 26 people were killed. A boy was ripped out of a car he was hiding in and a whole family of 5 was killed when their house was picked up an hurled into a field.

(My momma totally lived though! Great work, mom! She told me when I was younger, and I fully believe this was the fuel that fired my 16-year long storm anxiety, that she remembered running across the street to get to a neighbors storm cellar and her feet were barely touching the ground from the wind.)

The Great Plains Life Building though was so damaged that many thought it would collapse, but despite being twisted, damaged elevator shafts, and crumbling stair wells the owners decided to repair in instead.

(The PCLB is the tall one on the right. It's the tallest building in Lubbock at a whopping 20 stories!)

You can read a pretty creepy account here about an elevator.

I guess I feel a little connected to this one because I

a) lived in Lubbock for four years while attending Texas Tech.

b) My mom grew up there and I still have a lot of family living there.

And

c) I've been watching a lot of Storm Chasers on, you guessed it, Discovery Channel. It's like Twister only in real life, people! It's also one of the few English language channels we get here. :)

Why the French smell bad

Maybe because they have 265 kinds of cheese!

That's a shit ton of cheese! (no pun intended)

It's because there are so many different climates in France, and most regions have their own local cheese. Climate can be a very big factor in cheese making, so all of these cheeses turn out differently.

Huh.

Salt!

OK, so a little late on this bandwagon, but the book Salt: A World History is actually pretty interesting. I read a passage yesterday about how in ancient Roman times a sort of fish-oil (salted rotted fish, called garam) was used in place of salt in many dishes. Some considered it to be an extravagant addition to their food while others thought it was a putrid slime not meant for human consumption. After reading how it is made, I might have to agree with the later.

To make the sauce, the fish scraps were put in earthen jars with alternating layers of salt and weighted on the top to keep them submerged in the pickle that developed as salt drew moisture out of the fish.

Usually this happens out in the sun for days and days.

Then, this morning, Angela (my Korean tutor, who is also a vegan and trying to help us with being vegan for lent) began to rant about how much she hated fish oils in kimchi. She then went on to say how many Koreans use this fish oil in dishes instead of sogum (salt).

Don't you love it when things in your life overlap. I thought this was a practice that had been disposed of after the fall of the Romans, but I guess not. It doesn't really surprise me though. Kimchi, (fermented cabbage) is the single most popular food in Korea, it doesn't seem strange that salted fish left to ferment and repel juices in the hot sun for a month would also be quite popular for consumption.

Bottoms up!

Here are a few other facts about salt:

• It's the only rock that we eat


• The word salary is actually derived from the Roman word for salt, sal, because many people were paid in salt for services. So were soldiers, which is how we get that word as well. It comes from the French word, solde, meaning pay (referring historically to being paid in salt).


• In order to age cheese all you need is time and salt. It takes two years for salt to get to the middle of a wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. That's a long time! All that you need to make cheese according to Mark Kurlansky is milk and salt.

• Salzburg, Austria is translated literally as 'salt town.'

Apologies in advance for all of you out there bored out of your mind with salt. This is only part one, as I have not yet finished the book. Yay!

The "The"

I'm constantly learning new things about English now that I'm teaching it as a foreign language. Not so much things I've been doing wrong, but learning why we say things the way we do.

Of course there are still major mysteries that the Korean teachers will ask us explanations for, but we have none. Like how you can be ON a football field, but IN a regular field. Or ON an island but IN a country. I love it when these minute little problems come up. It makes me feel really lucky English is my native tongue and I'm not having to learn it.

Then, one day, my boss asked me, "Emily when do you use thE and when do you use thUH?" My answer: whenever you like. I use thE when I want to put emphasis on something and thUH pretty much every other time. I thought.

Turns out I was WRONG! Much like A and AN there is actually a time and place to use thE and thUH. (not the same for A and Auh though. . .)

there's a special pronunciation rule about the word the that is similar to the rule about when to use a and an: The is pronounced “thuh” when it comes before a word that starts with a consonant sound, and it's pronounced “thee” when it comes before a word that starts with a vowel sound. It can also be pronounced “thee” for emphasis (2), for example if you wanted to say, “Twitter is the [pronounced “thee”] hot social networking tool.” I actually have trouble remembering this rule and have to make special marks in my transcripts to remind myself to get the pronunciation right, so I apologize if I mess it up sometimes. I think I must have missed the day they covered this in school, and I've never recovered. -- Grammar Girl

She's definitely not the only person who missed that day in school. I'd never in my life heard of such a thing until coming here and according to all of the foreigners I've asked about it, neither have they. I tell the Korean teachers that it's not really that big of a deal, but they still insist on correcting us and making us feel like big English dummies.

In short

Vowel sound : thE

Consonant sound: thUH

Killer Lightning!

According to Discovery channel last night, a special on serial killers, you are more likely to get hit by lightning twice than be killed by a serial killer.

I don't know if that makes me less afraid of serial killers, or waaay more afraid of lightning.

Ok. I'm Not Really a Professor, but. . .

I'm going to learn something everyday and share it. It might be something interesting, it might not. It might be a personal life lesson. It might be something I saw on Discovery channel. It might not, but I'm tired of feeling like my brain is turning into mush after graduating college.

My goal: 365 days of learning!