New Website Giddiness!

I am super excited! Yes I used the word SUPER!!! How can this be? Me, excited? Why, How? It is still winter, and I am in Korea, the land of snow, ice, and 8.5 toes....Well, you see there has been a startling turn in events.. The ocean is thawing, the birds are singing, and I think that the White Witch is loosing her power! (sorry for my Narnia reference, I could not help it).You don't believe me? I almost didn't believe myself, except guess what the high temperature was today? 54F!!! I know! I'm practically putting on my bathing suit and going poolside, where's my SPF and umbrella-dressed drink?!? Last year it snowed in April, but this year it's looking like Mr. Spring or Aslan, if I continue with my above analogy, is going to win this battle.. I'm giddy...Giddy, I just love that word.. Don't you?In the spirit of giddiness, warmer weather excitement, and all the newness of Spring; I am adding my own newness to the world. And No, I am not pregnant.. ::Shame, on you for thinking such a thought!:: But even more exciting than new babies, finally after many months of hard work and pipping hot cups of delicious cherry cordial coffee, Yum! I have not just 1, but 3 new websites for Inge Kathleen Photography.. Yahoo! <--- another stunning wordThank-you everyone who helped me design and tweak them. They are much better because of you all.. Well if you have a few minutes and of course you do, because you love me ::cough, cough:: Check them out!-  If you do, I'll give you a really great virtual bear hug or treat you to the awesomest coffee ever, if you come visit me in Asialand -  and as always, I'd love to know what you think of all the newness.Now off to find out where I stuck my dainty parasol and green polka-dot sundress. :)1. My editorial photography: www.ingekathleen.com2. My lifestyle portrait photography: www.ingekathleen.com/site3. My blog: www.ingekathleen.com/blog - but don't worry about clicking this link because you are already @ the blog :) ~ but you can subscribe to all the blog updates by email on the left handside. Just put your email in and you will automatically be emailed when there is an update. It's crazy easy. To contact: ingekathleen@gmail.com

Desolution

Happy January 31! How has the first month of 2011 treated you all? I hope splendidly.. I was lucky enough to spend half of the month in the good ole US of A! Yes be jealous. I spent 100% of my time relaxing, talking, eating, and drinking coffee (about 50% of the time) with my awesome family and friends.  It has been a splendid year so far. Despite it being too cold for any human, I feel like the year holds so much potential. It's going to be a great one. I'm getting all tingly thinking about it... oh wait never mind the tingle is coming from the frostbite starting in envelop my poor tootsies.. booo... ahh well who needs em when you can think of all the amazingness this year will offer!

Odd....My tone of writing is a bit too cheery for the above image of death and oppression., yes? What can I say? My camera seems to have it's screwballish dark moods.. I try to cheer him up, but it can't help it. Graveyards are so very fascinating to him. They are just fantastically creepy to photograph in. Would you not agree?

Well enjoy February and all the crazy things to ensue! Talk soon :)

The Coolest Boys Eva Eva

I'm the lucky girl to have these two as my brothers. They really are quite the bomb dot coms. I'm not really sure why they even hang out with me or are my facebook friends. Do you know dear reader? I'm mean really I'm the geeky, huge camera toting, Korean, Mexican sister who can't seem to stay in the US of A long enough to do a load of laundry. Do you think they bother to put up me because I bribe them with food? Yes, yes that must be it!

Food really is a magic tool of manipulation. If you look at any great feat or massive betrayal in all of human history you know what is the motivation for it? A tasty meal. You don't believe me? Well let me explain.. Do you know the real reason Moses had the strength to cross the Red Sea? Not because he was a super human, no, no, it was because there was a pipping Chick-fil-a Chicken Biscuit waiting on the other side, Two of them! I swear it is true just look it up in the Bible. Totally there. It's there. very much there :)

And do you know why Brutus betrayed/killed his super tight friend Julius Caesar? Not because he was power hungry. He was just hungry and his mother promised to make him the best TexMex food known to man WITH extra cheese and cilantro if he stuck it to Caesar. Yes, yes, I know that they were Roman and didn't live in Texas or Mexico. And Texas wasn't even founded until much later, but you see his mother was so ahead of her times, she knew TexMex food before it hit Texas. And so there you have it my friends, the enchilada is what did Mr. Caesar in. Poor guy. You know if they taught the true history behind Caesar's fall in schools these days, more kids would stay awake in school. And that's what's wrong with the education system these days!  Hey but at least I have cool brothers. I hope you do too or at least a good cup of hot chocolate with a little cinnamon in it :)

Oh! how I love the Mountains and Pumpkin Pie too!

The mountains in Nepal are pretty much the next best thing to dark chocolate and pumpkin pie. If I could have had the foresight to bring a pie with me to Nepal, I could have eaten it while hiking the mountain then I think I would have dropped dead on the spot from happiness, maybe next year. Have you ever been to a place where you felt just an overwhelming sense of peace and clarity? For me this was the Nepalese mountains. and imagine if I had brought a pumpkin pie with me on my journey to Everest Base Camp? Wow, I think I could have found the cure for cancer!I even tried to take a mountain back with me to South Korea, but the guy in airport security said that it clashed with my outfit and the fashion police in Seoul would not have such a lapse in fashion sense enter their country. I rolled my eyes better than a teenager, but gave in and allowed him to take my precious hunk of rock from me. ::sigh:: Next time I think I'll wear more of a neutral color and see if I can sneak it past the guard. I've just got to figure out how to fit it through the airport scanner.. hmm. any ideas?Before I'm off to start my Saturday morning here in Korea, I wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving! It is really the best holiday of the year, and I'm am really very sad that I missed the opportunity to stuff my face in the USA with my beautiful family. ::inge proceeds to shed 2 tears:: <---- See I even shed virtual tears - 2 of them! - to let you know that I am not lying..I'm such a geniune person..::inge sighs and then sheds yet another tear:: I hope it was a lovely day for you all, and that you entered into a proper food coma., and that you ate more pumpkin pie than I did. [for my Thanksgiving day breakfast I ate 1/16 of a pie-it's like eating gold, delicious gold!]. But this begs me to ask? Where was my airmail package of pumpkin pie? Huh, huh? I'm not bitter.. NO.. not at all. so NOT hurt for not getting ANY pie not even a pie-scented card. rude!On Thursday here in Korea, it was a coincidentally the day of my school's fall festival. Can you guess what I made my kids dress up like, and perform for the entire school? 10 Little Indians. That's right. I was going for the most politically incorrect song possible. I would have dressed them up like 10 little pumpkins pies, but unfortunately there were no songs about pumpkin pie to justify my infatuation with the decadent dessert. Next year I'm writing a song to honor this golden, sweet, custardy disc of deliciousness. It will be a mad bestseller. I can already feel it. Ohhh... it's going to be good :)  Well that's all for me now, please have a lovely black Friday in the States, score brilliants deals at the stores, but more importantly make me proud by eating loads of leftovers for breakfast, lunch and dinner, ok?

Sumatran Life

So it's that time of year. You know the time of year that you clean out your closets or in my case clean out my hard drives, reorganize my life, build a website and conquer the world with a crazy fancy 'To Do' lists. What is this time of year called, I forget? Oh yes, Spring cleaning!. oh, uh..er..Shucks, I'm a little late, huh? Ahhh well, we'll just have to call it 'early' spring cleaning..Look at me and all my overachieving ways! I'm just that good. ::Ok ya'll, quit laughing at me. I'm trying to make myself feel better about my superhuman ability to procrastinate::

As part of my Spring cleaning, I looking through pictures of my Indonesian escapades from last winter that never made it to the light of day because of that superhuman ability that I mentioned above. So here is the first a 2 or 3 blog posts series on Indonesia/Nepal and the warmth of these beautiful countries that has currently vanished from Korea-land and will never return again! Ever! My toes will be amputated this week due to the state of the Korean winter and next week my nose will go too! Ok, maybe I am being a little dramatic, they are only chopping off 4 of my toes and half my nose, but you don't understand what it is like to go through six months of straight winter and have to wear long johns and wool coats in May! In May, people! I brrrrreaks even the strongest of spirits.

As part of my attempts to psychologically trick myself into thinking that I will not die during this winter, I am drinking Indonesia coffee by the gallons, turning on the sun lamps, buying a new swimsuit, and listening to Hawaiian music, oh and I even ordered sand for my apartment floor! What do you think? Do you think I'll survive? Ha, Bingo! You're very, very, right dear readers. I'm toast! Burnt toast, so burnt that even the butter knife scraping technic won't help my situation. I'm doomed! No more toes or fingers for me, and I might as well say goodbye to my whole nose too. I can just think of it as cheap plastic surgery, right, right?. ::Happy thoughts, Inge. Happy thoughts!::

"When Life gives you Lemons, make Lemonade" or in my case....

In the great continent of Asia, or probably more accurately in the country of S. Korea there is a disheartening lack of one of the best foods know to man.... Cheese! Yes! I know how do I, Inge, cheese lover, live here????? In a land where the only cheeses people know are plastic mozzarella and powdered orange cheese food?!? I don't know! I have pondered that question daily. And I was coming to a breaking point.

So you seeeeee, I was about to move back to a land flowing with bread and cheese, until 2 days ago a beautiful and painful thing occurred. An angel came down from Heaven and smacked me over the head with a broom stick and then in a booming voice said.. "DUH!, Inge! If you're so hung up on not having cheese make your own cheese. gosh darnet!" He said it just like that too! and then Heaven rang a bell because this messenger angel just received his wings for fulling his earthly mission..  His name was Bob. Congratulations Bob, your wings look good on you, but you got a little mustard/ketchup stain on your right wing-man. You might want to think about doing a load of laundry. Just sayin.

Anyways so the bruise on my head got me to a thinkin'.. Cheese. you say, Sir Bob?.... Can I really make, cheese? and then I remembered WikiHow.com! Oh joy.! It has all the answers to life and more! and guess what article it had "How to make Cheese!" Oh man, I practically died and went to Heaven!

And above in the milk picture, Yes, that does seems like an exorbitant amount of milk, a little bit overkill, but cheese is so good, and I am so deprived. Like a baby without milk, a chef with no knife, or a ballerina with no tutu!

At this point you might ask how the heck did you get all of that milk? Well you see in Asia, I practice thievery and bribery. Basically, I like to take the bone building milk from any unsuspecting Korean child. - aka - We play switch-a-roo at the lunch table.. I bribe them for their milk with candy and stickers. muahahaha :) It's a somewhat shady means to a udderly delicious end... CHEESE..

And for all you doubters in my ability to make cheese or tell the truth, it was delicious!!! Legitimate amazingness, and if you feel like a science project yourself, here is how you make your very own cheese --->

http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/Recipes/Cheese-Making-Recipes-304.aspx http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Cheese-at-Home

P.S. This post is dedicated to my dear friend Hannah O. You told me to take pictures and make a blog post of anything I wanted just because, so I made cheese for you and lived to tell about it. You're fresh delicious cheese is in the mail..

The Great Escape!

Mandy and I did it! We escaped Korea for a few short weeks to experience the beauty and intricacies of Nepali life.. How did we manage the escape, you might be wondering? Well see there is this new crazy invention, called an air-O-Plane. Have you heard of it? You see it wonderful! And by-golly it took us all the way from Korea right to the heart of Nepal.. Snip-Snap. Like a dream - BoooooM - Bamb! - Well quite dreamy other than 2 super long, food-less layovers in a China and then a very hearty frisking at the Tibetan border.. Ummmm, can you say Awkward?... as in awkward Turtle - (for all of the high schoolers who know the turtle well).During the Escape, I managed to grab a few photos that I thought maybe you'd want to see or not, depending on your general mood and your current Starbucks intake for the day.Below are photos from Kathmandu the capital city of Nepal, we were held captive by the city for over 4 days until the weather gods allowed us to fly our way  into Lukla, Nepal - by a sweet helicopter! - to start our 8-day, 75 mile trek to Everest Base Camp and back., but more on the mountain later. There will be more Nepali photo craziness on the blog this next week that is coming up. I Swear. Pinky-Promise, spit on my knee and then I'll even kiss my elbow. :)

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I made it out! Plastic Surgery and all.

Sooooo just in case you really missed me, or might have wondered if I might have died during my (our Mandy's and mine) 70 mile - 8 day climb, 18,192 ft high in the sky - to a place called Everest Base Camp in Nepal?... Did you even ask yourself where I was? Well don't feel bad because -- no, no, I didn't die - almost died- but death and cremation is too expensive, and you see, I have bad health insurance so I decided life was a cheaper option... Lucky for you, Mom, death is a pricey bugger... And even more lucky, I included a photo of myself  in this blog post to prove my 100% alive-ness - see my portrait below --p.s. I may have gotten a wee bit of plastic surgery while in Nepal. It's uber cheap there, and I was having an ugly day so I thought some plastic would cheer me up! It did, but the plane ride back to Korea was surprisingly more difficult, and I'm always so hungry now. I could almost eat a c---... or maybe just a horse... hmmm strange., or is it?

Farewell Korea - Hello Arctic!

Ahhh in a short few hours, Mandy and I will set out out on a crazy adventure of a lifetime! We will go all the way to Antarctica to ride the back of killer whales and polar bears! We have been training for the past 3 months by diligently going to the local Korean zoo every night and feeding the polar bears. This increased our polar bear karma. We have managed to feed the bears over 1,000pds of Rice and kimchi. We believe that our by the time we get to the Arctic the polars will think that we are brothers er um sister-wives perhaps with them and then they will give us a rides from north to west.  Getting to know Killer whales was a bit more of a challenge for us. You see, the Koreans don't have them in their zoo! I was surprised and frankly disgusted when I heard this. But it has been my dream since I was a wee lass to ride on the back of a Killer so I thought really hard.. For almost an hour! I know, I know.. That's about as hard as geniuses think! My brain hurt for hours and hours afterward.My brilliant plan? Well, we watched Free Willy 1,2,3, &4 every night for 3 months absorbing every word and sound made by Willy and his owner, Jesse, we now know the script by heart and will conquer the hearts of all the whales with out graceful whale dances and sweet voices.. And they will bow their heads and let us walk on their backs and ride them through the arctic circle...okkkkk... so maybe the above is a bit of a lie.. or a lot of one... (Sorry God and Mom) And maybe I'm not going to Antarctica.. but polar bears and lil' killers are really quite cute, so squeezable, and I would go, but you see I'm an English teacher and therefore have no money to fly all that way..  So sadly all of our hard work was spoiled, and now we must settle for a 3 week trek across Nepal. A trek that consists of eating loads Indian, Nepali, Tibetan food; meeting Sherpaa, kissing llamas, taking too many pictures, asking a Tibetan to be my pen pal, playing rock, paper, scissors till our hands fall off during layovers in China, buying loads of beautiful jewelry and clothes, OHHH and yeah... um climbing 18000 feet upward to see... that mountain --- Everest? :DAhhhhhh I'm so excited.. I couldn't even sleep last night.. probably due to the nightmares that I would forget my wallet, passport, get in a knockdown drag-out fight with Mandy, and my beautiful camera would blow up.. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ---> Boom! Like burnt toast! Done! haha.. so I decided that the sleep wasn't worth it.. Too scary. I am off to finish the last things on my list...1) Pack my passport And wallet2) Make Mandy breakfast in bed3) Go have a love chat with my camera4) Fly to NepalSee you all in a few weeks well via this blog at least :)Won't you miss this beautiful face??? huh, huh? Nepal won't know what hit it!and you can send your love or hate mail to my friend Juan for capturing this brilliantly accurate depiction of my face. :)   You guys miss me, won't you? kisses and hugs for everyone! :)

Bow-ChiCa-Bow-Wow!

Imagine if this was how you made your money... hahaha... I would for sure blink and twitch and break into cold sweats all at once.... and then I would be fired. Done for. Sent back to the States. And sentenced to a life of eating only Spam and kimchi..  :: Inge shudders and begins to twitch uncontrollable for 23.4 mins:: ........ Ok, ok.. I'm back! Whew.... remind me never to apply for a live manikin position... ever...  Dog food and fermented cabbage just aren't for me.. I might just cry and cry and cry.... and then the smell of my breath! Oui, It would be bad... yikes! You don't even want to know! My mouth would be like a small dark hole (or big dark hole depending on your personal opinion... but keep that to yourself thank-you!) of death..... death I tell you, that nasty 5 letter word ::shudders again::

Random wondering of the day: Do you ever wonder why "death" has 5 letter instead of 4 letter? I mean, Really.. Lets be honest... All bad, ugly words in the English language have 4 letters.. you know like the words... um...er...ish...

::Inge suddenly remembers, just in time, that she should stop her typing right NOW and only silently count off all the naughty words she knows... so she doesn't end up in a big dark hole of Death herself... then looks around to make sure no one heard her thoughts... wowzers! she's twitching again... and...ewww! she's sweating.... I swear, there is something seriously wrong with her, but don't tell her I said that.. See, she's a wee bit self-conscious, and might beat me if she knew I was talking behind her back..And I am a peace loving commentator and have no other employment options so this will be our little secret, yes? ::

But really... Why does death get 5 letters? does it just feel like it's better than the other big bad words like...... Such a snob! If Death went to high school, she would for sure be a Mean Girl and hang out with Rachel McAdams and her possy.... Esh! where does Death get off -- thinking it has the right for 5 letters? And with that I will end my thoughts... ---twitch, twitch, twitch, twitch, twitch, twitch..... :: see what I mean? Something is for sure wrong with her..::