I'm at my dad's apartment. He's watching some TV while I write this.

I didn't watch much TV when I was in DC, although I'd go through phases of watching lots of the boob tube. Here, the TV is usually on in the mornings, so I'll get about 10 minutes worth as I eat breakfast, but other than that, I don't really watch. Some of the people I know here have TVs in their rooms, but I don't. Until about 2 weeks ago, I didn't have a radio either, just a Discman, but I'd stopped using it several weeks ago, due to a tendency to listen to Tracy Chapman songs while moping.

Aya, my housemate, lent me her radio 2 weeks ago, though, so sometimes I turn it on in the morning as I get dressed. I like listening to the classical station; the DJ plays a lot of baroque stuff, which I love. This morning he played a beautiful Bach piece adapted for four saxophones, and I thought of my own saxophone-playing days.

Aya was horrified to find out that I had neither TV nor radio, and since she had both, she offered the latter to me. "It's just too boring if you don't have either!" she said. "You should at least have a radio."

Although I do admit that I miss being able to go out and rent a brainless action flick from time to time, I don't really miss the TV, and while I do appreciate the radio, I didn't mind too much not having one. Not having a lot of time to kill at home lends itself to the not minding, of course. I get home around 7:15 or so, and after eating and sometimes hanging out with Aya and whoever else is around the table, it's about 8 pm. If I'm not doing homework, I'll read one of my few English books, or write in my journal, and that's surprisingly satisfying.

I think my life here is fairly simple. I like that.

Last night, because I've been having some weird skin problems, I went with my dad to this doctor...of sorts. He's not really a doctor. He studied physiology very intently, and has a theory that all people fall into one of around 16 categories. It's kind of hard to explain. He's not even like the Chinese medicine practicioners that my mom used to take me to when I was younger. They'd at least take your pulse before prescribing strained deer antlers.

This guy didn't examine me or anything, he just looked at me and divined that my liver is strong, which makes my lungs kind of weak. According to him, I shouldn't worry too much about my skin. It'll clear up when I get married.

Yeah, my dad and I laughed at that too. I, however, was not polite enough to wait until after the consultation to laugh.

Don't get me wrong -- I was totally willing to go see this guy. I have my rationalistic side, which favors the western med-based dermatology I'm also following, but like the man says (the man this time being my dad), there's got to be something to eastern medicine if it's been around for this long. As long as my treatment is grounded in western medicine, I don't see too much wrong with exploring other options too.

Of course, I didn't pay for the $100 bottle of vinegar that my dad ended up buying from the store where the guy gives these consultations. It was for my consultation as well as my dad's, who went a few weeks ago (he was told not to drink too much water, as it interferes with digestion).

Well, it's a big bottle.

And it's supposed to be good for the complexion.

I did see the news that terrorists hit a hotel in Kenya that caters to Israelis and tried to hit an airplane too. I will have to ask Peter (Father Njoroge in my class) if his family is in Mombasa. It's just too horrible. What can we do to stop these things from happening?

I mentioned before that I experienced some anti-American sentiment here. Subsequently, I asked Myung-soo, my work colleague, about how Koreans feel about Americans, and was treated to a 20-minute long continuous list of grievances. (To be fair, she's pretty longwinded in general.) Among one of her points was that yes, we did experience Sept. 11, but that was one day, one time, and Americans have never experienced war at home.

My kneejerk reaction was of distressed disbelief. I felt that she was dismissing the horror of that day and the months that followed. I have thought about it from time to time since then, and I keep realizing that it is very, very difficult to remove myself from my American mindset, even though in the U.S. I think I'm firmly in the liberal camp and pretty open-minded. When I say American mindset, I mean that I can't imagine how it is to be Korean. Korea's been through some really tough shit in the past century: Japanese occupation for a quarter of a century, the horror of the Korean War, the abject poverty that followed. I think that a lot of people feel that the U.S. presence here is another kind of occupation, and that the U.S. doesn't care about Korea, it cares about its own political strategy, in which Korea, located near China and Russia, plays a small but significant role.

So yeah, it was pretty shitty of Myung-soo to address 9/11 that way, but at the same time, I never really thought about the terrible ordeals that Koreans (including members of my own family!) had to suffer, nor of the suffering of the millions of other people in other countries that have experienced war or terror. I only found out a few weeks ago that my grandfather was from a small town just north of the 38th parallel. He was visiting a friend in Seoul shortly before the Korean War broke out, and never saw his family again.

What's the point of all this? To be honest, I don't know. Being American here is strange, being Korean American here is strange. Being Korean, being Korean American in America is strange. I hardly even know what the questions are, much less the answers.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

BC and I have had some serious laughs the last few Turkey Days, so I'm missing her and her wicked mashed potato making skills today. Two years ago (my goodness, really that long ago?) today, I had both hands in a big 'ole bird, yelling, "The pits are still frozen! The pits are still frozen!" while BC dialed home to ask the perennial question: "Uh, mom, if the turkey's armpits are still frozen, can we still stick it in the oven?"

I celebrated Turkey Day last Saturday, with a bunch of missionaries and their friends. We had rotisserie chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy and rolls and sweet potato pie and someone even managed to rustle up some of that fake cranberry sauce that splooches out of the can (loooove that stuff). And, of course, kimchee.

My classmate Wendy, an American missionary, invited me to the party last week. From age 9 to age 15, Wendy lived in China with her missionary parents and two brothers. She came back to Texas and experienced INTENSE culture shock.

"I finally figured out what it was," she said over dinner two weeks ago. "In China, we played like children but thought like adults. In the U.S., the kids acted like adults, with their cars and makeup and everything, but inside, thought like children."

She went to Baylor for college and became an elementary school teacher. One day, a man came to speak about the plight of North Koreans at her church, and she was deeply moved. So much so that she signed up to become part of a mission to go there and minister to the people.

You could say that missionary-ism is in Wendy's blood -- her younger brother is currently doing missionary work in Sudan. And you could definitely say that traveling is her blood too: her other brother lives in Japan with his Japanese wife.

Seven other people round out Wendy's mission group: three couples and a baby. One couple consists of two Korean Americans. Another couple are the parents of baby Jared. And the third couple consists of one of the most drop dead beautiful women I have ever met: half black and half Korean, Winae grew up in Korea until she was eight, then moved to Milwaukee with her mother. I cannot even imagine how difficult it must have been to grow up half black in Korea. And then to move to middle America when you're in third grade? Fuggedaboudit.

Winae is married to one of the whitest men I have ever met: Jeff, who grew up in the Valley (my 'hood!) and whose ancestor gave the sermon to his fellow Puritans the day after the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock.

(I kid thee not. Could I make up stuff like this?)

After we ate, Jeff talked a little bit about the meaning of Thanksgiving to the group, some of whom were experiencing their first Thanksgiving meal of their lives. He kept away from the controversial aspects of Native Americans and all that, and just focused on the faith of the Puritans.

Then we played Uno.

Then we talked.

Then we ate dessert.

Then we went home.

Thus ended a very simple and god-filled evening. I had a good time. I ate a lot. I learned how to play Uno. I met Silvia, an Italian woman who is a Korean Foundation Fellow, and whom I saw again last night at the gayageum concert. I talked a long time with Janet, a New York Korean American whom I insulted right off the bat by guessing she was 27 when she's only 23 (but she didn't hold it against me). The only time I felt a bit strange was when I was talking to Jeff and he asked if I went to church in the Valley, and I said I didn't, that my family was Buddhist.

Lots to be thankful for, I'm happy to say. I'm learning Korean, living in a foreign country, making enough money, meeting tons of nice, interesting people, and spending lots of time with my dad. You know, when I came to this country, the goal at the top of my list was to learn Korean, but I'm realizing that seeing my dad every weekend and hanging out with him is something that I will remember all my life. As a number of you have pointed out, that alone is worth the trip. I feel very fortunate that I'm able to do this.

Interesting tidbit learnt at breakfast: Christmas here is like New Year's in the States, and New Year's, like Christmas. Christmas is a time to get together with your significant other, go out with friends, and have a grand old time. I told Ajuma that if someone goes out in the States on Christmas, people assume they don't have family or that their family is far away, and so feel rather sorry for them. She said that here, if you don't go out at Christmas, people assume you don't have a boyfriend or girlfriend. Hee.

Mad busy today, so no time to write. Sucks.
Have a few minutes in which I should be rewriting two letters, but bluagh, as RG used to say. (Or was it "bluagh"? Heh.)
I was stupid last night and went to a gayageum concert instead of going home and resting like a good convalescent. Decided at the last minute that I might get to meet an ambassador or two and went. Of course, I got lost, asked a policeman where Kumho Gallery was, went there, was told I was at the wrong Kumho Gallery, went back to the policeman who then apologized and directed me to the actual venue.
Well, only 40 minutes of wandering around in freezing cold weather (it snowed yesterday, remember?).
I know I sound grumpus (shout out to Sean -- mistakenly credited Wendy last time) about it, but when I was wandering around, I was perversely happy. I don't know, it's something about wandering.
Also, after about 20 minutes, I was DETERMINED to find the place, even if I was going to be late late late. Why? Because if I went home at that time, I'd miss dinner anyway, so I HAD to find the place, in order to get some eats!
I ended up missing about half the performance, but I really enjoyed the latter half, and 30 minutes was about enough. The gayageum is a 12-stringed zither, and the composer (who also played) did some interesting avante garde stuff with it, including a piece with a singer where the singer laughed and cried for a minute, read the newspaper, made white noise, and generally did everything except sing. The thing about avante garde music, though, is that it's like a puzzle -- what is the composer getting at? what message does s/he want to convey? -- and once you figure out the puzzle, it's kind of like, okay, can we get to the next piece now? So after I figured out that okay, Maestro Hwang wants to show us that the gayageum is versatile and can be beaten like a drum, and made to sound like white noise, and can evoke joy and tears and distress, I was ready for some very non-avante garde, pretty music. Which he provided. Beautifully.
I didn't meet any embassy folks, but I did have a nice time talking to a bunch of Foundation Fellows, and scored promises from Foundation people that I'd be invited to all the cultural events that the Fellows get to go to. Nice night's work.

MAIL!!!
More letters! One from Junebug and another large envelope from Wendy, which I have not yet had a chance to look through. Hurrah!

SNOW!!!
Yes, I finally saw some snow falling today. It was the "Quick! Turn into slush before someone notices!" kind of snow, but it was unmistakably flakes, not drops.

FLU!!!
Yes, I finally got sick yesterday, after feeling all healthy and superior as my classmates and teachers dropped like flies. I reckon I shouldn't have concluded the three-hour long hike with my dad on Sunday with a foot-dunking in the icy cold mountain water. It seemed like a good idea at the time...
When I woke up yesterday, I felt a little odd, but well enough to go to school. As class progressed, though, I felt increasingly exhausted, as well as strangely nauseous. So at noon, I packed it in and went home.
Tried to sleep, but sleep is hard to come by when ten thousand microscopic gnomes with pick axes are hammering away at your joints and muscles. So at 4:30 I gave up my short-lived attempt at stoicism and called my dad, who went to the pharmacy, got some western meds and some horrible Korean herbal stuff, and drove over to my house to drop them off. What love, eh?
Moreover, as the pharmacist had said that the herbal stuff should be taken with something sweet, like chocolate, my dad went out again and returned with about 20 kinds of chocolate, plus 10 mandarin oranges. Aw.
The herbal stuff is the same stuff that my mom used to force down my throat during my last year of high school, in order to strengthen my constitution before college. Except in those days, they didn't make the 4 gram packets of dried stuff, they sold the ingredients separately, and you had to boil them all together, strain them, and then force them down your daughter's throat. So my mom would make a batch of dark brown, evil-smelling liquid from the herbs, deer antlers, and, like, grass and stuff, and wake me up at 7 to make me drink it. And then give me a strawberry drop to take the taste away.
Aw. What love, eh?
I slept more or less straight from about 7 pm to about 2:30 am, when hunger woke me, and I stayed up for two hours reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets while eating mandarin oranges and chocolate. Sometimes it's nice to be sick.
Skipped class this morning to read more Harry Potter and sleep longer, then forced myself to get to work, where I am writing this. I only have 12 off days per year -- this includes sick days. Sick days, unlike in the States, are considered personal time, and are not accrued separately from vacation days. After the luxury of American sick time policy, this seems totally absurd to me. There is absolutely no incentive to stay home when sick, and every incentive to come to work and infect everyone else.
Another thing I don't understand about my work place: why can't one leave by oneself? Numerous times now, someone has hailed me, "Helen! Time to go. Let's go."
I try to demur by saying I have a lot of work, or that I'm not ready to leave yet, which works on the guy who says this the most, but does not work on another coworker, who says, "How long are you staying? I'll wait for you." This is both very nice and very annoying. Sometimes I need to do homework on the train. Other times I just don't feel like interacting after work, you know?
My dad thinks no one wants to leave first because they don't want it to look like they're doing less work than someone else. I can understand that, since no one has their own office here -- even the team leader only has a cube to differentiate his position. But I think it's partly a cultural thing too -- we have to do things together, because we're a team. The other day, someone here emailed me to ask if I'd be going to a coworker's wedding. I said probably not, since I don't know the guy very well. He replied that he didn't either, since the guy had started working in his team four months ago, but since they were on the same team, of course he would be going to the wedding.
I don't think I like this forced closeness. But I am American, after all.

Doggie note of the day:
While hiking Gwakaksan on Sunday, we saw a little dog wearing a camouflage outfit and a tiny pink backpack.

I got a letter from M la M today, to my delight. Real mail! I wouldn't give up email or the internet for the world, but snail mail letters have become a rare treasure.
M la M wrote that she sent the letter in case I was homesick. Thank you, M, for the thought, which is so in keeping with your kind nature.
It's not so much homesickness as much as nostalgia, I think. I ride the train, and I suddenly remember other places, other trains, other experiences. Watching the rich reds and golds of New England autumn flash by the window while riding Metro North back to New Haven from New York. Surfacing for a few minutes at Arlington Cemetery on the DC metro before plunging into darkness again. Taking the light rail from Hammersmith to Victoria Station in London each day during the two weeks I was a Richter Fellow (ha).
It's not that I want to be back in those times or in those places (for what experience is as sweet as the memory of it?), but I do feel a rush of fondness for the place, and tenderness for who I was then.
The thing I think I will remember most about the subway here is taking the number 3 line to work every day, and looking forward to the stretch between Oksu and Apgujeong, where it crosses the Han River: gazing at the green water, watching the people in the cars on the bridge we're sharing, looking up and hoping for a glimpse of the mountains beyond the river and the city.

Does it seem weird that I write these blog entries but haven't responded to many of y'all's emails? Please don't be offended. I write these entries in bits and pieces -- a sentence after I edit a block of text, or between documents. Snatches of time, I find, are not conducive for writing back to friends, and I haven't had a good stretch of free time at work for over a week. Last weekend I didn't go to my dad's house, so I didn't have access to a computer then.
Ah, last weekend. I mentioned something before about the wild activities of Saturday night, and haven't had a chance to update you on them. Funny how the forward march of time sweeps you along and you try to turn around and look back and recapture what it felt like a week ago and just fail fail fail, miserably.
Well. Suffice to say that I am old. Not old in years, but in spirit. It was Aya's birthday last Saturday, and so she and I and our other housemate Yuki and my friend Maiko went out to meet Aya's friend Doug, whose birthday was the next day. He and a couple of his buddies were drinking at a western bar called Santana, so we were having a grand ole time all together. Two of his friends brought cakes for Doug, so we had one there. (Cakes! Boys, buying cakes for other boy friends! Aw.)
The other cake was not to be eaten until a good two hours later, when we all ended up in Hongdae, an area known for its nightlife. It was definitely hoppin'. We went to some bar where Doug continued to get increasingly soused, and we all danced a bit to the all-American music.
Doug greeted an American during the night and introduced him to us as Sammy. Sammy looked a bit odd -- yellow suit, shaved head -- and didn't speak Korean, so no one was talking to him. I too, for whatever reason, didn't volunteer my citizenry to him, but eventually was talking to him rather stiltedly when one of Doug's other friends started rudely reaching in front of me to get to the cake.
As I was finding out that Sammy used to be in the U.S. army and actually had been stationed in Korea and in Ft. Lewis, where my uncle works, Cake Boy all of a sudden shoved me over on the sofa and continued to eat cake. I protested, but he doggedly ignored me and continued eating. Another friend of Doug's, Nice Boy, said something to the effect of, "Oh, he doesn't mean anything by it," but the only explanation I could come up with about this weird rudeness was that Cake Boy didn't want me to talk to Sammy.
Now, I didn't particularly want to talk to Sammy either (what, did I come to Korea to meet Americans?), but I was pissed off about Cake Boy's presumptuous and condescending attitude, and my mood took a decided turn south. It's not that Cake Boy wanted to get with me or anything, believe me. I think he just didn't want me to talk to an American. Period.
At some point, Yuki and Maiko decided that they didn't like the bar so much, and wanted to go to another club. I wanted to go home, but since taking cabs late at night is not advisable for young women by themselves, Aya offered to come home with me, and I could tell she didn't want to go home just yet. So there was the usual confusion of Who? Huh? Where? Why? for several minutes, during which the girls said they'd just head out by themselves if the guys didn't want to go. At this point, Doug said, "It's not safe to go out in Hongdae late at night by yourselves -- too many fucking GIs." After a moment, he also added: "And too many niggers."
I just stared at him. He lived in the States for a few years, so I have no idea why he thought that was an appropriate thing to say.
Ironically, after all was said and done, the girls ended up going to a hip-hop club. But before we went, the boys, thinking that we were going home (the confusion of large group communication), insisted we have some food from an outdoor vendor first. These vendors are ubiquitous here, and it's customary to end your night by eating tempura and rice cakes with your friends, standing under a tented moveable kitchen, basically. None of the girls ate much. I think the boys might have been a bit annoyed at us, but didn't show it. When they found out that we were not going home after all, they really did get annoyed, and left us to our own devices.
Soon after the boys left, Yuki and Maiko found the club they wanted to go to, and we paid our door fee (about $8, which included a free drink) and went in.

Yikes! Time to leave. More tomorrow on the rest of that night, and on the Thanksgiving dinner I'm going to tonight (I know I said I didn't want to meet too many Americans, but it's Thanksgiving, yo, and I miss the whole shebang, esp. my escapades with the BC).

Last night I had dinner with a Yalie and two administrators from Yale, who were conducting a site visit for the Richard Light Fellowship. The fellowship sends undergrads to Asia to learn the language for a year. Nice work if you can get it. Apparently its first year was my senior year at Yale (drats, foiled again!), so I didn't really hear about it then.
I did learn about it earlier this year when I was searching for a good language program to attend here. An internet search yielded the home page for the Light Fellowship, and a list of recommended language institutions in Korea. "If it's good enough for Yale, I guess it's good enough for me," thought I, and so I used that list to narrow down my choices.
Lo and behold, yesterday during class, the head of the language institute came into the class with two Americans, and said they were from Yale. At that, I let out an involuntary "Oh!" which necessitated an explanation that I graduated from there. The man, who spoke beautiful Korean, gave me his card, explaining to the rest of the class: "Oh, because she¡¯s from Yale." (Later on, Adrian, the guy who works for the Singaporean Embassy, ribbed me about it: "So, got a hot date tonight?")
In fact, the administrators invited me to have dinner with them and the Light Fellow at Sogang, a guy named Jason that I'd met the first day of school (Yuki, another housemate, introduced us). I had no idea he was a Yale student, or that he was even in college! I'm used to people looking younger than they are, so it was a surprise find out that he actually is that young. Class of 2005. Whoa.
I don't know if it was his age, or the fact he's from New York, or that he was sort of "on-duty" with his benefactors, or what, but man, he was a serious dude. Barely cracked a smile the entire dinner. I felt rather flitty next to him. Were we all so serious in college? Maybe I was, around authority figures. In any case, I wasn't last night, as they weren't authority figures to me, and as five years can yield a lot of perspective in the fields of the soul. I even asked that we order a bottle of wine, as I saw that the year's Beaujolais Nouveau had arrived.
It was nice to have dinner and wine with people who all knew Yale and New Haven (and even better to have it bought for me). A little bit of business and glad-handing occurred, as I mentioned I worked for the Korea Foundation, which makes grants for Korean Studies.
Mr. Administrator asked if I could get a proposal for a joint grant program to the right person, and when I affirmed that I could, he said, "Hey! You've just earned your dinner!"
"And I thought my charming personality was enough!" I replied.
Puzzled, Jason asked, "Why should her working there help?" (Ah, youth.)
Mr. Administrator clarified, "Well, she can get it to the right person right away, whereas if I were just to sent it unsolicited, it might lie on someone's desk forever."
"I'm just a lowly copy editor," I reminded him, feeling a bit uneasy.
"Yes, but in time, you might rise up in the ranks, and be in a position to help."
This little piece of schmoozing felt a little icky to me. What do I know of getting things to the right people? Plus, I never thought I'd be the schmoozy type. But it's not all that different from referring friends to other friends, is it? The distances are a little wider and the connections wear suits, but it's basically the same thing.
Another reason I feel icky is because my dad's venture concerns Korean students going on exchange programs to the U.S., and Mrs. Administrator was a perfect contact, as she heads the office of International Students. So should I have told her about my dad's venture? I didn't feel right doing that, but I want to help my dad's business¡¦
Aw, jeez. Can't I even enjoy a nice little dinner on Yale¡¯s dime without turning it into a self-doubt fest?

Much work, little sympathy for the imprecise and time-consuming nature of the job. Ya want me to turn this piece of non-English drivel into something remotely comprehensible? Then shaddup and take a number.
Grr.
Boy, feeling hostile today, or what? Went to taekwondo last night but since the Korea-Brazil soccer game was on, no one was there, and the teacher himself said, "Uh, I need to watch the game too. Can we just start tomorrow?"
Yo, I was watching the game too, but hauled my ass out here in the soggy night because we agreed I'd start on Wednesday.
Double grr.
After being shafted for the soccer game (yes, I know it's important and thrilling -- I like watching soccer too), I felt rather morose and took to wandering. It's just about the first time I've wandered since I've gotten here. I've always been too busy or tired or just not in the mood to go out before.
Everytime I wander, I wonder why I don't wander more. Last night, something about the rain and mist made the streets a little bit magical, while it kept people at home and out of my grumpus way. (Hee: shout outs to my h.g. Brooke, who heard John John's wonder/wander lecture with me our sophomore year, and to Wendy, for "grumpus.")
You know how I wrote earlier that Seoul is really westernized, so much so that I don't feel much out of place? Well, I think I spoke in haste. The old Korea coexists with the new Korea much more than I realized. Last night I walked past a loooong row of vendors closing up shop in a covered area between two buildings. Right next to the massive, modern Hyundai Department store, people sell huge bags of red peppers, heaps of blankets neatly folded on top of each other, piles of meat and pickled vegetables, stacks of dried fish and squid, expansive pans of spicy rice cakes, women washing dishes in plastic tubs. Man, it seemed like a totally different place. It seemed like Korea, not an Asian version of a western city.
I doubled back, heading toward home, but continued past my street until I saw the train tracks, and crossed 'em. The sky was a weird salmon color, which so exactly matched the enormous apartment buildings in the distance that the lights of the rooms seemed to hang in space. I walked past a one-room flower shop where a woman was peeling garlic cloves, one by one, from a plastic tub full of garlic heads. The neon of the convenience store, the restaurants, the little shops that sold nothing but tangerines and bananas, and the beauty salon lit the way as I followed the tracks.
Streets that might be classified as alleyways back home led off the road I was on, twisting off into the night gloom, leading into the gated yards with no grass, and houses with heated floors, and bedrooms with no beds, where people were living out their lives.
Something about this thought made me appreciative of Korea and this experience (for practically the first time). It also saddened me deeply. How can one be so glad to be on one's own, but feel so lonely at the same time?
The feeling probably has a term in German. There's a term in Korean too: shi won sup sup ha da; the feeling you get upon finishing a big project: elated and sad at the same time.
As I wandered home, I absently looked at my cell phone, and realized that someone had called. It turned out to be J, who'd left a message saying he was just checking in.
Isn't it strange that just at the moment I was feeling so alone and lonely, so glad and so sad, J called? I checked the message about five times, to make sure I'd really received it that night, Wednesday, at 8:02 pm. Sometimes I feel like coincidence can't explain everything.

If you've been interested at all in what I do at work, here's a sample of what I'm working on now (it's part of that Thai-Korean relations essay I mentioned on Monday):

"On the diplomatic side, Thai government announced to guarantee the sovereignty of the Republic of Korea in October 1949, while the establishment of the diplomatic relations on October 1, 1958. On March 1, 1960, the two countries exchanged the ambassadors between them. Since then, Thailand and the Republic of Korea have increasingly enhanced their mutual relations in all sectors including trade and investment, visits by heads of states as well as academic, cultural and tourist exchanges.
"The combination of states and civil contact has had great impacts on the interests among Thai people to learn and to understand the Koreans, though a slow pace in the beginning, through time."

In no way am I making fun of the writer's abilities. I certainly cannot write this well in Korean, much less Thai. (Maybe in French, though. With a dictionary). I'm just feeling whiny.
Maybe it's a result of soaking up Korean girl culture. There's a certain characteristic of young Korean female speech (most noticeable to young males, I think), that I can only describe as... whiny.
I'm not the only one who's noticed it, I swear! We talked about it in class, because we just learned the friend-friend/adult-child speech pattern* this week, and the teacher was telling us that we were pronouncing the words fine, but lacking the intonation of real Koreans. We weren't rolling out the last vowels long enough on our suggestions/commands the way real Koreans do. To wit, here's a conversation we learned in class (condensed):
A: "What are you doing?"
B: "Nothing. Why?"
A: "Since it's the weekend, let's go out."
B: "But it looks like it's going to rain."
A: "So what if it rains? Let's go."
Sound innocuous enough, right? Now imagine that speaker A is a seven-year-old girl who has thus far in life been pampered to her every heart's desire, has just finished playing with her Malibu Barbie doll or Hogwarts broomstick or whatever it is that seven-year-old girls play with these days, and is hungry, tired, thirsty, has been made to eat brussel sprouts, and has to go to the bathroom, all at once. Got it? Now read this:
A: "What are you doooooinggggg?"
B: "Nothing. Why?"
A: "Since it's the weekend, let's go oooooouuut."
B: "But it looks like it's going to rain."
A: "So what if it rains? Let's goooooo."
That's the way that Korean girls often sound. Speech is usually accompanied with a pout, eyebrows drawn together, and a kind of chin/shoulder coordinated forward movement I can only describe as the whine roll. It's sort of like the Flirty Girl combination hair toss and giggle, a move that's instinctual and calculated at the same time. I could do it for you, but then I'd have to immediately dive into the nearest river (currently icing up) in horror and shame.
What about guys? Yeah, they do extend the vowel a bit, but not nearly to the length of the female extension.

* I should explain the speech pattern thing. Hierarchy in Korean society is reflected in the language. Thus, you use one form of speech (honorific, or jone dae mal) to persons older than you or in positions "above" you (this encompasses a wide, sometimes confusing range of personages, including your parents, boss, people who have worked longer than you at the company, people who are older than you, people who are the same age as you but married, anyone you want to show respect to). Then there's the form of speech (ban mal) you use to people "equal" to you (friends of the same age, close friends who may be older than you, children, anyone younger than you).
In general, all forms of speech except ban mal are considered polite. Within polite speech, there is formal polite speech and informal polite speech, each with different verb endings. Don't ask me to explain, because I can't -- I don't know the appropriate times to use them either. This is one of the things that makes fluency in Korean so extremely difficult to attain, and virtually impossible without understanding the culture.
Sigh.
End of note.

Didn't end up going to taekwondo last night because I didn't really want to, and was talking to Myung-soo here at the office about it when J called. I miss the J. I wish I could figure things out.

Waded my way through 80 pages of magazine text today. Have certainly earned my salary today.
No time to blog, unfort.
(Or even write complete wds.)
Went to a taekwondo school last night with Aya, a Japanese woman in my house, and am going to sign up for lessons tonight. Ki-yah! Will feel very good to kick and yell tonight - feeling very PMS-y and annoyed as of late.
A H.B. shout-out to the magnetic D in NYC today, and a belated one to my soon dubu pal in L.A.

Again, loads of work today, including one really atrociously written article about Thai-Korean relations. Trying to figure out what someone means when they write stuff like this --

"These illustrate many good memories of a long-time relations, generating knowledge of Korean socieities, the Republic of Korea in particular, of the remote peninsula among the Thai. Accordingly, Koreas and Koreans are no foreign to us in the past and modern era."

-- is no easy task.
I had such an interesting weekend, too, dancing til 3:30 at a hip hop club, partaking of three cakes for two birthdays, being told that a popular area of town was dangerous for girls late at night because of "too many fucking GIs and niggers," and asking a non-responsive hooker if she was okay.
At least, I think she was a hooker.
Will write of all these things later this week. Finally, I did something fun that I can tell you about!

Tons 'o work today makes Helen a dull girl. The Foundation newsletter and one of its magazines is going out soon, so much to read and correct. Bluagh.
Tonight I'm having dinner with Wendy, the American girl who lived in China with her missionary parents when she was young. The rest of the class had plans to eat lunch together (after our speaking tests), but I couldn't make it, as I had to come here. :( Oh well.
There's a nasty bug going around. It's already hit three students in my class. But thanks to WS's going away gift (Trader Joe vitamin C pills that each pack a punch of 834 percent of Vitamin C RDA), I have escaped the germs so far.
(Watch me get sick this weekend.)
Hm, what to report about Korea today? Oh, the guys who deliver via motorcycles. Well, first, motorcycles are not considered vehicles here (I guess), so they roar along the crosswalks and sidewalks with the pedestrians. Well, actually, they go wherever the hell they want, much like the bike messengers of DC and New York. Second, now that it's frosty cold out, a lot of them have mittens on. But not just the gloves on their hands. Big oven mitt-like mittens that are attached to the bike handles. Hadn't seen such a thing before. You?

It's Thursday afternoon, and I'm way tired. I think it's from waking up at 6:30 am because I had to go to the bathroom, and then falling asleep again so heavily that my travel alarm clock completely jarred me awake at 7:30. Each of the five times I hit the snooze button (yes, I also wade into pools and the ocean inch by inch), I'd fall right back to sleep again.
Last night was a bit of late nighter for me, as Haruway (woman with the 6 sisters) and I prepared for our speaking exam, scheduled for tomorrow. The first part will be us playacting a situation (the teacher will pick one out of 18), and then the second part is our individual interviews with the teacher. The teacher paired Haruway and me together, so we practiced about half of the conversations last night, til 10:30 or so. She brought a box of donuts over, and I supplied some drinks and potato chips, so we had a fine old time stuffing ourselves (fortunately, Haruway eats about as much as I do, so I don't feel bad about stuffing my face).
Because I was up late, I'm rather crankified today. I usually get on the last car on the subway train, as it's usually the least full and I can sometimes even sit down, but today it was full of little kids, so I ran over to the next car. Unfortunately, it too was full of little kids, and more crowded than the first car. Yesterday I sat in a car with about 30 kids and it was fine, but today I couldn't deal with munchkin chatter, so I got off at the next stop and waited for the next train.
What can I tell ya? When I'm cranky, I'm cranky. I was also starving, and that didn't help one bit.
In my defense, I do sometimes like watching kids (from a distance). Not as amusing as animals, but close to it sometimes. Yesterday, like I said (I'm repeating myself because I'm so darn tired - sorry), I was sitting in the train when 30 kids piled in, herded in by their teachers. Yes, I did move seats so as not to be surrounded by nose-picking brats -- oops, I mean, by darling little munchkins -- but only once. I bore the three kids who sat next to me -- one of which had shoved her pinky to the second joint up her honker -- with Job-like patience.
The kids were pretty quiet and well-behaved, which I appreciated. There was a young mother also on the train who keep feeding her little baby sweets. The baby was probably about 2 years old: just able to walk without falling in the swaying subway car. He was wearing a bright turquoise jacket with yellow trim, and pants with the opposite color scheme.
The baby walked by himself away from his mother, who didn't seem too alarmed. On his way back from about 10 feet away, he encountered one of the teachers of the older kids, who picked him up (much to his consternation -- that baby wanted to WALK) and delivered him to his mother.
I was surprised that the mother let him walk around by himself. If the kid were mine (perish the thought! consign it to the bottom of the sea!), I would have been nervous about him straying so far from me on public transportation. But she didn't seem too concerned.
(She also, when the baby accidentally spit out his candy, took out a tissue and picked it up off the ground.)
Earlier this week, on a relatively empty train car, there was a bi-racial kid walking back and forth, with his Caucasian father in close pursuit. Everyone on the train was captivated by the kid, who sounded like his primary language was Korean. Two teenage girls with ballerina hairstyles (pulled back severely and pinned in several places) watched him and giggled and said hello everytime he passed by (the kid would say hello too). When they got off at their stop, they said, "Okay, see you later!," and one of them crouched down to shake the kid's little hand. An older woman asked the father, "How old is he?" and the guy answered in Korean, "3 years old."
A smiling older man asked the kid, "And where are you going?" but to no avail -- the kid was bent on making it to the end of the train, where he would pretend to crash into the wall and would say, "Ouch!" Whereupon his father also would crashed into the wall and say, "Ouch!" The same succession of events in the opposite direction would then occur: hello to the girls, determined progress to the end of the car, crash, "Ouch!", crash, "Ouch!"
This continued for at least the 10 minutes that we all shared the same train car. I'm sure it started as soon as the pair got on the train.
In preparing to leave the subway, the father and son comedy act continued: he pulled the kid's hood over his head, put him into a carrier, and slung him on his back, but he could see in the subway glass that the kid had pulled the hood right off. So with a firm but amused, "Oh, no you don't," he put the carrier down again, pulled out a bright blue hat with yellow stegasaurus-like triangles of plush along the middle, plunked it on the kid's head, and hoisted the whole package on his back again. And then stepped off the train.
Okay, I was utterly charmed along with the rest of the passengers. See, I'm not the the Wicked Witch of the East all the time.
I did find it interesting that everyone was so taken with this bi-racial kid, and wondered how they would all receive him if he were 15 years older. Wonder how the bi-racial thing goes over here?

I mentioned before that I talked on Sunday with Matt, who is in the Netherlands for the year on a Fulbright. He asked me how I was dealing with the culture shock, since it must be so different from the States, and I answered that it really wasn't all that different. I told him about a couple cultural differences (like how you use different verb endings and words depending on the age and position of the person you are speaking to) and he replied that it sounded pretty different to him. I think just around that point of the conversation my cell phone went dead, so we didn't get to complete our talk.
[Aside: cell phones. I read an incredible statistic recently, in a Koreana article (one of the magazines I edit). There are some 46 million people living in Korea. 30 million have cell phones. So approximately 80 to 90 percent of adults and adolescents have 'em. Elementary school children rank a cell phone second in a list of gifts they would like to receive (the first being a puppy). Everyone, and I mean everyone, has one, from my 62-year-old Ajuma to the Cambodian student who is here through a church sponsorship. And yes, even I have one.
I have a "han-doh pohn" (hand phone), for the first time in my life. My dad got it for me on my second day in Korea, and the saleswoman insisted I have the latest model, not the basic (and I thought still very nice-looking) model I would have chosen. She also insisted that I choose a doll to hang on the end of the phone. Everyone here, included men, has something dangling from the end of their cell phone. Mine is a character called Holeman. It's basically a black snowman-like figure with a big head, in the middle of which is a large gray circle. Don't ask. Out of the selection, which included more humanoid figures, cutesy animals, and stickers, Holeman was the least laughable. Since then I've realized that the dangling doll phenomenon is just the tip of the iceberg. In the subway, you can buy phone covers that look like furry bears or dogs or cats or the cute animal of your choice.
The whole accessory thing is even funnier considering that the cell phone technology is so advanced. Color LCD monitors. Photography capabilities. Text messaging, plugging into the internet -- all now basic features on your average phone here. I mentioned the subway vendors of handphone accessories, but I didn't mention that underground reception is a given. Everyone talks on the subway. A lot of people, especially women, politely cover their mouths and phones when they talk, but lots don't.
Okay, end of the cell phone aside.]
So I was talking about speaking with Matt about the differences between Korea and the States. As I wasn't too eloquent on the topic, I now take this opp to explain. When I said that it wasn't that much different here, I meant that all the outward trappings aren't all that different from those in the States.
To wit: I live in a large, cosmopolitan city. I work in a medium-sized company. I take the subway. I live in a house with plumbing and even western-style toilets. I wear the same clothes I did in D.C. and don't feel too out of place here. I sleep in a bed, not on the floor.
It's not like I'm in rural Kenya, or even rural Kentucky, where I'd probably feel a lot more out of place than here.
But Matt's right. There are a ton of differences here. The language, for one (duh), and all the cultural mores therein. Somehow, though, it hasn't been that hard yet to get along. I guess I'm pretty sheltered in that I go to school and work and home, and don't interact with too many people in uncontrolled environments, but I still don't think it would be that difficult to adjust. It surprises me to think this. Perhaps it just testifies to the extent of westernization here? Maybe I'm more Korean than I thought? Maybe I'm just an adaptable person?
Or maybe I'm just wrong. Dunno.

I have a love/hate relationship with the subway. I'm on it for 2 hours each day, and it's usually as crowded as the Mall on Fourth of July, and people shove and push and don't even wait for you to get out before pushing their way in (like, people! Do you think that maybe if you waited for all of us to get off the train and didn't crowd around the door, it might be faster overall than leaving us no space at all to get out? Do ya think?)
At the same time, it's the only time during the day I get to do a significant amount of people-watching, and that is fascinating. All these profound thoughts come to me when I'm riding the subway, or when I'm walking on the street, and of course I never remember them when I'm staring at a blank screen or page.
One thing I do remember thinking of (and frequently) is the diversity of the population. Now, I know Korea's diversity has nothing on, say, America's diversity. I know it's the most homogeneous country in the world (yup. I think the population is something like 96 percent ethnically Korean. Literacy rate is also about that high). But it's the faces that arrest me. I used to think that Asians did really look rather alike. I remember visiting Peaches at UCLA (University of Caucasians under the Law of Asians) our freshman year and being stunned at the sheer volume of slant-eyes like me. How did anyone ever tell each other apart? (Yeah, I know, I'm such a banana [white on the inside, yellow on the outside].) But here, where there are even more Asians, of course, it's surprisingly easy to distinguish between people.
I must admit that the hair color thing makes it easier to differentiate between folks, which may be the end goal of bleaching your hair to the weird burnt sienna (didn't you love that Crayon color name?)/orange shade that I accidentally achieved on Oct. 30, 1997 when I was trying to peroxide my hair blonde. (Halloween costume. Don't ask.) If only I had been able to time- and space-warp my way into Korean society of 2002 the following day, I wouldn't have had to pull a baseball cap over my yeah-I-ate-300-pounds-of-carrots color hair and skulk over to CVS to buy a bottle of "Nut Brown" Nice 'n Easy while keeping an eye out for, um, anyone.
Everyone dies their hair here. Well, except high school kids, who aren't really allowed to (doesn't really match their uniforms). Some dye their hair the aforementioned orange, others opt for relatively tasteful streaks of light brown or blonde, and some, lord bless 'em, go all out and go for long, curly, blonde hair with matching fall in front last seen on Dolly Parton in 1985. Or maybe Wynnona Judd in 1988.
Stop laughing. I kid you not.
It's hard to tell these days if the person ahead of you is Asian or not. (Miki says she feels the same way in Japan.) Maybe that's part of the allure - a way to make yourself look different from everyone else. Someone here was telling me that 10 years ago, this was unheard of - you would have gotten some strange looks if you'd dyed your hair in 1992. Even now, if you're a high school kid and you dye your hair, you're considered a bit of a problem child. But for everyone else (and yes, I have seen little children with streaked or dyed hair too), it's de rigeur. Gotta love the irony.

I just took a look at this new format, which is like, whoa! Majorly bright. (I don't see the page when I write these entries.) Talk about fluorescent green, huh? It's one of the several template options offered by blogger.com. I didn't realize that it was quite so, um, 80s.
Well, it's better than the boring-ass design that was previously up here. Let me know if you hate it. (I'd like to add a comment option, Steve, but I don't know how yet. I'm working on it!)
What can I tell ya today? You'll notice that these entries are hardly ever about the actual things I do from day to day. Rather, they concern themselves with things I've noticed and want to share with you, because: (1) they're interesting; and (2) if I wrote about what I did day to day, I think you'd be bored to tears, 'cause I do pretty much the same thing every day: wake up (this morning Ajuma was in a fine mood, and yelled at us all to come down and eat breakfast at 7:30. ouch), go to class, get on the subway, work, get on the subway again, eat dinner at home, study. Or if I'm feeling saucy (that being John's word), meet a friend for dinner or whatnot, and then go home and study.
The reason I'm doing a lot of studying these days is because my Korean language class moves really quickly, and I don't want to be left behind. Learning Korean is one of the main reasons I came here (pretty good place to learn, huh?), and I'm trying keep that my priority. There is a lot of temptation to do otherwise, believe me!
In class today, we met the students of the other two Level 2 classes. I was amazed at the diversity therein: there were students from India, Kenya, Ethiopia, Russia, and France. The French guy is 16 years old and either very French (rather standoffish) or doesn't have too many social skills yet (rather standoffish). The Russian girl reminds me of Maria (a.k.a. BondGirl), my old college roommate. I didn't get to talk to her, but she looked glam and gorgeous, and stood out like a red rose in a field of lilies. (Or maybe a lily in a field of marigolds? Hee.)
Tons of people are here through the church. Yesterday I talked to Peter, the 30-year-old Kenyan priest-in-training in my class, and discovered he had done missionary work in the Congo (where he learned French), had stayed a few months in Italy (where he learned Italian), and finally was sent here to Korea. The Church allowed him to pick three countries, and one of the ones he picked was Korea. Must remember next time to ask him why.
As part of a class exercise, I talked to Chung-ha, the Chinese nun, again, and found out that she joined the church in 1994, is planning to study Korean for two years, then go on to study theology in Korea.
And Adrian, the guy from Singapore, has worked for the Singaporean Embassy for 10 years, being stationed in Malaysia and Belgium before Korea. When I found this out, I was stunned -- he looks about 26. Nope! He's actually 32 and is married and everything.
Adrian is kind of the class clown, so I can see how he'd be suited for getting to know people as his job. (Though I neglected to ask what exactly he does for the Embassy. Darn it! Every time I find out something interesting about someone, I have another five questions that I don't get to ask because it's time for class again.) I said something to the effect that everyone was so well-traveled, I felt positively provincial in comparison, and Adrian replied that it was really tough at times; his father died when he was in Brussels, and he had to fly 13 hours just to get back to his family. Not all glitz and glamour.
I wonder how it would be to travel 'round the world for one's job? I know the inimitable (Skip To) My Luu does, but she always struck me as someone whose abilities and ambition went far, far beyond my pale. These folks seem much more normal (apologies, My! You know what I mean), except for the fact that they're come halfway around the world on the basis of their faith, or their job, or their sense of adventure, or their desire to learn.

[Note to reader: I wrote the following paragraphs yesterday, but couldn't log into blogger.com for some reason. So here ya are, one day late.]
Hey. I totally forgot to write an entry for yesterday. Oops!
I went hiking with my dad again, and while it was a short one, it was a doozy -- the last hundred yards or so was practically vertical. I mean, you had to hang on to the rope, or risk slipping in the mud and saying hi to the Big Three, you know?
The payoff, however, was worth it. We were at the top of Gomdansan, about 30 minutes drive to the east of Seoul, and the view was magnificent. To the west, the city, the Han River, and the huge reservoir where Seoul gets its water; to the east, mountains upon mountains, the craggy tops stretching far into the mist. Sublime.
Or rather, it would have been sublime, except for the 40 other people and children milling around, the little white poufy-tailed dog taking a leak, the guy lighting up and smoking in the middle of the roped-in viewing area, and the two guys off to the side who were selling Popsicles, ramen and makkoli.
Oh well.
Hiking is SO popular here, the trails on the weekend are like the city streets in Seoul. I'm so not kidding. Particularly right now, when the leaves are changing, and it hasn't yet begun to snow, there are more people than trees, it seems.
A large number of hikers take it Very Seriously, and dress to show Their Great Seriousness: bright plaid socks pulled up over their pants to their knees, mighty backpack with pockets for the water bottle and ice pick, gloves, walking stick, a rope hanging from the belt, heavy-duty hiking boots, bandanna round the neck, Goretex jacket, fleece vest -- the list goes on, believe me, but I can't even guess at what some of their accessories are for.
Another (admittedly small) faction of the hiking set are those women who think, hey, this is just like a stroll in the city. Accordingly, they wear full make-up, trousers, and loafers. I kid you not.
Of course, the weirdest group consists of women who are a mix of group 1 and 2 -- they wear hiking clothes and boots, but also sport carefully lined lips, rouged cheeks, painted eyebrows and blow-dried hair.
I have nothing to say about this phenomenon. Nothing at all.
Oh wait, I forgot about the people who bring their tiny little dogs (usually poufy-tailed) hiking. I was wondering why this seemed so odd to me when I realized that in the U.S., usually dogs are prohibited because they might scare away or interact badly with wild animals. No problem here. The only wild animal I saw on our hike -- besides five birds -- was a long-ass earthworm wriggling around on a mud-encrusted step, desperately trying to avoid being stepped on by the hordes.
A number of times, I saw people picking up their little white dogs when coming upon a wet or muddy area, so the dog wouldn't get dirty. (Which makes sense when you consider that they are probably apartment pets that live indoors.) Yesterday, up that stairway to heaven, I passed no fewer than three people who were carrying their dogs inside their jackets to safeguard them. I'm tempted to wonder what happens to the dog if the carrier happens to slip and fall.
Also worth mentioning: Dad and I were munching on some fruit in a clearing about three-quarters of the way up, when I spotted a flash of fluorescent green. On a (you guessed it) little white dog. At first I thought the owners had tied a piece of green fluff to the end of the dog's tail, to better distinguish it from the other 25 little white dogs on the trails, but then I realized the dog's tail was painted fluorescent green. (See, I was never that cruel to Bacon!) My dad said that people get bored sometimes...
Anyways, after all this hiking and observing, we got back to my dad's, and I totally forgot to write a blog entry.

Unable to rouse myself from the warm floor (the Korean heating system involves heating the floor) of my dad's apartment for a while, I got home around 9:30. During the subway ride home, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Matt, who's an expat this year too, in the Netherlands. It was kind of cool to think that we were communicating half a world away -- practically in real time, too! (There is a noticeable delay between the speaker speaking and the listening receiving.)
Last night I also heard from the teacher of the taekwondo class at Yonsei University, who wanted to know why I'd only come to two classes so far. I was totally taken aback -- I was amazed that he'd care enough to call. He didn't even know I hadn't paid ?just wanted to know where I was. It was a bit strange receiving a call from him at 8:30 pm on Sunday, but I don't know, I thought it was neat that he'd call.

Okay, so it's Monday here, and I haven't had much work yet, so I -- hey! I was all set to write about the background details of my sojourn here (as the T has requested), but I just remembered that I absolutely must tell you about Pepero Day.
Pepero are little stick-shaped crackers of Asia that are dipped in various flavors. I remember as a kid there were only chocolate flavor sticks, but now there are flavors of every kind. The wrapper to an orange flavored Pepero is on my desk now.
Anyway, it's Pepero Day today, so friends buy each other individual sticks, or packets, or huge, expensive Valentine's Day-type baskets of Pepero. Our teacher gave out individual Pepero in class today. (She's so sweet -- before the midterm exam last week, she gave us all yut, the sticky candy traditionally given to students before a test.) The American army officer in my class was very concerned about exactly what it was because he thought he might have to buy his wife (who is Korean) a gift. Well, it's sort of like Valentine's Day, but not quite, so I think he's off the hook. ;)
Oh yes, why is today Pepero Day? Well, today is November 11: 11/11. If you line four Pepero up, you'll see: 1111.
To all the capitalists out there - Happy Pepero Day!

Last night I went out with two co-workers to the Spaghetteria, where we had lasagne, spaghetti carbonara and a cream-based noodle thing. In true Korean fashion, we had our own little plates and shared the dishes communally. We did, however, use forks. (No knives, though. And the side dish was slices of sweet pickle.)
It's only the second time I've had western food since I've been here. Strangely enough, I don't really miss it. Maybe because I'm not a foodie? I just don't pay attention to food all that much, though I certainly enjoy it when it's in front of me!
Another Saturday morning at the office. Like last time, two weeks ago, I haven't gotten too much work, so I've been merrily answering email for two hours. Whee!
It snowed yesterday in parts more northerly, though apparently there was also a bit of snowfall in Seoul too. It's certainly cold enough; you can see your breath during the day as well as night. A nice time to sleep in late and have brunch and read the funnies and put on a fuzzy turtleneck sweater and maybe go buy some groceries or do a bit of shopping and then return home and make some hot chocolate and read on the couch, covered by a blanket, until you set the book down to rest your eyes for a moment and you fall asleep for an hour.
Sounds nice, doesn't it?
Have I done these things today?
NO.
Instead, I woke up blearily at 7:30, stumbled to the bathroom, wrinkled my nose at the smell, opened a window to admit a blast of cold air, quickly brushed my teeth and washed my face, returned to my room, put on some clothes, shrugged at my hair, and went to work. That is, after I gave Ajuma the rest of the rent. (I mistakenly thought it was 400,000 won, and so stiffed her 30,000 won the other day. Actually, I think that even 430,000 won is a good deal for room and two meals a day, plus pleasant company - I think it's about US$400 - but I've been told that it was on the high end.)
Which reminds me, I learned how to use the ATM this week! Very exciting. The Foundation set up a bank account for me (some service, eh? or is it just another expression of diabolical control? mwah ha ha ha!), and I got paid for October two weeks ago. My dad's been paying for everything thus far, but I was determined to stop that trend by paying my own rent, at least.
Since I wasn't given checks with the account (checks are not widely used here, which explains why my parents always paid for everything in cash in the States), I thought I might have to give Ajuma the rent in cash. But when I went to the ATM with Myungsoo, my work buddy, she showed me that you can get checks from the ATM! They're like travelers checks, in denominations of 100,000 won (about US$75), and you can use them any where; shopkeepers check your signature and ID when you present them.
Neat-o.

So my written midterm is over, but I have an oral midterm next week, for which I really need to study. Apparently in Level 1, students have an individual interview with the teacher, but in Level 2, you are paired with another student, and talk in front of the teacher. Which is all fine and good unless you get paired with someone with a lot more vocab and who can speak a lot more fluidly than you can. On the spectrum of ability in my class, I'm on the lesser abled side (for now, my pretty!), and there are at least two people I'd hate to be paired with: a Japanese girl named Midori (it means green in Japanese - isn't it pretty?) and a Chinese nun named Chung-ha (I think that's right - we call her sun-nyo-nim, or Sister, in class).
Sometimes I catch myself staring at Chung-ha, because I'm just fascinated by the fact that she's a nun. There are two other nuns in class - Rosaria, an older Italian woman (gotta get her story), and Theresa, a novice who's also from China - but Chung-ha is so young and pretty, I can't help but look at her. Plus, she wears the classic black and white habit, which looks - dare I say? -cool. She also works really fast - I was paired with her to do some exercises a few times, and she'd say the answer before I got finished reading the question!
(It was kind of annoying, actually.)
Anyhoo, as Chuck would say (shout-out to my buds at TPG), I need to rehearse the conversations in the textbook. I've heard that if you know them backwards and forwards, the oral exam is a snap.

Well, well, haven't I just blathered on today? Comes of having no work thus far (I just wait for people to bring me or email me their documents to edit). It would be nice if this kind of day came more often; I could study and email and blog away to my heart's content. It's 12:30 and I haven't had any work yet today. People here go to lunch at 12 - it's pretty regimented. On a half day like today, they go at 12, return around 12:30, and leave for home at 1. Maybe next time I'll try that too. Seems somewhat of a waste to commute two hours in order to work only 3.5, though, doesn't it?
One of my team members (the Foundation has teams, not departments) just left for a 2-week business trip to South America. She lived there for several years as a child, and I stared at her curiously before she reminded me that both of the Americas are destinations for immigrants. I'd forgotten that there is actually a large Asian population in South America, including a fairly large Korean population too. Vaya con dios, Miss Min.

Postscript: If you're seeing some weird characters in place of things like apostrophes and dashes, I apologize. They don't show up on blogger.com, where I input these entries, but I'm seeing them on my page. Grr.

Test went okay. Madly flew through the listening, speaking and hearing tests as they all were quite long. Must improve my reading skills - very slow just now. Problem is taking words in a glance - I can slowly spell out a word by syllable, but find it difficult to comprehend it in one look.
An American navy guy from my first level class (the one I moved out of) called me last Friday night. As I was with friends (drinking makkoli and learning slang), I told him I'd call him the next day. But the next day came and I didn't feel like it, so I didn't call, and now he's acting a bit coldly toward me. Well, I suppose I deserve that. I just don't really want to meet Americans here, not when there are tons of people from so many other places to talk to. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy talking to the two other Americans in my class, but I don't want to hang out with another American outside of class too much. What's the fun in that?
I am sort of interested in getting to know the American girl in my class - Wendy's parents were missionaries in China for several years before moving back to the States, so I bet she has some interesting stories. It's a bit disconcerting to me when she speaks about god so casually in conversation (as in, "yeah, I was interested in doing that, but God didn't want me to go down that path, I guess"), but I should get over it; there are two nuns and a nun-in-training in my class, as well as a priest and a priest-in-training.
I'll write more about my class and classmates when I have the time; just now I have to finish this essay before I leave for the day. I've also been taken to task by the fabulous T for assuming too much knowledge on the part of the reader, so I will set out the details of my situation here in an upcoming entry.
By the way, if anyone knows how to make this site look prettier, please please please let me know. I know my scintillating prose should be enough, but I can't stand looking at the actual site. Also, currently this site is by invitation only, and I'm thinking about going public. If you have any thoughts, lemme know.

Can't write much today, as have two essays to edit at work. Both are about the gayageum, a 12-stringed zither that has the same place in Korean traditional court music as the violin in western chamber music/orchestras. The Foundation is hosting a concert of a master gayageum player, Byungki Hwang, later this month (which is already November! wow). Based on the descriptions and essays I've been correcting, I'd love to go. The guy basically revolutionized the concept of traditional music by composing entirely new pieces for the gayageum - before, pieces were handed down from master to pupil with changes occuring slowly and organically, or through improvisation on the core melody.
This guy decided to compose entirely new songs for the ancient instrument (the first documented gayageum player performed for a king in the Silla dynasty in 551), so is really venerated in music. The essay he wrote about the differences between western and Korean musical philosophies is fascinating: basically, he says that the dominance of the bowed string instrument (i.e., the violin) in western classical music suggests that rationalistic logic and control are highly valued (i.e., you can control when the sound stops, how loud it is at any moment, etc.) In contrast, the dominance of the plucked string instrument (the gayageum) in Korean traditional music suggests that a balance between man (plucking the string) and nature (determining when the sound fades) is highly valued in Korean/eastern philosophy.
There are a couple Korean musical terms that don't have western equivalents, such as "yeoeum" - the after-tone - and its literary equivalent "yeoun" - the feeling that remains after reading a poem and closing the book. In painting, "yeobaek" refers to the unpainted parts of a traditional Oriental painting; viewers are more likely to speak of the creative use of blank space rather than the actual mountains or what have you.
Sorry if this is all a little academic. Having had music lessons on various instruments for several years as a kid, I find this absorbing, and in some ways profoundly revealing.
Test tomorrow. Bluagh.

Today is the national test for high school students. My coworkers came in at 10 am this morning rather than 9, as did many workers in the city. The resulting decrease in traffic is hoped to help students get to the test on time.
Yes, it's much more serious (and difficult!) than the SAT.
The test takes all day, from morning to evening, and covers all subjects; students begin preparing for the test once they hit high school. The outcome of the test determines in large part where you will go to university, so it is a BIG deal.
Accordingly, there's a burgeoning test culture in Korean society. No, no one dresses up as the written exam or anything like that - it's about gifts to the hard-working students. The popular gifts these days are all based on word play, which is just so cool.
Traditionally, many Korean parents will give their test-taker ¿³ (yut), a sticky candy, or Âý½Ò¶± (chap ssal ddok), a sticky rice cake. The reason is because the verb "to stick to" (ºÑ´Ù) also means "to pass a test."
Recently, it's become very trendy to give gifts based on this kind of word play. So a few years ago, Myungsoo's father gave her sister a ball before her exam, because the verb "to roll" also means "to think well." For weeks now, you could see displays of forks in department stores -- big ones, little ones, fancy ones, etc -- because the verb "to pierce something with fork" (Âï´Ù), also means "to guess" on a multiple choice test. And tissue paper is given because the verb "to blow one's nose" (Ç®´Ù) can also mean "to solve" a test problem.
Clever, huh? I like it too.

Speaking of tests, I myself have a midterm on Friday. We're reviewing these days in class. Yeesh. I'm a bit nervous because I feel like I have something to prove. See, I was originally placed in Level 1, based on an admittedly poor phone interview conducted when I was still in DC. At 11 at night. When I was expecting someone else to call.
Well, level 1 was way too easy - I'd covered all that stuff in the first Korean class I took in DC last year. Plus, with 10 Japanese students and one Cambodian student and one me, we spent a lot of time working on pronunciation problems specific to the Japanese tongue. So I requested a move into level 2, and on the basis of the following speech test/interview, was denied on the grounds that my vocabulary wasn't big enough.
(In some respects, this was and continues to be a real concern. Chinese and Japanese students have an advantage over westerners and other speakers of non-Sino-based languages for the simple reason that Korean is highly derivative of Chinese. Korean students graduate high school knowing about 1,800 Chinese characters.)
So I was a bit down for a while, but after a few more days of extremely basic lessons, I was driven to ask the head teacher if I might move into the more advanced class of Level 1. DE-nied! For the reason that it was too full.
A couple more days of swiftly growing sullenness and I complained again to the head teacher. To my surprise, the next day I was granted another speech test (for which I hadn't prepared, naturally). This time, the teacher told me that I was at about Level 1.8, but that I could move up. Yay! I said, but then immediately started to worry that I was already two weeks behind in level 2.
Her response? "Yes, but you're Korean, so you'll be fine."
I still haven't figured out if this means: 1. having grown up around Korean speakers and Korean natives, I would catch onto the formal grammer and vocab quickly; 2. that since I'm Korean, I have something to prove, so I'd certainly study hard and catch up; or 3. that since I'm Korean, I'm by definition hardworking and therefore would not slip behind.
One of my Level 1 teachers told me in my last hour in that class that she'd pulled for me, saying that she thought my vocab was indeed weak, but that I seemed like the type who'd study hard and catch up. I promised I would.
Wish me luck!

It's getting pretty chilly here these days. This morning it hovered around freezing point, making the walk to school and subway quite undelightful. I took out the other blanket that my grandmother lent me, and slept under a total of three last night. It gets pretty cool in my room. It would be better if I slept on the floor - the "ondol" (under the floor) heating system really keeps you toasty - but I don't think I have enough floor space to lie down on!
The bathroom in the house is also quite cold - in the mornings I can see my breath - so at night I usually run the hot water for a while in order to make bathing bearable. As you've probably heard or guessed or know, bathrooms here are different - but they're not what I expected, nevertheless, and I was prepared for the crouch toilets. In fact, only at school do they have traditional (?)crouch toilets; in my workplace and house, it's all about the porcelain throne, baby.
But that's pretty much where the similarities to western bathrooms end. I mentioned before that the washing machine is in the bathroom, which makes sense, of course. What's unexpected is the shower -- rather than an enclosed tub or closet, the entire bathroom is the "shower," with a drain somewhere in the floor. There isn't a showerhead per se in the bathroom, but a flexible shower accessory (I can feel my grasp of English slipping again), which you can hang on a grip on the wall, or just prop it up on the faucet (about hip level for me) and crouch under it.

Hm. I meant to make this funny but now it's getting rather tiresome. I think I'll shuffle off now. I did manage to make it to the gym last night, and was stretching after my run when the editor-in-chief walked in. He is apparently one of the few people who uses the gym. I asked him why, and he said, "Well, you know Korean people. They don't want to disturb anyone using the machine, and there's only three [a treadmill, step machine and bicycle], so people just don't use it."
So, hey, practically my own private health club! Cool.

Ajuma seems to be in a bad mood these days. I swear, she keeps moving the time of breakfast earlier and earlier. In my first week here, I came down at 7:30 (jet-lagged, you know) and she was all, hey, you're up earlier, breakfast will be a second. In the past few weeks I figured out that 7:50 was a good time to come down for breakfast - I could snooze a few times and still get to school in plenty of time.
This morning, though, the knock came at 7:30. "Come down for breakfast," Uchidashi said politely, being Ajuma's appointed messenger today. Her modus operandi is to complains to the diners present about whomever is not there, and shortly thereafter send someone up to bring the offending parties down. I myself have been the appointed messenger a few times, but never as early as this morning.
So, all that in prelude to saying - I'm kind of tired.
Must really find a way to exercise, as that has proven to be a good mood lifter. I've been wracking my brain for weeks as to how I could do this, given that I just don't have the energy to go to a 7 am taekwondo class for which I'd have to get up at 6:30 and then leave 15 minutes early in order to shower, eat breakfast and get to school on time. Even all that's not too bad, as long as I could get some decent sleep during the week, but with the class being as challenging as it is, I need to devote my evenings to studying, and I can't get to sleep at 10, I just can't.
Anyhoo (as Chuck would say), I've finally hit upon a solution, made possible by the fact that in the winter months (November through February), the KF workday ends at 5 pm instead of 6. So even if I linger half an hour, I'll be able to use the KF gym, which is tiny, but has a treadmill, which is all I need. Yay! Hopefully the exercise will blow that blankness away (see yesterday's entry).

Okay, so I have to talk to you about shoes for a second. Someone in one of my Korean classes in DC told me about the popularity of elf shoes, but I didn't believe it until I saw an example a few days ago. Of course, from that moment on, I saw them everywhere.
Yup, you read right - elf shoes. No, they're not green, and they don't have bells, and the wearer is not a diminutive sprite, but elf shoes is the right name for them: the toes extend anywhere from half an inch to (I swear) two inches beyond where your regular shoe toe stops. And they curve up.
The first one I saw was on a woman waiting to board the subway; she was wearing black ones that looked like a cross between a Debby-does-Dallas cowboy boot (sparkles) and a come-hither mule (two and a half inch heel). I thought that was kinda strange looking, but then I spotted my next one. And the next. And the next.
A really fun aspect of the trend (can't quite tell if it's on the up or on the down; Larry told me about it in the spring, so I suspect the latter) is that there are varying degrees of elf-i-ness - which, by the way, is exhibited by both men and women. You'll have your men's basic black leather lace-up dress shoe that looks perfectly normal except that it has a leetle beet more, uh... shoe, than you'd expect. Then you have your 3 inch heel with 2 extra inches of, um, toe -- turned-up, mind you! -- in the front.
I wonder when it'll hit the States. ;)

I tried to find a computer yesterday in order to keep up my once-a-day blog habit, but after going to the school library, which was closing, and then wandering around my classroom building looking for a PC room (unsuccessfully), I gave it up and trundled home. It's getting mightily cold here, so it was nice to sit on my bed and pull the top blanket over me and read the book Nina gave me before she left DC (Instance at the Fingerpost). Thanks, Neener! It's fascinating. Set in 17th century Oxford, the first part is told by an Italian academic, and there's just enough detail to make the times come alive. In that respect, it's much like Time and Again, the book from Stephen which deals with time travel into 19th century New York. Actually, I think Time and Again is better at bringing the reader into history; there's a lot of exposition about the nature of history and the past and how we can't really experience it as historians or whatnot that I find absorbing.
How cool would it be to write historical fiction? I've thought about that before and the idea happened upon me again today as dad and I climbed Bukhansan (Northern Mountain). Dang, it was cold. Dang, it was pretty. The turning of the leaves isn't that impressive (I'm guessing because there hasn't been a lot of rain in the region this season) but the mountainsides were pleasant to see, with the yellows and rust browns and greens broken up by stretches of bare rock.
We climbed up about half an hour to one of the Buddhist temples nestled into the hillsides. There's a big golden statute of Sakyamuni, and there were two little dogs in one of the courtyards, a white one busily trying to tear a sky blue tarp off of a pile of stuff, and a brown one sunning on a wooden board. We called them over, and after thinking about it for a second, they came hustling over, hoping for some food. When it was clear we had none, they returned to their pursuits.
Later, on the way down, dad opened up his backpack and pulled out various cookies and biscuits, and the dogs had a fine old time begging for some. A family with two kids was also there, and the father opened up a package of dried "ojingo" (squid) and the dogs again had a field day. (Dad commented that since monks don't eat meat, this was certainly a treat for the dogs.)
As my friends all know, I'm a sucker for dogs, and so whenever I spot one here, I'm just delighted. Today I saw several, usually sporting a jaunty sweater. The funniest one was one I saw while we were driving to the mountain: in traffic, I saw a woman on a moped, and caught sight of movement at her feet. Sure enough, there was a little red dog sitting between her feet, wearing a dog sweater and looking for all the world as if it were the one with the place to go, and a driver to take it there. On the way up the mountain, we saw a little black dog with a red sweater, being carried in the vest of a woman coming down the slope. The other day, I saw the same scene in the subway: a furry little head poking out from inside a partially buttoned jacket. Perhaps it was the warmth of the car, or the motion, but it seemed rather sleepy; I saw it nod off a few times, get woken when the woman wearing the jacket moved, and then fall asleep again.
Cute. A little strange, but cute.
I'm again in dad's apartment, being spoiled. Dad just warmed up some leftover "pa-jun" (scallion pancake) from when we were coming down the mountain, and served it up to me. The other day Myung-soo mentioned waking up early to make breakfast for her father, who was in town briefly for business, and I said, "oh! My dad cooks dinner for me." She was quite surprised. I told her that my dad is quite unusual.
What was I talking about before? Historical fiction, right. Yeah, sometimes I think that would be really cool to do, since I like writing and I like history, but then I always get scared off somehow. Like today, I was thinking - what fiction have I written lately? Zip. How in the world do I think that I can write this stuff? Just cause you like something doesn't mean you'll be good at it. Still, it's a thought.
I must admit to some sadness this week, due to various reasons. I'm starting to feel the way I felt in DC - what am I doing here? Where am I headed? What do I want? (The Scarlett O'Hara Syndrome: "Where shall I go? What shall I do?") As I've written to some folks, I was terrified before coming here and now I feel sort of blase about it all. Incredible. Wasn't I supposed to feel excitement at some point, before it all became rote?
I wonder if it's Korea, if I'd be excited about being somewhere else, just not here. Korea is so much more than a foreign place to me, it's a chance to get to know my dad and his family, to understand my parents and the way they are, and to understand me and the way I am. That's a lot of weight to place onto a journey. On top of all that, I'm 26 years old (27 by Korean age - they count the year in the womb as year 1), and I just have no idea about anything! What do I like? What is important to me? What do I want my life to contain - what do I need my life to have? What do I need in a partner? I don't have answers for any of these questions.
I thought that being in a foreign country would shock me into some realizations about these sorts of things, but I'm wondering if that was just wishful thinking.
Sigh.
I suppose I'm just having a bad day, or few days. I have to remind myself that bad days happen, no matter where you are. And it's only the first month, after all. It's bound to get better, right? This blandness, this blankness will surely go away, won't it?
...
Totally apropos of nothing, except I keep meaning and forgetting to write about it - you know what I really miss? Dryer sheets. Actually, dryers in general. I've done laundry three times so far, and unlike the commercials where people are sent into the third level of heaven just by smelling sun-dried clothes, I hate it. Until college, I never knew that clothes could be soft, never knew that clean jeans didn't have to be like stiff wooden boards when you put them on, never knew that socks could feel good to put on. Then I got to college and discovered dryer sheets.
Ah, dryer sheet! How do I love thee? Let me count the ways! Never again a brittle sweatshirt! Never again a pair of pants you could use as a table! I got too used to you, dryer sheet, and now I discover anew how much absence makes the heart grow fonder.
The funny thing is, we had a dryer when I was in high school. It sat in the corner of the kitchen and my mom put some flowers on it, I think.
There's no dryer in the hasook jeep. There is a washing machine in the bathroom, and some drying racks in the hallway and outside. So I wash my clothes and hang them up, and it works just fine, and I miss dryers like nuthin'. Getting towels and bathrobes and underwear and socks and shirts and pants and sweaters out of the dryer, all warm and fluffy... sob.
I'm aware of fabric softener, but let me just have this moment of silent tribute to Downey dryer sheets.
...
One last thing (a fun story to end with): on Friday night, I went out with Maiko and some members of the Sogang University English Speaking Club, and had makkoli for the first time. Makkoli is a Korean alcoholic drink made out of rice and known for producing a horrible hangover. While we drank (in moderation!), I learned some fun slang, including this one: "Mah-shi-go jook-ja!" Roughly translated: Let's drink til we die!
There's also this one: "Mah-shi-go tto-ja!" The M and T play off the beginning letters for Membership Training, a kind of initiation period for freshmen who are joining clubs in college. MT consists of a lot of drinking, hence: "Let's drink til we hurl!"
It might only be funny if you're familiar with Korean, but -- hee hee.

It's November! Wow.
Not much in the way of Halloween celebrations, though I think there were some parties here and there. In lieu of costuming up, I went to dinner with my team here at work (the Foundation is divided into teams - Cultural Affairs, General Admin., Accounting, etc.) and ate raw liver for the first time. We went to a "seng go gee jeep" - a raw/plain meat house. Only some meat is raw; the other stuff is grilled before you. Yum.
The liver was very red and tasted sort of, well, rubbery. Also ate some boiled blood, which didn't really have much taste. I couldn't quite get over the fact that it was blood, though, so I didn't finish the piece I'd fished out of the soup.
Uichol told me this morning that those kind of restaurants are popular with older folks, but not so much with the young generation. Such is the way of things. Old customs and traditions fall by the wayside as new influences sweep over the land. It is particularly evident here. Last night I noticed someone in the subway selling small handbags - you couldn't fit more than a few bills and your keys in them - and mentioned them to Myung-soo. She said they were for old women to carry, so they wouldn't have to carry heavy bags. Young people don't offer to carry bags for old women anymore, she said, and that's one of the customs that we're losing. The intimation was that western ways, becoming ever more prevalent, are replacing the old traditions, particularly in respect to venerating the elderly.
I was tempted to argue that western ways also dictate a lot of pretty good things (like, say, equality between the sexes - not that we've achieved it, but hey, we're trying), but I bit my tongue and merely said that with the good comes the bad. Everything changes.
I am surprised by the extent to which I feel defensive -- no, protective of western customs. I'm fairly critical of the U.S. back home, so it's a strange thing to feel angry when someone else criticizes it. At the same time, though, I am troubled when I hear criticism of Korean customs. For instance, according to the Confucian tradition, everyone falls into one of five relationships (father-son, husband-wife, ruler-subject, elder brother-younger brother, friend-friend). All the relationships (with the possible exception of friend-friend) assume a hierarchy, which makes me uncomfortable. I certainly don't adhere to it. But when someone else criticizes it, I instantly get defensive -- even though I have thought the exact same things! Meaning... what, that because I'm ethnically Korean, I know how it is, and so only I have the right to criticize? That's horsepuckey, and I know it, but I still feel that way.
Dunno, man. It's weird. It's that bi-cultural thing going on.

I'll just tell you one more thing about this topic and then it's off to fluffier subjects: two weeks ago, I was having some eats with two Korean friends (Doug and Sung-hee) and Maiko in a small local restaurant. The place was pretty noisy, so we were speaking English fairly loudly. Well, the proprietor came over and had a drink with Doug, and it turned out that he had gone to Sogang and majored in business administration, just like Doug and Sung-hee.
A bit later, the proprietor, who had clearly tipped back a few, asked Maiko and me where we were from. When he heard that we were from Japan and the U.S., he started yelling at Maiko: "I don't like Japanese people! I don't like Japanese! You invaded our country twice!" Maiko tried to gloss it over by smiling and nodding (the great defensive tactic of the foreigner).
When the guy started to then yell at me: "I don't like Americans! I don't like America!" I was genuinely surprised, and stuttered out: "But we never invaded Korea!" He replied, "3 million Koreans died in the war! I don't like U.S.!"
As he continued yelling, I said under my breath, "Yeah, and if the U.S. hadn't come, we'd all be speaking Chinese right about now." I felt a huge rush of adrenaline; I was torn between wanting to shout back and wanting to disappear.
Immediately after yelling, he apologized, saying that he knew it wasn't my fault, sorry, sorry. And as a goodwill gesture, he gave us some packets of gheem (dried seaweed). As a result, the next table over, which was very interested in the earlier exchange, started muttering amongst themselves: "Hey, how come he gave them gheem and not us? We want gheem too."
It would have been quite funny at the time (it is now!) if I hadn't been so shaken from the raw hostility I'd just experienced. I considered throwing a packet at them, but desisted - I kind of regret not doing so, actually.
The proprietor actually did give them gheem, but naturally, everyone in the place was staring at us by then, and Koreans are not shy about staring openly. The proprietor began cleaning the table on the other side of us, and just couldn't resist asking me:
"I just have one question for you."
I looked at him.
"Who is your favorite Korean actor?"
I replied, "I don't have one, I don't know of any."
Whereupon he began to loudly proclaim: "I see! Well, I don't know any American actors either! That's right! I don't know Bruce Willis! I don't know Brad Pitt!"
Like I said, it's funny now.
We finally got out of there, and I was literally shaking. I've just never had anyone be so openly angry at me, especially about something I wasn't responsible for. I asked Doug for a smoke, and he said, "You smoke?!"
"In times of stress," I replied, and lit up.
He felt really badly about the whole thing, and so took us all to a U.S.-friendly bar next. No one was there except the bartender/DJ, who played Lady Marmalade and Eminem, among others.
Before we went in there, Doug said, hey, you know, you were really courageous. Most girls would not have faced a guy like that, just ignored him instead. Hm.
Maiko told me later that she's gone through that before in Korea. She knows the history, she says, and she can't do anything about it, and she likes Korea, she likes Koreans, so what can you do?
Indeed, what can you do?
When I told my dad about that night, he said, "Don't go to such places." But -- and I'm not trying to be holier-than-thou, I swear -- it was a good experience. I'd heard about anti-American sentiment, of course, and since then, I've been trying to learn about the grievances that Koreans have in regard to America and the American presence in Korea. There are a lot. Some I think are merited, and some I think are based on a narrow view (okay, yeah, prejudices too) of Americans.
Since I'm pretty ignorant about Korean history (and also want to have ammunition to hurl at the next drunken anti-american rantfest), I started to read Don Oberdorfer's "The Two Koreas," which my housemate Tomas lent to me. There's no way I can really get into the mindset of a native-born Korean, but I'll try. Ya gotta try, ya know?

Fluffier things: After dinner last night, the team went to a "no-rae bang," a singing room. In other words, karaoke. Very wide American selection, including Pantera's "Fucking Hostile." Hm. Other western selections: Britney Spears "Hit Me One More Time," Coldplay's "Yellow," ABBA's "Dancing Queen," Coolio's "Gangster's Paradise," Linkin Park's "In the End," some Babs Streisand, some Beatles, some Carpenters. A Michael Jackson song or two. Not too much Madonna, which sort of surprised me.
After much coaxing, I sang Bryan Adams' "Everything I Do." Yeah, yeah, it's sappy dreck, but I like it. Plus, I know how the melody goes, unlike most of the other songs. So I belted it out, and everyone said oh, you're a good singer! and I still don't know if they were being polite or if they meant it, but you know, the whole thing was kinda fun. Weird, but fun.