Okay, I'm finally back on track now; this shows a Monday post, and it actually is Monday.

This past Saturday I went to lunch with a couple of work colleagues, and heard a funny wordplay joke. It's going to fall a little flat because it requires explanation of the Korean terms, but here it is: Kim Jong-il, the leader of North Korea, wouldn't dare to come to South Korea because of three things he'd encounter: 1. the knives in kal gooksoo (kal means knife; these are noodles made by hand and do not, rest assured, contain knives); 2. the tanks in tank-tops; and 3. the cannons in the name of a popular alcoholic drink here.

I had some Pyongyang style dumplings (I think they are bigger and rounder than southern dumplings) at the restaurant, which was a bit of a mistake because my grandmother had made some at home too. I've mentioned before that my grandmother is a phenomenal cook. I really, really appreciate her talents in the kitchen. Unfortunately, I can't seem to appreciate anything else about her.

I got home at 10:30 pm on Thursday night, and the two days until my father came back home were perfectly awful. Okay, no, they weren't awful. They were just very, very annoying.

Shortly after I wrote about my grandmother's mad cooking skills, Minnesota Margot asked me before I left here whether I liked my grandmother, since she couldn't tell from my post. I will now let her and everyone else know: my grandmother annoys me.
I don't want to be annoyed, but... I cannot tell a lie. She bugs.

Maybe it's that rejection of mother figures cropping up again (a large part of why I left my boarding house in December). Or maybe it's something else. But very simply, I just want to blow my nose in peace. I blew my nose several times on Saturday because it's very dusty in Seoul. My grandmother went from asking me if I had a cold, to wondering out loud if I had a cold, to telling me to take some cold medicine for my cold, to saying out loud (not to me) that I must have a cold, to telling my father when he came home on Saturday that I had a cold.

ARRRGH!

It's love, but it's pushy love, and I'm not used to it, nor do I like it.

My father said an interesting thing many weeks ago, when I asked why my grandmother -- who doesn't really like my mother, I'm pretty sure -- would ask after her and try to take care of her anyway. He said, "Old people have their own kind of compassion." I'm sure I'm testing my grandmother's these days.
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Back in Korea
Where there are mothballs in the bathroom stalls
Where girls call their boyfriends "Older Brother"
Where people brush their teeth religiously after lunch
Where you can smoke in the stairwells at the office
Where you don't thank someone for a present but proclaim them mad for spending so much money
Where your relatives ask you, "Why'd you get so fat?" and "How come you have so many zits?"
Where you always dress your dog for going out
Where you can amuse yourself on the subway by guessing which women have had cosmetic surgery