Bad stomacheache last night, around 1 am. Told my dad about it this morning, and he said something interesting: "I used to be like that. Always tired, stressed out. But now I'm not. You have to let it go. Make it simple. Don't be stressed out, because everything is impermanent, nothing is what it seems." (He's into the Buddhist thing, if you couldn't tell.)

So I'm thinking, yeah. Yeah, because I feel like I've been tired and stressed for years, and though there were definitely times where that was the appropriate response to life events, I'm tired of operating in that state all the time.

I haven't figured out yet what exactly I'd like to change about my daily life, but I know that I'd really like to change my mind's reaction to stress (i.e., get all tensed up and nervous about the least little thing).

(Yah, you THOUGHT this was going to be a blog about Korea, but once in a while, you have to slog through confessionals and promises of self-development. I'm not going to be offended if you skip these. In fact, I won't even ever know! So go ahead and skip with abandon.)

(All right, but now I feel all guilty because I haven't written anything fun or elucidating about Korea. FINE. I'll flip through this Koreana magazine here and find some FASCINATING fact, just for YOU.)

No, forget it, I won't. I have a flurgin' right to be lazy, don't I? So I'll just tell you this little story, which I keep forgetting to write down, but must have been forgetting on purpose, so that I could pull it out for this kind of occasion.

Everyone knows that obesity is a serious problem in America. Expat Matt, upon his brief visit back to the States for the holidays, wrote to me that I'd probably notice the preponderance of overweight people when I came back to the U.S.

Actually, I'm fairly unobservant unless I'm trying to be, and so I didn't notice until I read his note. Anyway, I didn't really think anything of it until several weeks ago, when I was walking to work and I saw a mother with two kids in front of me. The older kid, a girl of about 7 or so, was a little overweight. The funny thing is, I heard her say something in Korean to her mother as I passed by them, and I was surprised that she spoke Korean. It took a second to figure out why: in my head, since she was overweight, she had to be American.

Weird. Not like there aren't any fat kids in Korea (on the rise, as you'd expect), but odd to what extent you completely absorb beliefs that you never even articulate.