Reminders

I went to taekwondo for the first time in 9 days, and it showed. Felt good though. There are two new students, both foreign. One is a nice Canadian (wait, is that redundant?) who teaches English. When I said my name, she said that the director had mentioned me to her; apparently he said that I was very nice and that he wasn't sure if I should be called a girl or a woman. (Britney Spears shout out?)

A couple of people said hey, it's been a while, and I felt sort of validated, like hey! You noticed I wasn't around!

I've been waffling about paying for this month, because I'll be taking off on the 20th to go to Southeast Asia, and I've got finals and stuff, but I'm really glad I went; my mood flipped from kind of blue to bitches brew.

On the walk home from the subway, I noticed three things that reminded me, yes, hk, we're not in Kansas anymore.

1. The live seafood in the tanks outside a restaurant just steps away from the station. King crabs, unearthly, squat and ominous, in one tank, and several squid, ubiquitous in Korea -- it's a very common side dish for drinking, like peanuts -- repeatedly and futilely surging up against the walls of the tank, hoping to escape, I guess. Felt kinda bad for the squid, probably because they're kinda cute.

2. A few steps away, there was a guy selling fresh peanuts out of a flatbed truck. Piles of shelled peanuts heaped up on boxes and lit up by a generator.

3. A glance down the alley market was rewarded by the sight of another flatbed truck half-filled with Napa cabbages (the kind you make kimchee with). The stack was probably my height.

It's not that you can't see live seafood or truck produce in the States, it's just that it's so common here, and right in the capital city.