Last night was kind of an "everything is going wrong" night. (Well, after my glorious sandwich, that is...I should have started to notice the trend when I burnt half of it, but I was so elated about its ooey gooey inner goodness to notice.)

First, around 8:55 I woke up from one of those catatonic death naps. I felt like someone had run over my body with a truck. I was lying on my stomach, drool coming out of my mouth, the works. I fought my instincts and braved the cold to run to hapkido (about ten minutes through rice fields and under freeways by jog). When I got there, the group of high school boys that joined right after I did were just leaving. First, there's the goofy one. Then there's the other goofy one. Then there's the tall goofy one with glasses. Then there's the shorter goofy one with red glasses. (Only one person will get this, but maybe they are a next generation all-Asian Odd Squad?)

Anyway, my encounter with them led to my enlightenment on a few issues:

1. During my vacation, where I took a short hiatus from hapkido, the class moved from 9:30 to 8 pm. That explains why, when I tried to go Monday night, everything was dark and locked.

2. Koreans must think Americans love shaking hands. The tall goofy one with glasses kept saying "Hi how are you?" and shaking my hand.

3. Koreans also must think Americans say "Oh my god!" all the time. Once the tall goofy one with glasses found out that I didn't know class had moved, he repeated "Oh my god!" in a high falsetto about 82 times.

I smiled and said "See you tomorrow!" and ran back home.

Once I got home, I enjoyed about ten minutes of electricity before the apartment went black; just lovely apartment 503 (o-bek-sam), the entire rest of the building was fine. So I got up, sighed, and called the maintenance guy's cell phone. We had a very convoluted conversation in Konglish before he told me he would send his wife to "check it out."

20 minutes later she arrived with a flashlight, walked through the door, marched straight into the kitchen and flipped a tiny (and yet completely obvious) switch on the electrical board. Gee, I felt stupid. But hey...I didn't want to touch anything for fear of causing irreparable damage. I mean, just look what happened when I didn't touch anything.

After that, I was happy because I could see, but then I found out that the internet didn't recover from the shock as well as the electricity did. Ha. So it's still out.

And that was my night! Lovely! Actually, it wasn't so bad...

Things that are fantastic

I've already mentioned how it's very fashionable in Korean grocery stores to tape "goodies" onto merchandise. Here are a few recent purchases:
- a wine glass taped to a bottle of Yellow Tail
- much needed earmuffs and gloves taped to boxes of cereal (Choco-Chex and Oreo Cereal)

Also, I bought some fresh-baked green bread. After eating some, I am not sure what gives it its fantastic color.

I made a sandwich tonight with the green bread, peanut butter (smuggled in from the United States thanks to Paul), honey, banana, and chocolate chips. Slap the whole thing in a frying pan with some butter and it's one fantastic meal. Honestly, there really isn't anything better.

Oh, by the way, my vacation was also fantastic.

Near my school, there's a massive dirty grey comforter dangling by a tree branch. It's been swaying a few meters above the sidewalk for a couple of weeks now. When I run or walk past, I never go directly under it.

My favorite recently-read book is Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh. Stop by Gwangju and I'll lend it to you.