Day 29

• Yea! I got my foreigners card! I’m officially legal here! I can now open a bank account so I can get direct deposit for my pay checks. I can get internet ordered for home so I don’t have to go in to work every weekend to use skype or the internet. And perhaps most importantly, I can get my portable router so I can use my iphone.
• Today I went to the doctors because my eyes are really irritated. Turns out that I have allergies. I got antihistamine drops to use when ever they get red. I might be allergic to the fall weather since I’m not use to leaves falling, or it could be the small amount of shrimp that they put in everything. Apparently everything uses a Korean sauce that has a small amount of shrimp in it. Who knows, maybe being exposed to tiny amounts of it will help me build a tolerance to it, like getting a vaccine.
• I went to the gym after work today and taught Sunny how to box. She taught me to say “dong jong” which means hurry or faster. So now I say “dong jong” and she says “I go” in response to my training methods.
• After regular school kids go to “hogwans” to study English or math etc. I want to go to Hogwarts to study! Well, maybe not. Kids in my apartment complex don’t come home from school till 11 pm. It’s illegal for hogwans to stay open till midnight but many of them still do. By the time kids are in high school they are lucky if they get 3 hours of sleep a night. There is actually a Korean prober that translates to “if you sleep more than 3 hours a night you are wasting your life.” They take school very seriously here. Now I feel like a true Korean student because I stay up late at night and practice Korean using a computer program Mike gave me.
• Melissa, did you know that when we would chase down the Kogi truck we were chasing the meat truck? Kogi means meat. I think it is so funny for me, a vegetarian, to be chasing after the meat truck. It’s pronounced “koo-gee.”