Burned

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Hello Blog,
It's been a couple of weeks, sorry for my infidelity. I've been getting steadily more lazy in all ways, the heat and humidity only seem to let up when it's pouring down rain...which is more often than I remember happening in Minnesota. I feel compelled to exercise but the gyms here are missing one key element- air conditioning. Speaking of which, my electric bill is going to be over $100 this month; awesome! I've had a love affair with fried rice recently. I keep trying slightly different variations though none of them are terribly healthy. I can't imagine rice, eggs, soy sauce and mushrooms to be light no matter how many carrots and beansprouts I put in there. It's at least more healthy than ramen (I think)?

Two weekends ago I went to the beach with Andrew, Yun Kwan and YK's friend. The two Korean guys, both a little north of 30 didn't know how to swim, it was pretty funny. It seems like learning how to swim isn't a youth rite of passage in this country. The beach was packed, when I swam past were all the crowding was to get a little space the lifeguards zoomed past on their jet ski and whistled me...my feet could still touch bottom! We ate lunch at a seafood restaurant overlooking the ocean on the second floor of a building that had ceiling-to-floor windows. We ordered some hotpot soup dish that had a bunch of crab in it. I don't love crab nearly as much as other crustaceans but this one had a nice rich broth. I was quite lax in my application of sunscreen and it cost me dearly later in the week. I got a gnarly burn on my shoulders and back. I can stand the pain but what I can't deal with is the itching. It drove me insane for 2 nights. I applied aloe liberally but surely this didn't help in my skin cancer tally book .

I've been getting burned a lot at OCI recently, having no students show up to my class. This means I sit there for an hour listening to my iPod waiting for my co-worker to finish his lesson so we can eat lunch and leave. It's a pretty big waste of time but there's nothing rally I can do to control the matter. They don't come because they are busy doing their actual jobs and my offering of English conversation is just staff development that is more often than not superseded by real work. At least my thumbs are getting strong from all the twiddling they are doing.

I got burned on my phone as well. I tried to just get a used phone to replace the one I killed at Mud Festival but I couldn't keep my same number. $40 fee for new phone number. They couldn't give me a new phone because I am only staying in Korea for 2 more months, new phone $30. I had to cancel my old plan because it's on my old number. Cancellation fee, $25. It's refreshing to know that cell providers kill you with fees no matter what country you're in.

Other bits and pieces -I went out last Friday night and drank rice wine with a foreigner posse. We rounded it out with some beer and drinking games. It started to pour at about 1:00 a.m. and me without an umbrella. I got soaked trying to find a cab. I played poker a couple times at Liz and Jim's last week. I came out about even which is all one can hope for. I am also crushing Andrew in our bouts of Go-Stop (Korean flower card game (if you ask me nicely I'll teach you when I get back.)) He's helping me pay my outrageous airconditioning bills with the winnings. I got my ticket for Thailand booked, it wasn't easy thanks to Visa's foolproof fraud protection. I wasn't able to buy my ticket at all on a Korean website. I wasn't able to buy my ticket on an American site from Korea either. I guess Visa isn't "accepted everywhere" after all.

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