My new MacBook will be on its way to Jeju-do very, very soon. I’ve come to peace with it. My father, he has deep-rooted, principled objections to Apple Computers Inc., and I understand them; anyone can make a PC or a PC part or a PC program, but if you want something for an Apple, well, you have to go through Apple. But I’m really, really excited. It’s like a toy. Have you seen iLife ‘08?
Today I taught my kids the word for “flood” (hmm), ate a yogurt popsicle, and had one new boy show up to choir and two girls quit. Cool, whatever, we didn’t want you anyway. I also saw the student body president being a jackass in the special ed classroom – it appears that all student body presidents everywhere are alike – and told ACT that I’m down for yoga and pottery classes. I really want to take up cello again too, but they’re telling me that a used one costs around $400, so I have to think about it. I think I need some extracurriculars, though. I’m ready to do more on my own, to get more involved in this city, to be less reliant on others. And in that spirit, even though I don’t really feel like it, I’m going to go walk around Hwabuk and see what I can see.
Filed under: books, changes, host fam, how we roll, life in Jeju, miscommunication, okay seriously Korea, reading
Considering the typhoon, it was a surprisingly wonderful Sunday.
Full disclosure, as always: We brought the storm on ourselves. My friend G’s host sister, J, told her cheerfully that a typhoon was coming Sunday, but given the fact that no one seemed to be evacuating, we all laughed it off as typical Korean hyperbole.* Also, the two weather words all my students seem to know on their own are “fine” and “typhoon.” I thought this was funny.
I was wrong.
It’s been a rough week anyway for pretty much everyone I know – my friend A said that atmospheric changes were afoot, which explained my desire on Friday to personally throttle every single student in my second grade class, but I don’t know anyone on this island who made it through the week without at least once casting a longing glance back towards American shores. So ending with a Category 4 hurricane isn’t really surprising, I guess. Yesterday was cloudy, a little rainy, but about 75% of the island crew ended up seeing The Bourne Supremacy and/or wandering around looking for entertainment and/or eating Red Mango (finally), eating Indian food, receiving a free coffee mug from the only GNC in the province, and visiting the English bookstore and buying copies of Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim and Paul Auster’s New York trilogy. (Okay, the last part was just me.) Then G and my friend E and I went to the jjimjilbang with my host fam, where we all fell asleep on the floor and didn’t leave until 2 AM. At this point: no evacuations, no alarms, no warnings from the Big Brother-style speaker on my wall from which the superintendent declaims. I hope you don’t think I’m joking on that last part.
We woke up this morning with a promise hanging over our heads: pudding, or “ding-pu,” as HB has taken to calling it. (The first time I made it – out of boredom, on another rainy night – he called the ingredients pudding, but after witnessing its metamorphosis into dessert, decided that the name needed a change as well.) Because it was HB’s birthday party day, E and G and I ventured out into the rain to the supermarket down the street and to Paris Baguette for breakfast. It was a walk that would cost us four umbrellas. I had trouble standing upright. By the time we realized how bad it was, however, we were on a mission. Also so wet that it didn’t really matter if we got any wetter.
So we got our chocolate and our sugar and our croissants and sticky buns and green-tea-cream-cheese-pancakey-thing, and headed home, where the power appeared to be flickering, to no one’s consternation but ours. We made pudding by candlelight. We ate pudding and fried chicken with HF and HB’s friends by candlelight. At this point, trees were falling. Then we sat around and talked and read our books, in English, and took a nap, listening to the winds batter the window. When we woke up, the buses weren’t running, so we played Uno with HS.
When we finally made it to the bus station, the streets were flooded, windows were broken, and branches littered the streets. We got E on a bus to Seogwipo and G in her taxi to Hallim, and made it home, where HD, HB, HS and I ate ramen and, because I am forever behind every trend, I read more of the last Harry Potter, again by candlelight. (Side note: I can’t put it down. I wouldn’t call myself a Potter fanatic, but what I love about Rowling is her ability to create a propulsive story – i.e., I always always always want to keep reading.) Then the lights came back on, and I was able to discover that what had actually occurred was Typhoon Nari, with winds somewhere between 131 and 155 miles per hour. Oh.
This is so typical, for us to be here and have no idea that we’re surviving a massive storm. It’s the grand-scale edition of getting on a bus and hoping it goes our way. Welcome to life in a foreign country. My American mother asked me today if people don’t evacuate, and HS said no; I’m not sure if this was the first typhoon to hit the island, or if it was just the first typhoon in a while, based on what she said (see? SEE?), and I don’t know if people are blase or if they’re actually freaking out and they’re just doing it in Korean. You know? I never imagined that I could experience a storm in this way. But then I never imagined a lot of things.
*There is no typical Korean hyperbole. Mistake Number One.
…to paraphrase my friend Elizabeth.*
“You are sick, so I recommend rice.”
- one of my co-teachers/the story of my Korean life
HILLARY, IN MANGLED KOREAN I hope you ate well.
PRINCIPAL, IN NOT-MANGLED KOREAN Tea house?
Getting through Gimpo International Airport was a little like Legends of the Hidden Temple. Can you get to the stationery store to pick up wrapping paper and scissors? Can you get your flight time changed? Can you run to make it to your now-earlier flight? Can you talk your way through the gate when you left your passport in your checked bag? Can you pacify the security officials who want to stop you from going because you are carrying scissors? Can you do it all while bowing to the right people and not causing offense? In a dress?
The answer to all these questions, of course, is yes, as I am currently sitting in an apartment in Jeju City, Jeju, South Korea, aka not Seoul, aka not Chuncheon. The whole adventure made me really appreciate my co-teacher a whole lot. She dropped her papers and the principal had to pick them up, she made us run to catch our flight, and she got lost on the way to the restaurant. In other words, she’s a lot like me. I feel kind of bad for telling one of my friends that I thought she was awkward, because clearly what I should have said is “awesome.”
My principal, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to enjoy speaking in either English or Korea. He mostly communicates through actions, including but not limited to:
- elbowing me and gesturing that I should eat
- forcibly removing my name tag
- making me run faster to the plane
Reportedly, however, he told the other teachers at my school that they got the best teacher. I say reportedly, of course, because I still don’t speak Korean, and my co-teacher told me that. He probably said that they got the sickest teacher, or maybe the most disgusting.
My host parents don’t speak English either, for the most part, but I think this is clearly the family with whom I am meant to be. My host sister is in eighth grade and she’s really into volunteering. My host brother is in sixth grade and says, quote, “My mother and father don’t speak English, but they say I am…mischief?” Meanwhile, I have managed to convey to them that I have a mother and a father, that my father is from Vietnam, that I have a brother and a sister and two dogs, that one of the dogs died, that I have lived in both Kentucky and Tennessee, that I didn’t wrap their presents because the wrapping paper I bought was really ugly, and that I am a walking ball of germs. Everyone here seems to be really into the fact that Dad is 빋남 사람. At lunch yesterday, all the teachers and principals present had a conversation that sounded very much like
She looks Asian. Her father is Vietnamese. Oh, her father is from Vietnam? What did you say? She looks Asian. Oh, it’s because her father is Vietnamese. And her mother is American? Yes, but her father is from Vietnam. Oh, that explains why she looks Asian.
They threw me a surprise party yesterday.
I have to say, so far, that I am very happy.
*Can anyone guess which city in Pennsylvania this quote originally referenced?
EDIT: My host mom has apparently decided that she wants to wear the shirt that I brought that says “Real Men Wear Orange…Tennessee.” Oh God.
Filed under: Fulbright, crushes, how we roll, life in Chuncheon, music, okay seriously Korea, orientation, pictures, poetry, reading
Standard conversations with my teachers:
HILLARY Bang-teacher!
BANG-선생님 (teacher) Yes?
HILLARY Doesn’t your last name mean “room” in Korean?
BANG-선생님 You call me over for that? That is not question.
in Korean
KIM-선생님 We talk about location. So right now I stand in front of the
HILLARY Oh! Blackboard! I know this one!
KIM-선생님 Um…yes.
Note: we learned “blackboard” on the first day. I tend to get so excited when I recognize words, however, that I call them out regardless of their relevance. It should come as no surprise to anyone, then, that Bang-선생님 had to reassure me repeatedly tonight that she does not think I am stupid.
Here is Bang-선생님:
And here is Kim-선생님, shown here with my friend Ariah:
And here is part of our class at a hof called 75 (or 칠십오 , if you’re into that sort of thing):
This was, of course, pre-Korean haircut. On this night (Thursday), it was just our class. Apparently we are so well known for our poor performance that the advanced teachers actually make fun of our Bang and ask her how the dumb class is going, and she gets really heated on our behalf.
Friday was all the beginning classes’ party. This is post-Korean hair. Which is $8, so I highly recommend.
The club was called “STOP!” Our teachers reserved tables for us and set a cover charge. Note: In Korea, hugging is regarded as strange, but drinking with your teachers is totally acceptable. The above is an abstract depiction of noraebang.
Korean hair:
Something was funny, obviously. You can see the top of this Yoshitomo Nara shirt (also $8, incidentally) that says “mumps.”
These are the pitchers our teachers bought us. Lest you think “Oh, that’s not so big,” let me inform you that my friend Andy, who is shown above holding the aforementioned pitcher, is 6′8″.
The rest of the subjects I have mentioned in previous entries as needing discussion also require photo viewing, and I do not wish to overwhelm the reader, so I’ll deal with these topics incrementally. I will leave you, instead, with some lyrics to a song that I like. Also, I did not bring any books of poetry with me, so I am putting out an official request: blog readers, send me poems you like.
orange ball of peace - the mountain goats
they wanted me to be a lawyer. they wanted me to work in a machine shop. they wanted me to be a designer, but I came out on top. I'm a fire-man. I'm a fire-man. stand and watch the smoke. see the flames rise to the sky. I stand and watch the flames climb higher. I feel the smoke get in my eyes. I'm a fire-man. I'm a fire-man.
Last night I ended up in a club. “Ended up” is, of course, the only phrase that can accurately explain my presence in a club, given my tendencies to a) hate crowds of people, b) get really gross and sweaty, and c) dance like Elaine Benes. The night, however, turned out to be almost exactly the kind of night I love: I ate dinner with some Korean and Program friends, came back, got some things done (it turned out that the camp instructor with whose class I’m working had actually already DONE my lesson plan, last week. Oops), went to a hof (pub/bar) with some of the girls here, ran into a few other Program peeps, and decided to stay with them. We watched the rest of the soccer game that was on and ended up at this hip-hop club, a club that was decorated with weird graffiti and chunks of chain-link fence in an attempt to look “street.” What it looked like, actually, was that there were a a bunch of Americans there (us) and some fifteen-year-old Korean girls, one of whom was wearing a dress that said “More dash than cash.” I want it really badly. My friend David tried to teach us this sort of b-boy dance move. Naturally, I looked like I was trying to do the hora. Shortly after we departed, the police arrived.
So here are some more details about life here: We’re teaching at an English-immersion camp run by The Program. It’s the only camp of its kind in the country in that the learning is not textbook-based (which doesn’t feel that novel to me, but I think that’s a result of my American conditioning), so it’s really neat, although it’s apparently also really expensive for the students. Last week I worked with a big group to teach a movie-making class (during which some girls came up to my friend Andy, who’s 6′8″, and exclaimed, “You are very tall! How many centimeters?”), and then I taught a lesson with Brian, one of my fellow Kentuckians, on adjectives through music review. The lesson was actually a thinly veiled ruse to allow us to listen to music and watch a clip of Almost Famous. Here are some of the students’ comments on the music we chose:
- on “Sweet Child of Mine”: “His voice is very strange and unique…This song makes us feel excited.”
- on “Wagon Wheel”: “His voice is very Kentucky-ful…We think he is a farmer or maybe a cowboy.”
- on “What Goes Around”: “This song is too long. But he is very sexy.”
- on “All You Need is Love”: “Listening to this song feels like Christmas.”
Two interesting points are raised by the above anecdote.
1: Kentuck
I have mentioned in passing before that, having come to Korea, my goal was naturally to make friends with people I could have driven an hour to see at home, which is why two of my favorite people here are from my lovely home state. They’re not, of course, from Lexington or Louisville or anything like that – one is from Owen County, and one is from Owensboro (which is in Daviess County, naturally). The point being that they are what I like to describe as RIL Kentucky, that is, they are not any of those city imposters, unlike myself. One of them even went to Transy. Why didn’t I just bring a few Centre alums along for the ride?
For serious (yes), though, I have managed to get past the fact that I crossed the international dateline to talk about tobacco and the Kentucky State Fair. We’ve all been assigned to Jeju-do. Brian (Transy) theorizes that they want to keep all the country accents as far from the mainland as possible. Interestingly, I’ve sort of bonded with the Iowans present, all of whom have a similar complex regarding how people treat their state (badly).
2. Treatment by Koreans
Not all small children have stared at me, and those who have have mostly been really young, young enough that I can assume that they stare at everyone, Korean or not. The taller among us, however, keep having people ask to take pictures of them. I think I’m helped by the fact that, even though I’m pretty obviously American, my coloring allows me to slip by mostly unnoticed. I was out with Glypie (the other Kentuckian) and our RA Gwi Ohk a few nights ago, though, and this female street vendor kept telling me that I was “very beautiful. Very high nose! Not Korean nose!” Which was sweet and all, but a little weird, since nose height isn’t something I spend a lot of time thinking about.
Conversely, the way we treat Koreans is also sometimes questionable at best. There’s a guy here who is going to Jeju with me who is, basically, Glenn Quagmire. Last night at dinner he was sitting at this table next to us with some of the Korean girls with whom I’d gone shopping, and we would pause our conversation at various intervals to observe him spitting game. Fortunately, his poor facility with ladies appeared to be acceptable due to his targets’ sometimes weak grasp of the English language, which made lines like the following okay:
- “So, do you really want to be accountants?”
- “These traditional mats are very comfortable. Do you have chairs in your house?”
- “Are you planning to stay in Korea, or are you hoping to move somewhere else? …Like the US? Let me tell you about where I’m from. It’s called Scranton, Pennsylvania.”
We are loath to imagine what his host family is going to believe about Scranton.
Yesterday Gwi Ohk asked me if I knew “KFC grandpa.” Which I think explains more about my position here than any of my pontifications ever could.
Filed under: how we roll, life in Chuncheon, lists, okay seriously Korea, orientation, poetry
Exciting news(es) first:
1. I’m being published! For real! Doubleplusgood. I received word a few days ago confirming that Mixed Up Productions, a group dedicated to publishing hapa art and work, has accepted a few of the photographs and poems I submitted for their latest chapbook. This is all thanks to my former poetry professor and total BFFL Patrick Rosal, who suggested that I submit to them. (And Kundiman, which didn’t work out quite as well. Better luck next year?) Part of me is afraid that I’m going to look back on this later and be like, “I asked them to publish that?” But for now I’m just trying to stay excited that someone besides a school I attend wants to accept my stuff.
1a. I think we’re going to try to start a writer’s group here? That would be fun. I’m trying to focus on nonfiction as of right now. I believe we’re having our first meeting Friday, over beer.
2. TheScoop08 has asked me to be its International Coordinator! This is akin to an editorial job, and I’m really excited to not only get further into journalism, but also to be working with this group. I strongly encourage you to check out their website, and to let me know if you’re interested in applying for a correspondent position.
3. Placement ceremony Wednesday. I don’t even care where I go anymore – a lot of my friends here requested Jeju-do, which is an island at the bottom of Korea that has a teddy bear museum (hm. Bradenton), and I did too, but at this point I just want to knoooooooow.
4. I have letters in progress to: Yigit Menguc, Shanna Sanders, Kia Brill, Annie Maggard. More are coming.
5. I got a birthday package from my sister and it is the BEST PACKAGE EVER, in that it contained a sketch of the manse being constructed next to us (I think it could also fairly go by “grange” or, my personal favorite, “the house of Usher”), a copy of Joan Didion’s We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, and an awesome letter. A quote:
I spent the last two days at Sam’s because we thought we were going to go to a “field party.” We didn’t. Instead, we went to see Transformers.
6. I bought pineapple and croissants at E-Mart.
Now. I’ve started and stopped this entry three or four times, so I’m just going to write, in hopes that I can document what I can remember now and then maybe start updating more frequently.
Context: Here is my daily schedule.
- 9 AM – 1 PM Korean language class
- I’m in the remedial class. This is not an exaggeration. We have to have special daily quizzes because we all keep failing our weekly tests.
- Ten minute breaks every hour for soda or coffee – I am partial to Demi-Soda Apple, which, according to the label, has 11% apple juice
- 1 PM – 2 PM lunch
- ick
- this is why I spend all my money, because I keep going out
- even though a good lunch (like kimbap, which is sort of sushi esque) is only 1000 won, or about a dollar
- 2 PM – 4 PM workshops, teaching at Camp Program, free time
- 5 PM – 6 PM tae kwon do
- 7 PM – 9 PM extracurriculars (cooking, paper art, etc.) or KEY Club
- 9 PM – bed, homework, or going out
SO. Today: extracurricular was a traditional tea ceremony. At most of our extra stuff, the people are generally understanding about our complete inability to function. At dado, however, the woman kept physically repositioning us, berated us for using the wrong “thank you” (I gave the general thank you, gamsa hamnida, instead of the more specific “thank you for helping us” thank you), and, in my personal favorite move, rotated the lid of the teapot, because apparently we had it on wrong, even though the lid itself is round and her move had no discernible effect except to make us feel bad. I did it with my friends Glypie and Megan; Megan has survived attempted terrorist attacks as a Peace Corps member in Bangladesh, and even she found herself challenged. Also, the handout they gave us (on the subject of the tea ceremony) spent about a paragraph dissing Japan, which I’m starting to suspect is pretty much par for the course.
Yesterday: I went to KEY Club and I ended up in a discussion group led by the one Korean student I really, actively do not like. KEY Club background: They hold it every night of the week, and the first forty minutes are devoted to a discussion on a given topic. Then a KEY Club member gives a speech in English on some other topic. (Past topics have included Edward Norton, Lucky Numbers, and How To Seem Taller.) Then, usually, people disperse for an hour and reconvene to go drink and do noraebang. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, whatever. Anyway: so I found myself with the one girl who is not nice, this girl who gives us really bizarre statements like “Chocolate is my reason for living.” She usually has a scrunchie (old school) sort of halfway down her hair, and her “American” name, inexplicably, is Eddie. So we had our discussion today, which was on “love deficiency syndrome” (or: why do people have problems with love? – which is a difficult question to discuss when English is your native tongue, so I don’t know what made the KEY Club think this was a good idea). I said something about it being a difficult (i.e. shitty) topic, and it turned out, of course, that Eddie had come up with it. Whatever. The only good things were that I ended up sitting next to my language partner Sunny, who is still pathologically shy but now writes me notes that say “I like you <3″, and that we acted out the term “wingman” for the benefit of the males in the group. Then this other girl gave a speech about how to overcome psychological complexes (again, why is this a good idea?), and during the Q&A that followed, Mean Girl was like, “So, what’s your worst memory? What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?” It was great, as long as the definition of great is “supremely uncomfortable.”
FINALLY for tonight: tae kwon do. This is the most cardio I’ve done in about eight years, in all seriousness. Perhaps some of you may remember my disastrous foray onto the Polo Fields swim team – I was the fourteen-year-old practicing with the fourth graders. I’m running laps every day. LAPS. Fortunately, I sweat a whole lot in the humidity regardless, so what I look like when I get there is more or less what I look like when I leave.
As always, for next time:
- placement, probably
- Kentucky friends
- pictures (I know I keep promising these)
- mountain livin’/convenience store friends
- Sarah Vowell
Also, check out GoldDigger’s post on Planet Hiltron. Then go thank Raabia, immediately.
Filed under: how we roll, life in Chuncheon, okay seriously Korea, orientation
MASSIVE BLOG POST!
I’m going to touch on all of the topics previously mentioned, but first I would like to elaborate on my visit to the Korean bathhouse. Korean bathhouses are AMAZING. Or, to be more accurate, the bathhouse I went to was amazing. Everyone’s naked, so I couldn’t take any pictures, but there are all sorts of scented pools and the whole place smells like cinnamon and cedar and chocolate and tea. Lots of old women and babies bathe there. The whole thing is about $6 USD, but you can pay extra (as I did) for an exfoliation and a massage, in which a half-naked Korean woman essentially beats you with this exfoliant that is maybe apricot kernels or possibly shards of industrial plastic. My friend Stacey has a bruise that looks like she got some sort of whipping. The women tend to slap you liberally, but my skin is baby soft. Just something to keep in mind.
Now, to address the topics previously mentioned:
- monsoon season
May have begun, may have ended, depending on who you ask. (There’s no consistent correlation between South Korean answers and American answers, either.) It rains a lot but not every day. I have an umbrella and rain jacket, but if I did not, the “stationery stores” (more like Claire’s, but much cuter) sell umbrellas for a dollar or two. The stationery stores are also full of office supply porn, and I want every pen they have. I will take pictures when I figure out how to do so discreetly.
- Program Camp! (not to be confused with Camp Program)
I am, of course, part of a fine, honorable, scholarly institution. One where we do arts and crafts and physical activity. I start tae kwon do next week. Believe it or not. I also had a class last week on hanji, which is a decorative paper art. We even did it in the cafeteria. Other similarities to summer camp: it is hot ALL THE TIME and I’m always really gross looking, and the showers are terrible and don’t have hooks and smell sort of like ramen. Or ramyun, as they say here. Camp Program, on the other hand, is the camp where we’re teaching for the next few weeks. Not the same thing.
- hangul
It’s insane. I’ve never learned a non-Romance language before, not that my forays into Romance language learning ever went all that well in the first place. There are a few people here who are fluent in Korean, largely because they are actually Korean, and I’m so jealous. I don’t even remember what it was like learning to read, so I feel like a three year old pretty much always. See: Me Talk Pretty One Day. I keep waiting for my Helen Keller moment.
- drunken ex-presidents
We got put into these informal language groups at KEY Club, and I’m with this girl who insists on me calling her Sunny (see: politics of naming, below) and who doesn’t speak ever, and the former president of KEY club, a guy who goes by Lee. The seniority rule is really interesting here: regardless of who is the president of the club now, for instance, the guy who did it before is always above them. So during the meetings the actual president, who is already kind of short, will be speaking and the ex-prez will come up behind him and literally lean on his shoulders, just in case we had forgotten exactly who is in charge. We also went out for papbingsu, which is this sort of elaborate red bean-fruit-ice cream sundae, and he told us that his main hobby was drinking, and the best dishes that he cooked were foods that went well with drinking. Meanwhile, Sunny emailed me later and told me that she was hoping to feel very close to me.
- the politics of naming
I got into a really interesting discussion with one of the girls here about whether or not offering American names to students is okay. Personally, I’m on the fence; yes, names are often selected in foreign language classes in America, but we are also in a position of power relative to South Korea that’s not exactly comparable to America’s relationship with France. At the same time, though, it seems that denying students who actively seek American names the opportunity to have them shows the exercise of a similar power. Basically: Who am I to tell anyone what they can or can’t name themselves?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot more lately in that being an outsider Asian here has really caused me to consider my identity. I had a fantastic conversation with my friend Leah, who’s a Korean adoptee, last night about what it’s like to feel tied and not tied to a given culture at the same time. (Note: This conversation took place over pitchers of Hite beer, shortly before I tried to teach a Korean college student the lyrics to “99 Problems.”) I’ve always felt sort of uncomfortable identifying as hapa, in that it always seemed as though I was trying to stick out, since white kids didn’t go around bragging about their ancestors from Germany or Slovakia or wherever. There are several other half-Asians here, though, in addition to a number of adoptees, and many of them identify as hapa as well, which makes me more comfortable considering race as a serious part of who I am or am not. The point of this ramble (I was planning on being an excellent blog writer, v. literary, but since I always write when I’m busy or half-asleep, I sound like a moron most of the time) is that these questions of identity have made me realize the symbolism present in my own name. My last name has no blood connection to me; my father’s stepfather adopted all my grandmother’s kids, which is why their last name is not Viet. This is a handy fact to know, considering that I’ve never really felt a connection to my last name (or liked the way it necessitated a glottal stop between it and my first name). And yet – I feel as if, were I to take a Vietnamese family name as my last name, it would be an implicit rejection of my whiteness and my mother’s culture, even though she has no real connection to the name either. So I understand how difficult and complicated these ideas can be.
- noraebang
Karaoke, essentially. Koreans seem to be able to do this any night of the week.
- noraebang 2
Koreans party so much harder than Americans. Really. They stay out later, drink more, spend more days out of the week sitting in bars singing karaoke and sitting in bars inhaling chicken and beer. (Really good chicken, mediocre beer.) They put frats to shame.
- my birthday
Pictures coming soon, but I received pocky and cookies and cheesecake and a pencil holder. I love these people.
Maybe soon I can get into the habit of writing regularly and not so badly. Until then, however, this will have to do.
