apples to apples

i just finished a weeks worth of homework tonight because i did maybe 5 whole minutes of it over the course of this entire week/weekend. ah! my mind is numb and my fingers are cramped, but i will press on. today has been a fairly bad day: enormous rainstorm with million mph winds that broke my umbrella + being caked in street grit and mud ALL DAY + traveling far by subway and some by taxi to see the asia erotic museum with mandy, only to find that it is nonexistent. monday is definitely over.

lately i've been contemplating how in the world to explain everything that's here to my family and friends not here. it is so easy to skim over the rough times when describing abroad adventures, even though they shape the experience just as much as the good. most people forget that being in a foreign country does not make life instantly great, but in fact, it makes it much more difficult. a lot of the time here, i feel exhausted and fed up with the weather and frustrated when i cannot communicate with people, but for now, it's just extremely fulfilling to continue absorbing my surroundings and to be myself without it depending on external factors, such as location or other people.

so far, being in korea has made me appreciate history so much more, or rather, appreciate it period. slowly but surely, i am collecting tidbits of information from all over and piecing them together in order to try to understand this country, and i love it. history major here i come! ha, just kidding. based on its contemporary history, korea seems to have invented the saying that things are never black & white.

anyway. those north koreans had better keep the rest of their missiles to themselves. it would be TRAGIC to have to go home early for "safety" reasons. even if there are missiles going off right above me, i can honestly say that i feel much safer here in this city than any other city in the US. i am already dreading going back to the US a bit, for a few good reasons. however, i am excited to get home (aka: within a 10-mile radius of a Hollywood Video), because i will immediately tackle the rest of Sight & Sound's top world cinema for 2005:

brokeback mountain(ang lee)
a history of violence (david cronenberg)
the holy girl (lucretia martel)
2046(wong kar wai)
mysterious skin (gregg araki)
the consequences of love (paolo sorrentino)
the descent (neil marshall)
moolaadé (ousmane sembene)
tropical malady (apichatpong weerasethakul)
the beat that my heart skipped (jaques audiard)
head-on (fatih akin)
howl's moving castle (hayao miyazaki)
last days (gus van sant)
the sun (aleksandr sokurov)

alright. what i just wrote sounds much more serious than i actually feel right now. yesterday i couldn't go to sleep for the longest time because i was daydreaming about the weekend. i hope that i remember the details of this place, such as: people walk on the left side of the sidewalk, if you go to hongik on the weekends they hand out phone #s for ecstacy every block, and how some taxi drivers are sweet enough to pull over and ask policemen for directions because their idiot passengers can't speak korean without an american accent.