Hey everyone out there that reads my blog, it's tuesday night and though I'm quite comfy in my new set of sheets (thanks mom) I must admit I'm feeling a little down. The past week has been a bit rough, I'm facing some of those cultural differences and frustrations that I was warned about, and I'm hitting it right on the 8-12 week mark, geeze do I have to be so predictable? Stupid UCLA study abroad homesickness chart making me feel like a statistic instead of an individual mutter mutter...I don't really want to get into it on a public blog, but lets just say I'm going through the "makes you stronger" part of my experience.
I also had to say goodbye to two good friends in a 24 hour period. My friend and coworker Sean left on monday. Remember the guy that I wrote about who helped me out at the club when the creepers were creepin? Yeah, he's gone back to the land of Bogans and Utes... don't get the reference? Here's an easier one, their country's stereotype tell's his "mate" to play "knifey spoony"... He's back in Australia. We all gathered for an epic night on Saturday, in which most of my friends did incriminating things that I'd love to write about but.. you know... the whole public blog thing, but I can say it was a good night and a nice send off for him. He was one of the main people that I spent time with so I'm sad he's gone.
Then today my friend HyunDok came to Sinchon to have a final lunch with Tyler and I before he leaves for the US indefinitely. He's a really nice guy and I wish I had had more time to get to know him. After we ate we walked around Ewha and had some coffee. During our final chat I had an experience that I don't think I'll ever forget. We were walking along the street, I was on the side with the cars and he was on the inside and he switched spots with me.
He started to explain to me,"In Korea, when men and women are walking, the man should walk on the outside, next to the cars, because it's safer-" No sooner had the words escaped his mouth, when I was startled with a loud sound, I heard the most terrible crash. I looked and about 75-100 ft in front of us a motorcycle was flipping over in the air and crashing into oncoming traffic. I just gasped and froze. A taxi had rammed into the motorcycle and it had hit a wall and then flipped over. I started looking for the person and all I could see was a helmet laying far away from the crash.
HyunDok and I walked over and the man was laying in the street in the most unnatural position and I almost started crying. I was sure he wasn't alive. The taxi driver got out of the car and checked on the man, but he didn't move. Everything happened so fast, we waited for the police to come and finally the man started moving around. I was so shaken up. HyunDok even went into oncoming traffic to retrieve the man's helmet. He was really calm but my nerves were flying all over the place, and when we were walking home and got to the corner a motorcycle drove by and I irrationally grabbed HyunDok's arm (the motorcycle was a good five feet away from him), and he looked at me and asked quite nonchalantly, "haven't you seen something like that before?" No, no and I would have liked to keep it that way. He went on to explain that due to the dangerous driving in Korea, accidents like that happen all the time.
It's been a strange week and I'd like things to go back to the way they were. But even during these rough times I still have great friends. Tyler even drew me a nice comic that had a silly picture of me with stink lines radiating off my head, with the caption: Nadja Smells. Awww. It did make me laugh though. It's a Simpson's reference by the way... hopefully I'm a little more Annie-esk in the next entry.
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