and so on

Last weekend was really nice. Rachel and Joanne came down from Jeollabuk province (Jeongup and Jeonju, respectively) to stay with me, and on Saturday we went to Seonamsa temple to see some of the fall foliage. It was, as I think either Duncan (Jeonju ETA) or Jairus (fellow Suncheon ETA) described it, "riotous color." It really was beautiful, some really bright reds that I don't think I've ever seen, having spent most of my life on the West Coast. On Sunday Rachel, Joanne and I took a bus out to Suncheon Bay. There was a reed festival going on. Unfortunately, my quest to see Suncheon Bay when the reeds are red was again thwarted. But we talked to a staff person and it turns out that there is a sort of flowering reed that is red this time of year, but those reeds only grow in a certain part of the bay, far from where we were. So that quest has been postponed indefinitely.

On Sunday morning, before we headed to the bay, Joanne and Rachel cut my hair. I've been growing my hair out, but I needed a change. So Joanne gave me bangs and Rachel gave me a bit of a trim. I haven't had long hair and bangs since maybe middle school or early high school, but I'm happy to say my hair looks much better now than it did then. It's a nice change, and my host family had fun watching the process.

I've finally purchased my plane tickets to Singapore and Saigon. The direct flights from Saigon to Seoul were disappearing quickly, to be replaced with flights with long lay overs in Hong Kong. As it was, I had to spend about two hours talking to six different customer service representatives, three from the ticket website and three from my bank. Finally figured out that my bank needed to raise the spending limit on my debit card in order for me to buy the tickets, and since I didn't have certain account information on me, I got them to do so only by somehow being able to provide the amount and date of my last account transfer, from memory. Anyway, it's a relief to get that over with at least. Now I only have to plan a week in Japan, and I'll be going to Japan by boat instead of plane, so hopefully it will be less expensive and less complicated.

In the news of urban legends, I only decided to comment on this because I've received this e-mailing twice in the last month--it looks like the NPR petition is in circulation again. This e-mail petition has acquired urban legend status because it is actually incredibly old. I actually remember receiving it for the first time years ago when I first had e-mail. The e-mail commonly starts, "On NPR's Morning Edition last week, Nina Tottenberg said that if the Supreme Court supports Congress..." though there are other variations. According to a couple websites on the subject, this petition was started by two concerned University of Northern Colorado students in 1995. Shortly after it was first sent, the University found its system clogged by responses, and the students' e-mails were shut down. In 1998, the University and the two students apparently tried to stop the circulation of the e-mail, since many consider e-mail peitions to be actually useless anyway, and this one was also outdated--but as we can see it's still continuing. It's kind of amazing that the Internet can operate in such a way that not only can something like this keep going for so long, but when it resurfaces, I can receive the same e-mail from two different friends who are from opposite sides of the country within a relatively small time frame.

Reading: Finished "Reading Lolita in Tehran." Now I'm reading "Living Dangerously in Korea: The Western Experience 1900-1950." I'm finding it interesting because not only does it maybe explain some aspects of the American influence on Korea (for instance, a couple of the most prestigous universities in South Korea were founded by American missionaries, and Pyongyang in North Korea was a big missionary spot before the Korean War), but since most of the Westerners in Korea in the early 1900s were Christian missionaries, Suncheon and the American missionaries who founded my school have been mentioned.