Good Friday

So our stake-out was not meant to be (and I was looking forward to it, too). As I expected, actually, the culprit didn't appear at the Korean class he so usually stalks. That meant that I, my host mother, my co-teacher and a policeman friend of my host mother's brother weren't given the chance to swoop in on him. The good news is that I didn't have to miss my evening class with the exceptional first years. Other good news is that I've been contacted by a couple foreigners who have also been bothered by this socially-awkward, military-obsessed suspected kleptomaniac and they might be able to supply me with his full name and cell phone number. If I can compile some kind of harasser profile on this guy and get the police to at least pay attention to him, I think I'll feel like losing my wallet was worth it. Though I do miss my wallet. I've never had a wallet stolen before. It does sort of feel like a piece of me was taken. Or more like a miniature me was taken. The photo on my California ID was really good. And it ironically had my old Portland, Oregon address on it. I miss that card.

On other fronts, you may have heard about the 7.0 earthquake that occured off the west coast of Japan. I realized a few days ago that I actually felt this very earthquake all the way over here in Suncheon. It was last Sunday, I was lying in bed half-asleep still recovering from all the occurences the night before, and my bed started trembling and the windows rattling. It felt like an earthquake, but I wasn't excitable enough about it to get out of bed and run around, as I did during the last earthquake I experienced. I did however sit up, check the clock so I could remember when it occured, and then fall back onto the pillow. My host sister who was in the next room didn't feel anything, but a few days later I read about the earthquake and saw that it had occured at 10:53 am, the same time I'd read on the clock. I've felt earthquakes before, both in California and in Portland (there was a big one my freshman year near Olympia, WA--the last one, that I was in bed for), but it was a bit odd to think that I'd felt an earthquake that had injured and killed people in another country. Worth noting, I guess.

Tomorrow I head north to Jeonju with my host family. I'd originally made plans to do something with Rachel, then my host mother asked me to go on a trip with the family since the kids have one Saturday off a month and she had managed to get free from school as well. I'll actually be getting the best of both worlds, so to speak, because Rachel will be meeting up with us in Jinam, a little north of Jeonju, where we'll be going to Maisan National Park. I'm looking forward to it, though the kids aren't that excited about going hiking (What else is there to do in Korea, anyway? They wanted to go to an amusement park). So my host mother is mollifying them by buying them new shoes. I guess they might need them, since she admitted to me the other day that they've never gone hiking as a family. That's more an indication of how little free time families have, and less of an indication of how popular hiking is here.