Find me a find, catch me a catch...

Koreans like to play matchmaker, it seems. I think like in some other cultures, they don't like to see someone, probably especially a girl, hit a certain age without finding a mate. The very first night I was here, when I was at the bar with all my coworkers, I was asked if I was married or had a boyfriend. At the negative answer, I was immediately referred to the guy next to me, whom I haven't seen since. I'm not even sure if he's a teacher at the other branch of the school or if he was just a friend of someone's. But he was single, and Heather made it a point to note that he is considered quite handsome for a Korean.

When I was getting my hair dyed (dark red with blonde streaks) at the salon the other day, one of the hairdressers asked me the Single question. Then she slapped my hairdresser on the stomach and told me he's a good catch (or whatever Konglish equivalent, I don't remember).

Today I went out to lunch with my boss and mentioned that I like little kids, as there was a cute one running about. She said it's because it must be time for me to get married. Then I explained to her my opposition to marriage, and she agreed, actually. I mentioned how my mom thought it would be nice to have some little Korean grandkids, and Heather thought that was so funny. Then she got the Idea.

Nine hours later, as I was leaving work, she said she found a very tall Korean guy for me who had studied business in the US for six or seven years and she would hear back from him next week, since she's leaving to go to Hong Kong tomorrow for the long weekend.

Now I'm a little nervous.

Engrish

So this is what the chocolate milk carton I bought the other day said on the side:

Our Chocolate flavored milk drink is hasty way to freshen up your day.

Hasty is the most obvious thing there, but keep thinking about the rest of the sentence. It gets you a little bit.

Korean Eyes

I noticed right away that a lot of Koreans have glasses, especially kids. I'm not sure if this generation has worse vision than older ones or if adults just wear contact lenses more often than glasses. Over fifty percent of my students have glasses. It's ridiculous.

At first I thought Koreans just have bad genes in that area, but then I mentioned the glasses thing to one of my classes, and they all chimed in with how much Koreans play video and computer games. Then it began to make more sense. I posted an entry a while back from someone else's blog about how they have boot camp here for kids addicted to video games, and I've noticed those who aren't truly addicted are usually still avid players. And every time I ask a class what they did this weekend or what they do when they're not doing homework, or what they like to do, it's always "play computer games" or "play Nintendo DS." It's almost never anything else. I guess glasses are a price they're willing to pay.

Power Outage

Today when I got home from yoga and went to turn on CNN I realized that my power was out. I have no idea when this happened, but judging from the lack of cold in the fridge, probably sometime during the night. That sucks so bad. I have a lot of cheese and butter and milk in my fridge.

I'm wondering if it has to do with my water heater leaking water over all sorts of open and covered wires in my laundry room... I called Heather and she called the landlady to come take a look, and after checking the fuse box, the water heater was the first place she went. That could be because Heather told her about the water problem, too, though.

The extremely shitty thing about losing power in Korea is that I also lose hot water when that happens, since the electric thermostat controls the tap water and the water that heats the floor. So I had to wash at the sink today with cold water.

I also had to relinquish my keys to the landlady, since she doesn't have any for some reason. That meant not locking my door as I left for work. Sketchy. I took my laptop with me to work, as well as all my spare cash that I leave about. I didn't want to haul my camera, video camera, and ipod to work, though, so I hope they'll be safe in their cabinet.

Considering the lax attitude people seem to have around here for fixing stuff, I fear that I will not have power still when I get home. I have one tealight and one tiny flashlight, so I guess in that instance, I would go to Heather's house for the night.