Update

It's been a long time again since I've updated. Christmas came and went, and I had a wonderful time in Seoul. I spent New Years in Jinju, which was nice as well. Since we didn't have anywhere to stay in Jinju and didn't want to shell out the cash for a real hotel, we spent the night in a Korean spa, where for a small fee you get pajamas, a blanket, and a spot on the floor to sleep for the night.

The place we were was crowded, and so it took us a while to find a spot. The place is literally room after room of empty space with people covering every inch--it kind of looks like gyms turned into relief centers after hurricanes, except without the cots.

I couldn't manage any sleep that night with the combination of snores, creaking doors, and crying babies; so when it started to get light in the room, I was just lying down with my eyes open. A little girl, also awake, soon spotted me. My coworker Jen was next to me, so I whispered, "Jen, there's a girl over there who is totally staring at me." I look up, and this girl is crouching over me, maybe three inches from my face.

I don't know how she got there so quickly, but this girl was unabashed. I think I smiled or said hello, and she started saying something in Korean that I couldn't understand. When I was unresponsive, she pulled up to my face again and blew in my ear. At this point I was so surprised that I just started to laugh. She still seemed confident in her interactions with this foreigner, so she decided to use all of the English she had ever learned. The speech went something like this:

"I like violin. I like piano. I am nine years old. How old are you? Yellow. Green. Blue. Pink. Black. Do you like soccer? Yes, I like soccer. No, I don't like soccer, I like basketball. I like watermelon."

At this point I was laughing as hard as I couldwithout waking anyone up. I interacted with her a bit more, and then started to pretend to sleep, hoping that she would go away. She didn't. She tried on my glasses, tickled me, kissed my cheek, poked me, and started using her hair as a paintbrush on my face.

I eventually gave up any hope of sleep, and played with her for the next two hours while everyone around us slept. Since our conversation was highly limited, her favorite game was when I would tap different parts of her face and she would have to mimic the pattern on my face, remembering the sequence. Halfway through our little friendship, she took out a plastic snail toy she had and put it my my pocket (her space boundaries were pretty nonexistent.)

She finally got tired, so she laid down in my lap and fell asleep while I rubbed her head. We decided to leave soon afterward, so we got up and she followed. She followed me up a couple of flights of stairs until she finally realized I was leaving. I don't think I've ever made a friend so easily before, and although I was tired, she was a fun start to 2009.

Here's a picture of us. My eyes aren't open, but it's the only one I've got.