Cameraless

I've been very, very bad about taking my camera when I go out. I mean, I just don't do it. So then I end up having to take other people's images off the web...this is the National Folk Museum in Seoul. I went today! Not part of the plan, but now it's crossed off of the list. I meant to go to a gallery in a totally different part of the city, but got on the wrong bus and then was too hot and flustered to figure out how to get on the right one, so I walked a while until I found a subway station, and went to a neighborhood I knew a little better. The museum is just so-so but still a good experience. It was strange to me b/c you just walk in, no tickets or checking bags or anything (free admission until Dec to celebrate the 60th anniversary of ROK), and you can take pictures in there! I almost fell over when I saw someone shooting a case. Very, very different from the typical American museum experience.

Roads were all messed up anyhow b/c they were blocking them off for parades and other celebrations: tomorrow is Independence Day. I saw some of the scariest scaffolding in progress in my life. Four men were in the middle of a street building a pretty narrow tower of scaffolding, no planks or anything, just the metal beams, and were already way above a traffic light when I walked by. No harnesses, no safety anything. I somehow managed to kill enough time and not fall over from the sun overexposure to meet my classmates for dinner: Mayumi and her new husband, Yuko, Aiju, and Kelsey. It was really nice to spend time w/them outside of class, despite the classic overeating and reeking of BBQ.

Yesterday I met my language exchange partner and got a peek at the offices of the psych grad students at Yonsei. We talked about her experiments with children and infants, since her focus now is on coordination and language development. She talked about how the brains of bilingual children are different from monolingual kids and I talked about how Americans never say things to each other that can be construed as impolite or offensive. She was surprised, thinking that Americans are more direct (this was about when people tell me that I'm fat). Hilarious, b/c it's sooooo the other way around.

It's late. A big weekend ahead.