It’s no secret that I’m afraid of other Westerners (i.e., white people) in Korea.  I don’t like being around them, and I try to avoid them most of the time.

I know I’m missing out on a lot of potentially great friendships, but I’ve had some bad experiences… The two hours before my Korean language class, I can feel my stress levels rise to points it never comes close to at work.

I just re-watched the brilliant Woody Allen movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  When I first saw this movie, I thought Woody Allen was doing his typical trashing of white protestants with some of the characters — particularly Doug.  But after living in Korea for quite some time, I feel like I know Doug… I feel like I meet him every time I’m with a big group of foreigners.

Doug is why I ignore white people… so, if I’m rude to you, I’m sorry… it’s nothing personal, it’s my fear of you being Doug.

Watch the video:

Please note that I have many great white friends and this is not meant in any way to describe them.  It’s just an underlying fear/distrust I have about most white people in Korea.

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I have never known what MSG was.  I knew through osmosis that it was supposed to be really bad for you, and I just assumed that the trial lawyers had taken care of the “problem.”

I never imagined that it would be sold in the grocery store by my house and I never imagined that it’s orange packaging would be eerily similar to its next door neighbor, the salt.

So yes, I’ve been eating MSG everyday thinking it was salt.  Everyday putting in more and more because my food never tasted salty enough!

I did notice that it didn’t really look like salt… but I just lumped that into the Things Are Just Just A Little Different In Korea category — a category, by the way, in which one can place almost anything.

However, after doing a bit of research, it appears that MSG does nothing too horrible to our bodies except make us hungry… and then fat (see here,  here, and here)… unless you read Yahoo Answers, in which you will find that MSG can do everything from causing brain damage to killing you.

Mostly, I just feel dumb.  I can read Korean and I know the word for salt in Korean (not to mention that the word “salt” is actually written in English on the salt package), but when I’m tired and in the grocery store, I’m usually on autopilot.  This, paired with my most recent lapse in food knowledge, is not boding well for me.

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I don’t like sunrises.  One has to wake up obscenely early or go bed obscenely late, and either way, 5:30am never feels good.

And if I don’t like sunrises, I positively hate the photos we take of them.  I don’t understand how we, as a species, could be so universally attracted to the sunrise & sunset that every time we see one we think it’s a good idea to start clicking away with our cameras.

It must be an evolutionary flaw that will no doubt leave us lower in the food chain (well, this and electing Tea Party candidates).

I say all of this because a few days ago, I woke up at 3:30am so I could walk several kilometers to see the sunrise… and to take photos.

Basically, I fell for Sokcho’s marketing.  They have Seorak Sunrise Park and it looks so pretty in all of their pamphlets!  I figured if they named an entire park after the sunrise that it must be something to see.

It wasn’t.

My life did not improve from waking up early.  I was just really tired for the rest of the day (and I missed the sunset because I was napping).  Of course, I knew all of this before I even woke up to see the sunrise, but I, like so many others, did it anyway.

So, this is my contribution to the failure of the human race: sunrise photos… if you want previous submissions, you can view sunset photos here.

You can see all the sunrise photos here
More info on Seorak Sunrise Park

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My new least favorite thing in life are the stairs behind my apartment that have a hand rail wrapped in barbed wire.

Some of you may know that as a singular statistic, I fall down stairs way more than any normal person should.  So whenever I walk down stairs I’m gripping that rail Britney on a Cheetos bag.

So, you can imagine my horror upon seeing rusty old barbed wire wrapped around my life support system.  And to make matters worse, once you scale the hill with barbed wire stairs… there’s exercise equipment!

Here’s the 2 minute video (be sure you have sound):

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