These last two weeks have been crazy, for more than one reason.

Last weekend I went into town to visit a friend of mine that happens to be in the army. We hung out for a while and then decided to go out and hopped onto the subway. A little background is necessary here. Although koreans are asian and most westerners think of them as passive and calm, they do go out and drink at times, this being men AND women. On more than one occasion, I've seen both men and women, young or old, stumbling around and/or hunched over puking in a corner. Sounds unusual, but really it's not. I think it has to do with their work and stress levels. So, anyway...my friend and I got onto the subway to just go a few stops to Itaewan, the local foreign club area. My friend is pretty big, but overall harmless. He's around 6'3, bigger than me and a lighter skinned black man. After sitting on the subway together hardly a min, I realized that a korean was just gawking at Cameron. This isn't all that unusual, as he is black and more than a little different here. It kept up for a min. and I said something to Cameron. Cameron looked up and lo and behold, the man stumbled on over and got right up in front of him and started yelling in Korean. The only thing that I understood was that he was very angry and wanted to know where we were going. I didn't understand anything else, but it wouldn't have mattered anyhow. I told Cameron to just not answer, so he sat there just looking at the man. I had forgotten that when people are angry at home and yelling at you you're expected to look them in the face. So...there's Cameron looking this guy in the eyes. Let's just say when I yell at the kids in class, they stare at their feet. It's considered inappropriate to look at someone when they're angry and yelling. At this I quickly told Cameron to look at his lap. He was a little confused, but did so. The man just kept on yelling and people were beginning to stare at us. After around 5 min. of this, finally a korean man next to us yelled back at the man to sit down. It didn't really matter at that point, because our stop had come. We scurted out and thought things were ok. Little did we know, but not 2 seconds later, he was following us up the stairs and still yelling, with more people staring at us. I tried stopping to let him by, but this did little but make him stop too and scream more. Cameron whispered to me if I could run. Not being quite that way, I just tried to get rid of him myself by finally yelling in Korean, "Why are you doing this"? We turned and walked quickly to the escalator, this time much faster and he kept on coming, running to catch up. He started grabbing my arm continuing to yell. How did we merit this, I don't know, but at this point another foreign american came to try to help us out too, telling the man to go away. He ended up following us all the way out of the subway and wasn't subdued until the other foreigner that was helping us went and got some korean cops. At this point Cameron and I kept walking. Strange to say the least. He was drunk, but come on. All we did was sit down in the subway.

That was just one strange incident that we've had lately. This past Tuesday night I got home a little earlier, really tired from not having gotten much sleep the night before. Anyhow...I usually go to bed really late, but that particular night I was sound asleep before 10. I guess clinton came home after 10 and was also asleep when it happened. At around 2:30 in the morning he heard something in the living room. His room is right next to the front door and living room, so he opened his door to check what was going on. Clinton's pretty blind apparently without his glasses, so he said the first time he walked out he thought it was John and asked him in his surly night voice what he was doing. The guy was sprawled out on the floor and didn't answer. Clinton went back into his room and got his glasses and went back out. The guy was much too big to be John and the only other person Clinton could think of was my friend Cameron. I just cracked up the next morning as he was telling me this. I slept through it all. So, he said he walked up to the guy and polked him in the head, which got no response also. He kept nudging the guy and finally he roused and started babbling in korean and trying to crawl away and hide from Clinton. Clinton said he just kept trying to go back to sleep on the floor. What he did understand was that the guy, in between passing out, wanted water. Clinton went to the tap and got a glass and when he returned, the guy was sleeping again. He poured some on his head and the guy finally woke up. I almost wish I would have woken up to see it. Apparently he had to lure the guy out the door with the glass of water and toss his shoes and jacket after him. What's funny is that he was so drunk that he obviously didn't know where he was, but still had the sense to take his shoes and jacket off when entering someone elses house. Talk about an ingrained habit. We live on the top floor of an 18 story building too. Until then, we didn't lock our door at night. It's not like we really thought many people would just stumble in and pass out on our floor. We've been locking in since Tuesday night though....