soon e snored quite a bit during the night. from time to time, i'd give a slight tug on her pillow or the cover. i didn't want to wake her but i also couldn't sleep with her snoring. it's so quiet here. no noise from other apartments nor from outside! not at all like the condo in andover or our house. a few minutes before 6:00, i decided i should make a quick trip to the bathroom before everyone gets up. i dread having to wait to pee. sawn e was already up. i went to the bathroom and then asked her for "chan mul" (cold water). i told her that soon e was "pee-gon-hay-yoh" (tired) and i made a snoring sound. went back into the bedroom and lay down again. soon e was starting to come to. she got up. i got up too. felt like walking around the living room a little. soon e asked me if i wanted to go for a walk. i said yes. several times last night and again this morning, i felt the urge to ask what we were going to do today. but i realized that the very best thing would be to let soon e relax and just take things as they come. we'll do whatever we do. we aren't on one of my former wife’s touring death marches. 6:23, soon e and i left for walk. soon e wanted to go to a small mountain near by. i got quite a few good pictures of early morning life in the area. on the curb of one street there were some bundles of used boxes. soon e said that a business collects them for recycling. at one point i saw some spires that looked like a Muslim church. soon e said it wasn't a Muslim church but a place where weddings are held. everything needed for a wedding and reception can be rented there. then we came to an area that soon e remembers. there are very few non-koreans in the areas that we've visited so far. i tend to forget that here i look different from everyone else. we held hands for a good part of the walk. i wondered how the koreans we passed felt about us holding hands. i know that there is resentment on the part of some koreans toward korean women who marry foreigners. we passed a massive church. soon e read the sign. it's a methodist church. then we went down a side street and suddenly were at the foot of a small mountain. i asked soon e if people pick mountain vegetables there like she does in Massachusetts. she said, "no. it's a cemetery." sure enough there were grave mounds all over the area. there was also a walking trail up the mountain. apparently there is spring water at the top. we were going to walk to the top but soon e felt some rain drops. we started back since we were 36 minutes into the walk and the condo was some distance away. on the way back, i asked soon e if we were going to move to a motel. she said no. she told her sister that it was too inconvenient going back and forth to a motel. besides, the cheaper motels re-rent the rooms in the daytime so we would only be able to sleep there. soon e discovered that sawn e has a second bathroom. there is one in the master bedroom. sawn e thought it was fine for us to stay. i think everybody was just worried about whether or not i'd be comfortable sleeping on the floor. now that i have the lay of the land, i would much rather stay at sawn e's. sleeping on the floor, as everyone else does, has not been a problem. the first night i was too exhausted to even think about it. but now i'm getting used to the floor and the pillow with wheat husks. i feel much more a part of the family staying here. it would be very hard having to go to a motel to sleep and then get back to sawn e's the next day. |
