I am sitting here drinking an iced coffee. Koreans apparently love iced coffee...it's everywhere. It usually comes in little cans and it's quite good. The other day I decided to get one and I opened the cute little fridge I had seen at the corner store everyday...only to find out that the fridge wasn't a fridge. It was a heater! The iced coffees were hot! In a way (a Korean way) this makes sense. You put the can in the fridge - it's cold coffee. You put the same can in a heater? It's hot coffee. Merely another example of Korean ingenuity.

Our friend Eileen got back from Hong Kong yesterday and her legs are covered in bandages. She got such a bad sunburn that she had to bandaged from her toes to her knees...poor thing. She is as white as can be (she is whiter than me even!) and she apparently was only in the sun for half an hour. Yikes. Other than that she though Hong Kong was fantastic. I want to go there...and I want to go to Vietnam, North Korea, Bali, Cambodia, China, Japan, Russia, Mongolia, Guam...any way, you get the idea.

I got my first copy of the Korean Herald yesterday! Yipppeee! It was like Christmas for me. It's not a bad newspaper and it's interesting to read about things going on in Korea and how they perceive international politics. Yesterday there was an article by a professor about America. It was the biggest load of hogwash I have ever read (and I have read a lot of hogwash by the so-called liberal media..ahem, anyway). In it, the man laments the state of Korea and uses the elevators of America and Seoul as an example of contrast. According to him the "hold Open" buttons in America are worn down they have been pushed so much. And in Seoul? The "close doors" buttons of course. He claims that Koreans will slam people in the closing elevator doors rather than be late while Americans will patiently and obsessively open the doors for all those who seek entrance. Puh-lease.

Here is something interesting for my j-school buddies out there (and for other like-minded folk). Remember the South Korean who was beheaded my the Islamic militants? Of course you do. So, they are holding a commission into his death in Seoul and lo and behold if some interesting things have emerged. Apparently, the Associated Press received a 13-minute video showing the man in captivity. They neither informed the Korean government or the man's employer. They sat on it. The first time the government knew the man was being held was the day before he was killed (or so they claim) and when they got wind of the fact that AP had an earlier tape they requested it. What the received was a 4-minute edited version. Strange? You bet.