My Friends

I want to tell you about the people I already knew prior to coming to Seoul. As previously mentioned, I know Meredith Thompson. She is a fantastic person and we first met in high school as we wrote on the school newspaper together. Meredith, like myself, enjoys a good time. Another teacher at our school, and fellow citizen of Wooster, is Darcie. While Meredith and I wrote on the school newspaper, Darcie was our Editor-In-Chief. I did not know Darcie very well in high school (partially because she was one WHOLE year older than myself) but we were acquaintances after multiple trips to high school journalism conferences at Columbia University in NY. I really do not understand how the three of us from the same minuscule, rural, Amish-infested town ended up at the same school and with apartments in the same hall, but it has worked out really well and I feel very lucky :)

I would now like to discuss my Korean friends. Nam Wang and Kookno Lee are absolutely ridiculous. While I interned for a semester in D.C., I lived in the same apartment building as these two young men. After weeks of the raunchy smell of kimchi waif down the hall, I thought I should meet these characters. Nam has this laugh. I traveled 5,000 miles to hear this laugh. Even if what he is laughing has no humor value, I lose it. That is all I have to say about Nam Wang. Kookno Lee is just as funny and a little less ridiculous. Kookno Lee loves to imitate the Korean "dog call." This call consists of a two finger (on the same hand) and tongue movement. It is inappropriate and should not be tolerated in any society. I traveled 5,000 miles to see this Korean "dog call." Both Nam and Lee have been nothing less of extremely hospitable since I arrived and they took my American friends and I to dinner the first weekend I was here. Both of them now work in the banking industry so they are generally tied up with adult responsibilities while I go to school and sing the ABC's.