Rise and shining in my face. I have on the Oakley's I wear when I'm biking. The sun is dimmed, but so is the monitor. I don't really need to see the words, just the mistakes when I make them. I feel exhausted today. We've been staying up late watching World Cup games. I'm stressed too, because of the upcoming departure. In fact, the only reason I'm not escaping to a long morning sleep-in is because Mary Hall's mom called at 7am, leaving a message that she'll call back. Of course we have the machine turned up to its highest volume, a level where it could rouse the dead if necessary. Mary Hall is someone I went to elementary school with, then Junior High, and even High school. Her mom is Korean and is in town for a few days. Man, small world.

I spent the best part of my Sunday afternoon clearing all the cupboards in the kitchen of bugs. Yuck. For the second day in a row, a little miniature red armadillo was perched on the lip of the Quik container when reached for it to make my morning choco-tooyoo. I've seen them around. For months one lived on the shower curtain, never moving. I thought it was some kind of weird lint until, I guess, the details of what I saw everyday started to integrate in my mind and I suddenly just realized, "Hey, that's a bug." But it has only been in the bathroom that I've seen them on occasion. There are all sorts of openings to the outside world to blame for the intrusion there. Drains galore.

But the kitchen... I don't know. Bugs near my food creep the shit out of me. One time, at the First Hill apartment, I had bugs in my flour. I got something out of the cupboard only to find it crawling with bugs. Looking for the source, I only needed to open the door again to see an exodus of tiny black bugs climbing up the wall of the paper flour sack and over the lip to freedom, or what they thought was freedom. Placed fortuitously below the lip, under precisely the spot from where the bugs were leaping, was a clear shot glass. The bugs neatly fell into it, where the slick sides prevented their escape. A shot-o-bugs. It was gross, in reality, and I freaked out at the kinetic mass of insects trampling each other in attempt to scale the glass wall. Ick. So I grabbed the glass, shoved it under the faucet, and in my fear/disgust turned the water on high.

Mistake.

As soon as the stream hit the dead-end bottom of the shot glass the flow redirected itself upward and out, distributing bugs all over me and the countertop. Then I REALLY freaked out.

But this most recent nemesis seems more docile. Sure, they move when I disrupt their perch on my food, but otherwise they hunker down for extended periods like the one on the shower curtain. So when I pulled down the cylinder of Quik and saw a bug for the second day in a row, I decided to take a peak in the cupboard where I saw many of them loitering among the jars and bottles of oil. I put off cleaning until the afternoon, at which time I took apart the whole kitchen, cleaning each shelf and every item on it with a 10% bleach solution. My mantra: Kills the widest variety of pathogens across the widest conditions. I don't know if the bleach killed the bugs or if they just drowned in it. Doesn't matter: They're all gone now. They were most prevalent in the cupboard where all my hot chocolate and cold chocolate mixes are. I also keep olive and other oils there; I think that's what they really liked as oil has a way of escaping glass and coating everything in the near vicinity with a fine film of sticky slick. I think the aggression toward my personal staples was just a by product of the attraction to the oil.

I found a few of them in almost every other cupboard containing food, but they didn't really seem to like the food so much as just its mere presence. There weren't any bugs in the flour or in other containers for which I am notorious about not closing. I found them all just waiting in between spice containers or fleeing the encroaching light as I systematically removed items that blocked it from the far reaches of the cupboards. It's over now, but the whole thing took a good two-hour chunk out of my afternoon.

In the evening we went to Mrs. Chung's house for dinner. She's been anxious to meet Dave; I wanted him to meet her too. I expected it to go better as I am always very comfortable there. Her husband was home, so we got a chance to meet him, but he was quiet and the three of us couldn't come up with much to say while Mrs. Chung was cooking. Cooking, cooking, cooking - it never ended so that most of the evening she was not with us for conversation or lack thereof. It was terribly awkward and I felt bad because I wanted Dave to have a good time, and I wanted them to have a good time with us. But, I just couldn't think of anything to say to Mrs. Chung's husband. Thank GOD for TV's though. What did people do before them? We watched World Cup.

Besides that, the meal was excellent. She made great Buddha food for us, even omitting the eggs on a dish that is traditionally smothered in them. There were plenty of namul and fresh crisp kimchee. She made fried tubu, dwenjeong stew, and pinddaettok. Delicious. Hers was better than any vegetarian restaurant I've been to in Korea. Seriously. I'm not just saying that because I like her so much. Later she served us mal'cha (green tea from powder), ceremony-style. I was so happy for Dave to witness it. She gave him the special bowl to drink from and I taught him how to hold it.

Also at the house was her granddaughter, who is not her granddaughter but a relative. I'm not clear on the story there, but the girl calls Mrs. Chung grandma. I can't recall her name, but she's in the fifth grade and incredibly cute. She helped Mrs. Chung with all of the preparation for the food and even serving the tea. She is just learning and is not quite sure of the proper way to hold the bowls, which are quite large in her hands. She was so careful not to spill, standing, walking, then kneeling to serve. She bowed politely after setting down each one. Then with her own bowl of tea, she sat legs underneath her, both hands under the bowl and drank. Her hair is cut in bob that is longer in front and parted on the side. The long side was tucked behind an ear but loose strands fell forward when she leaned over the bowl to drink. She was so polite and cute. She looked tired from helping with all the kitchen work and then later I saw her folding towels and doing other stuff with laundry. They were working her hard. I think I'll get something for her in the States.

Mrs. Chung's husband, though quiet with us, seemed nice. I thought he and Mrs. Chung were a good couple: they both are down-to-earth and have this peaceful quality. He told us he doesn't drink coffee, only green tea because the tea is so good for health. He also never left the room for a smoke. Health is very important to both of them. He is a professor of mechanical engineering at Chungang University and also a retired Colonel - artillery he said. Artillery.

So, it was nice but I felt stressed about the overwhelming silence. I wished Mrs. Chung didn't have to do all that cooking and I was torn between helping her (should I offer? what is the etiquette in Korea?) and leaving Dave to fend for himself. I never know what to do, but I always want to do the best thing. I usually end up doing nothing and then feeling like crap for it. Ah, well, I'll see Mrs. Chung thursday at which time she'll load me down with books to take to her daughter in the States. That's something I can do.

One more thing: Mrs. Chung said the surname of Ha (river), as in my name Haran, is a really good name because all things come from water.