This is going to sound a bit depressed, though I swear I'm not. It's just that I'm sitting alone in my homestay (my host fam having abandoned me for my last week in Gumi), pretending I don't see the giant, unorganized piles of stuff scattered across my floor and dresser, working on archived crossword puzzles and listening to music on random, and of course the last two songs have had lyrics that begin:
when you're alone, it's better 'cause nobody knows you
and
this is the end of something i did not want to end, etc. etc. further depressing things

Tonight Robin and I said goodbye to the moms and kids at Samsungwon. I dunno. I thought staying in Korea next year would make all this easier, but somehow it's not.

Hm, Dr. Lee just got home. (OK, I haven't been totally abandoned, they left Dr. Lee here for me, though he didn't come home last night and rarely, rarely talks to me). He saw me in the kitchen making ramen and, just to make sure, asked, "Can you cook it?" Ha! Of course, Korean food is incredibly difficult to make, and I guess shin ramen is Korean, but still...Actually, now that I think about it, Fresa was completely shocked when she first witnessed my ramen-making technique. Unlike hers, which involves two pots , a seive and about 30 minutes (we're talking about a single package of ramen, here), mine involved only one pot, no seive and about a quarter of the time, which led us to coin the terms "the Janaki method" (normal) and "the Fresa method" (insane). Really, they take their ramen very seriously over here. I was completely nonplussed the first time I saw it on the menu at an actual restaurant. Isn't that like going out to dinner and ordering leftover spaghetti?