대한민국!

Both of my countries, Korea and the U.S., are in the top 16 of the World Cup! Hooray for squeaking out enough victories to pull ahead!

(I think Zakumi, the World Cup 2010 mascot, is quite adorable, other than his weird spots. They look like some sort of disease.)

Watching the World Cup, seeing screaming Koreans, it all really makes me miss my family. And also Koreatown. I have no real connections to anything Korean here- there's one Korean restaurant, which I haven't been to yet, and the Korean markets are a joke, pretty much tiny little holes in the walls, without much stock.

Coming from LA, where there is an enormous Korean population, I'm used to speaking Korean and reading Korean pretty much on a daily basis. Now, I have to force myself to remember how to speak Korean when I call my parents. I'm forgetting words, grammar, and smells on a daily basis!

Even worse than all this is the fact that I'm totally out of kimchi. I ate the last of it last week, and I'm rather depressed about it. I can't buy kimchi, because I am a total kimchi snob and only eat my mother's homemade kind (and of that, I only really like two types), so I have to (horror of horrors) make it myself.

This might be my project this weekend- kimchi madness.

When I watch soccer, I also really, really want dried squid (오징어). 


Sigh. I miss the Korean half of my life.