Day of the Alarm

I hate them. Mornings that is. A pattern is emerging. I go to sleep around midnight, and wake up at 2am. Then I generally manage to fall asleep within an hour or two and wake up again at 4am and again at 6am. I eventually start falling back asleep around 8 but by then I feel like I should be getting up. It sucks.

Yesterday I spent the day hiding from the rain but instead of being relaxed like the day before I just sank into a lonely place, despite my best efforts to ward it off with endless episodes of House. So I finally got up and prepared my bag to go out into the neighborhood and brave the grocery stores. I needed food. So I put on my shoes and pressed down on the door handle, only to discover it wouldn't open.

Now, it's a fancy door handle, keyless and coded and full of fancy sounding beeps and whirls when it opens. No one had told me there was a trick to getting out. So I peered at it and found a little dial that you could turn to point at "open" or "closed." So I turned it to "open" and opened the door.

ALARM! ALARM!

The noise was piercing. I had somehow set off the security alarm. After a second's panicked hesitation I remembered the doorman and clattered down five flights of stairs to get him, only to discover that he spoke no English and had no idea what I was trying to say. I guess there the alarm is only an alarm. No police ever arrived, like they would have in the states. Eventually, the doorman took me upstairs, unscrewed the battery case on the door and pulled out a battery. He put it back in when the noise stopped and everything was fine. Some security system, huh?

So out I ventured with my umbrella and a tight, humble smile etched permanently across my lips. The grocery stores each have a man who's only job seems to be to yell things at people. I assume this is some sort of selling tactic. The "drug" store I stopped into had tiny, tiny aisles crammed full of everything you could ever imagine, from scissors to pots and pans to toilet seats to facewash and razors.

So I survived my first neighborhood adventure. I came back and due to circumstances beyond my control fell asleep for a couple hours. In the evening Jen and I stumbled our way to Costco, where I bought almost too much to carry out with me; Quaker oatmeal, Nutrigrain bars, Skippy peanut butter, spaghetti and tomato sauce, juice boxes...everything I could think of. Getting there was an ordeal. Our taxi driver was a sad sounding old man who was delighted with his opportunity to practice his shaky English. He told us how great and powerful America is and about his wife who died 3 years ago of pancreatic cancer. He obviously had no idea where he was going so when we we in the area his GPS insisted was the Costco area he flagged down a girl on the street and had her get in the car to direct us to our final destination.

Nighttime was an unsteady moment for me. Samantha went to dinner with her boyfriend, and Jen and Hyo Jin both went to sleep and I got really lonely really fast. Thank god for mothers. One Skype conversation with mine had convinced me that there was no reason I couldn't take this city head on. And just to prove it I'm off on my very first subway expedition to do some touristy things. I will certainly be back to let you know how that went. Til then!