A Small World

I've been battling one of those colds you get in Korea that hangs on and on and on until you forget you have a cold and start thinking that blowing your nose 29 times a day is normal. I woke up Saturday morning, fully planning to stay bundled up in my covers all day to recover, until I checked facebook and saw that Lisa Duitman, a friend of my mom's and someone I grew up with, wrote on my wall. Apparently, her daughter, Elayna, was on tour in Asia with the Cleveland Orchestra and perhaps I would be able to see it. So I did a little searching on google and lo and behold, Elayna and the Cleveland Orchestra were literally playing a concert 5 minutes from my house that evening. What were the odds! So I promptly biked over to the concert hall and bought myself a ticket. Hooray! An orchestra! And not just any orchestra--the Cleveland Orchestra is currently ranked #1 in America and #7 in the world. It was an absolutely amazing concert, and being the absolutely only white girl in the audience, it felt even more special. What a small world! A girl from my home town playing a concert just minutes away from me in Korea. I caught Elayna after the concert (MUCH to the disapproval of the Korean usher who very plainly told me that I was ABSOLUTELY not allowed to go back stage) and we went for breakfast the next morning at her hotel in downtown Seoul, and then I showed her and a couple of the members from the orchestra to one of Seoul's palaces. (That's where the picture of us was taken.) So random and so fantastic. God bless facebook.

And speaking of facebook, later in the weekend I saw the new movie that just came out about Mark Zuckerberg and the beginning of facebook called "The Social Network." It was one of the best, most engaging movies I've seen in awhile. Everyone who knows anything about facebook should see this movie! And if you don't care about facebook, go for the soundtrack! Trent Reznor does all of the music for the movie, and it is PHENOMENAL.

To end on a less upbeat note, today at 2:30pm North Korea shot artillery shells at a South Korean border island called Yeonpyeong Island. Two marines were killed, sixteen were wounded, and three civilians were wounded as well. South Korea then fired back, and they're saying this is one of the worst clashes between the North and South since the Korean War. As one person who commented on the BBC website put it, "North Korea is like a spoilt child. You can issue empty threats of retaliation all you want but it won't learn." This incident is a bit unnerving, especially after the Cheonan naval ship was sunk (presumably by the North Koreans) just last March! But don't fret, friends and family, Yeonpyeong Island is a couple of hours away from here. Also, it seems as though South Korea may have been conducting some military exercises near the border, so perhaps the attack from North Korea wasn't because they're completely crazy and there is fault from both sides? For some reason, that seems slightly more reassuring. If you haven't read about it already, click here for the article from the BBC.