Grandma's condition and taxi fun

Today I went to my birthfamily's home with Unkyung. Grandmother was there and she had a fever, barely able to open her eyes or lift her head. She's lost a lot of weight. Unkyung's heart is clearly heavy at the thought of her death, but I'm sure she's partially glad that her grandmother's pain will be over soon. For me, it's useful to know that cancer runs in the family.

I took a taxi home. The taxi driver asked me where I am from. I told him "I'm sorry, I don't speak Korean," in Korean. He continued to talk to me in Korean and told me that he thought I was Korean because my face looks Korean. Funny how many people here think of you as either Korean or American, as if the concept of Korean-American is so foreign. And I also noticed that, even though I don't speak Korean, he continued to talk to me. I picked up enough to tell him where I'm from, but that's about it. In America, if you take a taxi and don't speak English, the taxi driver will shrug and stop talking to you. Yet this man kept talking and trying to communicate.

I've also noticed that left turns are made on red lights. Not in the same way they are in America, where we make left turns on red because we reason, hey, I was already in the middle of the intersection when it turned red. Might as well go. No, here it seems to be that red lights only mean you can't go straight. Left turns are acceptable. This may not be legal, but it's what almost all drivers do, whether I'm in a taxi or riding with Unkyung.

I ALSO was amused to see a reality TV show like the American show, "Cheaters." Like cheaters, a person comes to the show suspicious of their significant other. When they are caught cheating, a confrontation is arranged during a moment when the cheating is actually occuring. The twist is, at the end, they are on opposite sides of the street and must cross the crosswalk. If the victim thinks they can forgive, they both stop in the middle. If not, he or she keeps on walking past the cheater. The drama of it had me chuckling. A little bit of America that has trickled in.

When we arrived near my home, he took our a wad of bills to give me change and licked his finger to count them. Yeah, that's exactly what I want. I prefer my money with spit on it.

That's all for now, folks! Take a minute to answer my quiz...