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September 13, 2005
Invasion!
The sky fell on Seoul today. At least if you think of the sky as made of water.
I was half-asleep when, at 12:17 p.m. (I looked at the clock), an enormous boom shook my room. My immediate thought was, "Holy crap, the North Koreans are coming!" Then, when further booms didn't materialize, I thought maybe the construction site next door had an explosion. It turned out to be the biggest thunderclap I've ever heard. And I've heard some doozies in Chicago. Crazy.
This week is Chuseok, which means Koreans go to their ancestral homes and eat stuff (apparantly a special rice cake is among them). Seoul, I'm told, totally empties. Looking forward to some "me time."
I was on the elevator today and an ajumma reached out and suddenly felt the fabric of my shirt thoughtfully.
This was an... interesting experience. I never had occasion to go to a Pentecostal service in the U.S., so this was my first experience with them. All through the first half it seemed like a pretty average harmless-Methodisty-rock-music type service. The pastor started his sermon talking humorously about his vacation in Thailand with the other pastors in the denomination. Some funny/ironic, depending on your perspective, things about how fearsome it is to handle God's money were said.
Then he said for the potential fornicators and adulterers to come on up to the altar. He asked people to keep their eyes to themselves, and I was going to do that, until I realized that a) I was supposed to be reporting on this and b) no one else was.
I kind of regret not going up there myself. After all, you can't really judge something if you haven't experienced it, and this, though definitely weird and probably deceptive over the long term, was pretty harmless. As it is I was just perplexed by the whole thing.
Posted by b-applegate at September 13, 2005 2:27 PM
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