Sweet Slumber

Well, it looks like I'll be going to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, 12:04AM as the clock turns. That's good, since I only got 4 hours last night and 3 hours the night before. I'm running empty and looking the part too. I wonder if the bags under my eyes are due to lack of sleep or the stress from teaching. Maybe I got them in the short 3 months I spent teaching elementary and middle school kids...wouldn't surprise me. Well, no matter. I'm just falling in line with the ideal Korean look, which consists of: pale-white skin that would scare a ghost, a rail-thin body that says, "Hey, I'm a junkie", and dark-circled ::PHANTOM:: eyes that would even make Johnny Depp in "Pirates of the Caribbean" jealous. Of course, the eyes aren't really part of the ideal look, but 11 million people in Seoul could make you second-guess it.

I kid you not, almost every Korean has some kind of visible bag-shape under their eyes. More so on women than men. I think it stems from the hellish high school life they lead here. You know something's not right when high school students are commended on foregoing all sleep and natural instincts of health and body to study. You know something's wrong when it's admirable to get nosebleeds from studying all night. Well, my guess is that's where the bags come from. At the very least, I'm one step closer to blending in.