Bugs. South Korea's got 'em.

We'll start with spiders. There are spiders everywhere. They are in the stairwells, walking around on the ground, hanging out on the lightposts at the park.... everywhere. The one exception is Bruce's apartment, thank goodness. I've only seen one tiny thing running across the floor and he didn't last ten seconds. South Korea's got some spiders of a different caliber, though. These are NOT American spiders. What we are used to in the States is on a much smaller scale. Now granted, we DO have the dangerous spiders, brown recluses and black widows, but I have no clue about the poisonous potential of some of the creatures I've seen over here, which only adds to the fear factor. They are BIG. **body wracking shudder** I treat each and every one of them with respect and give them a wide berth of space.

In general it's just neat to see the difference in species in everything over here. The pigeons are bigger. The blackbirds have white area's on their chest and wings. The beetles are almost decorated.... I saw one the other day that had purple wings and polka dots! The moths look different than what I've seen in the US. There are lots of praying mantises... which "a lot" to me means that I've seen four so far, so comparitively speaking that's a lot. I also saw one of those (ugh, gag) bugs that has pinchers on it. The pinchers were almost as long as the body itself.

I've been forgetting to take my phone with me, but I'm going to start from now on so that I can get some pictures of these little critters. I'll post them after our trip.


Today we are going to go to the park, have lunch with Bruce, go to the library, and then out to dinner tonight. Yesterday was a very quiet day since the Koreans were celebrating Chuseok. From what I understand it's like our Thanksgiving. So we just relaxed here. Then in the afternoon Bruce took us up to see his office since he needed to check some emails. That was interesting and impressive. I'd describe it all, but you know how the saying goes.... "I'd have to kill ya." Rest assured that it's all very top-secret, high-tech, dangerous, and that the safety of our Nation depends upon it. (Yep, I'm giggling at the complete exageration I'm making here.)

I realized I was coming down with a cold yesterday: runny nose and an itchy throat. I'm taking Zicam and just hoping it knocks it out before the cold has a real chance to develop. Alyssa's showing symptoms, too. I can't give her Zicam, though, so I'm just praying her little system is more resilient.