back to square one

the past 16 hours my life have been a train wreck of sorts.

I feel like i'm actually going a little bit crazy.

While downtown with some friends, my purse was stolen,
which contained a little money, my ipod, my cell phone, my alien registration card (korean ID), and my bank card...

This morning when I was headed to meet a friend who let me use her phone to close down my bank card,
I realized my bike was not parked where I had locked it...
in fact, upon further inspection, it's simply gone.

Essentially, almost everything that made me feel somewhat established and comfortable here
 has been taken away from me in a matter of hours.

tears were shed... but alas, life goes on.

So far, I have found out that the robber didn't use my bank card, THANKFULLY!
the bank has rendered it useless and are sending me a new one soon.
My wonderful sympathetic Korean friend has contacted the owners of the bar where my purse was stolen and they are going to search for it... fingers crossed someone took the money and ditched everything else.

I'm not counting on getting lucky, but it would sure be a welcome relief.

As for my bike... I'm still in udder shock.
i don't understand.
I'm glad that i dawdled around about buying a new seat because now the entire bike is gone...
I have been replaying where i last rode it and put it ... did i lock it? I always lock it....
honestly, the mystery of its disappearance really put me over the edge today.

I will be fine, so don't worry about me,
but I guess two main lessons were learned from all of this:

1. Korea is not as safe as I thought
2. don't place too much value in "things"... because they can be taken away.

on the plus side:
i've made some new friends, and we genuinely had a great time this weekend.
also, one of them decided to have an experimental dinner with me at a kimbapnara (cheap korean food)
so we ordered food completely at random,
and ended up getting a table full of delicious dishes.
In doing so, I ate a clam and a few squid tentacles!
 (and probably a bunch of other things i would never normally eat)
overall, not bad.

Thus, I guess my streak of bad luck ended at dinner.