(Day 115) Seoul Nambu Correctional Facility-day 20 D-136

sit-ups	push-ups	chair-lifts
50 x 4	50 x 2	40 x 2
Breakfast, lunch & dinner = November 5

I mailed another letter to my mother. It ended up being 7 pages of rambling. By the end of the weekend I felt like I was repeating myself a lot. And I was. I would write it here, then to my mother and finally a third time to Z. No cut and paste features available here. I spent the morning finishing up chapter 3 in my ode to sci-fi novel. Now on to the action, or act 2. I wish I was able to share it so I could get some feedback. To me it sounds juvenile and quaint.

I still haven't gotten the books JU sent me. What on earth could they be checking them for? There just books made of paper. Even if something was hidden inside, it would not be that hard to x-ray them and it doesn't even take long to flip through every page. Even if they're looking for hidden messages, I'll be released before they even finish reading the first book, I'm sure. They can barely speak English here, I don't they're reading skills are much better-- certainly not good enough to pick out a code if there was one.

Later in the morning a guard came to my cell to test the screen in my window. I'm only here for a couple months. Do they really think I'm going to try to bust out? Where would I go if I did? How would I leave the country? Wouldn't it be cheaper to just pay the fines and walk out legitimately? I wonder about the sanity of some people sometimes. Watching too many Hollywood movies making us foreigners out to be criminal masterminds.

The books finally arrived around 4 pm. There are some really good titles here. I hardly know where to begin... I think I'll start with turning the TV off. It's all in Korean anyway, except for the movie on Saturday nights, which was Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows this week and some forgettable movie last week called The Darkest Hour. I usually just have it turned on to watch the moving images, like a dog or cat might watch TV. The travel shows were interesting. They sometimes have English speakers and the documentaries are usually produced by Western media and dubbed into Korean, but I can manage just fine without the dumb drama and talent-less shows. I don't care how popular K-Pop is becoming, it sucks donkey balls. Maybe I'll keep it on this week just to make a viewing schedule of the documentaries. The schedule is the same every week, since its all controlled by the prison system and there is only one channel-- their Channel-- which usually presents the shows broadcast by state run channel KBS 1 or 2. Pure Propaganda. Brainwashing doesn't get any better than this.