Adventures from this morning

It's only thirty minutes past noon and I'm already ready to go back to bed.

In fact, I fell asleep for two hours after writing that first sentence and forgot everything I was going to say. Shucks.

I came home close to 3 am last night after wasting several hours in our student lounge. Instead of working on my paper like I intended to, I fell asleep on our teacher's couch. I remember scrunching up into a ball wondering why it was so damn cold. I used my teacher's blanket without telling her. I don't think I folded it correctly when I left.

At 5 am this morning, I went to a Korean police station for the second time in two weeks. When I told that to people at work, they all gasped and asked me with bulgy eyes what happened. It wasn't anything that dramatic. I just had to go to report on a crime or accident for class. "Oh," was their universal answer. They were disappointed. They had all wanted to be entertained with someone else's drama.

One interesting thing about Korean police officers. They try extremely hard to look tough on the outside but they're big softies for students who go to the same college as their kid and vitamin c drinks.

When two other students and I arrived at the police station this morning, the officer in charge of last night's incidents looked us up and down and smacked his gum at us.

"What do you want?" he asked, looking back down at his work. "We came to report on a crime or accident from last night," we replied, a bit timidly.

He looked thoroughly annoyed. "Why did you come so early? We're really busy right now." By the way, the first time we went to the police station, they told us we had come too late and that we should come around 5 if we wanted to learn anything.

My classmates and I looked around the office but nobody seemed busy. One guy was browsing the internet and checking his cyworld. Others appeared tired from the long night before, and were lounging lazily in their chairs.

"We'll wait here," said Hye-min, the girl who had assigned to be my tutor for the journalism class. "Wait outside," the officer said. With that, he left his desk, trying to scare us more, and went to talk to the other policemen in the office.

We didn't budge, and after about 5 minutes of wandering aimlessly around the office, he came back and said "Okay okay fine. Come in," and buzzed us in. Easy as that.

"What school do you go to?" he asked us. "Korea University," we replied in unison. He looked up and smiled for the first time. It was all smooth sailing from there. "My son goes to Korea University! He completed his first year and just started his military service!" I had to remind myself I was talking to the same guy.

He stapled us the actual reports of last night's incidents and warned us not to write down the criminal's name. On the front cover of each report was written in large letters, "You are not authorized to show this report to any 3rd party without the consent of those involved." It was the same rule that had prevented us from doing the assignment before, but today, it didn't seem to matter at all.

My report was about a soldier on duty who was digging through a pouch attached to the back of a bike. The police were making their rounds when they saw him and pulled over because he seemed suspicious. "Is that your bike?" they asked him. "It's mine. I'm just looking for my glove and a gear," he replied. Too bad the bag he was digging through was too small to lose anything in, and after fidgeting around for a couple of seconds with the police watching nearby, the soldier ran out of excuses to make. "So why aren't you leaving?" the police officer said, looking at the unopened lock on the bike. The soldier was said to list several unreasonable excuses until the police scared him by looking his name up on the computer. "It's not mine and I didn't steal anything!" he screamed. They took him in anyway and grilled him for a couple of hours before letting him go. A fair punishment, I believe.

After taking notes on our incidents, the three of us left the office, satisfied at our accomplishment. We had stood up to the police bully and got what we wanted. But as a token of our appreciation, we bought him and his colleagues some vitamin c drinks. "You shouldn't have," he said surprised. "I love these!" Cute.

And with that he was back to work. Back to the gum smacking, nose wiggling, stern faced police officer who had to put up the tough front so people wouldn't walk all over him. What a life.