Hanji Homework!!!

 This week in hanji I finished the box I was working on and my teacher gave me this as homework.  It will be applied to the sides of the hanji medicine chest I am making.  The piece is 16" by 8 1/2".  That may not sound very big but I have to cut all the white out.  There are two pieces of hanji paper along with the pattern on top.  There is a lot of white but luckily they are pretty big pieces.  I'm not sure when she wants it done.  I haven't even started on the chest yet but I think that is coming next week. 

She also gave me my own hanji kit.  The plastic cutting board is a soft plastic not like a cutting board so your knife won't go dull fast.  She gave me an Exacto knife and the cute case you see. 

Now I have so much homework.  I still get a lot of weekly homework from pojagi and chasu.  But I'm loving every minute of it which is what is most important, isn't it anyway.

I almost blew away today going to and from hanji from the effects of Tropical Storm Muifa.  It blew my umbrella inside out  too many times to count and I had never stood at the bus stop which is covered with my umbrella open.  But the wind was whipping the rain all around so it was impossible not to get wet. 

My teacher's daughter who speaks English well was there and told me a disturbing story.  She said that she and her mom were driving on one of the narrow sidestreets near hanji when a group of boys came over to their car and started harrassing them.

One pretended that she had hit him with her car which wasn't the case because the road is so narrow you can only crawl.  She drove on and they threw rocks at her car.  She stopped because she couldn't drive away quickly enough and they told her if she didn't give them 50,000 won ($45.00 USD), they would break all her windows.  They told her this will making sure she saw that they had knives.

She was very scared and gave them the money.  I asked how old these boys were and she said they looked high school age.  This was very concerning to me because this area is not too far from where I was mugged in 2009. I asked if they would report it at least to the police but she said that the police always consider these incidents to be civil like he said, she said.  I understand what she is saying because I have heard this before.

Rocketman is quite worried about me to say the least.  I am worried too and will be even more careful.  I also like it that now I will be carrying my Exacto knife with me thanks to hanji.  I just pray that I won't have any problems and it should stop when school starts next week.

Today we also had a drunk homeless man try to come into the hanji shop.  The teacher did a very good job of getting him to leave but it took awhile and I was getting nervous.  I've never seen that before and I hope it's not the start of problems.  You just need to be aware of your surroundings and you need to be careful.  It was a strange hanji day that is for sure.