Just as I had them tagged as Christians – even with a language barrier there’s something eerily international in the vague waving of books in the hand while speaking through a fixed smile for far too long – they pressed a plastic envelope containing tissues into my hand, leaving me wondering if in fact this was some form of advertising. Well it was, but my first suspicion had been correct; after my girlfriend came out of the store to rescue me I turned over the tissue package which had been pressed into my startled hands to see a rather long-armed but nevertheless unmistakable God-type figure embracing people with the English words "God is Love" above it.
Given that this was my first solo experience in the country, I remember thinking that this type of thing was possibly going to happen a lot, but actually it never did again. At least, not on the street – we still had plenty of Christians, Buddhists and Shamanistic-type people knocking on the door of our apartment, which soon stayed closed after I learned that opening the door to these people was like opening a portal to the Twilight Zone.
I intended to take photos of the Christian tissues so I could write about them, but after my new life in Korea had calmed down sufficiently I couldn’t find them. Almost three years later, half a world away, and several months into a bad case of writer's block which has prompted people to ask me if I’ve abandoned this blog, they fell out of a suitcase and gave me something to write about again. Perhaps the Universe moves in mysterious ways after all, or maybe I’m just hopelessly disorganised.
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