3/12

i'm thankful for hyori's bed and breakfast on netflix, which is my new favorite reality show (streaming on netflix). i'm thankful that the show stars a hippie-ish ex-pop star couple who live a quiet life on jeju island (the hawaii of korea) and who for the purposes of the show decide to start a bed and breakfast and so have their small simple life invaded by strangers. i'm thankful that this leads of course to hilarious hijinks, but also to real emotional moments, like at the end of the last episode when the couple are lying in bed together (their voices captured by planted microphones) and talking about the group of sweet girls who are living with them and hyori delivers this sad soliloquy about how she feels jealous of them and feels a kind of loss because she didn't have friends like that when she was younger, with whom she could "talk about nothing" and care for each other. i'm thankful for how that the show feels like a combination of animal crossing and knausgaard. i'm thankful for the subtitled narrator, who is constantly silently commenting on the action in a voice that is both childish and not. i'm thankful for their cute dogs and cats, who roam freely around their house and yard. i'm thankful for their ritual of making and drinking tea, which makes me feel that i need more rituals like that in my life. i'm thankful to get a view, however mediated and constructed, into other people's lives.