This is Christmas. Well, Christmas Angel, actually, but we call her Christmas for short.

The northern part of Korea has a kazillion little army camps scattered all over. Most of them are left overs from the Korean War. The camp where J is stationed is one such camp. Anyway, being small, they each have small stores on them, and different camps carry different items. Going camp-to-camp to find what you need is pretty common. Welcome to Korea!

Anway, with it being the Christmas season, I was camp hopping to get all my gifts and baking supplies and whatnot one beautiful Saturday afternoon. I was at a camp about 45 minutes away with a cart full of goodies bigger than I am when

I see this little reddish-orangish-yellowish thing scurrying on the sidewalk in front of me as two he-man looking soldiers go up to it and kick it.

That's right. I said kick.

The second soldier raised his foot to give it a kick, too. They were laughing as the poor little creature dropped to the ground and cowered. Not caring that they each outweighed me by a good hundred pounds and stood about a foot taller than me, I walked up behind them and said, I know you are not about to kick that little dog.

Foot poised about the little thing, the soldier turned to me and said that the dog is a nuisance and a biter. Obviously it's a threat, says I, it's no bigger than the foot you're about to squash it with. Then, looking him right in the eyes, Kick it and see what happens.

Although they could have just as easily squashed me with that same foot, the soldiers wisely decided to live to kick another day and moved on.

Now I take a closer look at the little puddle of hair on the sidewalk. Its beautiful eyes are looking up at me uncertain as to whether I am friend or foe. I crouch down on the sidewalk a couple of feet from it and just start cooing. Slowly, it inches its ways towards me. As other people approach on the sidewalk, it presses its little body into me to hide from anyone else who might try to hurt it.

Let me just say that it was not my intention to keep her. I scooped her up that day and smuggled her on the bus with me because she was nothing but skin and bones. She was literally starving. Not to mention the fact that it's like 5 degrees outside and people were kicking her. I came to the conclusion that little dog would probably die if left there and decided to risk my own death and take her home with me. On Monday, the vet clinic would open, and I would take her there to be nursed back to health and adopted out.

The 45 minute bus ride gave me plenty of time to work up fear over J's certain wrath but also enough time to know that I had done the right thing. I decided not to call and warn him but to just show up with little dog. When I got back to our camp, I called him and asked him to come help me carry home the packages--figuring that a public showdown would be better for mine and little dog's health. J came right over. But instead of being upset about little dog, he smiled. I explained what happened and that I had no intentions of keeping her, but he just smiled and started petting her. And she let him.

We miss Cokie and Weezer so much it's painful. And I have ALWAYS had a pet. Always. Not having one is killing me. But J and I had decided that we would definitely NOT have a dog over here because we already have the two best pooches in the whole wide world in America, and getting another one would be like cheating on them. AND...I hate little dogs. Really. I hate them. And that's all there are in Korea. Yippy, snippy, barky, bitey, annoying little dogs.

But Christmas (so named because I found her while Christmas shopping) is not a little dog. She's a fox. I've decided. And all my decisions are final. And, well, two days later when someone told us that he would like to have her as his family's own little fox, J and I cried.

And then we said no. Christmas is staying here.