The fog sinks deep and thick over wooded hills.  The terraced rice fields, brown and scrubby after harvest, steam from the weak sunlight that manages to pierce the fog.  Damp clothes swing from clotheslines dripping the dampness from their stitches.  I too swing dampness from my limbs.  And yet, the anticipation of the heat and warmth beyond the fog brings everything from their warm beds.  There is rice to be sown, corn to be dried, and dust to be swept.  There is not a morning without the hallam (noise) of magpies and crows awake in the fog.  By lunch, the fog has been swept clean behind the hills.  But for now the fog rests heavily and I am hidden within it.