I've been terrible with this thing lately. Not that this thing - this blog - is fragile, it will still be here even if I neglect it. I should just remind myself to get to writing some things down here once in a while.
And so, in an effort not to lose my place, I'm just going to go through April chronologically - with some small memories of things as they've happened.
I'll start with April 5.
April 5 Tuesday
- my friend Quinn and I decided we wanted to take a bit of a break from the work week and each took a sick day on Tuesday. This just happened (funny how these things work out so perfectly aint it?) to coincide with the college basketball championship game. I crashed at this place and we woke up in the morning to watch the game with some Korean "fast food" (rice dishes and noodle soups) in our laps. The game was awful - anyone that watched it can tell you that - but we weren't discouraged.
It was the first beautiful Spring day in a while and so we got his frisbee and headed into the city to find Seoul Forest - a sprawling park, nature reserve and everything in between in the heart of the city. (as a fun aside, the SF's website says something like "New York has Central Park, London has Hyde Park......now Seoul has Seoul Forest - - - - - it didn't quite live up).
The place WAS pretty cool though. Very large, very flat and flanked on every side by tall buildings and reminders of a city of 10 million people. We found a large plot of land taht no one seemed to want to go on and through the frisbee around for an hour or so. The first signals of Spring.
After Frisbee we got some ice cream and ventured over the "Sports Area". It had a riding track for equestrians, which we watched and then a series of courts for all different sports.
We chose Croquet. We wanted to learn how to play and there were plenty of 65-year-old-plus people loitering about to show us. By the way, if this isn't sounding like the Korean Version of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" I can assure you it felt like it to us.
Through great patience on the part of students and teachers - we started to get the hang of the game. After a half hour or so, we had most of it down.
It should come as a doubt to no one that Koreans that play croquet take that playing seriously. The main man teaching us the game had an electric device on his armband that not only timed our game but also kept track of each ball. Those sitting on the sidelines, watching, were drinking rice wine (makkeoli) and eating kimchi and Quinn and I were invited and insisted to partake in both activities. We obliged happily.
After the Croquet match we found ourselves at the basketball courts and haphazardly begged a few young teenage kids to play us in a game. They were ecstatic to play white people. We played. Quinn and I both came out feeling pretty proud - until we reminded ourselves that we played against 14 year olds.
Later we got hamburgers and beer. We each bought a cheap jersey in Itaewon. Then we met some friends for good dumplings and noodle soup and some more beer.
Somewhere around there we both made executive decisions to take sick day #2 the next day. Not to hang - but to actually take a sick day. It's good we did - both of us got pretty ill. It was probably the rush of spring air - or just the exhausting day of sports with the young and the old.
No pictures unfortunately, but we're headed back to Seoul Forest this weekend for Quinn's birthday so I'll try to snap a few.
April 6 Wednesday
Sick day. Ran a few errands. Chilled.
April 7 Thursday
First day back after 2 days missing. Each student I saw told me he was worried. The other teachers gave me new tea - I was implored to eat more kimchi. Noted.
One school story...........I was doing a mini-unit on company names - some companies with English names that they wear or know and have no idea what they mean. Adidas got brought up. I told them the history. Then I happened to mention that growing up I had heard once, incorrectly, that Adidas stood for All Day I Dream About Sports (an acronym) and that we, jokingly, had a changed that last word into another "S" word that can occupy young men's minds as much as sports. The co-teacher laughed. One or two of the brighter students laughed. The ones that didn't spent a minute guessing "S" words (I didn't tell them - nor say the word explicitly), and right before I cut it off - one student just yells out "SOAP!" to which I burst out laughing and my co-teacher too - perhaps because neither of us could figure out how he came up with "soap" as his first guess.
Also, two students though KFC stood for "Korean Famous Chicken" . I think I ruined their lives.
Thursday night I stayed out later than I should have with friends around town. That's all you need to know about that. It didn't matter though - being hungover and tired (only a little, mom, i promise) went along well with the fact that everyone assumed I was sick.
AND I'll give the weekend it's own new post. I'll stop there.
quotation:
"They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm"
- Dorothy Parker
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