It's Friday! It's also my little brother's birthday. But more importantly it's Friday! Seriously though, I'd love to wish him a happy birthday and help him celebrate, but he took off for Canada last week. He ended up surprising my parents at my Grandmother's house on Father's day. Isn't that sweet.
So with him gone and school being over I've got a nice big apartment to myself and more time than I know what to do with. And that ain't not bad. Actually the place has never been cleaner. I don't do much more than sleep here and watch TV. So, the sink isn't full of his dishes and it isn't likely to get dirtied up again. Except for the dust that is so prevalent in Korea.
I really gotta get to this website more often cause there have been a few nuggets over the past 6 weeks that were kind of funny or sad depending on your perspective. The first was last month. It involved me shopping for a present for (Jong)-Soo's birthday. Being never quite sure what to buy a man, I was shopping around locally with my brother. I had previously decided that, since he's a smoker, that I couldn't really go wrong with a Zippo and some cologne. One to light his cigarettes and the other to mask the smell. So, I went to the shopping plaza beneath my apartment to a counter that sells them. They had some nice ones but what I really wanted to do was to get it engraved. So I asked the woman (keep in mind this conversation was in poor Korean) if it was possible to have a name written across the lighter. She said it wasn't. Fine, so we carried on to the next shopping plaza (there are actually three within a half-block of my home).
There, we found another counter and I went through the same spiel again with another woman. After calling another woman over, she said that she could. Great! So as to avoid confusion, I traced the lighter and wrote it exactly as I wanted it to appear. She smiled and sent it off with the other woman headed to what I assumed must be the engraving department. In the meantime there was a fragrance counter nearby where I picked up a bottle of Polo Sport. Shopping done. And considering that I was supposed to meet him in about 20 minutes it was none too soon. A few minutes later the "engraving" woman returned with the lighter and, with a beaming smile, she showed me her "work." What she had actually done was taken some kind of instrument and etched it on by hand. Now, I'll admit that it wasn't terrible cause it was more or less centered on the lighter and not knowing the Korean word for "engrave" I had said, "Can it be written..." but really! I could have written the same misshapen letters myself at home with a nail file. So, I stared at it blankly for about 30 seconds pondering my next move and finally decided that it was still, in fact, a decent lighter and that Soo might enjoy having it as a conversation piece. So I smiled and thanked the lady for her "work" and carried on my way.
On May 25th (as you can see from the pictures) my brother and I ran the full course of the Hi-Seoul Marathon for Foreigners. Well, actually the "full course" was only a quarter marathon (10.5km). But, I did manage to run it without having a heart attack, dying, or even having to stop to walk. Which is fairly significant to me cause I'm not exactly in peak physical condition and the only training I did was to run about 5 times on the treadmill at the gym. I would have run more but, at that point, I was still going to school 4 hours a day, spending 2 hours on the bus and teaching a full load of classes. The first picture is my brother somewhere on the course and the second is of me crossing the finish line. As you can see I didn't win.
We said goodbye to another teacher at the end of June. Soo-(Hyun) has gone back to New York for graduate school. It's kind of sad cause she could be (without exaggeration) the nicest person that I have met. She will be missed. So, now we have a new teacher. A 6 foot 3, hockey player from the Yukon. You can bet he's tough. I have been busy up to this point so I haven't had a change to drink any beer with him, but he seems like a nice guy.
Well it's almost officially summer here and unfortunately I don't have air-conditioning. But, I'm happy to say that, so far, I haven't needed it. I'm gone during the day and when I get home I open my front door and the sliding doors on the balcony and the wind up on the 15th floor gets going pretty good from one end of the apartment to the other.
That's all I can really remember for right now. Except that I had a good laugh last night when my girlfriend was taking some kind of medicine and needed water. She ended up grabbing the two-litre plastic bottle next-to the water bottle in the fridge. Which turned out to be Soju. How's that for a shocker. Expecting water and ending up drinking straight alcohol. Well, she wasn't happy, but it provided some entertainment for me....heh heh.
I'll see if I can remember any good stories from the last 6 weeks and I may throw up another entry on the weekend. BTW I have my ticket and I'll be back in Winnipeg on the 28th of July so be ready.
Brent
