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Week 8 - Y2 (Apr 23rd to Apr 29th) |
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Sunday April 23rd, Caroline has become a recent fan of opera, and when
she found out that the Seoul Opera Company was putting
on Mozart's Don Giovanni, she organized a trip to the
opera for several of us foreigners. One small
oversight-- the subtitles were in Korean, and the
libretto was in Italian. I pretty much knew what was
going on because I had to study Don Giovanni in
university, but I was probably the only one who had
any idea . . . It did make me miss getting to see
free or cheap concerts at U of T, but I did pick up
several pamphlets advertising upcoming string
quartets, symphonies, etc. I even discovered that
Branford Marsalis is coming to Seoul in May, and that
Brad Mehldau is coming in September . . . good to
know!
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Monday April 24th, Rob, who finished his contract in Daegu at the same
time that I did; just got back from travelling around
South-East Asia for six months. He stayed in Daegu
for just over a week, but his flight back home was
booked for Tuesday morning, so he came to stay at my
apartment for one night before he left Korea forever.
I met You Oak for our tutoring session, and then I
rushed over to the train station to meet Rob. We went
back to my place for a little bit, and then we met up
for dinner and drinks with his friend Lorna, who also
lives in Seoul. Afterwards, we headed back to my
place. Even though both of us had to get up early,
neither of us were tired in the least bit, and heavy
with the realization that we might never see eachother
again, we decided to be troopers and stay up the whole
night and talk, watch movies on his laptop, look at
pictures, etc. I'm really glad that we got one full
night to hang out before he left, but it's so
depressing to think that we will probably never see
eachother again, unless I decide to go to England
anytime soon, or he decides to move back to Korea. We
kept on saying things like, "Oh yeah, we were going to
do this, and we were going to do that, why didn't we
ever do that?" One thing that really sucks about
being here is the transitional nature of friendship.
I've been fortunate enough to have met some of the
best friends I'll ever meet in my life, but it has to
come with the realization that they're going to leave
eventually. I'm tired of having great people leave,
and having to start over again. Now, the whole old
Daegu crowd has dispersed: it's kind of just me,
Charlotte and Jason now, and we're all in different
places now anyway.
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Wednesday April 26th, Tonight, I had to do a 2 hour seminar at the JASS
hagwon (the private kind of "continuing education"
school that Jae also runs). These seminars happen
every Wednesday, hosted by different people every week
from every field of music, and are free to the public.
I was incredibly nervous about it, because I had no
idea what to expect, or what kind of level of
musicianship to aim for, or how many people would be
there, or anything. Jae was just kind of like "Oh,
any topic, just something general", and I was like,
"Great, what does that mean?" (Jae is a great boss,
but sometimes a little too laid back!) So I figured
I'd do a discussion on the use of guidetones in
improvising. I figured since the students were all
coming from a jazz focus, that could be helpful for
most of them. The nice part was that I got to just
sing for half of the seminar (Jae told me just to play
for awhile too, which I was all too happy to do--
everyone who knows me knows that I hate talking in
front of big groups of people). So I booked myself a
rhythm section and a translator, and just went for it
for two hours. A fair amount of people turned out, as
well as several of the teachers, which made me more
nervous, but all in all, the seminar seemed to be well
received. I'm just glad that it's over.
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Friday April 28th, Early this morning I headed to the train station to
catch a train to Daegu. I wanted to get to Chilgok in
time to see my old students at lunchtime, and that I
did! It was very overwhelming to be there-- I didn't
realize that the kids missed me so much! At any given
time, I had about five kids hanging off of either arm,
all pulling me around saying, "Teacher, come here!"
It was fantastic . . . I missed them a lot more than I
realized. Unfortunately, my favourite little girl,
Michelle, was sick, so I didn't get to see her, and
she was at least half the reason I went to visit in
the first place!
What was also strange was that Sue, my old boss, was
being bizarrely nice to me (after a full year of
either ignoring me or being flat-out rude to me, I
wasn't exactly expecting sunshine and roses from her).
In fact, she even wanted to take me out to lunch. I
can't really figure out why . . . she's only nice to
people when there's an ulterior motive . . .
At night, there was a going away party for a Korean
friend of mine, U Ga (English name Claire), who is
moving to Vancouver! The party was at Chilgok Mike's
apartment, and about 80 percent of the people I know
who still live in Daegu were there, so it was a good
way to see basically everyone I know. Later the party
moved downtown to Communes, where I got to see Hyun
Shic (the manager) for the first time in ages. Ryan,
Lindsey, Ange and I finally got home around dawn,
which I think is the mark of a good night!
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Saturday April 29th, We had a pretty lazy start to the day, but we did
manage to get it together enough to go out for a
lunch-ish meal of haejung-guk. Haejung-guk is a soup
with a bunch of different vegetables and spices that
has beef bones in it that you use your chopsticks to
pick the meat off of. Surprisingly, I really like it,
despite the fact that in Canada, I would almost never
eat red meat.
After that, we got some ice cream and beer and sat at
a convenience store (all the convenience stores have
little plastic tables outside here) and played card
games. After awhile, we thought it would be funny to
play a game of "Chilgok Survivor"-- everyone had to
come up with immunity challenges, and whoever got
voted off had to go back and wait on Ryan and
Lindsey's rooftop! Very silly and very fun-- people
kept on passing us on the street and staring at us,
wondering what in God's name we were doing (some of
the challenges involved doing ridiculous things, like
hopping contests, and standing in crazy poses for as
long as possible). After much backstabbing, and weird
alliances, and a long "tribal council" where we argued
over who should finally be the winner, Jason (who was
also visiting for the weekend) was crowned the first
winner of "Chilgok Survivor". This means that the
next time we're all in Daegu, Jason will get free
drinks all night! We all decided that we would do a
full day of "Survivor" and plan it out properly, and
get someone to videotape the whole bloody thing!
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