Took a sick day yesterday, not because I was really very sick (a mild cold), but because I needed the time to just breathe for one minute, or for the many minutes that constitute a whole 24 hours. It was a highly unproductive day: watching tv, dicking around on the newly installed internet, downloading music. And a nap. You can’t have a sick day and not take a nap. And so I returned to the miracle library today for 3 hours of storytelling. Relatively stress free, but these days, even my kids that I used to really really like have turned into whiny, selfish, annoying children. It concerns me more when people are annoying than when they are assholes. Even with kids. If you’re annoying, you can’t really fix that. You can’t not be annoying if you have already displayed some inherently annoying traits. But you can fake being nice when you’re actually an asshole. One of my greatest fears in life is that anyone will think I’m annoying. That damage is irreversible.
Weekend shenanigans. Friday night, made the usual rounds—juliana’s, then ladies’ night, then juliana’s again. I knew there would come a time when the same bar every weekend got old. I think that happened a while ago but I’m just now admitting it. But I played darts—I am a very bad “dartist”—and drank until 3 am. As per usual. What are we without our routines? Doesn’t mean we like or dislike them. Maybe that’s exactly what is bad about some routines, they’re inconspicuous and subtle, neither blatantly good or bad, but they still manage to maintain a grip on our lives. Compounded by the sort of sinking feeling that we only fully acknowledge and own in melodramatic retrospect. I think I’m probably the queen of that. But it’s a feeling I get a lot but can’t pinpoint (unless I’ve had a good day, apparently), the mulling over of wasting time and wasted time. even my lamentations over wasted/lost time due to routine are part of my routine. Along with coffee and chocolate for breakfast. I digress.
back to weekend festivities. next day, erica and I had plans to go to a festival in daejeon (another large city here. 1.5 million peeps). I woke up at 9 am to my alarm because the internet man was sposed to come get me set up. at 11 he was still a no show. so I got stood up by the internet man. What the fuck? Plus I was slightly hungover. I would not have volunteered myself to wake up at 9 am on a Saturday, were there not some sort of obligation (he came again on Monday, so now I have home internet. I also got $120 in gift cards to emart for no apparent reason. Assah!).
Anyhoo, met erica and went to the train station, where we were 2 very popular people. She saw some of her students, I saw a student of mine. And then I saw my “helper” from my Monday drama class. I was praying the library hadn’t told her I thought she was a shitty helper yet. Me, my library co-workers and my city hall supervisor had a meeting last week to discuss her flaws. They said they’d let her know her services were no longer required. What I’ve found though, is that there’s really not the protocol of letting one down gently over here. I found that out with the whole creepy pervy guy situation at haeryeongmyun. They didn’t make up some lie to avoid hurting his feelings or embrarassing him in front of his colleagues, they just told him exactly what I said about him. Made things a little awkward. So I’m hoping to avoid that situation here.
But I’m trying to talk to her at the train station, and she couldn’t even adequately express in english where she was going or what she was doing. Yikes. So we board the train and erica’s student and family are sitting right next to us. They immediately start feeding us cookies and drinks. And then my phone starts to ring. As I answer it, the snack man is handing us oranges. My helper is on the phone telling me they’re from her, but It really is just her saying “ger, ger.” The korean equivalent of “uh” seems to be “ger.” I hear it a lot when my students are struggling to form their english phrases. But I made the connection and thanked her. A note about the snack cart on a korean train. Very similar to a snack cart you might see on any other train or mode of public transportation boasting a snack cart, but the top shelf of this snack cart had all sorts of tentacles poking out from amidst the other standard snack fare. Random, but at the movies, you can enjoy popcorn or chocolate or hot buttered squid.
I really enjoyed taking the train this time. I’m used to being on hot buses for long periods of time, having almost but not quite enough room for my legs. Plus, it’s nice to pee when you need to.
we arrived in daejeon on Saturday afternoon, and tried to find a motel. ended up far away from the places we planned on going to (thanks to a janky lonely planet map). Our love motel was run by a family—wife, husband, 2 sons. We go up to the desk to inquire about a room, and see a little pair of legs stick out from behind the sliding partition—two young brothers playfully fighting on the floor of their apartment, in a building that promotes infidelity and one night stands. I wonder if they were still young enough to be oblivious to the sins motivating most of the people coming and going from their “home.” Weird to think that prostitution feeds the family, clothes them, pays for their hakwons. I guess a mother has to make a living somehow, and running a love motel sure beats utilizing one for “entertainment.” After settling at the love palace, opted against a ballet in favor of eating some swine. Delicious swine.
What I’ve learned from travelling with erica on several occassions now is that she doesn’t take the easy way out as far as getting around in the city, be it familiar or unfamiliar. Though it would always be easiest to just hop in a taxi and go somewhere, she’s a firm believer in using public transportation wherever she goes. Most of the time that means deciphering the city bus system/schedule. And I just think that’s really cool, to understate it a bit. If I were alone, I would have spent lots of money, but not a lot of effort, on just taking taxis wherever I wanted to go. I think erica’s methodology is much more useful. Makes you more self-sufficient and gives you a better mental layout of the city. And I’m sure map navigation skills are going to be invaluable should I ever end up on the amazing race
That said, we took a bus to a downtown-ish area (not sure where the main downtown is in a large city…) and wandered for a while looking for a place to eat. Again, lonely planet gave some vague instructions on where to find a good restaurant. We were in the area, but gave up before we found the specific restaurant. Same thing later when we were looking for the elusive “murphy’s bar.” A place only special because it was rumored to serve guinness and we couldn’t find it. 2 things that made us keep searching longer than necessary. If you put in the time and confusion, you don’t want to give up before you find what you’re looking for. But we asked for directions at several family marts, 711s and mini stops. We were about to give up when we came to the last family mart. Each time before entering we tried to size up the counter person—is that person a hip, young beer drinker. Is that person even old enough to drink? The last woman looked mean, but at least old enough. She also had two large (by korean standards) dogs that didn’t necessarily look nice behind the counter with her. I’m sure there’s a health code violation in there somewhere. Anyhoo, she actually was the most helpful, because she directed us not to murphy’s bar but to an adequate substitute, as it had live music. The concept of “live music” in korea is always an interesting one. You never quite know what that means.
On the 9th floor of a high rise building across the street lay the “kenny g” bar. While every other floor of this tall building was dark and lifeless, lo and behold kenny g was lit up like a christmas tree (indeed, with christmas lights), a beacon of sorts luring us up into the unknown.
I regret not taking a picture of “kenny g” written in hangul.
When we got to the 9th floor, the doors opened and there was a greeter at the bar entrance. Honestly, this was one of the nicest and cleanest places I’ve been—bar or otherwise—my whole time in korea. So we walk in and the room is huge. We are the only people there, besides the three korean women and 3 filipino singers. There was a disco ball for lighting and the chairs and tables all looked brand new, adorned with red and blue stars. To complement the furnishings were several large kenny g posters (some of which looked as though they had morphed into mini-shrines). On the wall behind the stage was “kenny g” written in red, cursive letters—this stamp and the posters all displayed in an ironic attempt to lend credibility to a bar that already seemed more impressive than any other I’ve been to in this country.
We sat for a long time waiting for someone to start singing. The stage was set, but we were still the only peeps there. But eventually, 3 filipino singers took the stage. 2 women and one small man. The man played keyboards, sang and ran the other pre-recorded background music. The women sang and did cute little syncronized dances together. And it was awesome. They said they were happy to get to sing their english songs, as most of the time the korean demographic didn’t allow for that. So they sang “crush”, “englishman in new york”, “eternal flame”, etc. all in three part harmony, and all three of them had really pleasant voices. It was just nice. After they finished singing, they came and sat at our table. We took pictures together and chatted it up. apparently they’ve been doing this (not just in korea) for a really long time, moving from bar to bar. They speak english, korean and filipino and were probably too nice to us. The next day I got an email with our pictures taken that night from the ringleader of the group. So lonely planet was 0 for 2—no restaurant, no murphy’s bar—but erica and I were both pleased with where we randomly ended up that night.
Right now in the library there are 3 little boys standing against the wall, arms in the air as they fight off tears. I don’t know what they did, but they’re in trouble. If only I could get them to do that in the classroom…
Saturday morning we got up and checked out of our motel. It was some sort of festival day. Erica had heard from a semi-reliable source about a flower festival in a large park in daejeon. So we went to a large park in daejeon. Alas, we did not find a flower festival, but we did find really nice trails, a creepy old guy with a towel on his head who followed us, and pirated dvds for $3. all in all, a good day.
When we got to the park, we noticed that there weren’t really too many flowers or blossoming trees that might warrant some sort of festival. But we were there, it was a beautiful day and we decided to embrace the surroundings. The mountain itself was beautiful, with well-kempt trails and wooden walkways. There were some small waterfalls, and we climbed a miniscule peak that kicked both our asses. I was thoroughly impressed with erica though. She was wearing ballet flats and I was wearing running shoes, and we both managed to make it to the top of an almost vertical trail. The length of the trail was relatively short, but it was just straight up. here, where it is most important that the trail be in good shape, it was so crappy and rocky and uneven. But have no fear, there’s this limp rope off to the side should you lose your footing. The whole time we’re climbing up this peak, people coming down and going up are looking at erica’s feet telling her that her shoes aren’t good for climbing mountains. And of course they are the authorities, decked out in head to toe north face gear—replete with walking sticks, backpacks, gloves, etc. anything and everything that can show off a brand name is absolutely essential for a 1.8 kilometer hike in the springtime. I am sad to say I didn’t see any crampons or rapelling gear. Maybe next time.
Anyhoo, even after we had made it to the top, just like everyone else, people were still commenting on her shoes. Maybe it’s just me, but I think lipliner and full makeup are just as inappropriate for a mountain, but I didn’t see/hear anyone giving the agimas shit. People can be so nosy. It’s no one’s business what shoes we wear. And even if they think we’re unprepared for mountain climbing, said unpreparedness doesn’t mean we’re idiots, though they can sure make you feel otherwise, even when you don’t speak much korean. It was during our descent that we picked up the old guy with a towel on his head. At first he seemed harmless, taking pictures of us, taking pictures with us. But then he started making lots of grunting noises and commented on erica’s t-shirt (it had russian letters on it. Here, if someone asks you “are you russian?” it usually means “how much do you cost?” so erica was justifiably paranoid). Whenever we stopped, he stopped. And he followed us the whole way down when he could have easily passed us. When we got to a flat spot, we walked as fast as we could away from him. On the way out of the park, there were all sorts of people selling random things: pears, bags, pirated dvds. So I got the departed and borat for $3 each. Ni-suh.
Post mountain, decided to kill time at starbucks. Then we decided we still had time to kill after already killing time, so we went to an art museum. It apparently was a brand new art museum, all the obligatory gifts of flowers still prominently displayed near the entrance. I really like museums, even if I don’t “get” art most of the time. But there was really something laughable about a lot of the crap in this place. For starters, it was all korean artists (hey, that’s cool. whatever). but one of the major topics was dokdo. yup, that tiny little island that didn’t matter to japan or to korea until they decided it was a good idea to fight over it. But apparently it was this one dude’s muse. So lots of paintings inspired by dokdo. Not that this in itself is even laughable. But one of the paintings had “I [heart shape] Dokdo” written on it, finger paint style. Part of what I like about art and art museums is the inherent air of pretension and snootiness. It’s fun to have a whole environment that compells you to act “sophisticated.” And then there’s a heart shape on the painting. For serious? What a ruiner. way to shatter the façade by being a little too earnest in your dokdo love. Arte es vida, dudes.
So we left the museum and headed back to the train station. On the way back a man fell asleep on the back of my chair, his arm squishing my hair. Prior to his dozing, he had been singing to himself and just generally muttering crazily. After we transferred trains, I made a 3 or 4 year old Korean friend. He saw me eating the last piece of my chocolate and stuck his hand on my leg, asking for some of it. Then he wandered up and down the aisles coming to talk to me each time. He saw Erica sleeping and asked me what she was, not who she was. So that was funny. I told him she was an alien. But I don’t know how to say that in Korean, so I really just told him she was a foreign person.
Monday in my drama class, my helper (the one from the train station) wasn’t there, and miraculously the kids were little angels. My library chingu came in and yelled at them the whole time and then they actually sat still for about an hour and a half of the 2 hour class. No luging down the wheelchair ramp. Holy shit. Now that’s amazing.
Um, I guess that’s all. The thought of having to wait until july to take my vacation is getting me down. Most of the other city hall peeps are leaving next weekend. Of course it’s worth it to wait—2 whole weeks with jules and rory—but still. there are always festivals in the area to get my mind off the suncheon routine. A trip to busan is tentatively in the works. which means I’ll decide on a Friday to go the next day.
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