Yeah it’s been a week since I posted anything. I’m not being lazy I just haven’t really had anything to say. Struggling with some writer’s block I suppose. Last Sunday I joined a gym down the street for 50,000 Won a month. I’ve been running three or four times a week but I really wanted to get back into lifting...you know, tone up the arms a little bit. I over did it my first time there and woke up in a lot of pain on Monday morning. I couldn’t even extend my arms straight until Thursday but the noticeable difference in size was rewarding and as soon as I could raise my hands over my head I eagerly made my way back for round two.
On Wednesday some Korean War vets visited the school and set up an outdoor exhibit of images from the worst parts of the conflict, a corridor of enlarged black and white photographs set on easel boards for students to contemplate. I took my time strolling from picture to picture, considering the bombed out cities, tanks, crying children, mass graves and body parts sloppily displaced by shrapnel and machine gun fire. Standing transfixed I searched myself for an emotional response or an understanding of the horrors that occurred in that time and place, yet knowing full well that the ability to describe chaotic reflections of war is a charge reserved only for those unlucky enough to have been there in the first place. I wondered if it was possible for these young kids, products of an accelerated consumerism based culture and strong western influence, to actually relate to the terrible events that occurred on their soil only a few decades ago. Or are they like I was at that age, shrugging off the annals of our fathers, World Wars, Vietnam, as uninteresting history lessons, irrelevant accounts overshadowed by the excitement of the present and the fast paced promises of the future? The vivid reminder of the atrocities men commit against each other struck a solemn note within me but I eventually concluded that my knowledge and experience of such things is limited and ultimately inconsequential.
Tony mentioned something about wakeboarding and barbecue on Saturday so I hopped a train to his hometown of Yongsu. I was never really that good at wakeboarding but I’ll rarely say no to sunshine and powerboats. Tony lives out in the sticks and on the long haul to the countryside I practiced reading station signs in the local language, Hangul. I taught myself the alphabet during some downtime at work and it’s actually pretty easy but I’m still sounding out consonants at a first grade level. The trickiest part is the over abundance of weird vowel combinations.
So I arrived in Yongsu only to find out that wake boarding was canceled due to the cloudy weather conditions, but there was still a good barbecue happening on top of a nearby rooftop. It was a great afternoon getting to know a bunch of other foreigners. Good food, beer, music…what more can you really ask for? Most of the foreigners there were South Africans. You don’t really meet those kind of people back in the States and I find them fascinating. They seem to be tougher than the English while maintaining a level of civility greater than that of Australians, but keep in mind that I’m largely basing my assumptions on stereotypes. They are the descendants of British colonists in Cape Town and they speak a really cool dialect of English that can morph into a weird Dutch hybrid without warning. They call this language Afrikaans. Over the course of the night I managed to master a phrase that means, “Fill my cup friend”: Khere may un dop brah. Also, they have really great insults and I was told that if you really want to put someone in their place you can say, Tu mas poose niar. I’ll refrain from translating that literally but it doesn’t take a linguistics professor to get the meaning. There was also one British guy who showed up to the party and being that my experience with the English is derived primarily from Guy Ritchie movies, I was understandably disappointed upon discovering that he had never participated in a heist or owed a gangster a sum of money he couldn’t possibly repay.
At around two in the morning a group decision was made to hit up the local norebang, an experience I had been anxiously anticipating for nearly two months now. This particular establishment was oddly themed around James Cameron’s Alien movies. Weird. I’ve always loved karaoke so I was sure that norebang would be awesome, yet I was honestly a little disappointed. With karaoke you are presented with the opportunity to make a fool out of yourself in front of a large crowd of strangers whereas in a norebang you only get to embarrass yourself in front of your friends. Also, the music selection was rather limited and I would have liked to see a little more hip-hop. Still, I cranked some classic heavy metal and rocked the houses like usual.
Tony and I said farewell to the awesome crew of foreigners around 4 a.m., and as the trains weren’t running we crashed in a nearby jinjibang. It wasn’t the greatest sauna ever but I was able to get a nice shower, clean pajamas, and comfortable space to pass out on the floor. Another Korean weekend successfully seized!
Cool Thing About Korea #12: Korean Football. Watching these guys play is awesome. I wish I had their hand-to-foot coordination.
Dad, here's a little video of the game play per request.
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