I Have the Right to Destroy Myself

I know that spring as truly arrived in Seoul. On Wednesday, during my walk I noticed that the city workers had begun to plant flowers in the large pots beside the main roads. The petunias and pansies, still in their packs, were sitting on top of the pots waiting to be planted and bags of potting soil were sitting beside each pot. The weather has grown nice again, although it did rain most of the day on Thursday. I went for a long walk, tempting fate by not bringing my umbrella, and was caught in a gentle spring rain while still far from home. Seoulites are hideously afraid of rain and will pop open their umbrellas at the slightest hint of precipitation. I only had the hood of my hoodie to protect me from the acid rain which leads to baldness. (I say suck it up and admit your Baldness is genetic; you can’t have all biological luck, you thin beautiful Koreans, there has to be some balance!)
At work, the schedule changed again. The school year just started or at least a new term. So once again, we were all rearranged. Mostly for the better this time around, I have lots of really good classes. Some horrible classes, but more good than bad. However, I did get stuck teaching speaking classes to the MLB’s (middle school beginner level). These kids know almost no English and I have to try to get them to speak and the course book isn’t very good and there are moody middle school kids who think they are too cool for school or are painfully awkward and shy. The worst part of the schedule is that I have 26 classes to teach a week, by far the most I have had. Also, I don’t get until 10:00 everyday expect Monday and Wednesday, when I get out at 9:00. This is only bad because Wednesday is Boys Before Flowers night with Sarah. All of February I was getting out at 7:00 on Wednesdays. This puts some serious time restrictions on our evening.
Tragedy occurred, the actress who plays Guem Jan Di was in a car accident, apparently she is fine, but because of a facial injury, they had to take a break from filming. It seems they actually film the show only days before airing. So, there was only one episode this past week. Something Sarah and I did not know until the cliffhanger ending of episode 17. We searched and searched for episode 18 until we finally found a website that explained the problem. A severe disappointment. And things are getting intense. I am glad there are only 24 episodes, I don’t know if I could handle the suspense for too much longer.
To get our fix of Korean Teen Drama we started watching a comedy called Princess Hours. This one is almost exactly the same as Boys Before Flowers; expect the leading male is actually a prince instead of just rich. This shows pretends that Korea is constitutional monarchy. We only watched part of one episode though; I had to leave to catch the last subway home.
On my own, I also started watching a comedy with dramatic moments that has Rain (Bi) as the leading male. The premise is ridiculously weak and Rain is always throwing things like shirts and towels when ever he gets mad, which is all the time. And there are lots of shots of him running in small shorts. This show is a couple of years old, definitely pre-Ninja Assassin, the movie for which he sculpted his body. There is also a fashion designer whose bra is always showing. I think it is supposed to indicate that she is a character that we are not supposed to like; only a villain would let her bra show in Korea. I had to stop watching it because the rest of the episodes are streamed off a website that no longer seems to work in Korea. I’m kind of bummed, but will get over it and just watch something else. There are plenty of crappy Korean dramas where two people who hate each other and fight all the time but through unusual circumstances they are forced together and eventually fall in love, even though many people in their world conspire to keep them apart. There is always much misunderstanding, poor communication, and the press always misconstrues things. At least one character must be famous and the Korean Press is vigilant. At least that is what TV has lead me to believe. I don’t actually know how important celebrity gossip is in Korea or how invasive the press is. I don’t read newspapers or internet sites because I can’t read Korean.
On Friday, after work, Sally and I met Dave, Lisa, and Sarah in Nowon for supper and The Watchmen. We went to a samgupsal place where two businessmen were trashed long before we arrived. When one of them literally fell off his stool, the owners took away their soju and asked them to leave. Well, kind of escorted them out, the one who paid was almost blind drunk. His friend took off and for the next half hour or so, we watched as the one that was left, stood outside in the cold, with this suit jacket pulled over his head for warmth while waiting to be picked up. People watching in the evening is one of my favourite pastimes in Korea. The drunk people are plenty and always highly amusing.
We went to a 12:50 showing of The Watchmen, which meant that we didn’t get out of the theater until 3:30 ish. It was a good movie, but so long. At least it is easy to find a taxi at that time; there is not much competition.
On Saturday, I went for a really long walk. I walked to the Gireum subway station, which is five subway stops south of Ssangmun. I took the subway back to Suyu for a coffee and walked back to Ssangmun. The whole excursion took about three and half hours. It was a lovely day.
Sunday was an even lovelier day. I walked to Gireum again, this time by a different route, worrying that I was lost many times. But I just followed the signs and eventually stumbled into the station. This time I took the subway to the centre of the city, to Jonggak station, where I browsed Bandi and Luni’s for a while, managing to only buy four books. I was so frustrated the other day with all the books I had on my shelf, I needed something new and interesting to read. I found one book that was an English translation of a Korean writer. I was pretty excited about this book and read it all on Sunday. It was good, although not necessarily essentially Korean, which is what I would really like to find. A book about Koreans in Korea with events and thoughts that could only occur in Korea. Essentially Korean. Most of the English books in the Korean section were written by Korean Americans and were about Korean immigrants in the states.
I am curious about celebrities in Korea, singers, actors and writers (if you can call writers celebrities). They have such a rigid fan base, unless they can speak in multiple languages they can really only be famous in Korea. I know that performers like Rain do a lot of crossover stuff and record their singles in four languages (Korean, English, Japanese, and Chinese). Also, many singers also do acting in movies and on TV. Lots of the famous people are often on TV in these really odd random comedy shows where they do stuff like cook together outside, but not in a competition, just for fun so that people can watch. There are also TV shows were two famous people will pretend to to be married for a month and other such odd things. They have time for this because there are only so many times you can tour a country the size the Korea.