Marry Me John, I'll be so Good to You.

I noticed a building in my neighbourhood that contains four “special establishments” and a church. Korea continues to rock my socks.

I discovered recently that my students are not calling me a whore, “hor” is merely an expression of surprise. It shouldn’t surprise me that the non-word vocalizations should be different in Korean than they are in English, but it kind of does. I have had to learn a whole new vocabulary of vocalizations. “Yah” instead of “hey” to get someone’s attention or to yell at your little brother when he hits you. “Aieesh!!!” to express anger. “Azzah!!” to express happiness or excitement. I died in Super Mario, “Aieesh!!” I finished the game, “Azzah!!” I have also had to learn that I can’t use others, sssshhhh means nothing to my students.

A few times I have become very upset with students because of something I misunderstood. Do-Ick used to yell “Same Same” every time he wanted my attention and would continue to yell until I yelled back, “Wait!” One day I lost it on him, tearing my hair out, “that is not my name!!!” Same is a short version of teacher. Sorry Do-Ick, but only a little sorry, you should learn patience, you’re not the only student. Another time, playing the picture game Seok-Ho would yell “Circle Circle Circle” for everything that was being drawn. “Seok-Ho, if you yell circle one more time you are not allowed to play anymore!” Actually he was yelling his name, Circle sounds like Seok-Ho with a Korean accent. I felt real bad about that. Aieesh.

Since Bryan left and I have to find ways to entertain myself during the evenings. I have been taking walks along the canal path with about a thousand others. The path has two separate lanes: one for bikes and one for feet. I see families out for a walk, I see young girls holding hands and giggling. I see couples trying to play badminton on the courts beside the path. I see dads chase their young children on the track. I see guys trying to show their ladies how many pushups they can do. I see ajummas and ajoshis on the public workout equipment. I see people walking their dogs and I see people carrying their dogs. There are running clubs and walking clubs and biking clubs. At a few places are there fit young women running dance and aerobic classes for the ajummas. Tuesday, they were line dancing. Wednesday, it looked like interpretive dancing. My head was full of anticipation to see what Thursday would bring. Alas, the ominous clouds cut my walk short. I didn’t want to get caught in the rain. It might make me go bald.

Just like before Bryan was here, I don’t know what to with my time. Early in the eveing I am sleepy and look forward to going to bed, but then bed time roles around, or at least the time that I deem appropriately late enough to considered a grown up bed time and suddenly I’m wide awake and hungry. I can’t concentrate on a book and I don’t want to blog, I am too lazy to try studying Korean. I bought the book that the Seoul National University uses to teach Korean. I hope that I can make good use of it and that I will find it useful. There seems to be a lot of Korean in the book, especially considering that it is a book for beginners, but then I remind myself, that this is Korea after all and a lot is expected from students. Of course the university program is going to difficult. I want to know a lot more Korean for round two when Bryan and I come back for a year or two.

I was not looking forward to Bryan leaving. Luckily, I had a few days of vacation just before the day of extreme sadness and sorrow. Unfortunately, so did the pretty much the rest of Korea. It was ok, though, the rest of Korea didn’t interfere with our plans too much. Bryan and I decided to travel down to Busan for our last weekend together in Korea. We left after I was done work on Thursday afternoon. We took the 5:30 KTX to Busan and arrived at 8:30. We checked into the same hotel that we stayed in the first weekend, conveniently blocking out the bed bugs from the previous visit. I am please to report that we enjoyed a bedbug free Busan this time around. After we settled in and sat in front of the aircon for a while, we took the subway to the Haiundai Beach. We walked to the beach from the subway, marveling at how different it was during this nationalish holiday. The beach had basically turned into a night club. The sheer number of beautiful young boys and girls was a little over whelming. It seemed like everybody was out to get some. The skirts were short and the vests were ironed and all were a little drunk. And yes, we saw girls navigating the sandy beach in minis and high heels, the highlite of Bryan’s trip to Korea. I’m not sure what to make of it.

We walked around the beach area trying to find a restaurant that still looked a little hopping, most people had already moved to drinking on the beach by this time. All I wanted was some raw fish. The place we had been too the last time we were in Busan was already closing up and so were all the surrounding places. We finally had to go directly to the beach to find what we wanted. The ajummas and the ajoshis were all beckoning us from their patio’s and we finally had just to go with who was the loudest and most abrasive. The ajumma brought the menu to our table, assuming we wanted Fish BBQ, she first pointed to that. We told her we wanted raw and she pointed at the raw, the cheapest of which was 70,000 won. Bryan and looked at each other in a moment of panic, as much as I hate leaving a restaurant once we are sitting, that is a lot of money to pay for one meal. She saw our look of horror and immediately knocked 20,000 won of the menu price. It was still a little rich for our blood, but we decided to take it. Hungry and desperate.

The ajumma had seated closest to the beach, perhaps as advertising that her restaurant was foreigner friendly. However, it was also the closest to the three drunk guys with a number of empty soju bottles on their table. As we sat down, they eyed us. They paid close attention to what we ordered and our soju and our beer. They were very interested. It was inevitable. Bryan is just to good looking for his own good.
The ajumma who called us into the restaurant didn’t trust that we would know what to do with the food that we ordered and hovered to close for comfort. Nobody could leave us alone. Everybody was in our business.

After the plate of raw fish came out and we had eaten a bit and the broiled fish that comes as a side dish came out, and we hacked into it to get at the little bit of meat available, after we had only had less than one bottle of soju and one beer between the two of us, one of the three men suddenly decided that he was drunk enough to strike up a conversation with us. It started as they usually do, “Where are you from?” and then he told Bryan that he was very handsome and asked if we were a couple. Again, if this had happened in Canada, one would assume that this man was hitting on Bryan, but in Korea, it just means that he wants to be friends or that he thinks Bryan is interesting. It doesn’t have anything to do with sex. He told me that I was beautiful too, just for good measure. Two hours, more soju, and a lot of hand holding later, we had discovered that they were architects that had working on buildings in exotic places like Dubai. Two were 30ish and one was 37. One gave Bryan his card. He liked Bryan a lot and he wanted to me give him English lessons. He was really really drunk. The older one disappeared at some point in the night. Nobody but Bryan and I seemed concerned. The embarrassed friend who was slightly less drunk had to act as an interrupter. He was so embarrassed about his friend. He kept rubbing his hands on his face just like a rabbit does and apologizing. It was really cute. Eventually he convinced his drunker friend to leave. It was 2:30 AM and they had to work at 8:00.

Bryan and I walked around a bit more, then decided to buy a picnic mat and joined the youth on the beach. We sat with a bottle of whisky and watched the drunken antics of those around us before we caught a cab back to the hotel, donating our 3000 won picnic mat to two matless girls. It was a lovely night.

The next day we did more shopping, finished up Bryan’s souvenir shopping and sock shopping. He bought a lot of socks. I purchased the ugliest most awesome New Balance shoes. I have no more excuses to not work out. Except the whole being horribly afraid of trying to find a gym and actually go there regularly. (I do not look forward to all the staring that is going to happen, but Sally and I bought a gym membership, more blogging to come.) We went back to the beach in the eveing for more raw fish. This time we went back to a place we knew and had a much better and way cheaper meal than the night before. Although, slightly less entertaining, only slightly though, we witnessed a drunk woman who lost her shoes at restaurant rag on the ajumma in charge, who didn’t seem to give a damn, while the embarrassed offspring and husband hovered in the corner.

We didn’t know what to do during our second last night together in Korea and just bought some junk food and hung out at the hotel. Saturday morning, after we checked out of the hotel, we dropped our bags off at Busan Station and then we wondered around a bit more. Taking it all in.

We returned to Seoul on the 3:00 KTX getting home in time to finish Bryan’s packing before we headed out to meet friends for Bryan’s last night in Korea. I had to make an effort to not cry into my dalkgalbi. Then more of an effort not to cry into my beer at the hof that followed. We eventually ended up at FF because we always do. We danced a lot. Out on the street, getting some air, Bryan and I ended up talking to another Canadian couple from Toronto. The boy was leaving in a couple of weeks to attend Berkeley and the girl was staying another year. The boy told me that he was glad to be leaving because he doesn’t like Korea very much. He was otherwise nice, but I say good riddance, if you cannot appreciate Korea, then you do not deserve to be here. I wish him luck though, I really do.

Sunday morning came all too soon and it was time to get to the airport. We stopped for one last coffee at Gloria Jeans Coffee and then got on the airport Shuttle. We rode in almost silence for two hours and arrived at the airport too quickly. The wait for the check-in wasn’t too bad. We met a nice couple from Seattle that had been visiting their English teacher son. At the check in the lady told Bryan that he had to go through security almost right away. I did my best to not weep; I didn’t want him to weep either. We had our final hug over the gate and then he was gone. As soon as he walked through security I darted in the nearest bathroom and cried hard for about ten minuets. I gathered myself and got on the bus for home. My apartment, not ours anymore. It’s lonely without him.

The past three months have been the perhaps the best in my life. I have had so much fun with Bryan here. Almost everyday was an adventure. I cannot wait until we come back to Korea together.