Playing Catch Up

As promised, midweek make up entry. Right now, I’m not inside at all; I’m sitting on a stage in the middle of the hub of crisscrossing streets of downtown. It’s warm enough today to stay out here for a bit, though I’m sure eventually I’ll get cold enough to go inside. It’s before 5 pm the streets are super busy already. There’s a store across from where I’m sitting called “It’s Skin” which is good, because I totally wouldn’t have known otherwise. On my subway ride over here, I was in the same carriage as a ton of uniformed high and middle school students, and there are a lot of them roaming around here as well. There are bangs as far as the eye can see. Now that the sun is making a regular appearance, I’ll have to think about getting my first ever pair of prescription sunglasses. I’ve never had them in the past, but since glasses are so much cheaper over here I’m definitely going to.

But to the point of this entry: the weekend before last. My entry before last was written Friday night at a point when I wasn’t expecting to go out. But I ended up calling the lovely Jasmin to see what she was up to and, as a result, I ended up heading off to see her at the Holy Grill, thus ensuring that I would not have an early night. I help her and this girl Kristin run lines for the cabaret that they were performing in the following night. That was fun; I miss doing theatre related stuff. After they’d rehearsed, Jasmin and I went off to do some dancing. Due to my totally terrible memory, I can’t remember if anything notable happened that night but I do recall it going fairly late.

The next night was the cabaret. It was a cute, love themed show that was raising money for a Buddhist monastery that runs a home for abused “international marriage women” and men who’ve been injured in factory accidents. Super good cause. There were three monks from the monastery at the show, one Korean, one Cambodian and one Sri Lankan. It was funny seeing monks laugh at the skits. They were introduced by an embarrassingly rambley Australian woman. The venue for the cabaret was this awesome cafe / used bookstore run by a Chinese Canadian woman and her Korean yoga teacher husband. It felt rather like being in Guelph, which was a comment also made by several former Guelphites in attendance. Sweet memories of the Bullring. There was even organic snacks! The performances were really good, especially the scene done by Darrell and Whitney, who are both trained actors. What a pair of stars. For the last scene, they needed an audience volunteer. I was sitting right at the front, beside a teacher for our company named Melvin. Well as soon as they asked for a volunteer, Melvin pretty much rolled me out onto the stage. So I ended up in the show, playing the role of a woman being picked up in a bar. Twas fun. As an aside, non-Canadians who came to Korea to teach get a serious education in Canadianness by being here. Several Brits, South Africans and Americans have mentioned wanting to visit Canada now that they have so made so many Canadian friends in Korea.
Anyway, after the show, me and some folks went for some galbi, which was followed by some – you guessed it – dancing.

Sunday, I headed off to Busan to meet up with Maanda for some kite making action. There’s this Buddhist temple in Busan that puts on monthly cultural events for foreigners and this month’s event was traditional Korean kite making and flying. It was a lovely day. We were supposed to write the things we want to come to us and the things we want to send away for the new year on the kite so that they could symbolically fly to the sky. My kite flew super high and for a good while, but then someone else’s line cut mine and my wishes literally flew away. There we snacks afterwards and Maanda won a prize for her beautiful kite. In fact, when we were making them, this camera dude saw Maanda making hers and was like “it looks like the Jamaican flag,” which was funny but also strange because a Korean who knows what the Jamaican flag looks like is rare indeed. Like every good thing, kite making was followed by galbi with Maanda and her friends from Ulsan who had also taken part in the festivities. Then I caught the bus back to Daegu and wrapped up my delightful weekend.

In other news, most of you are probably aware that Korean figure skater Kim Yun Ah won a gold medal at the Olympics. It would be literally impossible to not know this in Korea because her routine was played on every TV screen I saw all day long and for several days after. Also, her face is everywhere advertising stuff, which was the case before and is even more so now.

So I’ve previously mentioned how segregated our office is. Example: there is a new Korean employee in our department who started about two weeks ago. He has never been introduced to us. If I didn’t pay attention, I’d never even know there was a newbie because we were not informed at all. I’m generally a big believer in proper introductions so I just think its really lame to go about stuff that way. Especially because now there’s the awkward “say hi / don’t say hi” situation. Boo.

Last night, Melinda and I went to the movies. In Korea, movie theatres have numbered seats. This is stupid. In a theatre with maybe 10 people in it total, we were seated right beside and right in front of other people. So we moved, eschewing our correct numbers for more sensible seating. We saw Chloe, the new Atom Egoyan flick. It takes place in Toronto, so it was nice to see home.
And there you have it; you are officially caught up on my life. No narrative gaps.

This week’s music recommendation is a joint from hip hop group Leesang, who have enjoyably scratchy voices. Bam!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOroE3OUoGA

Love,
AAA