Rocking the Soccer 'Burbs

In my never-ending search for more people to play soccer with, I’ve acquired a Tuesday night group out in Daeti. Gyu, my soccer savior, helped connect me to these boys who (he says) use “tough language” and, as (I’ve noted) smoke between games.

Nancy picked me up from the airport when
I first got here, and has the cutest southern
twang in the world.

I’m not sure exactly how to describe the skeptical Korean face. Nancy (pictured left, disgustingly fit, and nicely cheery) calls it The Korean Stare. We get it a lot in class.

Actual excerpt:

“In the picture, do you think he is walking proudly *point*, or absent-mindedly? *point* Raise your hand *demonstrate* if you think proudly.” 3 hands and 47 Korean Stares. “Raise your hand *demonstrate* if you think absent-mindedly.” No hands and 32 Korean Stares (everyone else isn’t looking at me).

But the stare I get when I lace up my cleats, while difficult to read, is possible to guess. 3 parts confused, 2 parts skeptical, and 1 part completely disoriented. As soon as I start playing, it’s mayhem. If it didn’t resemble the utter disbelief one might expect from someone who has never seen a pet poodle roll over and play dead, it would be flattering.

A favourite from Jeju.

I got cheers and hollers from even the simplest of moves and whenever I actually did something good, the boys in the stands would faint and weep and make marriage proposals.

I am joking, of course. But I have gotten a marriage proposal before (pre-Korea). And their reactions here are similarly ridiculous.

That said, of course I love being the girl rocking the guy’s world. I love the catcalls at the boy I just beat one-on-one; I love watching them gradually realize I won’t break if they touch me; I love turning the 2 parts skeptical, 1 part disoriented stare into a thumbs-up and an invitation back next week.

Because more soccer is never a bad thing.

I promise (maybe) that I'll stop writing about soccer and start writing about...Korean culture and things. Maybe. 

Don't Worry - I Know CPR!

There are have been some memorable quotes this past week, but my favorite is from Gyu (my unofficial soccer translator who happens to play outside mid like a [skinny, Korean] demon).

Let me preface this by saying that Gyu has a smile that is all things sweet, sincere and polite. But it’s not exactly reassuring when he uses it while translating soccer buddy #38’s, “당신이남자가아니라는것을확신합니까” into

“He says, ‘Are you sure you’re not a man?’ But in a good way!”

The runner-up for this week’s quote contest came from an unidentified defender who kicked me in the stomach.

“Are you okay? Don’t worry. I know *gestures* CPR!”

Third place goes to my dad for telling me to “Have a good weekend! Have an adventure!” Unfortunately, I have failed to do this. Three hours of soccer (even in the beautiful rain) does bad things to an out-of-shape-Elaine’s quad muscles and four hours of sleep does even worse things to her adventurous spirit. So I settled for a small walking tour of my side of the Yeongdo mountain (봉내산, Bongnaesan).

This is "Tomato," one of our main go-to restaurants.

Some friendly schoolgirls who practiced their English on me.
When I asked to take a picture, this was the resulting scramble
for the pink comb. 

The Laughter is Healing

According to one of my students’ notebooks.

Sometimes Engrish is very profound.

The class started out terribly, as some classes do. I could just feel it: that vacuum of energy from both me and the students. I wanted to be home in bed reading Franny Billingsley’s Chime and they wanted to be somewhere where I wasn’t speaking English at them. But we were both there and we had 50 minutes and there was nothing to do but shoulder on.

So I wrote the verb (“study”) on the board and they copied their adverbs around it. And what adverbs they were!

How do you study?

Sorrowfully. Excessively. Perfectly. Frequently. Smugly. Fightingly! Elegantly. Sexily.

Wait, seriously? John, Neo, Marine—did you write “elegantly” and “sexily? You just copied that from last class. Marine, how do you study eleg—”

Marine demonstrated, and believe me, ladies and gentlemen, that boy can study elegantly. I’m not sure about sexily, though, because as soon as he started unzipping his coat with a suggestive smirk we all were laughing too hard to really think about modifiers.

My boys: who no longer have to take the TOEFL!
As they say, "We have escaped from TOEFL." And as
Palash (far left) says, "We no longer have To-Fail." Get it?!

Slice of home

Oppa and Unnie make me laugh.

Case of the Mondays

Some days are such a struggle. Mondays, in particular, have that nasty habit. Often there’s no reason for it, but by noon I’m thinking how is it not Friday? How is this day still going? That was today.

A nasty backbiter of a day.

Luckily I have trustworthy colleagues who have my back and can make me smile.

Unfortunately, I did not see Elijah today, which might
have contributed to the Mondayness of it all.

Crazy kids.

Aaaaaand I have a boombox. It weighs fifty
pounds and plays cassette tapes. Lucky girl, huh?

Even more luckily, God gave me a little hug today. I was playing my violin in a big classroom full of empty desks and scattered chairs. Lee tickled the hell out of the ivories while Richard and Park (Korean friends of ours) barged in with guitars at the ready. They sang in Korean, we sang in English, and we all knew the melody. Music and God baffle me that way.

Plus, I truly do believe there's always a silver lining. I just found it: 

"Baffles" is only one letter away from being "waffles."

Madness of a Korean Disposition

Seats were lined up all the way down the beach. Luckily,
Ashley and I got special seats reserved for foreigners.

On Friday I went to my third concert of all time and my first ever K-Pop concert.

Some crazy guy trying to hit on Ashley bought us glow
sticks. Seemed pretty cool until his favourite bands came
on stage: then he screamed like a little girl. We were almost
too terrified to wave our glow sticks. Almost.

K-Pop is madness. But it’s the kind of madness I can get behind: systematic, addicting, and exceedingly well-dressed. And there’s dancing. Lots of it. If V is right and a revolution without dancing is not worth having, than I suggest we begin said revolution in South Korea and invite Taemin, Minho, and the rest of Shinee.

And Big Bang.

And maybe 2PM.

They’re prominent (advertisements, dramas, movies), they’re pretty, and best of all, they’re prolific. For a book nerd who spent all of her childhood saying goodbye to characters she loved for three books (four, if she was lucky), this is a dream come true.

Guys dancing in suits will never get old.

In fact, K-Pop is an entire culture devoted to what teenage girls want. And unlike in America, it’s not degraded. The majority of Americans groan when they see a Justin Bieber poster and pretend to puke if Twilight is mentioned at all. But in Korea, much of society revels in these staples of girl world rather than ridicules them. The boys in my classes are just as likely to have seen the dramas, gone to the concerts, and memorized at least one k-pop dance by heart as the girls are.

Even more bizarre is how for once it’s not the women who are being ogled, but the men. Of course, there are girls’ groups, too, and they are very popular. But we have those in the States. What we don’t have are billion-dollar companies devoted to making groups of five boy/men look beautiful. Whole lines of clothing are devoted to bands, and each member of the band has to have his own “look,” his own “angle.”

Couple of fangirls bundled up on a crowded Gwangali Beach
to watch some K-Pop. Free outdoor concerts are awesome.

I ogle.

Mostly, I like anything that feeds my inner fangirl. I don’t know why that part of me exists, but I can’t deny that my heart didn’t squee! when I realized just how many Korean dramas and K-Pop bands there are. It’s like that moment when you read the first page of an five-book series, or you watch the very first episode of The West Wing, knowing there are still seven whole seasons left to go.

It’s not something that will stop me from reading my books or writing my stories or playing soccer, but K-Pop is a delicious way for me to indulge in a little madness.

My new favourite group:

The one with the bizarro green thing on/around his head? Wicked good dancer. How do I know?
Maybe because I've watched this video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovztfpWPo5M]
 a hundred times.

Kiss Me, Kill Me

Looks funny, right?

Here’s another Korean lesson: 방(bahng) means room. So your bedroom is your 방 bahng. There are singing rooms called nore 노레 (song) 방 bahngs. And there are DVD 방 bahngs, which are basically private movie theatres.

Tonight, Ashley, Hanna, and I visited one. Since we were sans guys, we figured a nice, light romantic comedy would be fun. So we picked “Kiss Me, Kill Me,” a romance between a hit-man and his hit. Considering the cover, I was looking forward to some good fluff: hot guy goes to kill cute girl; cute girl disarms him; bizarre connection blossoms; la-di-dah, they discover they love each other.

Sort of.

Except that after disarming him, the girl steals the gun and tries to use it on herself. With a swift kick to the wrist, he then disarms her and soon discovers she ordered the hit on herself because she was suicidal and wanted to go out with a 방 (couldn't help it). 

He begins to spend his pathetic, friendless existence ordering her not to kill herself, even though he himself has very little worth living for. Their first date is a day-long awkward-fest at an amusement park in which neither of them look at one another, nor smile, nor speak. At the end of it, he takes out a dozen roses he had hidden in his jacket all day long and throws them at her, yelling at her for being crazy. Every time the romantic tension got close enough for them to kiss, bad guys show up with guns or metal rods or with polite bowing and break up all that mushy nonsense.

She crashes her ex-boyfriend’s wedding with a gun, and his job as a hit-man is endangered by a younger new guy. But when they duke it out, he loses and is slowly being stabbed to death when she finds them and uses her wedding-crashing revolver to shoot the younger hit-man. Both men are wounded, but they part on good terms—the younger leaving before the cops come at which point our main hit-man grabs the girl and uses her as a willing body shield in order to make it to the get-away car. Unfortunately, he gets shot and bleeds to death in her arms.

Sort of.  Actually, the final scene is their reunion...during prison visitor hours.

So, yeah, it was a chick flick: hot guy (who lives for the thrill of murder) goes to kill cute girl (who is suicidal because of love); cute girl disarms him (and tries to use the gun on herself); bizarre connection (based on mutual ineptitude at living) blossoms; la-di-dah, they discover they love each other (despite an unknown number of years in jail to follow).

Thank you, Korea.

The Most Adorable Korean Lesson You Will Ever Learn

I’m going to give you your first lesson in Korean. Don’t worry; it’s not one of those boring lessons about how to say “Hello! Nice to meet you, you dirty f***ing slut-whore” like my first lesson in Korean. This is much easier to say.

The Korean verb “to apologize” is sagwahada (사과하다). “Hada” (하다) is the verb of verbs. For those of you who know your Japanese, this is the “suru” (する) of the language. The closest English has to “hada” (하다) and “suru” (する) is “do.”[1] We can mix these verbs with all sorts of nouns to create verbs. Song+do = sing a song. In Japanese, you say shoppingu o suru (shopping) or sukii o suru (skiing).

So. We have 하다 = do.

Stay with me. This is where it gets adorable.

The first part of the verb is 사과, so where in song + do = sing a song, now we have 사과 + do = to apologize. But 사과 by itself means “apple.”

Apple + do = apologize.

Can you guess the adorable part now?

As Hanna explained it, “You don’t have a Korean boyfriend now but you are 진짜귀엽다 (jinjja gwipta: really cute), so when you have a Korean boyfriend, you will fight with him. When you make up, you should bring him an apple and say,

사과받아주세요.

Pronounced:

sagwa badda juseyo.

Meaning:

Please accept this apple/apology.

But remember to pronounce all the b’s as sort of p’s and all the d’s as sort of t’s too, but more of a d sound. Oh and the j’s sound a little like ch’s. Sorry it’s a little complicated for you English speakers out there. I apologize.

사과받아주세요

---

[1] English needs a cooler alphabet, am I right??

Nuptial Eeyore

I’m kind of downer at weddings. After spending so many weekends of my life playing Pachelbel’s Canon and Bach’s Air on repeat, I’ve sort of been soured on the whole romance part of the affair. Luckily, Koreans agree with me.

See those people in the back? They never stopped talking
the ENTIRE time. Kate (who is awesome and will get her
own blog post later) says they stand back there so they
can catch up with everyone they haven't seen since
the last wedding.

Sunny—one of the women working in the international office—invited all of us to her wedding last Saturday. Her ceremony took place in a marriage hall—an entire building devoted to small chapel-esque rooms with spray-painted gold chairs swathed in white tooling (sp??). Unnaturally white trees lined the short, elevated aisle—white, lacy— of Sunny’s chapel and the pulpit bulged at the front, drowning in flowers. Across the hall, two other halls mirrored hers with disconcerting exactitude.

My favourite part of the wedding was the groom. Grinning from ear to ear, he practically bounded down the aisle alone. No groomsmen or bridesmaids slowed things up so he was able to make it from door to pulpit in a round three seconds. At the front, he bowed first to Sunny’s parents, then to his own. Each time, he got down on his knees and touched his forehead to the floor.

There is much less touching in Korean weddings, much less kissing, and much, much more chattering from the audience. In fact, the fifty or so people who were crammed into the back never stopped talking the entire wedding. We could barely hear the pastor speak. Really, the only thing that was particularly clear was the groom shouting “네!” (Yes!!)—hilariously loud—in answer to what I assume was the obligatory, “Do you take this woman...?” question. The whole ceremony was in Korean, so it was a little tough to follow.

Mommy and Daddy of the groom. Mom's wearing a Hanbok

To finish the ceremony, the cameraman staged us all into pictures surrounding Sunny and her new husband. First family, then friends, then work friends, then foreigners, ect. Afterwards, Sunny and hubby greeted all the guests at the reception while wearing Hanboks, traditional Korean dress. There was a fake throwing of the bouquet and then a not at all fake and completely delicious buffet. And you had better believe that my second bowl of ice cream mixed with cookies and a little coffee made me much less of a nuptial Eeyore.

Dictator in Knee-High Boots

Go Lotte!

A couple weeks back I went to a baseball game with some friends of mine. Our local team—the Lotte Giants—were playing their last game before the post-season, a spot in which they were already guaranteed. Consequently, the crowd was not as bubbly as normal Korean crowds are cracked up to be. We found our seats in the placid outfield at the end of the first inning and settled down to a leisurely game.

But across the stadium, right behind the first baseline, the famed cheering section was doing its thing—despite any support from everyone else in the stadium. We couldn’t see much, but just like in high school looking at the other lunch tables we could tell other people were having a lot more fun than we were. Since it was our first game, Lee and I decided to crash the party.

The guards manning the gates into the rabid cheering section were easily foiled by a couple of wily foreigners. “Ticket?” He asked. We looked horrified and patted our pockets and pointed in the direction of our supposed seats. He teetered, but—as we well knew—he didn’t have the English to politely say, “I can’t let you in without a ticket,” so we were waved through.

Noise exploded around us—screaming girls, a man’s amplified voice, and, of all things, a vuvuzela. We found two open seats right in the middle of the mighty rumpus—in front of newspaper pom-pom-armed girls and behind flag-waving enthusiastic older men—and jumped in. I might have been screaming, “Hail to Kim Jong-Il and the blessed Communist Party” for all I knew, but I was screaming it to the tunes of old American classics. I vividly remember hearing the theme from Mission Impossible and probably a few from the Best of Queen album, too.

Hitler only wishes he had this kind of stage presence

Lee took pictures and I screamed God-only-knows-what as the Giants took a big lead in the fifth inning. The girls behind us made us a couple of newspaper pom-poms for our cheering pleasure so we could more effectively follow our cheerleader. This cheerleader—the drum major of the event—was a youngish (30s, probably, but Korean, so that’s still young) man wearing a Lotte uniform and knee-high white boots. He danced, he screamed, he led us with a control of the crowd so thorough as to make Hitler envious.

Don’t mind me. There’s just something about joining into one body of many screaming parts that forcibly reminds me of dictators and communism.

Anyway, unlike communism, it was a blast. I’m looking forward to more live Lotte games in the future. But for now, I’ll settle for keeping up with their postseason work. Game three tonight and hopefully on their way to the finals.

Time the Destroyer is Time the Preserver

            It’s hard to tell when life is changing. Time slips by unpretentiously, humbler than Christ himself, leaving me fumbling with my mat as I try to get up and walk. By the time I’ve got it under my arm and I’m ready to leave the pool, it’s disappeared into the crowd—and the crowd has disappeared, too. It’s just me and the cool breeze and the black sky.

            I’m not complaining, mind you, about the breeze and the unreadable night. But sometimes it’s nice to have a little more warning. Sometimes it feels good to hear the clock ringing the hours or see the sun shifting degree by degree from horizon to horizon. That’s why I appreciate the birthdays and the benchmarks—the lines on the wall denoting my infinitesimal growth spurts. They’re good for the filing system.

            All-State Orchestra with strep throat.

Playing against Augustana College.

            My sister’s wedding.

            Les Miserables in London.

A flight to Korea.

But more often the real growth spurts happen in those shifting times—during the breeze and the black—and only a shiver of the chord connecting your heart and memory tells you something’s changed. The shivers are clues, so tiny I usually miss them—so random I sometimes mistake them for a trick of my emotions (is it that time of month again?). But I’m getting better at catching them these days: when a student prays for our class in Arabic; when my students cover their teeth to giggle at my jokes; when two of my grown male students hold hands as they walk down the hall beside me.

So what’s changed? Not much. It’s a little colder in the mornings. Most of my students remember my name and aren’t afraid to use it. Minhee smiles at me sometimes. When I fumble (with words, with my keys, with my mat as I leave the pool)—even as the leaves change color and the night comes a little faster - I don't stumble.