Much work, little sympathy for the imprecise and time-consuming nature of the job. Ya want me to turn this piece of non-English drivel into something remotely comprehensible? Then shaddup and take a number.
Grr.
Boy, feeling hostile today, or what? Went to taekwondo last night but since the Korea-Brazil soccer game was on, no one was there, and the teacher himself said, "Uh, I need to watch the game too. Can we just start tomorrow?"
Yo, I was watching the game too, but hauled my ass out here in the soggy night because we agreed I'd start on Wednesday.
Double grr.
After being shafted for the soccer game (yes, I know it's important and thrilling -- I like watching soccer too), I felt rather morose and took to wandering. It's just about the first time I've wandered since I've gotten here. I've always been too busy or tired or just not in the mood to go out before.
Everytime I wander, I wonder why I don't wander more. Last night, something about the rain and mist made the streets a little bit magical, while it kept people at home and out of my grumpus way. (Hee: shout outs to my h.g. Brooke, who heard John John's wonder/wander lecture with me our sophomore year, and to Wendy, for "grumpus.")
You know how I wrote earlier that Seoul is really westernized, so much so that I don't feel much out of place? Well, I think I spoke in haste. The old Korea coexists with the new Korea much more than I realized. Last night I walked past a loooong row of vendors closing up shop in a covered area between two buildings. Right next to the massive, modern Hyundai Department store, people sell huge bags of red peppers, heaps of blankets neatly folded on top of each other, piles of meat and pickled vegetables, stacks of dried fish and squid, expansive pans of spicy rice cakes, women washing dishes in plastic tubs. Man, it seemed like a totally different place. It seemed like Korea, not an Asian version of a western city.
I doubled back, heading toward home, but continued past my street until I saw the train tracks, and crossed 'em. The sky was a weird salmon color, which so exactly matched the enormous apartment buildings in the distance that the lights of the rooms seemed to hang in space. I walked past a one-room flower shop where a woman was peeling garlic cloves, one by one, from a plastic tub full of garlic heads. The neon of the convenience store, the restaurants, the little shops that sold nothing but tangerines and bananas, and the beauty salon lit the way as I followed the tracks.
Streets that might be classified as alleyways back home led off the road I was on, twisting off into the night gloom, leading into the gated yards with no grass, and houses with heated floors, and bedrooms with no beds, where people were living out their lives.
Something about this thought made me appreciative of Korea and this experience (for practically the first time). It also saddened me deeply. How can one be so glad to be on one's own, but feel so lonely at the same time?
The feeling probably has a term in German. There's a term in Korean too: shi won sup sup ha da; the feeling you get upon finishing a big project: elated and sad at the same time.
As I wandered home, I absently looked at my cell phone, and realized that someone had called. It turned out to be J, who'd left a message saying he was just checking in.
Isn't it strange that just at the moment I was feeling so alone and lonely, so glad and so sad, J called? I checked the message about five times, to make sure I'd really received it that night, Wednesday, at 8:02 pm. Sometimes I feel like coincidence can't explain everything.