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Sunday, July 23, 2006


Since I spent too much money in Seoul (it is quite a bit more expensive than Masan, as you would expect) the weekend before, I decided to take it easy last weekend. On Sunday I hiked halfway up Mt. Mahakasan to find the café I discovered the last time I hiked. I intended to get a beer to sip while I finished “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth (excellent book, incidentally). I sat down and started to read, but no one came over to take my order. I noticed that there was people only at the one table, and they were laughing and carrying on. Looked like they were having a good time. After about half an hour of reading and taking photos, the aforementioned people waved me over.

The only woman of the group vacated, and from what I understood, she was the patroness of the café. Next thing I know, I’m being offered moccoli (rice wine), plum wine, and kimchi (pickled cabbage) with tofu. One of the group was due to travel to Canada himself, to Vancouver. He was also a chiropractor. As I had begun seeing a chiropractor in Canada before I left, I tried to let him know that I would be interested in seeing him as a patient.

This was the first time that I got frustrated by the language barrier. No matter how hard each party tried to understand the other, I could not get his business card or phone card. He kept asking for mine, and weird as it might seem, I still don’t know my number because the school takes care of all my bills and subtracts it from my salary. About an hour later, I ambled down the lower portion of the mountain, slightly tipsy.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

World Cup Fever






A few nights ago I went to see the Korea vs. Togo World Cup game; It was being broadcast in most public locations: sports bars, billboard screens, the local stadium, and on a huge screen in a large construction site. My friends Tim and Amy accompanied me, and by this enormous department store downtown we met a few Korean friends. One of them, Yung-tek, is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life. He greeted us with gift bags, having bought us each a red “Fighting Korea” T-shirt. I went to put it on over the T-shirt I was already wearing, but Yung-tek insisted that I take off my current T-shirt to put it on. I obliged, and he and his friends proceeded to laugh at my prodigious chest hair. I blushed!

We bought snacks and beer in the department store, a sprawling multi-floor deal that is like Walmart in its “you can buy anything here” approach to retail. Next, we headed over to the construction site, part of a swath of swarming humans, all decked out in red shirts, armbands, headbands, face paint, and glowing devil’s horns. I couldn’t believe my eyes. They had erected a temporary pavilion complete with spotlights, huge balloons, a stage for entertainers, and television cameras. There was maybe a thousand people there, all cheering, chanting, and waving inflatable rods, that, when struck together, make a shallow snare drum sound. When combined, the resulting percussion is considerable.

In between entertainment acts, I somehow became separated from my friends. I looked for them briefly, and then felt that this was a futile activity, so I sat down to enjoy the proceedings. I watched most of the first half from this location, occasionally looking for my friends. Just before the game started, I heard a string of Korean announcements, and I could have sworn that I heard my name and something about Canada. I did not believe my ears though, and so I missed the obvious: my friends had secured a public announcement to try to reconnect with me. At the break, Togo was up 1-0, and I headed to the rear because many people were making their way out of the construction site. There was a bottleneck, so I thought I would have a good chance of finding them there.

I had forgotten my money on my bed, and I didn‘t know the way home, so I would have had to find a bank before I caught a cab. All of a sudden, through the loudspeaker I can hear my friend Tim’s voice say in English “Trevor, if you can hear me, meet Tim at the camera between the two towers.” I was thrilled; as I was hungry and thirsty and they had all the snacks I could alleviate my bodily discomfort and enjoy the rest of the game with good company. Korea scored two goals in the second half, and every time they scored, they fired off fireworks and people got up out of their seats, hollered, hugged each other, and slapped each other high fives. We went out for drinks after Korea won 2-0 to the jubilation of the people.