Part 1
February and March

Got a little rusty at writing. Really events have just kinda gone by and I’ve felt few pressing comments for them. February began with Aden’s birthday on the 4th then proceeded to tease us with spring weather for a couple of weeks. Our closest co-worker finished her contract and moved into the center of Australian anti-excitement found in the west coast city of Pirth. Just last night we watched a CNN Down-Under music documentary. Apparently the motivation is high in Pirth to get good at something so you can get out. Work was a little hectic as the administration ran about in headless fashion preparing for the new school year here. Hard times are on the Korean Economy. Enrollment has dropped significantly and with a recent relocation to pay for, little veins were popping out of foreheads over petty penny problems like minimizing heater use in the freezing building. Another result of the economic crunch was that April, our friend, wasn’t going to be replaced. So after she left, the neighborhood has become as dull as a retirement home as our closest friends live over an hour away (a little less if we pay a $10 taxi fee). As I just told a friend on the phone, there’s so much free time, one feels obligated to have something to show for it other than being able to name all of the Friends episodes. I ran out of good non-fiction to read so I relapsed back into fiction. February ending with a comical trip to a ski resort. Our school had promised to take the staff skiing at the end of January. However, that was the busier of times so it got push back to the end of February following weeks of warm pre-spring weather. When the time came everyone at school was still to busy so they just told Aden and I that we could have the condo and invite our own friends. Friends and friends of friends came from all over the country. The girls cooked up some awesome Taco salad and we made a night for ourselves that won’t be forgotten. My knee still hurts.
         Enter March. I’ve established an interesting and rewarding friendship with a Korean Banker named Ho-sup. At first, when he gave me his phone number as I was closing an account, I was thinking he wanted private English lessons. These are highly cherished as just having a few can double your monthly income. We met that night and he bought some food and beer and we sat at a bar just talking. He helped me with some Korean, but for the most part we spoke in English. He has a parrot-like lingual memory, recalling everything I teach him. Just to fit into the balance of the Korean philosophy of yin and yang I remember close to nothing of his lessons, my role is very important in our friendship.
         We began to meet every week. He would usually choose a place, like the Zoo or downtown, and we’d talk over a nice dinner. He took Aden and I to a spaghetti house and I thought that for the following weekend I’d cook some western-style spaghetti for him. The next Saturday he brought his young son (I can’t remember his name) to our apartment and we ate a full course Italian meal complete with salad and vino. Afterwards Aden and I included him in our reminiscing of Colorado, showing him all our pictures of the San Juan Mtns. and Durango.
         As fitting into Korean culture (very quid pro quo) he invited us to his place the next weekend. This happened to fall on the Saturday of the huge snowstorm. The snow started Thursday night and cancelled school on Friday when there was about 8 inches on the ground. The whiteout continued until Saturday night, though after the first 48 hours of heavy wet snow fall it did lighten up. As you know Saturday is a workday and true to the saying “the Koreans live to work”, we witnessed many locals dressed for a normal business day trying for hours to get their 4-cylinder, 2-wheel drive cars out of their driveways…all this only to find that their entire morning invested in conquering the weather, as they no doubt saw it as, only allowed them many more hours in neighborhood traffic jams. The kids running crunching circles in the parks and building obese snowmen covered more ground then their frustrated and motorized fathers. Aden and I spent the entire morning walking around observing. We also made a 5-foot snow devil named Sneezelbub (he had a cold). Mom sent me a picture of Deajeon that made it all the way to the Houston Chronicle, depicting some very honed driving skills of the Koreans in a giant parking lot. The snow allows you to see the path of each car and from the aerial photograph it’s just one huge messy frayed knot…surely complemented by a symphony of honking that even the silencing nature of snow and distance could not constrain.
However, despite the chaos inside the neighborhoods, the main street had been salted (I chuckle in disbelief every time I remind myself that there is not ONE snowplow in this city) and by Saturday night it was drivable.
Ho-sub picked us up and cautiously drove us to his upper middle class apartment a couple of neighborhoods over. As most upper-mid bathrooms, Ho-sup’s had the fully functional toilet accessory that fits on top of the seat. It has a digital display and many buttons to control spraying gadgets and the comfort of your bottom. There are entire stores devoted selling these toilet toppers. His home has beautiful wooden floors and was decorated with plants that his wife laboriously cultivates and charcoal black river stones that Ho-sup collects. In each stone he shows us the image hesees. There is one with an eagle, another with a dinosaur’s face, and another with human resemblance. All of the pictures can be seen from only one angle, or viewpoint and you must have the right indirect light to let the shadows illustrate the contours. The patience required to find one of these smooth black stones along a riverbed is remarkable to me. Ho-sup then showed us all of his wedding photographs along with family vacation pictures.  His wife had prepared an amazing assortment of salad and appetizers. The main course was pork cook in small pieces so you can wrap your bits up with a red lettuce leaf. You also can add a little of the honey mustard salad and fresh garlic in the wrap for more flavor. I hadn’t eaten as much as I did that night since my last Christmas feast in Lafayette in 2001.  After dinner it was decided that we would spend the night in his guest bedroom and we started to drink beer then shifted to Chaivas whiskey, although it was hard to find room for more of anything in my stomach. Ho-sup had apparently talked it over with his wife before and asked us to move in with him. We were totally in awe of the magnitude of this offer to share his home with us. Although we declined, it’s good to know that if we ever get into a jam and need a place he has extended an open invitation.
We woke up the next morning and went to see Big Fish. Great film.