The shoes, which were ordered on Thursday night, showed up Saturday afternoon at the hogwan. My high school students were kind enough to inform me that I would need a "band" for my feet and stockings. We went to a pharmacy at the end of class to get a band, which I discovered meant a simple band aid. What an idea: Pre-bandaging feet to prevent future blisters. Unfortunately, the shoes wound up being a waste of 8 bucks, even when I covered my achilles with band-aids. By the time I'd made it from Jilyang all the way out to my friend's apartment, my feel were already killing me! I already hated the shoes. Note to self: Don't buy shoes off the internet for 8 bucks. Yes, they were cheap, cute and quick to deliver, but so not worth it.
On Saturday night, Eli, Elise, Vanessa and I went to this pub called "The Bus." Part of the restaurant/bar was an actual bus. I thought this was pretty funny because I ride the bus a lot in Daegu, but I would never have considered it a hip place to go hang out. On the contrary, it's usually dull, dirty and has a tendency to cause motion sickness. I thought maybe hanging out at "The Bus" would change all this, but it didn't.
We had a good time there though. Brandon brought along one of his Korean friends from work named Eston, who brought along another Korean girl named Suji. Suji was as quite as can be (shy to use her English I think,) but Eston was the life of the party.
At some point in the middle of our fun and games, an arm wrestling match was proposed between Eston and Vanessa. (I've been trying to recall the events that led up to the match, but I really can't remember for the life of me.) Anyway, you might think an arm wrestling contest between a man and a woman is no contest, but you don't know this woman. Vanessa grew up on a farm in Oklahoma, played basketball through high school, worked for UPS part time, and is currently training to run a marathon. She has the biggest arms I've ever seen on a woman in real life.
I remember alerting Eston to her agriculture background, and he responded with a thoroughly made-up story about how he also grew up on a farm and used to sleep with the cows. Haha! Before the match, I heard Elise whisper to Vanessa, "Be careful. Guys are fragile."
Vanessa won after what I'm pretty sure was a fairly fake struggle. She won twice. Eston was in disbelief and kept saying her name over and over again all night in a friendly rivalry sort of way. In jest, he arranged for a rematch in one month on April 13th.
I've never been very good at competition. I don't mean that I'm not competitive, although I'd like to make that excuse. Nick never lets me. I just mean I'm not good at competition. I rarely win at games. But I enjoy watching.
On Sunday night, I taught "spoons" to MinWoo, JiHey and SoRi (Minwoo's friend, not to be confused with "sorry," though it sounds quite similar.) We played the first few rounds with the spoons on the table in front of us, and I did fairly well as the others got a handle on the game. Then, we started placing the spoons around the room instead--all three spoons in different spots.
Eventually, Minwoo and SoRi began to find interesting hiding spots. A couple of times they hid one behind the kimchi refrigerator, and we had to fish around blindly with our hands to find it. In one of my final rounds, I raced after the same spoon as SoRi and wound up in a tug-of-war for about 30 seconds. (Ok. Immature. But I wanted to stay in the game!) I succeeded, but we ended up calling it a no point.
Later when I was out, SoRi hid both spoons behind the refrigerator, which was clearly furthest away from JiHey.
"They are forming a guild," said JiHey, recalling her Korean SAT vocab.
Fortunately, she was the first to attain four of a kind and got a head start, but unfortunately, MinWoo and SoRi had too much of an advantage. JiHey chased after MinWoo and put him in a headlock to keep him away from the spoon! I was rolling with laughter and big sister understanding!
It was probably one of the best times I've had with my Korean family.
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