Sundays
Sunday, January 30
Another week gone by and another week closer to the end of this whole Korea thing. Earlier this week I received all of my pension information from my boss. I couldn’t make much out of it and the amount that has been paid into it seems to be out of date (at least, I sure hope it is out of ) but it told me how to go about getting my money when I leave.
Things are getting a little sad in Cheongju. My friends all arrived around the same time a couple of months before I did and they are all leaving in about a month. Amanda is staying another year and there are a few other people who came after I did, but most of the people I spend the bulk of my weekends with will be gone soon.
Ah, such is life.
Today is Sunday. It is about 9pm. I have to go into work Monday and Tuesday but then I will be on vacation until Monday. With Intensives, poor sleeping abilities, trying to get my portfolio back in order, I am really looking forward to some time off. The occasion is that it is the Lunar New Year. Koreans use this time to go to the home villages of their parents and grandparents. Just like the Chuseok holiday I couldn’t really get much about the traditions of this holiday out of my students.
Accordingly, apparently my kids are going to eat all of grandma’s Mandu-rice cake-soup and steal all of her money. They might wear some fancy Hanboks, though.
My plan is to head to the big mountain, Seoraksan, in the north-east with Rick and Lauren and try to make it to the top. It is no Everest or K2, but it’s a mile vertical anyway, so who knows if we will get all the way to the Summit, but I am going to give it a go. We will spend a couple of nights there before heading back. In my mind it is going to be awesome. Realistically, everything will probably be closed as it was on Chuseok so it will likely be a giant disaster. Oh well.
It seems that I have a firmly established routine on Sundays. I really do not know why given that it is totally unproductive and ends in me spending too much money, but it has become a solid part of my week:
8am- My alarm goes off. I have not woken up at 8am in months. I set this so that I wake up, realize how lucky I am to not have to be into work until 1pm. I then promptly go back to sleep.
12pm- Usually I am reasonably conscious by now. Now, remember, I am writing about Sundays in Korea. The thing with Sundays in Korea is that Saturdays in Korea routinely spill into Sundays in Korea. So, despite being conscious I rarely move. At the most, I might rotate my pillow if I happened to drool in my drunken sleep.
1pm- Think about getting out of bed. Actually, this is an inaccurate wording. This is more accurate: think about getting out of my floor mat. Usually, this is just a bluff.
1:15pm- Realize I am hungry.
1:16 - 1:30pm- Think about what I want to accomplish during the day. Realize that none of it will happen.
2pm- Finish my meal at Burger King.
2:15 - 3:15pm- Walk around Home Plus like a zombie.
That is basically a long way of saying that I spend too much time at Home Plus. This doesn’t really surprise me so much as it makes me worried. On days when I was really bored at home I would sometimes walk around Target. I would generally buy absolutely nothing. I am worried that I am predestined to become a routine part of the mall-walking circuit.
I never bought anything at Target largely because I was flat broke. Now, I am not flat broke. I have become one of those clichéd people who goes to the store for one thing (usually salsa) and walk out with 80 bucks worth of junk.
Now, every Sunday I do the same song and dance at Home Plus: buy salsa, fake pizza cheese, and tortilla chips. I start off on the first floor which is home goods. I like to look at the cameras and the fancy rice cookers. In the beginning of the year I thought about buying a small toaster oven so I could make food that doesn’t involve my pot or frying pan. Now, I have managed to stop myself from making any purchases that can’t be eaten by me as I do not have a very long time left in Korea.
Things I have bought in the home department:
Steaming rack
Floor sleeping mat
Shoe rods that don’t work
Christmas tree (aprox 6 inches)
2 pairs of jeans that I didn’t bother to try on (take that mom)
A Walther PPK BB-Gun (with a silencer).
Then I go down the escalator ramp to the food section. In order to get a huge number of shopping carts to the food floor the employees send them down the escalators in big groups. They become stationary on the ramp and are received by an employee at the bottom who quickly pulls them out of the way. Now, I have seen a few people almost get wrecked when their individual carts get stuck when the escalator ends and the floor begins. Always, I get stuck between two groups of carts and fear for my life enough to formulate an escape plan if the set of carts in front of me. I do not plan on dying via a shopping cart sandwich.
The food floor in Home Plus is almost always ridiculously crowded with people and their carts.
Usually, I am in a good mood until I get to the food floor. I usually walk around the produce and meat departments to see if anything pops out. I don’t usually buy too much food as I eat at school, but sometimes I like to mix it up. Last Sunday I had tacos.
The problem with Home Plus is the aisles. They are smaller than aisles at home and they are also a lot fuller. I often try to walk up and down the aisles looking for snacks but I usually only make it threw a handful before I start getting flustered.
I do not know if it is because of the narrow aisles or something else, but Korean shoppers have this tendency of just stopping in clusters in the middle of an aisle. If I could make eye contact with them or even get them to look at me without making an idiot of myself I would just scoot by. Often times they stop in groups big enough to make the passage into a dead end. So, I go to the next aisle and hope it has not already been sealed.
Within 10 minutes of trying to simply get to the other side of the store my mission of buying snacks turns into a mission of buying salsa and then getting the heck on out of there. As it is, I usually spend a lot of time swearing at everybody beneath my breath.
After this I go home, clean my apartment, eat and then wonder why I can’t fall asleep after sleeping until almost 2pm.
Things are getting a little sad in Cheongju. My friends all arrived around the same time a couple of months before I did and they are all leaving in about a month. Amanda is staying another year and there are a few other people who came after I did, but most of the people I spend the bulk of my weekends with will be gone soon.
Ah, such is life.
Today is Sunday. It is about 9pm. I have to go into work Monday and Tuesday but then I will be on vacation until Monday. With Intensives, poor sleeping abilities, trying to get my portfolio back in order, I am really looking forward to some time off. The occasion is that it is the Lunar New Year. Koreans use this time to go to the home villages of their parents and grandparents. Just like the Chuseok holiday I couldn’t really get much about the traditions of this holiday out of my students.
Accordingly, apparently my kids are going to eat all of grandma’s Mandu-rice cake-soup and steal all of her money. They might wear some fancy Hanboks, though.
My plan is to head to the big mountain, Seoraksan, in the north-east with Rick and Lauren and try to make it to the top. It is no Everest or K2, but it’s a mile vertical anyway, so who knows if we will get all the way to the Summit, but I am going to give it a go. We will spend a couple of nights there before heading back. In my mind it is going to be awesome. Realistically, everything will probably be closed as it was on Chuseok so it will likely be a giant disaster. Oh well.
It seems that I have a firmly established routine on Sundays. I really do not know why given that it is totally unproductive and ends in me spending too much money, but it has become a solid part of my week:
8am- My alarm goes off. I have not woken up at 8am in months. I set this so that I wake up, realize how lucky I am to not have to be into work until 1pm. I then promptly go back to sleep.
12pm- Usually I am reasonably conscious by now. Now, remember, I am writing about Sundays in Korea. The thing with Sundays in Korea is that Saturdays in Korea routinely spill into Sundays in Korea. So, despite being conscious I rarely move. At the most, I might rotate my pillow if I happened to drool in my drunken sleep.
1pm- Think about getting out of bed. Actually, this is an inaccurate wording. This is more accurate: think about getting out of my floor mat. Usually, this is just a bluff.
1:15pm- Realize I am hungry.
1:16 - 1:30pm- Think about what I want to accomplish during the day. Realize that none of it will happen.
2pm- Finish my meal at Burger King.
2:15 - 3:15pm- Walk around Home Plus like a zombie.
That is basically a long way of saying that I spend too much time at Home Plus. This doesn’t really surprise me so much as it makes me worried. On days when I was really bored at home I would sometimes walk around Target. I would generally buy absolutely nothing. I am worried that I am predestined to become a routine part of the mall-walking circuit.
I never bought anything at Target largely because I was flat broke. Now, I am not flat broke. I have become one of those clichéd people who goes to the store for one thing (usually salsa) and walk out with 80 bucks worth of junk.
Now, every Sunday I do the same song and dance at Home Plus: buy salsa, fake pizza cheese, and tortilla chips. I start off on the first floor which is home goods. I like to look at the cameras and the fancy rice cookers. In the beginning of the year I thought about buying a small toaster oven so I could make food that doesn’t involve my pot or frying pan. Now, I have managed to stop myself from making any purchases that can’t be eaten by me as I do not have a very long time left in Korea.
Things I have bought in the home department:
Steaming rack
Floor sleeping mat
Shoe rods that don’t work
Christmas tree (aprox 6 inches)
2 pairs of jeans that I didn’t bother to try on (take that mom)
A Walther PPK BB-Gun (with a silencer).
Then I go down the escalator ramp to the food section. In order to get a huge number of shopping carts to the food floor the employees send them down the escalators in big groups. They become stationary on the ramp and are received by an employee at the bottom who quickly pulls them out of the way. Now, I have seen a few people almost get wrecked when their individual carts get stuck when the escalator ends and the floor begins. Always, I get stuck between two groups of carts and fear for my life enough to formulate an escape plan if the set of carts in front of me. I do not plan on dying via a shopping cart sandwich.
The food floor in Home Plus is almost always ridiculously crowded with people and their carts.
Usually, I am in a good mood until I get to the food floor. I usually walk around the produce and meat departments to see if anything pops out. I don’t usually buy too much food as I eat at school, but sometimes I like to mix it up. Last Sunday I had tacos.
The problem with Home Plus is the aisles. They are smaller than aisles at home and they are also a lot fuller. I often try to walk up and down the aisles looking for snacks but I usually only make it threw a handful before I start getting flustered.
I do not know if it is because of the narrow aisles or something else, but Korean shoppers have this tendency of just stopping in clusters in the middle of an aisle. If I could make eye contact with them or even get them to look at me without making an idiot of myself I would just scoot by. Often times they stop in groups big enough to make the passage into a dead end. So, I go to the next aisle and hope it has not already been sealed.
Within 10 minutes of trying to simply get to the other side of the store my mission of buying snacks turns into a mission of buying salsa and then getting the heck on out of there. As it is, I usually spend a lot of time swearing at everybody beneath my breath.
After this I go home, clean my apartment, eat and then wonder why I can’t fall asleep after sleeping until almost 2pm.
0 comments:
Post a Comment