Today is Sunday. It is usually a day I spend a good part of at the gym, making up for lost times that I didn't go on Friday or Saturday. I am sick today, for the millionth time in Korea, so my better judgement (and a South African guardian angel perhaps) convinced me to skip yet another day.
If you know me, you know my obsession with the gym. It's important to me. It's a way of life. It's something I won't compromise. Usually gyms are full of the same types of people, the same equipment, and the same kind of vibe. So one would think it would be the same kind of experience in a Korean gym than any other gym around the world right?
Wrong. Korean gyms are unlike any other gym experience, and it is something I will have in my memory forever (whether I like it or not).
Korean women are a rare breed at the gym. They do not lift weights. Unless you count those pink weights that weigh like 1.5 pounds, and I don't. Korean women also don't do cardio machines. However, Korean women are excellent at creating the image that they are doing cardio, when in fact they are actually doing nothing at all. If you're in the gym long enough, you'll see that the women are doing one of three things and one of three things only. 1) They are walking on the treadmill while talking on their cell phones. 2) They are sitting on the bicycle while talking on their cell phones. Or 3) they are sitting on a yoga mat while talking on their cell phones.
Korean men on the other hand are surprisingly in shape, and there is no age limit on this either. I've seen men in there twice my age with a 45 lb weight attached to a chain around their waist while they do chin ups.....and talking on their cell phones. There are two types of men that work out in Korea. The ones who actually work out and seem to know what they're doing, and the ones who stand there watching t.v. and barely touching a piece of equipment the entire time they're there.
Like any other building (whether it's public or private) in Korea, you're required to have a pair of indoor shoes and outdoor shoes. This really pisses me off. I don't want to have 5 million pairs of shoes for everywhere I go during the day. I don't mind having 5 million pairs of shoes in my closet at home for my own addiction and desire, but everywhere else is really annoying. I also really hate taking off my shoes. I never came from a family that takes their shoes off. In fact, my dad wears his shoes right up until the moment he changes into his pj's and goes to bed. We like our shoes, and we like them on our feet. So I like to pull the 'foreigner card' here, and I wear my gym shoes to the gym and when they try to explain that's not how it's done, I give them a very confused look and say I don't understand. Most of the time they brush me off like some stupid foreinger, and let me work out in piece.
The trainers at the gym seem to think they have the right to interrupt my work out and tell me what I'm doing wrong. Every so often they seem to take a break from their Starbucks coffee and pizza for lunch, long enough to linger around me entirely too long to see if I'm doing everything right. They're often telling me I am lifting too much weight for a woman, and that I should be on a cardio machine or taking the yoga class. I have literally had to put my hand out in front of me and yell "STOP!" to one of the elder trainers to get him to stop pestering.
And don't even get me started on the locker rooms. Between the ajumma's who stand there for an hour blow-drying their crotches, to the women in the shower head next to you asking you to soap up their backs...it's all entirely too close for comfort for me.
But like everything else in Korea, it is an experience I won't soon forget. The gym will get lumped in to every other wild thing I have witnessed during my year here in Korea. And who knows, maybe one day when I'm working out at my gym in America, I'll suddenly miss getting smacked on the ass in the locker room by an old lady, or getting harassed by a kimchi smelling trainer during my squats. Who knows.....
If someone would have told me I would be spending Thanksgiving this year surrounded by screaming Korean kids, a Chinese woman, Dora the Explorer, and some of the worst beer on Earth....I would have told that someone they were cookadodle-doo-crazy.
But alas, welcome to the unpredictability of my life. I was sad when I was walking to work on Thursday. I started to think about all my friends back home going to their families for dinner, and about my mom, dad, and brother looking so small at our big dining room table. Work was just like any other day for the most part. It was a friend's birthday, so we were celebrating her birthday more than Thanksgiving, and I was honestly thankful to be celebrating something, anything at all. To my surprise at the end of the day one of the grandmother's of a student sent our staff a "Thanksgiving dinner". Although the turkey was actually sliced deli meat turkey, it was a nice gesture. There was cheese cake, turkey, salami, salmon, pickles, cheese, bagels and cream cheese, and my favorite pumpkin pie. I joked with a co-worker that this was the best Jew Thanksgiving I'd ever had.
So it turned out to be a pretty good holiday away from home after all. And it did give me some time to remember what I'm thankful for.
I am thankful for:
1. Coffee (what? This is perfectly acceptable as the number one thing I'm thankful for.)
2. Having the means and the motivation to travel, and to keep traveling.
3. My mother. She makes most things I have had and will have in my life possible.
4. Christmas music.
5. Hot showers.
6. Hamburgers.
7. My best friend Samantha Sovde who has stuck through me during the worst of times, and the best of times.
8. The time I spent in Hawaii, Spain and Boston.
9. My dad and his gentle heart.
10. Books and the authors that keep writing them.
11. Pumpkin pie, apple pie, pecan pie....pretty much any kind of pie.
12. The uncertain and unplanned future.
13. Skype
14. These blankets I have wrapped around me because I refuse to turn the heat on.
15. The strength to keep going, even though the destination is unclear.
And last but certainly not least, I'm thankful for Led Zeppelin who sing one of my top 10 favorite songs of all time appropriately titled, Thank You.
I've got Christmas fever. There is no way around it, I just do. I've been playing Nat King Cole's Christmas cd's on repeat for the last two weeks. And even youtubing Kenny G jazz Christmas. (Hey don't knock it 'til you hear it, Kenny G plays good music.)
Anyway, I love Christmas. I love it more than any other time of the year. I'm sure most people love Christmas. What's not to love? Snow, cookies, pies, turkey, candy, stuffing, chocolate peppermint deliciousness, egg nog, brandy, wine, fires, stockings, the fat man in a red coat...do I even need to go on? I am aware that more than half of my reasons are because of food, but Christmas does bring about some divine food. Food that I am dreaming about after being in the land of fried fish, white rice, and long slimy noodles all the time.
Sometimes I get seasonally depressed around Christmas. I think of all the other families out there, and how everyone and their mother's mother gets together for Christmas. There are traditional dinners, traditional gift giving, traditional Christmas light seeing, everything is traditional. I have a small family. The normal mom, dad, brother and myself kind of family. We make Christmas as special as we can, but I find myself missing and wishing for a big family, for cousins, nieces and nephews, grandpa's and grandma's, and aunt's and uncle's running around a house that can barely fit four. When you see Christmas in the movies or on tv, you see ten or twelve people gathered around a nice oak table, passing a huge turkey over their heads, conversation so loud they don't notice the dog under the table while grandpa slips him a slice of turkey.
When my brother and I were younger, we used to spend Christmas every year in Florida at my grandma's house. She has this amazing house that she designed herself, with a waterfall and coy pond inside, an outside patio to die for. All the family used to get together over there, and we would have our own traditional Christmas. It eventually got to be too expensive to go every year, things changed, and people changed. We began to have our own little Christmas's. We still manage to get together every year, we have only been apart one Christmas so far.
I started to think about how when you get older, the things that used to be such a big deal when we were younger, are not made into such a big deal anymore. Birthday's come and go, anniversaries aren't cherished anymore, and Christmas becomes more of a hassle than a celebration. However this year, as I sit in South Korea with unfamiliar traditions all around me, I long for those quieter Christmas's with my family. I smile at the thought of my mom tiptoeing out to fill the stockings, my dad taking extra special care to wrap a KBCO cd he gives us every year from our favorite radio station. I am excited to have the parade on tv in the back ground, as the cinnimon rolls rise in the oven. I think that even though at the end of the day, my mom so stressed out that my brother has nothing to eat and nobody is grateful for all the time and effort she's put into dinner, the small traditions have still been carried out. We'll go to an afternoon movie if we can agree on one, and we'll come home and gripe about all there is to clean up.
I think about how to bring back the bang in Christmas this year, how to make it a big deal again. If I can get my brother and my mother to get along for more than a day, that would be a feat in itself. My brother will only spend one day with us, and drive back to his house late in the evening after dinner. But I'll wish that he will stay longer, that he may even decide to stay the night. I'll wish like I do every year, that we all just sit around the fire a little longer and talk. But the day will pass by like it usually does. I will be shortly packing to return to whatever country I'm in at the moment, my mom will return to her patients, my dad to the computer, and my brother to whatever job he does that makes a hell of lot more money than the rest of us. And then I'll be thinking about how to make Christmas better next year, how to keep the holiday spirit a littler longer, or how to make it mean more to us the next time.
However this year I am going to do just that. I will have Christmas music blasting 24 hours a day, and the oven baking something delicious every morning. I will be over-cheered, over-cooked, and over-Christmas by the time the new year rolls around. I'll take the time to set out my mom's holly china, and add pumpkin spice to everything. This year I'll be sure to let my family know how much I have appreciated their support in this last year, and how thankful I am to have them in my life. I will forgive them for things I have been holding on to, and make sure they know I love them.
After all, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year right?
11:20 is a time I look forward to with bated breath every single day. 11:20 will make or break the rest of my day. 11:20 can be the best part of the day, or the worst part of the day. The rest of the day depends on 11:20. I depend on 11:20.
11:20 is lunchtime.
During the morning hours as I teach, I look up at the clock endlessly watching time move by ever so slowly. I am always starving, and I am always praying for a good lunch. We have to eat with the kids, which are rather annoying, but most of the time I don't even care because I'm too consumed with the goodness (or repulsed) by the food that I'm hoovering into my mouth.
Lunchtime used to be even more of a gamble, before I figured out there was a lunchtime menu. One of my kiddos is from Denmark, so they always send an English copy to my class for her. (Why would they send an English menu for a girl from Denmark you ask? I asked the same thing, and was met with blank stares and confused grins.) I started to make a copy for myself, so that I could find out what the second half of the day would entail. If lunch is good, I'm happy and the rest of the day goes smoothly. If lunch is bad, I curse Korea in my head and make my kids lives miserable. Yep, that's how much I love food. That's how much I look forward to eating. That's how I make it through the days with the little Korean terrors.
However, the menu ended up being quite the guessing game, and rarely correct. Just the other day the lunch menu read:
-RICE-KIMCHI-MEAT PANCAKE-FRUIT
Now I don't know about the rest of the world, but I'm kind of keen on my pancakes being meatless. And the FRUIT they so falsely advertise is usually a small slice of apple, or a third of a banana. Hardly a servings worth. I have to bank on the good days of lunch because when it's bad, it's so, so bad.
Sometimes lunch is amazing. They serve us pork with steamed veggies and potatoes, plus rice of course. A few weeks ago they served this pumpkin dish that was absolutely divine. Spaghetti and meatball day is always a good day. Sometimes they make potato and corn purees, which remind me of my host mom's cooking in Spain, and she made amazing purees.
But alas, there are too many days that go wrong because of lunch. There are too many horrid looks exchanged with my co-worker. Today I had a particularly horrifying experience that brought me again back to my days in Spain. The menu said FRUIT, like most days. I was hoping for a banana or some tomatoes. But what was actually there, to my disbelief, was a wonderful fruit salad COVERED in mayonnaise. I couldn't even hold in my shock. I turned to a friend and said, "why on Earth would they ruin such a perfectly good fruit salad by putting mayo on it?!”
Most days I look down to realize that everything on my plate is either yellow or white. I realize that I am eating an insane amount of carbs, and that I would sell a kid on the black market for some meat. I'm not trying to sound ungrateful; I realize these ladies work hard to feed the entire school. And their jobs consist of cooking and cleaning up for a bunch of brats, and ungrateful foreigners like me. But I can't help but wish that a little more nutrition went into these lunches, for the kids really, not for ol' picky me. Koreans will go to great lengths to tell you how nutritious their foods are. But I'm sorry, between meat pancakes, mayonnaise fruit salads, and white rice.....what I'm seeing is a lot of clogged arteries, cottage cheese asses, and carb overload. Put some damn color in the lunches!
I suppose I should be more thankful that I get a lunch at all. I picture my mother standing over her desk gnawing on a power bar. Or my father sucking on peppermint and butterscotch candies all day long. Or even my brother who rotates between the same three restaurants every single week on his lunch breaks.
If there is one thing that lunchtime has taught me in Korea, it's to mind my p's and q's like the polite young lady I am. I've realized that I have incredible will power to force myself to eat something without gagging. I also remember to always smile at the lunch ladies, and say thank you when I'm bringing in my tray. Even if I'm thinking, 'thank you for the mystery meat pancake, the fruit salad with the side of lard, and also thank you for the hour I'll be spending on the treadmill later'.
I've never felt more like my mother than I did last night. I curled up in bed anticipating my next chapter in my recent book, and to my left on the night stand sat a perfectly poured glass of red wine. Now it's no secret that red wine and my mother are quite fond of one another, but it shocked me to my wits end as I took my first gulp of it. You see my mother does this thing when she drinks things, especially with wine. She takes a sip (extra-ordinarily loud mind you), and then she holds the liquid there for a good minute before she swallows it (again, extra-ordinarily loud). It drives me insane. I mean really, what do I care how long she holds her wine in her mouth? I have no idea, it just drives me nuts.
So I'm sitting there, about to indulge in a creepy book about a woman in a mental hospital (go figure eh?), and I realize that I've been holding the wine in my mouth for over a minute! I almost spit it out at the recognition of it, but my mother also told me never to waste wine. I swallowed it of course, savored it if you will. But the feeling was so bizarre and creepy, I sat there, back straight, for a good ten minutes trying to figure out how to defy all other inherit characteristics of becoming my mother. Nobody, and I don't care how wonderful a woman your mother is, nobody wants to become their mother. Bottom line.
Anywho, this brings me to my next random there is no point to this post, thought. This week is Halloween, and Friday we have some big event at school to put on for the kids. I absolutely love Halloween, but I hate dressing up. I like the pumpkins, the carving of the pumpkins, the scary stories and movies, the grave-yards, the haunted houses, the candy of course, I love it all. But I hate, hate, hate the amount of pressure there is to dress up and find a costume. We have to dress up at school "for the kids", which I'm reminded of daily. However, my kids are whimps. They're scared of Corduroy for pete's sake! I read them one of my all time favorite books as a child, Corduroy, and then had to spend the next week telling them that stuffed animals don't really come to life at night. Sweet Jesus that was a mistake.
I never realized how stressful Halloween was until I had to come up with costumes on my own. No wonder parents always hate Halloween. Lets face it, how many times has your mother thrown a sheet over you, wrapped an elastic around your neck and said, "Boo! You're a ghost." It's insanity. I ended up buying a kids pirate costume today, and hoping I can mangle it to fit me somehow without looking slutty.
I shouldn't complain really. I'm sure it'll be all fun and games when it's all said and done and Friday actually rolls around. The kids will be absurdly adorable in their costumes, and we'll play pin the tail on the black cat a million times. And maybe, just maybe, the mothers will send their kids to school with tons of candy for the teachers and I can self induce myself into a candy coma. Don't worry. I'll post pictures.
