Heartfelt Confessions

Roughly six months ago, I discovered that the bigger grocery store here in town will deliver your groceries to your door if you spend more than 10,000 won. I also discovered that the delivery boy is a cheerful, good-looking man. After that most welcome of revelations, I began buying water, juice, and milk (i.e. the heavy stuffy) at that store and having them delivered. My usual practice is to bike to the store, buy my groceries, dump them in a box, write my address on said box, and then hustle back to the apartment before the delivery guy arrives. That way, I can be there to open the door and gush about how thankful I am that he delivered them for me.
Today, I was in a good mood. I had spoken with Lil' Sis on Skype, and PJ was scheduled to come down from Incheon to visit this weekend. After school, I pedaled over to the grocery store, bought two cases of water, lemonade, apple juice, mango juice, grape juice, and milk. I boxed them up and whistled my way back to the apartment. I propped the front door open, as it was terribly hot, and set about making dinner. I pulled a carrot and a cucumber out of the fridge and began cutting them into sticks and circles, respectively.
A few minutes later, I heard the thump, thump of purposeful footsteps and looked up to see the delivery man at my door.
I smiled. "Annyeonghaseyo!" I said, putting down the knife and wiping my hands on a towel.
He smiled back (swoon!) and put the case of water and box of juices on the floor. Then he turned and lifted the second case of water off his dolly.
"Kamsahamnida!" I beamed.
He nodded, still grinning. "Mashiketuseyo," he said ("Enjoy your meal.")
"Kamsahamnida!" I said again. "Annyeonghikaseyo!"
"Annyeonghikeseyo," he said back, turned and exited.
I listened to the thump, thump of his footsteps and the creak of the dolly wheels getting softer as he walked down the hall.
"You're beautiful!" I called. "I love you!"
The footsteps stopped and then returned at a much quicker pace.
He appeared in my open doorway. "Mwoyo?" ("What?")
"Uh . . ." My face was bright red from a sunburn, but I knew I was blushing. "Thank you? Kamsahamnida?"
He laughed and I knew I wasn't going to get out of it that easily.
"Sarang e?" he teased. "Sarang e?" ("Love?  Love?")
"Yes," I admitted.
Even though I was so humiliated, I thought my head would burst into flames, I laughed. I couldn't help it. We both stood there laughing and smiling like idiots.
"Okay, okay," I said, flapping my hands at him. "You can go now. Thank you. Bye. Kamsahamnida."
"Goodbye," he said in English and turned. With one last amused look over his shoulder, he left.
I heard him laughing all the way to the elevator.

Good, Clean Fun

"One, two, three . . ." M&M trailed off as he counted the photographers. ". . . thirty four, thirty five. Thirty five of them! They're like locusts! They just keep coming!"
The participants of the photography contest had corralled us against the water, their huge SLR cameras aimed at us like rifle scopes. The clicks of the shutters was just background noise to the pleas of "One more, okay? One more time, okay?" We four westerners stood in the sun, striking pose after pose and (most of us) struggling to keep smiles on our faces.
"The photographers," our host, Isaiah explained, "are in a competition to see who can take the best photo. That's why they all want to take a picture of you guys; you're interesting and different."
And, we were. Myself, M&M, Lemonade, and Lord Oswell Firewine were the only Westerners there (other than two ladies that we saw very, very briefly). As such, we were bestowed celebrity status complete with camera-armed paparazzi. We dodged the cameras as best we could and took in all the sights of the mud festival.
That is, we saw stuffed squid, mud, robotic puppies for sale, mud, stuffed pork intestines, mud, lots of hats and umbrellas, mud, free beer, mud, colorful statue-type people, and mud. Did I mention the mud?
I only mention the mud because I fell in it.
Twice.
Sunday, July 17, 2011 was the first annual Mud Festival of Goheung County in South Korea. There were booths of food and more booths of food and drums and dancing and singing and . . . you get the picture. There were also mud-olympics.
They had a mud footsal competition, which is sort of like soccer, but in knee-deep mud. They had mud wrestling. They had mud tug-of-war. They had mud platform tug-of-war, where each team of five participants stood on a Styrofoam block. They had mud-board races where a person would lie on their stomach on a long, broad, ski-looking board, and push themselves through the mud with their arms. They had a bicycle relay. Yes, they had a bicycle relay, and yes, we signed up for the bicycle relay.  Despite his skill with the motorcycle (hey, balancing a bicycle should be easy after riding a motorcycle, right?), I couldn't convince M&M to join our team. And Lord Oswell Firewine insisted that because of the shockingly ungentlemanly behavior of certain people in his childhood, he never learned to ride a bicycle. So, Lemonade, two Korean girls, and myself made the four-person team.

Let me preface this next bit by saying that I can ride a bike. I can ride a bicycle like nobody's business. I can ride a bike and talk on the cell phone at the same time. That's how good I am.
However . . .
I cannot ride a muck-covered bicycle on a wooden plank 18 inches wide that has been smeared with slimy, slippery mud.

I sat on the bicycle, pushed off, and slid right into the mud.
As I sank hip-deep into the muck, I couldn't help but think that Lord Oswell Firewine would have done as well as I in this competition.
Lemonade came to my rescue and hoisted me out of the muck. I scrambled back onto the bicycle, pedaled, and slid off the board again. The third time, though, was a charm. I pedaled to the end of the planks and hopped off. I handed the bike to my Korean teammate and she pedaled across the plank to give it to Lemonade, who also fell off the board several times. He made it to my end and our fourth teammate pedaled to the other side like she was pedaling through the flower-dotted countryside instead of a huge expanse of limb-sucking mud.
So, thanks to our Korean team-mates, we made it to the semi-finals where we were given the bicycle with the crooked handles. Fortunately, I noticed the crooked handles right away and managed to get across the board without falling in once. Yay for me! However, trying to quickly explain to my Korean teammate that we had drawn the short-stick, bicycle-wise, proved difficult. She fell in twice. By the time we picked her out of the mud the second time, our two competitors had already completed their runs.
We had to be content with third place.
And bronze medals.
And prize money.
And the warm, fuzzy feeling that we were all going home as champions.

Crash Like You Meant It

I've fallen off my bicycle three times in the last week. The first time, I was attempting to avert a collision with a car that appeared to be most comfortable when swerving all over the road. I jumped up on the narrow sidewalk, but my back wheel caught on the curb and I crashed. My audience of elderly Koreans stared with fascination as I untangled myself from my bicycle and stood up. Then they all smiled and nodded at each other, as if to say, "See? I knew she wasn't hurt. No need for assistance." The second time, I barreled off the edge of the road into some gravel. The truck that had run me off the road honked, loud and long, and sped by.
This last time, I fell simply because I wasn't paying attention to where I was going.
I pedaled to my apartment building after school, hot and tired. Three 2nd grade boys were playing cops and robbers (or the Korean equivalent) with toy guns. They saw me and started waving and yelling, "Hayna! Hayna!" I waved back and, with their expectations fulfilled, they began shooting at each other again. I smiled at their childish antics, promptly hit the curb, and fell off my bicycle.
I remained on the small patch of weeds I had (thankfully) fallen into, listening to the shouts of alarm around me. The three boys ran over to me, expressing various levels of concern. I stared at them for a moment, and then inspiration struck.
"I've been shot!" I clutched my side. "I've been shot!"
They looked at me in confusion so I pointed at their guns.
"Owwie!" I groaned. "Owwwwieee!"
One of the boys examined his neon-orange, plastic gun.
"Yes," I said, nodding. "The gun."
He furrowed his brow and pointed the gun at my face.
"No!" I said, suddenly panicked.  "Andae!"
I didn't know what kind of toy gun they had. Some of them have actual foam pellets or, worse, bullet-shaped plastic shells.
He pulled the trigger and a stream of water hit my forehead and ran down my nose.
"Sonsangnim?" he questioned.
"No, no, I'm fine," I sputtered. "Teacher is fine. Sonsangnim gwenchanayo."
He nodded, beckoned to his friends, and they took off.
I wiped my face on my sleeve and limped away, musing that I probably deserved what I got.