The Surreal Life

So, I've been sick.
I have a two day work week now. I stayed home Monday and Tuesday, and yesterday was one of those fluke holidays they told us would happen. My school was having a picnic. I chose not to attend. Had things been different, say, I taught a school where kids actually cared about/already knew some english, I would have gone, but as it is I would have been a little leech attached to my coteacher, constantly asking "What's happening now?" or "What did he say?".
Anyways, I was on the mend, and extremely stir-crazy from two solid days housebound. Actually three, I don't think I left on Sunday either. I had the day off, so I could leave the apartment and be free of guilt, and not sneak around. I was sitting at the computer when there was a knock at the door...
It was Jessie! Apparently, on the way to the bus stop, to go to her home school, not to teach, but simply to occupy space, she had figured "Hey, I live with a guy who has been sick for two days and has a day off. This would be a good day to play hookey. " And it was. Pretty believable that she would have caught what I had, especially since I was also "staying home". Cue the "Chukka chukka... BOW BOW" and the shots of blue sky with minimal fluffy white clouds. All we had to do was convince Cameron to let us use his dad's car, and we would be set for a Ferris Beuller-style day off.
(And I know where you thought the "Chukka Chukka... BOW BOW" was going, but rest assured, it's not that kind of blog)
Anyways, my getting out of the house plans had included a day trip to Mokpo, but that was out now, because we almost always run into Jessie's students in Mokpo. We decided on Kwangju, which is the capital of our province, and the fifth largest city in Korea.
A one-hour bus ride later, we were there, sitting in a Baskin Robbins. I decided to go for an Asian twist and have "Green Tea" ice cream, Jessie went with the cheesecake, which may have been a better idea considering how hard cheese is to get here. Delicious start.
Next stop, the department store that is spitting distance from the bus station. Real classy.
So, a real easy solution to unemployment presents itself. Giving everyone crappy retail jobs. Seriously, staff outnumbered patrons by about four-to-one. If there was a shelf, there was a minimum-wage worker attending to it. It was a sea of uniforms. Apparently, it's not meant to be high-pressured, but compared to Sears, it was the bottom of the ocean. You could tilt your head at something, and twelve people would descend on you to ask you something. What that was, I'm not sure, I still know no Korean. We left the department store as quickly as we could. We were lucky not to get the bends.
We picked a direction to walk in, and walked. I was so glad to be out of the apartment I didn't care. I would have walked anywhere. I was ready.
As we crossed the parking lot entrance, a strange man in a red usher's uniform began to perform a perfect mime for us. It was pretty entertaining. Another woman, in an identical uniform, was speaking to us through a microphone. It was amazing! What was happening? I watched, mesmerised by their wide-brimmed red hats. And then I realized... they're directing traffic. It was the craziest thing, it actually looked like the guy was dancing. He couldn't just point, he had to spin a little too, and the woman, in between thanking every car that drove in, would bow to welcome it. It is crazy here. Absloutely crazy. I can't even believe it.
The reason we chose to go to Kwangju is that there was a design festival happening. It's not really my kind of thing, but it sounded interesting enough, and non-Korean language-based enough to get my interest. When we got there, we looked at some photo displays, and then bought tickets. We followed the map to where restaurants should be, only to find a construction site. We went back, to find the line we had ignored had just ballooned to about 300 middle school students. We got in line with them. They laughed. We wondered why. Then an english interpreter came and rescued us from the line, which was apparently just for the school trip. Great.
Anyways, I guess for a design exhibition, it was pretty standard. Crazy computer-kitchens, couches made out of balloons, clothes out of a 1950s sci-fi movie... and for some reason, clothes that lit up when you hugged someone. Very practical indeed. Another nice touch was the tree skeleton with plastic globes containing mp3 players hanging from the branches.
It was all very neat, but you had to feel for the kids on the school trip. You couldn't touch anything, or try anything. Jessie was particularly annoyed by that. Apparently, they only decided to design one of each thing, and couldn't take a chance on anything happening to it. One very very cool thing though, is that Jessie got some very good tea prepared for her by hand by a woman in traditional garb. It was very neat. Afterwards, we went to the restaurant in the basement, and felt horribly underdressed. Jeans and sweatshirts in a white-table-cloth "fusion" restaurant, whatever that means. It was pretty good though. After, we were asked to fill out a survey about the design fair with our interpreter. That was awkward. I wasn't too impressed with it, because some of the stuff was really boring, or just impractically eye-catching... and the cool stuff couldn't be touched. So that made filling out a survey through an interpreter pretty awkward.
Anyways, then we went home, which was good, because my recovering body had had enough.
That's all for now.
More news later.