Days off. To be followed by more days off.

I have so many holidays! It's like they don't want me around at school.
I had Thursday off. It was midterm time at the boys' school, so obviously my classes were not happening. On Wednesday, I had done the crossword review, and I was wondering what to do on Thursday. Should I study my correspondence course? Should I just sit and nap, or surf the internet?
Luckily, towards the end of the day, James Park came to me and told me that I would not have to come the next day, since I had no classes.

SWEET!

Well, that was great. Bad news, though. I would have to go to school on Thursday morning, to "report to" my vice-principal. So, you can have the day off, but we will take away the best part. That's right, no sleeping in.
So, I go in. I was dressed pretty casual, but I usually am for days when I have to come but am not teaching. No reason to wear a tie if I will only be sitting around in the English lab all day. I have a seat at my desk, because I thought if I am reporting to school, I should at least sit at my desk. After about ten minutes (around 9am or so) I look over at my vice-principal, and I see that he is taking a nap.

It's 9 am. In the morning.

I couldn't believe it. There are times when he's asleep in the afternoon and I think "Wow, shouldn't you be working?" but I usually figure, well, he's put in a full morning, maybe he needs to recharge. But not at 9am! What, did you have a rough drive to work? What is your problem?!?! (the idea that he was hungover was later brought up)
AT any rate, I wound up sitting at my desk for over an hour just waiting for my vice-principal to wake up. I didn't want to wake him up, because that seems rude in any language. I mean, especially here, where you VP is your captain and you must respect him, do I wake him up by saying "Hey!", "Hey-yo!", or "Hey-imnikka!"? I mean, I want to use the proper level of respect. Especially if he's all cotton-mouthed and cranky.
I eventually made it home.
On Friday, we invited Matthew, the new foreigner and his wife over for dinner. I thought it would be nice, especially after they had helped us determine if we could take the dog in or not. Maybe I wasn't clear enough though when I invited them over that it was supposed to be for dinner. Hyeong-Mi (the wife) called around four, and invited us to come out for dinner. I said that I had made us a pasta sauce (us being Jessie and I plus her family) and she said "Okay, you eat that, and we'll come over around 8:30."
Then she hung up.
Well, it just meant more for us. It was good pasta too.
They did come around 8:30, and it was actually very nice. Their kids were so nice. Robert's kid... I can't imagine having into our apartment and not having to tie him up to maintain our own sanity. The younger guy, Jonathan, did make himself right at home and used me for a climber for about half an hour, and managed to do quite a number on my glasses, which I only managed to fix about five minutes ago.
We had a nice conversation, for the most part. The only awkwardness came from Matthew talking about the Korean hierarchial system using pretty strong terms right in front of Hyeong-Mi... I could not help but feel a little awkward. But even she seemed pretty annoyed with Yeongam. She said that the people here seemed very polite at first, because they spoke using very traditional language. But now she says that they talk about her and her husband all the time, and they talk about her even when he is not around. So, the town is pretty gossipy. Apparently, they're pretty rude too. I guess that we're lucky in that we can not understand anything that is said, so we can just assume that everything is nice or polite, as long as it comes with an accompanying smile.
Saturday, we were planning a trip to Gwangju. In fact it was planned out to be a pretty full day. We were to wake up early, and then we were to head to Gwangju for a Korean language lesson, and then a shopping spree. Jessie wants to get some spring clothes, and I just want to get out of the house. But, I woke up around eight, and thought about getting up. I don't know why, but I have been so tired for the last week. I just can't get out of bed, and when I go to bed, I have been falling asleep pretty much immediately. Long story short, we didn't go.
We didn't even go shopping. We were supposed to take the train from Gwangju to Mokpo. We were meeting Rodrigo and Sarah for the "Mokpo Miracle". That's what they call the sunset. Maybe you didn't know, but the sunset was invented in Mokpo by fishermen trying to come up with a reliable system of marking the end of each fishing day.
We had a nice picnic, even though we arrived a little later than we had planned. It was surprisingly cool by the seashore, which probably should not be so surprising to someone with a geography degree. I only wore a light hoodie, and I was pretty cold. Mostly my hands, but still. Rodrigo had made some hamburgers with some ground pork, and they were amazing. We had a fun little visit by the water, and we drank and were merry. Actually, I began to realize just how little I drank as the couple of glasses of beer and wine I had hit me pretty hard.
While we were sitting there, these four Korean girls came and started hanging out just down the way. We took pictures for them, and they took pictures for us. My phone started ringing. Which was surprising, because I was sitting with all the people who had the number. I looked at the display, and I recognized the number as being the guy who had called twice a few nights before and tried to talk to me in Korean.
The third time he called while we ate, I took the phone over to the girls and told them "This man, tell him, 'wrong number'". They talked to him for a bit, and it turns out that he was Mongolian! They talked for about five minutes, and at that point, I clarified that it was the wrong number, and she passed it on. Mission accomplished. I thanked them, and went back to our little dinner.
He called back five minutes later. The current theory is that the phone used to belong to his lover. You see, he's obviously a sailor. The picture of the women that shows when my phone turns on is of his lover and her friend. The baby that shows as the phone shuts down is obviously their love-child.
Around eight o'clock, they lit up the "Dragon Island" , which was right off the shore from where we were sitting. If you took the lumps to be the associated lumps on a dragon, assuming that you know what a dragon looks like, and you added and subtracted lumps from your mental image to make it fit, and then squinted your eyes until almost anything would look like a dragon, then Dragon Island would look just like a dragon. They had a row of lights up the back, which changed colour like Christmas lights in successive order from tail to head (I think). Then the the head (I think) lit up orange and green.
It was truly magical.

This entry is going way too long. But, you know, my life is just so exciting...

one more thing... Last week I asked Mr Lee if I would have Monday off, because it is Teacher's Day, and it was my understanding that most schools do not have classes during that time. Jessie had the day off, so I figured maybe if I had it off, we could go away for the weekend. Anyways, Mr Lee said that I had to come in. Then he called me on Friday night and retracted it! We could have made away plans! Argh! So now, we're doing our shopping spree tomorrow. Apparently he had wanted me to come for the ceremony (all in Korean) but for some reason now I don't have to.

SWEET!