birthday

My birthday will be over by the time I'm done writing this post and I couldn't have expected a better one. I wasn't even expecting a good one, since it seemed that we had run out of new and fun things to do quite awhile ago. Last week was a hard one (they just seem to keep getting harder) and I wasn't looking forward to a birthday weekend that had no foreseeable chance of being special. Saturday started out as nothing special, with a few hours of playing Starcraft and a strong cup of coffee. Another teacher came over with some mix for carrot cake and we watched a movie, which ended up sucking. By the time I was blowing out my candles, I was full-blown depressed. Then I got the idea to see if the Filipino store in town was open. Leta was convinced it wouldn't be, so it turned into one of those "Who's gonna be right?" things. We got there and not only was it open but it was crowded with people. Before we knew it, we were drawn into a conversation about the usual at first (where are we from, where do we work, how long are we here for, etc). We sat down, I accepted a drink and thus begun many new friendships. We got talking about everything from the inadequacy of Korean-style learning of English through simplified rote learning to the price of a head of cattle in America to how I needed to play basketball for their team. Hanging out turned into eating supper with all of them and proceeded late into the night. It was really refreshing to hang out with new people who spoke perfect English and I had been really missing the Philippines lately, going through my Asia pictures and seeing the kids that I grew so close to in only 2 weeks...

So anyways, there were kids running around and playing the whole while we were at the store. One of the little girls warmed up to Leta. After dinner, we went to a norebong (karaoke room) and they sang country music and Leta danced with the little girl and the whole thing was just tons and tons of fun. I had mentioned to the teacher we were hanging out with that I was indecisive about making birthday plans because I was dreading the idea of a birthday that was nothing special. This was what I needed and now, I've got some people to play basketball with on the weekends who speak English and all seem to be really laid back and cool.

My actual birthday, today, started out pretty crappy. I fell down in the tub and expertly bruised the base of my spine pretty badly. It doesnt feel like it's injured any more than just a bruise, because the pain is localized there, but it keeps me from exercising and makes leaning over extremely painful. Besides that, it was what I had pretty much expected: went into Gwangju, ate dinner at a nice restaurant, went out afterward and played Rummikub in a cafe. After the excitement of the night before, it was all the fun I needed. On the way home, I even met some exchange students from China and found out they were from Harbin, where I've been planning to visit at some point while I'm here. They went to university here in Naju learning Korean and turned out to be cool. They gave us these steamed things that are like... pancakes with syrup and walnuts cooked into them. And now my birthday is over and I'm looking ahead to another week of the same. At least the back injury will provide some variation.