Amanda Takes Off...

Had a good weekend, even though some plans I had fell through. Saturday night Sabumnim and I had dinner together and saw Click. It was a more serious movie than I expected.

Sabumnim brought a large bag of puffed rice, corn, and puffed rice cakes. Watching her wrestle this bag out of her gym bag was amusing enough. Later, she spilled a large amount on the ground. She whispered, "Oh, many, many!" I felt the floor in front of her feet. It was covered in puffed rice. We tried not to giggle too loudly. At the end of the movie, I looked at the floor. She'd gently pushed it all underneath the seat in front of her during the movie.

As we were leaving, she paused and said her right leg hurt from push, push, pushing the rice on the floor. She was whispering, "I'm sorry, so sorry" to the theater janitors. For some reason, I found it ridiculously funny.

As a side note, I ate some Baskin Robbins' ice cream called "엄마는 외계인" if I remember correctly. In other words, "My mother's an alien."

Sabumnim made me pause when a new Nike ad come on on the big screen outside of Megabox. "Wait. Taekwondo," she said. Korea Nike's Just Do It. Breathe. ad features taekwondo, albeit not as close up as an ad that was playing here when I first arrived (titled "Just Do It. JDI." in the archives). I am curious to know if Nike's got a Michelle ad in the States like it does here.

I must admit, I nearly choked when she said that HR misses me. What? She said he's been asking "is she coming tonight, is she coming back?"

"I yelled at him!"

She shrugged. "He misses you."

Some interesting things happened at the studio tonight. Master was helping me take care of something. He said, "Amanda, wait, let me call my American friend. Your story very long."

"No, wait, listen."

As soon as he got us downstairs, away from noise, I restated what I needed. I had to look up one word and I was back to sounding like a cave woman, but he understood. "New X. New Y. New Z." Then he had a question that he thought Heidi might be able to answer (I'm not sure why, his American friend would have been better). He said, "Oh, Heidi, NateOn" and started to open a chat program.

I couldn't see my face, but I can imagine how it looked. "아니요. 아니요." No. No.

"왜?"

I had practiced this. I had perfected what I wanted to say. Instead I stammered in Korean, "No friend."

"Why?"

I just shook my head. He asked again. I shook my head. He asked again. After doing this for a few moments, I used three different words and that was the end of it.

He kept asking "why" and I just shrugged. Even if I had the vocabulary to tell him what happened, I still don't know why it happened. Nor do I care. Back out of the room over that, just don't call her for help.

We played some sort of game that involved racing a partner (in my case two partners, Crybaby and Handphone Girl) to pick up a focus target. You then hit your partner(s) on the thigh with the thing. We had to do ten jumping jacks first, then run, or do the "Wonder Woman!" thing, etc.

While I was in line waiting for my turn I thought, "I am a good sport about a lot of things, but I am 28 years old and I don't think I should be subjected to this. I am too old for this." Most days I don't mind being the oldest student by 7 years (of the regular students) but I wasn't digging on this. If I were competing against anyone else my own age, I would've been OK with it, but going against a high school student and a 13 year old? No.

Crybaby won the first round and started after me. I said, "28살이에요! 아니!" Mixing the polite and banmal form, I said, I am 28 years old! No!

She didn't smack me. Everyone else laughed.

She won every other round but one. I won that one.

I did smack her.

Gently.