Amanda Takes Off...

Last night I went out for dinner with Sabumnim from TempStudio. We were near her university, KNSU, so we stopped by there, too, even though it was dark.

This is half of their taekwondo studio. The metal walls on the left side can be rolled up to double the available space. We walked in there, and I said, "Whoa. This place is huge." She said most classes have about 50 people in them.

It was nice to see her, even though it was only for a brief time.

Yellow dust, fine sand from the Gobi desert, has hit us. I ignored the extreme dust day warning yesterday because I didn't see anyone else with masks on outside and I couldn't see the dust when I left my house.

That was stupid of me.

After being outside for a total of 20 minutes, my eyes, nose, ears, and lungs were burning. Sabumnim was coughing, too. And the moon was...fuzzy looking. So on the way home I picked up a yellow dust mask, meaning I now have a white cloth mask that's supposed to help save my lungs.

I'm keeping it in my jacket pocket.

Tonight I gave Master's wife (who answered the door) the thank-you note. Their daughter was sitting in the living room with Crybaby. She yelled, "AMANDA!"

Master came into the studio, nodded at me, paused as if he was going to say something, and gave me a smile that said it all.

Laster we talked more about our weekends. When I told him about drinking dongdongju with H, he said, "Oh! Oh! I teach you about dongdongju! Did you tell him that?"

We played soccer tonight. Right before class, Master turned on one of his CDs (he doesn't often play music in class, which I like). It was an English-language song with opening lines that made me look up in shock. "Master, oh my God!"

He immediately switched the song. "I don't know, Amanda. I don't know what it means. Is it bad?"

"Yes, really bad."

"I don't know words, Amanda."

"I know, it's OK but..." I made my eyes as wide as possible and shook my head.

I listen to Korean music a lot. Mostly the same CDs over and over because after a while I can pick things out. (I had a heck of a time pronouncing 고마워요 until I realized one of my songs used it over and over. Suddenly, I had no problem say it.) But I'm always afraid I'm going to caught mumbling not-understood-to-be but totally-misappropriate phrases to myself.