Amanda Takes Off...

Today is Liberation Day. This is the day that Korea was liberated from Japan because America used an A-bomb. Or something like that.

So last night, after taekwondo class, Good Man and I went out for dinner with Master's family. It was really nice. His kids were so shy! It was funny, they weren't nearly as shy with my parents.

Good Man had met a professor of his for coffee during the day, so he showed up wearing a suit. He looked really good, but I kept expecting to see Good Man, not Good Man in a Suit, so I was a bit thrown off every time I saw him.

We had dak kalbi, which is chicken (and in this case rice cake, too) in a rich, spicy sauce. At the restaurant the waitress said I was the first foreigner she'd ever seen in there. She asked where I was from.

The restaurant was fairly small and everyone was listening. Master said, "She's Korean. She likes soju!" Everyone else smiled or laughed. The next two or three times she asked, he kept saying I was Korean. He did finally tell her I was an English teacher and I took taekwondo...then he did business, describing where he taught and how good his studio, and so on.

Over dinner I found out that NewSabumnim will be gone at the end of the month. She's going to be teaching in China for a year. I told him we should have a surprise party for her and recounted my story of the December surprise party to Good Man in English. Master followed up with his version in Korean.

Then I asked Master a question I've wondered about for a while. I wanted to know why Master—the youngest son—got Tongil and the family's house whereas his older brother got a new studio and no house. In part it came down to timing with the sons and their university and military time, but it also had to do with the fact that Master's Brother's Wife already had a house. I have wondered about this but couldn't figure out how to ask, so Good Man did it for me.

I asked Master how old his brother was (30) and found out his wife is 32. I said, "Oh, she is older." Master said, "Yes, like me!" I jutted my thumb at Good Man and said, "Like him, too." Master said, "Oh yes, true!" and reached across the table to shake his hand, as if he'd met kin. Master's Wife grinned at me and we both laughed.

We had soju, but Master poured in a different order than he taught me in the soju rules. He poured to Good Man first. Later I asked Good Man why. He said it's because it was two men meeting for the first time. (My response? "Your country is too complicated.") I figured it was something like that. When he remembered that Good Man is younger than me, I stopped pouring for Master and Good Man did it. We had three bottles, and I was doing pretty good shot for shot until the last few.

We had ice cream after dinner. While we were walking along, Powerful was on the street. Oh! I was so excited to see him, I haven't seen him in months! He's going to a hogwon to prep for the university exam. I greeted him and then walked away. I turned around and he was bowing and waving at me with a bit of a "who the heck is that?" look on his face. I miss him.

Master's Daughter held my hand while we went to the ice cream shop, walking along higher areas of the street then jumping down. Master was doing the same with his son near the subway steps. I wondered what the people around us thought.

After ice cream we went back to Master's house for coffee and fruit. We ran into Grin on the way back to Master's house, and he joined us to talk to Master. Master semi-introduced Good Man and Grin in this "this is a friend of Amanda's" way. It's common to either straight not introduce people or to semi-introduce people if one party really doesn't need to know the other.

While we were having coffee Master said to Good Man, "Amanda used to come to taekwondo every day. But now she is very busy." I asked Good Man later what Master meant. He said he was just teasing.

A very nice evening.