Okay, I’ll say it: OCTOBER! WHAAAAT?!?

Okay, moving on.

Monday, Sep 30

Other than Drone Show Saturday, I literally spent the entire weekend holed up in my room studying for a test and practicing a presentation: which the culmination of both were today. The test: HA HA HA HA HA funny not funny. The presentation was…okay. I hate that they schedule two big things like this on the same day and I have to figure out how to best divide my time. The test might BE more important, but…I can fail the test quietly with no one knowing but the teacher. The presentation, I have to stand up in front of 15 humans and if I don’t have it memorized well, UGH. That’s mortifing. A public display of failure. So I end up spending more time on the presentations (there’s two each term) and just let the test cards land where they may.

So when I got home, I CRASHED, big time. I ordered steak and rice NOT ON A FRIDAY, watched TWO episodes of a k-drama, and was in bed by 9pm. Of course, I’d had the wonderful surprise today of learning that there’s no class tomorrow! I knew it was a “new temporary holiday,” whatever that means exactly, but it wasn’t marked as a school holiday on the calendar. So since I already know I’m off on Thursday (for some other holiday I’m not sure about) and plan to DO SOMETHING FUN that day…

Tuesday Oct 1

Not my photo. Credit: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world

…I stayed home all day today and got myself a little ahead with vocabulary and pre-doing the exercises in the workbook so I don’t have to look like such a boob when we do them in class on Wednesday. I did some of my remote work, which got totally ignored last week due to LIFE…and even got to read a bit. And now it’s 7:30pm and I’m about to get into my nightgown, watch one episode of a show, and be in bed again by 9:00pm.

Living Large in South Korea.

Oh, the reason I was able to stay home today was because it was Armed Forces Day. This was the 76th one but it’s only just been declared a “temporary” holiday, where people get off from work and school. I think South K just wanted to parade around all their soldiers and tanks and even some top secret missile (not so top secret anymore) just to say HEY NORTH KOREA, don’t come for us, We’ll Take You Down. That’s just my hypothesis. Also North Korea has SO many more soldiers…in 2022, South Korea had approximately 500,000 military forces, while North Korea had around 1.28 million. And they certainly brag about their weaponry, but I don’t know truly who has more killing power.

Anyway, there were huge parades all over the place…and fancy airplane tricks happening above. I didn’t go to a parade but I did hear/see the planes practicing over the weekend.

Wednesday, Oct 2

Walking home from the bank

Never left the building yesterday so had to go to the bank today for rent. Bad Goshiwoner. Rewarded myself for adulting with a sit-down in Starbucks with my favorite drink: Grapefruit Honey Black Iced Tea. They certainly don’t have that back home! It’s a lovely thing. I’ll miss all the grapefruit things when I leave Korea. It’s just under half a mile to the bank and back and thank goodness I’m getting better about Just Going and not whining about not having a car and having to walk everywhere.

Class was fine. It’s nicer when it’s sandwiched between two days off, as today was.

Thursday, Oct 3

Today was Foundation Day in Korea. Foundation Day, October 3, has traditionally been regarded by Koreans as the date for the founding of the Korean race. That’s amazing that they know that to the day. Do we know that? Was it when the English came to America? That doesn’t seem like the same thing – our race didn’t change then, the people that came first might have suddenly started calling themselves Americans, but they were still the same race they had always been…no?

I’d had sort of plans for the day off but…they never really materialized and I just piddled in my room. Only went outside to sit on the roof for a dramatic sky at sunset.

Friday, Oct 4

Tutor. Class. Fried chicken. Kdrama.

Saturday, Oct 5

Today I DID A THING. Wow. Ha. Last year I missed the BIG annual fireworks display…who knows why, no one wanted to go with me? I was scared to go alone? I dunno. But since this might be my last autumn in Korea I’m making a real effort to not miss any of the things!

And while the show itself did not disappoint…it was a BEAR getting in and out. They’d been predicting between 500,000 and 1,000,000 (yes, you read that right, a MILLION) attendees at the main park where the display was taking part. I could not believe 1,000,000 people could FIT. Anyway, fortunately, the display was happening over the Han River, so there were many places to see it from. We (me and two friends from the building) left home at 4:00 for the 7:30 show, thinking we’d be there in PLENTY of time to find a good spot.

HA HA HA HA. Never Underestimate South Korea when it comes to how many people attend events. They are NO JOKE. ALL the people go to ALL thing things. When we got there (and the Uber driver had to drop us off like a half-mile from the park because of the traffic) we walked along with the throngs – yes, THRONGS – of people who were ALSO headed to the park to look for a spot to sit and watch the fireworks). There Were No Spots. People were EVERYWHERE. Every square inch of ground was taken up with mats, chairs, tents, camera tripods, and people. We walked. And walked and walked and walked. There was a LOT of security due to the expected crowds (SK is very cautious now after the Itaewon Disaster of 2022) so you could only sit in designated areas and you couldn’t block pathways or access for emergency vehicles. Eventually we wound up inside a fenced-in basketball court surrounded by trees. We had little hope of seeing anything.

Fortunately, most of the fireworks were big and high enough that they were mostly above the treeline. Yay.

There were three countries represented: Japan, the US, and Korea. They each had their own 20-minute display. The Japanese were my favorite. They’re very colorful and there are a lot of explosions at once. I could easily recognize the American fireworks, cuz they’re very samey-samey, not nearly as much variety as the other two countries. Korea finished up with a great display and the grand finale. The crowd was appreciative and applauded after every really big and beautiful explosion. That was really nice. A lot of people had brought laptops and were watching the live stream of the show as it was happening over our heads. Obviously the scene over the lake was much better than our view over the treetops, but…at that point we were happy to be able to see anything.

But. When it was OVER…,and we waited a bit to give the crowds some time to thin out…it took us TWO HOURS to get out of the park, up the (oh so many) stairs to street level, and to the nearest bus stop…and onto the first bus with space on it for us. I’m gonna say the line just to go up the stairs was easily a quarter mile long. And there were two sets of stairs, both equally long and slow.

Then it was standing room only for most of the (hour-long) bus ride, I only got a seat about 10 minutes from home…and then it didn’t go to any of the stops closest to home, it let us off much further away so there was still another half-mile to walk…when my hips, knee, foot were just DONE.

Would I do it again? Yes. But only if I could swing a better viewing spot. I saw videos of the park the night before and there were already so many people in spots. There were good seats for sale up-front at the main park, going for like 200,000w ($150 US), and lots of good vantage point cafes in the area took reservations for the evening just for fireworks viewing. There are a lot of high rise apartments along the river, I bet there were a lot of “fireworks airbnbs” happening.

All in all, an exhausting but good day.

Ahh, I wish I had better pictures but I took mostly videos. Here’s just a quickie…you have to click the link and wait a second…

1SE – fireworks korea 10.5.24 (20241006-005003)

Sunday, Oct 6

And today I am crippled, ha ha. I expected as much after yesterday. I gave myself a relaxing morning…did some work and studying, read and napped and just took it easy. I don’t think I left the building.

And tomorrow is a new week when I will try Once Again to find a better balance between Koreaning (all things related to learning Korean: class, tutoring, studying, homework, language exchanging, etc) and enjoying myself. Of course, the midterm starts on Friday, so…we’ll see how I do. There is a holiday on Wednesday – Hangul Day – for which I have tentative “getting out of Seoul” plans. Yeah, we’ll see. My guilt usually takes over and I stay home and study.

See ya later love ya bye.