Ground Score

It’s only been about a week since my last post. Last weekend my friends and I were supposed to make up for missing Thanksgiving in the states by getting together for a big feast on Saturday night. We ended up not getting around to it, and I feel like Thanksgiving was a flop. However, and more importantly to the Korean experience, it was Malcolm’s birthday that weekend and I spent about three hundred dollars during those two days. A few days later, after I was done sulking about my spending habits, I took charge. I finally sent home most of the money I had leftover, leaving myself with just enough to survive until Christmas Eve.

             I’ll get my next paycheck on Christmas Eve, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect. Malcolm, two South Africans, and myself are going snowboarding for five days starting Christmas Eve night. There is no way we were just going to sit around that weekend not doing something amazing. The girls are volunteering at an orphanage that weekend. I’m all about giving credit when credit is do, but that’s the last thing I would want to do on the holidays. Not only would I not be spending the most celebrated holiday in America with the people love, I’d be spending it sober with a bunch of children who don’t understand me or the Santa hat I’d be wearing. I’m going to the mountains…

            January is coming up, and I get two weeks off after I finish three weeks of English winter camps. Thailand’s on my mind. I’ve heard the full-moon parties there are the best beach parties in the world. The timing just isn’t in our favor, though. We looked at the moon cycle, and we are going to miss it by a few days. At least we will get to join in on the half-moon party. It it’s half the fun a full-moon party is, I won’t be disappointed.

            I found an acoustic guitar on the side of the road this week. In Korea, people pile their trash bags around the nearest telephone poll. Ajumas—little, old, Korean women, who walk around, hunched over like Quasimodo—scrounge through the trash, picking out recyclables. Luckily I found the guitar on top of a pile before one of them got to it. I was walking home from school on Monday when I noticed the guitar sitting atop a heap of trash bags. The neck had been super glued to the body, and the strings rose about an inch from the frets at the bottom of the neck, but it was better than no guitar at all. I dropped it off at home, and then caught a tab to Home-Plus (Korean Wal-Mart). They sell over-priced guitars there, and I knew they’d have strings. Once I was home, I restrung the rusted instrument and gave it a strum. A few of the tuning knobs were missing screws, and the bridges—the plastic pieces with six small groves that run perpendicular to the strings, and hold them in place—had been accidentally filled with super glue. Long story short, I might just need to invest in a new guitar.