one love, one life (No Regrets, Guns and Talks)

Love is a temple.
Love’s a higher law.

Thanks, Bono.

This has been a rough weekend. Not necessarily a bad one, but a draining one, and I’ve eaten horribly and haven’t been jogging since Wednesday, which sucks. I really need to get back on track this week, because I was doing so well.

Thursday and Friday at DMS were great. My “Have You Ever?” pop song lesson went over really well, and just all of the classes were really great. KSH is absolutely wonderful. She’s the epitome of what a co-teacher should be, I think, and I’m so glad I get to work with her. I went out and watched the boys play soccer while I studied Korean, and they all seemed to get a kick out of listening to me practicing. Two boys in particular seem to like me. I went exploring the school again during the free period, and they followed me around trying to talk to me, which was really cute. I finished Teacher Man on Thursday, and although I didn’t really gain a whole lot of specific insight, it did sort of inspire me. It reinforced for me what I already knew—that people who love teaching do it for the students. And I can definitely say that the best thing about Korea is the students. They don’t actually care about learning as much as I’d like, specifically English, but they’re really sweet, and they’re just fun to try to talk to and watch. I really hope they’ll inspire me to stick to studying Korean regularly, because I’d love to be able to understand them and talk to them about more than just their hobbies.

Friday night after school Tim came into town and we had pizza (bad diet!) Then we met Meghan and went to DVD bang. So here’s my review for the movie No Regrets:

I give No Regrets 2 and a half Bs out of 5. I didn’t really like it, which surprised me. I guess it’s one of the first completely Out Gay movies by an Out Gay Korean director, so it’s a big deal. It’s basically just a love story. There’s maybe some class issues involved, but they weren’t actually that important. The main character is an orphan living in Seoul, who has a job at a factory and works several other odd jobs to save money for university. But he loses his job at the factory, and because he’s about to turn 18, he’ll have to move out of the orphanage. So he goes to work at a gay drinking establishment. It’s “escorting” and prostitution, really. So suddenly the orphan boy starts to make a lot of money and gets rich, but then one of the patrons falls for him. And for roughly the first half or two-thirds of the movie, the two characters don’t get together, for no apparent reason. The love interest is a rich son of a CEO, who reaches almost the point of stalking the main character, and the main character is obviously attracted to him, but for whatever reason he refuses him repeatedly, calling him disgusting and saying that he’d kill him if he didn’t leave him alone. Presumably it’s because the boys are strongly discouraged from becoming involved with any patrons, and he’s an orphan who has rich-guy attachment issues. But it just seems pointless and stupid. Anyway, they get together finally, but then we find out that rich-guy-love-interest is actually engaged to be married (gasp)! He has every intention of breaking it off, but then his fiancée is pregnant and his mom says he has to marry her or he’ll presumably be out of the family. So after hardcore stalking gay callboy the entire movie, he suddenly shuns him completely. Then there’s a random unnecessary minor character death, and confusingly the main character is so angry about being jilted that he plots with another minor character (not the one who died, obviously) to murder his once-love interest and steal his money (or something?) It’s not clear. Anyway, he can’t go through with it, although they get him bound and gagged into the dug grave before he has this epiphany, but the friend turns on him and… They end up together, I guess, although the last scene is weird. Anyway, I wouldn’t say I regret seeing the movie, and I guess I appreciate it for… whatever it is, but I felt it had narrative issues, to say the least. And the main character just wasn’t charming to me. He was really really pretty, but I wasn’t endeared to him, so the whole thing was kind of… meh.

So I went home, and SURPRISE, there were roughly twelve relatives in the living room! I guess my mom did tell me that they’d be doing the ritual eating and kneeling thing again on the 14th, but I forgot. Most notably present was my host dad’s brother, who speaks English really well, and whose daughter was born in Texas. And his wife, and another woman I didn’t recognize and her son, and my host mom’s sister and her son, and a couple of other old women I didn’t know, and an old guy. So I sat down with the family, but that was awkward, because they were just talking, and I was sitting there. And then they did their bowing and sat down to eat, but I’d eaten pizza, so I was full. So they kept saying “You look… tired. Go sleep.” But I didn’t want to be rude, so I tried to stay, but eventually I left. Host uncle and his wife and kid stayed Friday and Saturday night. I didn’t get up or open my door until about 10am on Saturday, because I needed a break, and I wasn’t sure exactly who was home. Eventually my host uncle appeared and announced that they were going somewhere, so I quickly made plans to go to Gwangju with Meghan. We met Tim at the bus station and ate at TGIF FRIDAYS!

Just to be clear, I typically hate Fridays. But I was excited for the American ambience. The prices were ridiculous--$12 for a hamburger and $16 for chicken quesadillas, but it was, in my opinion, totally worth it. Our waiter was cute, and it was apparently silly hat day. Woohoo. After that we went in search of a DVD bang, eventually finding a huge one downtown. It had the Jeong Jae-Yeong movie I really wanted to see but which lacked English titles at our Naju DVD bang, so I was way excited. And it turned out to be… really good, at least in my opinion.

So, double review entry. Here’s my review for Guns and Talks, which I give 5 Bs, basically because of Jeong Jae-Yeong. Guns and Talks seems to me, someone who knows very little about the genre, in the spirit of Quentin Tarantino and The Boondock Saints and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. It’s a buddy movie, I guess, about four friends who lead a pretty normal life except for the fact that they’re assassins. The leader is the older brother of the youngest one, who isn’t actually allowed to shoot anyone yet. Jeong Jae-Yeong is the only one who can actually shoot well—he’s the great marksman. And he’s super hot! He has long hair, and wears black a lot, so he looks really young and in several scenes like a goth boy. It’s amazing. And Shin Ha-Kyun (who was in Welcome to Dongmakgol with JJY), plays the fourth member of their “male quartet of assassins.” He’s the comic relief, I guess, and kind of an annoying character. Anyway, they’re assassins, and they have some troubles, and that’s the plot of the movie. Shin Ha-Kyun falls in love with one of their intended targets, a pregnant woman, a high-school girl somehow finds out about them and begins hounding them to kill a teacher who jilted her, and a policeman is on to them as they’re planning one of their most difficult kills yet, hired by the news anchor they’re all in love with. It, surprisingly, ends happily. Anyway, I found it super-entertaining, and Tim and Meghan didn’t seem miserable. I like gangster movies, but this was even better—a gangster comedy with no huge narrative flaws. And JJY doesn’t die in the end! Although if I have one complaint, it’s that he doesn’t get enough face-time.

Most perplexingly, I think I may have reached the end of the list of JJY’s movies, at least ones in which he has more than a cameo appearance. Randomly Tim discovered a movie on the shelf in which he seems to be the main character, but it also appears to be a children’s movie? Weird. Not a gangster movie, anyway. So maybe I’ll save that for a rainy day. And I guess this means I’ll move on to Lee Byeong-Hyeon(g?). I want to watch Bungee Jump를 하다 again.

Sorry, MOST perplexingly, I have a huge canker sore… in the back of my throat. I’ve never actually had a canker sore there before, but it looks exactly like one, and it’s really big. So I think it’s the reason I’ve had a bad sore throat for a few days—I hope, anyway. And I hope it goes away soon, because it’s pretty sucky. So I felt crappy when I got home from Gwangju, and basically went right to bed.

I woke up late again this morning, depressed that I hadn’t accomplished much this weekend, but at least managed to finish up the two lessons for tomorrow, which makes me feel okay. The visiting family left around noon, but then six visiting friends came over, and were unbelievably annoying. That brought the total number of kids in the house up to 8, so I called in reinforcements and invited Meghan over. They were shrieking a lot, slamming doors, and just generally beating each other up non-stop, which was just annoying. And then, grandma appeared around 2:00 with… a kitten!

So we have a new pet kitten. Which might be exciting, except for about 12 things. 1) The kitten is the baby of a cat living on our farm, and we apparently don’t feel it needs any shots. 2) The kitten is waaaaay too young to be separated from its Mom. It’s tiny and has no motor skills. 3) Because Mom hates animals, the cat will be living in my room. So we made a late visit to the pet shop tonight, and bought the only litter pan they had, which I think is way too tall for the cat to even get into, but we’ll test that theory tonight. There was a really limited selection, since most Korean people don’t have cats as pets. I found American brand kitten food, but the proprietor of the store informed my Mom, in Korean, that kittens don’t eat food. They eat milk and rice.

To which I responded: Oh leally? I agree that this cat is probably too young to eat any real food, but I would think that eventually it needs real food? It wasn’t too interested in the rice they offered it today. The store owner then convinced my Mom that she needed to buy shampoo, which was actually dog shampoo, so we could give the cat regular baths. (I was already forced to give the cat a bath this afternoon, and I assure you that despite the fact that it’s an infant, its claws are sharp, and its aversion to water strong.) My mother noticed my perplexed expression and commented to the effect that I would need to get used to Korean style. Apparently. They were highly surprised when I tried to explain that in Miguk (America), cats bathe themselves. (I’ll concede that the problem may have been that I have no idea how to create a reflexive verb in Korean.)

Anyway, when we got home she handed me the litter box and said “You… do. I… hate… animal.”

Now, I think I may have once mentioned that I liked cats, when my host siblings saw the picture of Norman. But I never said “Please… let’s get a cat.” I would like one, but I don’t want one that will live only in my room and for which I’ll have to do everything. The kids were the ones who actually wanted the pet, and they’ll be bursting into my room every five minutes to play with it, but they’re not actually going to take care of it. So this seems like a bullshit deal. My parents probably feel that I’m receiving my just desserts for everytime that I really wanted a cat and then they ended up stuck taking care of it, but since neither of them were willing to man-up and take my last cat when I won a prestigious freaking fellowship, whatever.

It’s not even that cute! Maybe it’s too young to be cute yet. It’s all black with white feet. I’ll post pictures of my new roommate soon. Stacy named it “Happy,” although I preferred Allen’s suggestion of “Spiderman.” I’ve given it a Korean name, my new favorite word, because it sounds cool: 기다리다. It sounds like “kee-da-lee-da” and means “to wait.” Kida for short. I’ll admit that I’m no great expert on cat genitalia, but according to Grandma, it’s a girl. I should probably find Kida and make sure she hasn’t died or pooped on the floor before I go to bed.

Take care!



Yep, too small to be away from its mother. And look at its wittle white feet!



















This would be a gratuitous crotch shot, but the cat's there.






















I was trying to have one of those Simba Lion King moments but Kida the Happy Spiderman was not interested.