1. Cashed in on some easily acquired brownie points by inviting Q over for breakfast. He sat on the couch, bonded with Mi Nam, and enjoyed a tasty breakfast while watching TV and while I ran around getting ready for our little weekend-get-away.
2. Junior Mint texted me to tell me that someone dropped off a gift for me; food for Mi Nam... hehehe... and not just any kind of food, luxurious high-end doggy treats called "yogurt cheese sesame sticks". Turns out my "stardom", if you'd call it that, has thrown Mi Nam into the spotlight with me. Because of my boxing, my gifts to date have ranged from free gym memberships, Adidas boxing boots, to socks, potatoes, and now dog treats... hehehe.
3. Loaded up the cars and off Q, some of his coworkers, and I headed for Pension Village, a village of rented out massive houses on an island here in Korea. In Canada we'd call them cottages. Some of them were massive. We had reserved one of the massive ones cause our group consisted of about 13 adults and 7 children; children ranging from a couple months old to 5 years old. From the get-go, I had a bad feeling about the whole trip but Q claimed it'd be fun and so I agreed to go along. The house we had rented out was huge. It had a mini waiting pool in the backyard, a singing room in the basement, huge bathrooms, a beautiful back porch, and it was about a 2 minute walk from the ocean. Sounds nice, eh?! Well,... may I remind you that there were 7 children?!!!
4. My patience lasted about only an hour before the kids were just driving me mental. Why did they invite me to this place that was basically no different than a jail except that it was prettier. I've heard of dripping water as a form of Chinese torture but screaming children, was this a form of Korean torture?! And if so, what did I do so wrong to deserve this?!!! Seriously... things went from bad to worse and it was only a matter of hours before I started texting my friends, telling them that I was stuck in hell. Hell... H- E- double hockey sticks. Hell. There was nothing fun or funny about it, like Q had said there'd be.
5. My first question to Q, "Who was the wise guy behind this that planned this trip?" I wanted to kick him, seriously. I'm fully aware that children are noisy and children tend to be little curious troublemakers but THEY chose to have kids, I didn't, and yet it was ME who was trying to calm them down, stop them from sticking their fingers in the door hinges and carrying them up and down the stairs. I tell ya, I don't know what they thought when they decided to have a child. Maybe they thought it would be fun. I guess someone should have told them it also meant work... and learning parenting skills. Am convinced that inviting an unmarried, childless person to an event that is clearly for families is just as "fun" as asking a single person to a couple's dance. Why would you do that?! Where's the logic in that?!
6. Side note to all you parents who worry about your daughters getting pregnant, send them on a weekend get-away with a house full of terrorizing ankle bitters and I promise you they'll come home scared stupid of ever getting pregnant!!!
7. OK, so maybe I'm exaggerating... wait, no, I wasn't. It honestly was much worse and by 5pm I found myself alone, sitting beside the ocean and mumbling not-so-nice things... hehehe. Thankfully I can laugh about it now but on Saturday, it was no laughing matter. I was in tears. With exams coming up, the next two weeks are going to be really busy and really stressful. I really needed to have this weekend to relax and this was definitely quite the opposite.
8. Found refuge at the beach and so that's where I spent most of my day, sitting on some concrete wall watching people digging for crabs and shells. The tide disappears during the day, leaving a gigantic field of mud and so it was hilarious to see people slipping and sliding, losing their sandels, and throwing mud at each other.
9. Lately I've been feeling rather bitter about things. Things I shouldn't be bitter about, like getting invited out to dinner parties by Q's coworkers, and so I have been staying home a lot.. too much. I've come to the conclusion that this must be homesickness. I am officially homesick and so things that once never agitated me are now testing my patience. Today I had a bit of a meltdown beside the ocean. There I was being force to deal with someone else's friends' rude manners and their annoying children in a house that sounded like the walls were paper thin. I am always dealing with other people's friends. When do I get to go on weekend get-aways with my friends? Q says I'll have less of these "rough patch" days once I have a better handle on the Korean language but I don't think language is the problem anymore. I am homesick. I sat there for 3 hours at the beach, hoping that one of the many people I had come there with would notice that I had gone missing. No one noticed.... except for a 30 year-old Korean guy out walking his mother's dog. He noticed me all upset and so he sat with me. He called me pretty but I rejected his compliment, telling him that my tears had washed away all my make-up and made my eyes puffy. Oddly enough, he jumped up, ran off and then returned with nail polish. I thought it rather odd but as he started to paint my nails, I couldn't help but laugh. It was definitely one of the strangest things a total stranger has ever done for me. "Now pretty" was what he said after he finished applying the clear polish. Thirty minutes later Q found me. He pleaded with me to go back to the house, it was getting cold and I was shivering. I didn't want to go back. I was so done with the loud mothers totally disregarding any kind of parenting skills and their wild children who clearly controlled both their parents. Oh man, if only my mother was there. I swear, my mom not only would have set them straight with ground rules but she would have had turned them into angels.
10. The rest of the night was good, surprisingly. That is, up to the time when I wanted to go to bed and the kids didn't. But besides that, it was nice to hang out with the men. We sat around the dinner table, taking turns cooking and telling stories. Then, after we had eaten for what felt like hours non-stop, we went to the basement for a couple hours of singing and dancing. Their dancing was terrible, to tell you the truth, but they were having so much fun and so it was so refreshing, considering how the rest of my day went.
QUESTION OF THE DAY...
Since when did children become rulers of a house?
QUOTE OF THE DAY...
I like children, but these ain't children.
-- Me
As the story has it, one day I headed to the opposite side of the globe – the Flipside. I arrived in Korea February 16th, 2005 and thought I’d do a year, then leave. I was wrong. I stayed, launched my first company, Flipside Fitness, and then opened Korea's largest boxing club, Hulk's Boxing (now called Hulk's Club).
After 11.5yrs in Korea, I then picked up one day and returned to Toronto, Canada. But then I left again.
Now I live in the Philippines where I am the CEO and head coach of Empowered Clubhouse, the Philippines' first and only boxing clubhouse exclusively just for women. I also am the founder of the Lil' Sistas Project, CEO and designer of Slay Gear and Baa Baa Black Sheep .Ph.
2 comments:
It was not so a good time for you ,i gues?,,poor Amy,but live there as a sranger ...i find it a GREAT THING YOU DO !!!it must be somtimes, verry difficuld,,,and homesic ..yes i can believed it!!!
Ah, Amy. I feel your pain. My niece and nephew used to drive me insane whenever I stayed at my mom-in-law's house and there were only two of them. And as for homesickness, it definitely got worse for me as time went on. I thought it was supposed to get better, but the longer I lived in Korea, the less tolerance I had for everything and the less I enjoyed life. I spent many nights hidden away in my apartment just escaping the stress of it all. There were good times for sure, but I do remember feeling like you do.
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