2. Joined a volunteer group called PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, and Peace ) It’s a movement designed to bring PLUR, wherever you are, through the spirit of volunteerism. Currently, they have three projects on the go.
3. Had a long serious talk about friends with Snickers and am thinking that making friends with his friends’ girlfriends wouldn’t be so bad after all. I’m apparently the “hot issue”, as Snickers calls me, among his friends. They all want to meet me, teach me games, take me fishing, have me help them with boxing, and so on but the problem is that all these friends of Snickers are guys. And ok, so these guys have girlfriends, but I’ve never really seemed to click with the girls. In some ways I can be a girly-girl, if I try, but given the choice whether I want to duke it out in the ring or go shopping for hair barrettes, hand bands, and other things that I’ve even grown out of or wouldn’t be caught dead wearing unless it was Halloween or I was seriously paid to wear, I rather hang with the boys. I just seem to click with the boys – always have, always win.PLUR’s three projects:
1. Feed Your Seoul
Every Friday, they go to a soup kitchen and help feed the homeless.
2. Help Your Seoul
Every Sunday, they go to Seoul Station and pass out food to the homeless who sleep and live in/near the station.
3. Orphanage Visit
Once a month, they go to Hyang-Ae Orphanage to visit and do activities with the children there.
4. Having said that, however, I must admit that I did enjoy hanging out with the Mouse Doctor’s girlfriend. I’ll call her Minnie Mouse for the sake of my homepage. Despite the clothes she showed up in for late night fishing, she wasn’t really girly-girl. She seemed pretty cool. Moreover, and this is why I really thought she was ok in my books, was because she talked to me like we spoke the same language and that we were no different from each other. She didn’t talk to me in slow, simple, one-syllable Korean words and she genuinely seemed interested in the conversation. She posed no awkwardness and didn’t seem uncomfortable about any possible misunderstandings or whatever. And at no point during our fishing trip did she ever pull out a mirror or use her cell phone to adjust her make-up – a Korean girl thing that drives me bonkers!
5. I’m still training like an animal but I’ve been boxing at Snickers’ boxing club. I haven’t been back to my club since Japan, nor have I even so much heard a peep out of my coach either. I still have the extra key to the club and so I’m thinking I might sneak in there this weekend to train solo. I miss my teammates a lot and I’m not really too sure on what it is I am waiting for but for now, training at Snickers’ club is ok. Mind ya, I must admit, I seriously am missing my little High School Kiddies and pad work. Plan is to get Snickers to start doing pad work with me soon – very soon!!!
6. I’m convinced that I should have a warning label on my forehead that reads “Does not play well with idiots”. I guess the word “idiot” is a strong word to use here, “mentally deprived” I suppose would be more appropriate. Mentally deprived people annoy the heck out of me and I think I have a very high level of standards when it comes to who it is I label as my friend. Like many other foreigners here in Korea, I too once feel into the “I’m a foreigner, you’re a foreigner, so let’s be friends” trap when I first came, but then the reality of it all hit me. If I was in Canada, there’s no way on God’s green earth that I would talk to half these people, and that’s me being generous. So it got me thinking as to why it is I am friends with certain people here in Korea and whether or not I would maintain these friendships after I left or are they only alive because I am here and so are they. I’m not a snob and I don’t think I am better than others but I do know that I don’t particularly fit in with the common foreign crowd here, or necessarily the Korean crowd for that matter. Beyond the obvious fact that I’m big into sports, working out, and health, I enjoy and appreciate a good intellectually stimulating conversation and I much prefer a person with life experiences and common sense over a book-smart geek. Having said that, I went through my list of phone numbers tonight and pondered just who in my life in Korea I really consider my friend. Buff Boy the Original definitely won first prize.
7. With less than a month until I DON’T walk down the isle and DON’T say “I do” (only because there is no isle and there is no required “I do”), Snickers and I went wedding band shopping for his ring. I think we found the perfect one, too!!!
8. Met up with Kitty Cat for coffee and Girl 119 showed up (new nickname there folks… hahaha). Indulged in some lengthy girl chat while Snickers “worked” away at his new part-time job… hahaha.
9. Snickers new part-time job isn’t really a part-time job at all. It’s more or less him killing his buddies at pool and then happily taking the prize money. Regardless of what you want to call it, he only “works” once or twice a week but his pockets have stayed full. Good stuff… hahaha.
10. Had a good lengthy conversation with Snickers about friends. Am hoping that me volunteering, helping at boxing, and taking on random side jobs will lead me to some people that are more interesting and more my type. At Dankook I met many interesting and intelligent people who I would have loved to be friends with, however, they were also my students and so I didn’t think it right to be all buddy-buddy with my students. As for the staff, I tried to not mix my business with pleasure. Having said that however, with the exception of a couple of them (like Kitty Cat), there was no interest for me to even consider mixing my business with pleasure.
QUESTION OF THE DAY...
What kind of person do you classify as being your friend?
QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty.
-- Sicilian Proverb
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