A stellar weekend

Though Saturday started out with another frustrating Korean class, in which I *sort of* learned how to ask and answer "What time is it?", the weekend turned out rather excellent. After crying (literally) through class, there was some shopping therapy time downtown until it got too busy to move. So, we went home and got ready to go out that night. Timber, and friend of ours and I tried to find this club that was listed online that apparently closed down 3 years ago (hello, online travel guides, update please!). Instead, we ended up at the same bar we had been at the weekend before, a "ladies" bar, no boyz allowed, in this mysteriously quiet alley downtown. (quick! hide the gays!) We met some of the same people we had last weekend, and a Korean couple who we drank and talked with the whole night. I learned some interesting Korean words and customs, and a little bit about how difficult it can be to be a Korean lesbian. They were totally adorable, and between my three months of Korean and their fourteen years of English, communication went OK. I'm pretty sure they did most of the work. It was totally impetus to keep on going to Korean class no matter how frustrating. My liver had another lesson in the chemical breakdown of soju, and I was up bright and early Sunday morning at 9 and at brunch by noon. A bloody mary and a B-fast burrito later I was all fueled to go to Woobang tower/Duryu park where Daegu has it's most gorgeous cherry blossoms. The park was FULL of people who all had the same idea we had. I can't figure out if it's just a population to square footage issue or that we just plan to do the same thing as everyone else all the time, but in any case it was busy. The park was full of families, couples, and groups of elderly people sitting around on mats on the grass playing cards as well as go and some other games, eating snacks, drinking soju and enjoying the sunshine. Timber and I sat down for a while and this sweet girl came over and gave us both cookies and a flower to me. This sort of thing has happened a couple of times. Sometimes on the trains and such, if a family or couple has had snacks they have gifted some to Timber and I, and our coworkers, as well as our kids at school are always trying to feed us things. I'm not quite used to it, but it's really sweet. With the kids it can be a little strange, because often the hospitality comes in the form of a sticky kid handful of candy. (mmMMM, delicious, thank you. I'll just put that right here for after class...) But, I'll take individually wrapped cookies from strange girls in the park any day. Another highlight was the butterfly I got to crawl on my finger. It had been circling around and around me while I was laying on the grass and when I got up to leave it let me get super close to it and crawled on my hand for a second before flying away. I was amazed! I wonder if they are just used to all the people.
At the temple in the middle of the park there was a siamese monk-cat who greeted us and let us take her picture under some paintings while she napped and bathed. Forget the buddha statues, people were gathering around the cat like she was handing out free tickets to enlightenment. Everyone kept saying "meyongi, meyongi", "cat, cat" when I think they might have otherwise been there to pray.

As we were walking around we saw two groups of older people dancing and singing. The first had a drum, a singer and several accompanying dancers--all old men shaking their shoulders like they were b-boys back in the day. We tried to take a video but I don't think they liked that very much. The next group featured an old lady with bleach blond permed hair, crazy makeup and a shiny gold suit. I was invited to dance with her, and in retrospect maybe I should have. When will I ever get the chance again?

As we were leaving, we met this older guy with a golden retriever puppy Timber just had to pet. We asked him, and he bent down, lifted the dog's ear and told him to come greet and sniff us. They are totally BFF.

Now it's time for bed, and another week of school starts tomorrow. It's not so bad, but I definitely need the weekends to look forward to.