Fishing, circa 1850

Well, today was a welcome surprise as I had planned to do absolutely nothing, and I did, in fact, do something. As usual this was thanks to the PE teacher. Man, I'm gonna have to buy him a car or at least babysit his kids a bunch or something. I owe him big time. Today, he showed up around noon and asked if I wanted to go fishing. Obviously, being incredibly busy with tons of plans, I agreed. Shortly thereafter, Jeong, his son and I headed off for some fishing. Once again my perceptions/assumptions of what we would be doing was way the fuck off. Rather than the standard fishing that one is accustomed to, we headed to a shallow little river that looked identical to the small streams out west where everyone panned for gold about hundreds of years ago. And frankly our tools of the trade weren't much more up to date. Apparently, casting for fish is illegal, at least in this area, so we fished for small little panfish (shari, and others that I can't remember the Korean for) by hitting rocks in the stream with a sledgehammer, then moving the rock and hoping that the fish underneath would be scared into the net we placed out front. Yeah, high-tech, I know. After doing this for a while, we moved out into the deeper area and the PE teacher used a a simple toss net to snag more panfish, while his son and I tried to catch kegari (frogs). It was cute cuz his dad taught him how to say "Let's catch some frogs" in English and he just kept repeating it for the rest of the day. Well, it was cute for a while. After we were satisfied with our haul, we sat down for lunch. We broke out a portable gas stove, cleaned and cooked up the panfish, threw in some ramen and green peppers and had lunch right there on the stream banks. When that was done we munched on some corn cobs, apples, and the teacher and I downed some soeju while his son ran around, as 6 year olds are privy to do. Man, these people know how to live. Eventually, we decided to return to the 21st century and hopped in the car and headed home. Again I was pleasantly surprised to find that I'd been invited to a home cooked dinner with the family, so obviously I said yes. Before I could enjoy the delicious meal of bulgogi, gogi (fish) and chicken (don't know Korean for it yet...crap), I had to play with the kiddies first. The games on tap today were Throw stuff at Wallin until he cries or someone stops you (they started with soft balls, moved up to soccer balls, then onto to little handheld arcade games, and were stopped just before the boy let loose with a 2.5 lb or so dumbbell...that would've hurt...I'm sure I would have cried), Hide and Seek (very easy since the apartment isn't very big and they kids kept talking...amateurs), and teach Eric Korean (I even got some sweet flashcards to practice with as the daughter just started learning Hangul about the same time I did). Seriously, these kids are just too incredibly cute for me to take, which is why I would have let them let loose with the dumbbell. Come to think of it, kids injuring me is pretty adorable to almost everyone I know. The wife also sent me home with the vast majority of the leftovers to sit next to the remnants from the food they gave me on Saturday. Wow. Like I said, I owe these people big.