Today was a good day. For starters, we ran the a.c. last night. That always makes for a good night for me, except for one small problem; occasionally I have to get out of bed and leave our bedroom, which is the only airconditioned room in the apartment. If you've been reading Roblog for any amount of time, you know why.
Maxine had a bit of an unsettled night. She woke up two or three times. (I loose track at the high numbers, to tell the truth, and in the middle of the night two is a pretty high number of times to wake up.) Not unusual. We have nights when she wakes up just once, and the occasional night where she gets up to five times. Last night wasn't bad, because each time I took care of her all I had to do was lay her down, pop the pacifier in her mouth, and sit by the crib for a few minutes to make sure she was asleep. I changed her diaper once. The work end of it was not the problem. The problem was leaving the air-conditioned comfort of our room. There's a wall-mounted fan in Maxine's room, so it's not really that hot, but after a.c., nothing feels good except a.c. The unsettled part came around 5 a.m. She woke up, and when I went in to check on her she was wide awake, and nothing I did made her calm down or sleep. In situations like this, I call in the big guns: Horyon's Boobs. A quick feeding will put Maxine back to sleep if nothing else works. This is required about once a week now. Hopefully it will drop off to nothing soon.
So today we had lunch with a friend from Horyon's church. You see, a couple of weeks ago Horyon went to lunch with her parents and a group of church people who clean the church on Saturdays, and one person paid. This being Korea, it is pretty much impossible to go Dutch or offer to pay for yourself in situations like this, so Horyon offered to treat the friend to lunch sometime. Ended up being today.
We had bo-sam: steamed pork is the centerpiece, though to a Kansas boy like myself, the one plate of meat for all five of us (Maxine doesn't eat unprocessed meat yet) looked like the right amount for one person. Not here. For individuals there was dol-sot-bap: rice cooked in a heavy stone bowl, and served hot. You scoop your rice out and into a regular rice bowl, except for the rice that has burned to the sides of the stone bowl. That burned rice is called nurungji (new-roong-gee), and it is eaten after the main course. You put some water in the stone bowl and it makes a sort of bland rice soup. Not my favorite, but it's a good match with food that is too spicy. Those main courses were good, but this place had the best side dishes I've had in a long time. There must have been ten different kinds, and only one that I didn't like. Tasted like cucumbers pickled in rotten fish guts with a hint of turpentine. But everything else was awesome. I am putting that restaurant on my list of places to return to.
After lunch, Horyon returned to her parents house, and I came home. I had a private lesson to go teach. Unfortunately, from a monetary perspective, but fortunately from a time perspective, he canceled. So I went on a bike ride.
I used to ride pretty regularly, but since Maxine came into our lives, back and forth to work (3.5 km going, 4.5 coming, as I take the scenic route) is about all I usually get in. Today I got a solid 27 km ride, to Dalmaji and back.
Now I'm tired. I'm going to bed. I'll try to fill in the details later. For now, I had a good ride, but my butt is a bit sore.
Peace,
Rob
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