We’re on week 20. EJ is starting to feel the baby move in little flutters, but not too actively. It’s amazing seeing the changes she’s going through. We’ve also been anticipating the cravings, and I think they’ve arrived. Only, she’s not wanting pickles and lime sherbert. She wants American food. Sauteed Cajun seasoned chicken breasts. Spaghetti with tomato sauce loaded with mozzarella cheese. Steak.
I wish this could last.
Today was Roboseyo’s wedding. They’ve been together almost as long as EJ and I have, so this was momentous. The wedding took place at Fradia, an Italian restaurant floating on the Han River that EJ and I briefly (as in 10 seconds) considered to use for our wedding–not that it was not a good place, it was a bit out of our price range for what we wanted.
The wedding was so tasteful and gorgeous. We were able to get much of the blogger family at the same table. Stafford and a few others had to sit somewhere else because our table got full. It was strange being in a place and knowing so many people. I guess we really do have a lot of great friends these days.
I bet everyone would agree that the highlight of the wedding was the video Rob and HJ prepared. Each talked about the other and their families in Korean and English. Rob’s Korean was stellar. Couldn’t plug up the waterworks during most of it. It wasn’t sappy. It was entertaining and heartfelt. They had about as perfect a wedding as you could get, especially knowing the track record of gaudy weddings in Korea. I was impressed that the guests were silent during the vows.
It was great to see Rob and everyone, albeit too briefly. On the way back home, I had a series of annoyances that put me in a “lousy Korea” mood. EJ and I decided to take the bus home from the Express Bus Terminal area because we’d more likely get a seat on a bus than on a subway train. The bus was so late, though, that there was no seating. While we were waiting, I went to go check when the bus would arrive. When I went back to Eun Jeong, she said, “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“That ajosshi. He just stopped and looked at my boobs.”
I asked her to point him out, but she couldn’t find him. I’m getting fed up with the low class male privilege behavior some men exhibit here.
We couldn’t get a seat on the bus, so we grabbed onto the bars and stood. While people were still crowding onto the bus, some young guy in his twenties decided to throw away his half full melted chocolate ice cream product. Displaying a common tendency to not connect cause with effect, or rather the “What Could Go Wrong” syndrome, he missed the trash can. He gave a sound like “oops” and stood there awkwardly, like he didn’t know what to do. He put the cup in the trash. Then EJ started railing into him. I noticed that there was some chocolate ice cream on my suit pants. He just stood there indecisively. Then he started trying to wipe me off with his t-shirt. It was then that I noticed that a large splotch of melted chocolate ice cream was on my suit jacket sleeve–as in half the cup. I took out a handkerchief and wiped it off. The kid may have been stupid, but I didn’t want anyone wiping me off with their t-shirt. It would make me look like a douche. I just wanted the incident to be over with, but EJ kept railing into him about how he had no manners. He was trying to apologize and even offered to give us all the money he had on him, which was just W5,000.
We said, no.
But it would have been nice if he could have acted like a gentlemen and offered my pregnant wife his seat as an apology. Instead, he just mumbled he was sorry and slinked off to his seat. Even though I had wiped off the milkshake product, I felt sticky and dirty the whole way back. EJ and I eventually got seats in the back. When we got to our stop, EJ got up to go, but the bus lurched, and she fell down on her butt. A lady and I caught her to help break her fall, but I wasn’t fast enough. She wasn’t hurt, but again, it was another one of those only-in-Korea annoyances, this time an unprofessional bus driver who cares more about beating a route time than the safety of his passengers.
We stopped by E-mart to get some water and coffee for the house. All the lines were long. That’s not a complaint, but it didn’t help my mood improve. I just wanted to go home and take a shower.
While waiting at the bus stop, there was an annoying bunch of “swervy kids.” That’s my term for this growing trend of teens on motorcycles, usually one guy driving with a passenger awkwardly sitting on the back, none wearing helmets, making a shiteload of noise from their engines and horns while swerving their bikes back and forth so hard, you’d expect them to crash. These particular kids really gunned their engines at the bus stop and zoomed into a crowd of people using the crosswalk, almost hitting a man with a bag of groceries.
EJ and I stopped by Paris Baguette on the way back, and we shared some patbingsu. It made me feel a little better, but I really wanted to get home. Now I’m all washed up, and those dirty clothes are off. I’m not so annoyed now, but I just had to vent a bit.
