Kickball

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"In a happy little foreign town, where the stars are upside down, half a world away, far, far away."-Deana Carter


Been a long time since I’ve written. I have been very busy with work and the whole social butterfly thing that when I come home I just want to watch The Daily Show and sleep. Work still sucks but I have slipped into the seventh stage of grief and have just accepted that I am stuck at my shitty school. The cockroaches in my apartment are mostly gone, although I have seen 2 in the past month. And I am thinking very seriously about getting a cat.

I have met so many people in the past couple of months it's hard to keep them all straight. It’s very easy to make friends here, because we are all in the same boat and all have similar adventurous personalities. There are some that I am very happy to have met, and there are others who are just people to pass the time with. There are so many foreigners here it’s really unbelievable. The most notable of them all would be Laura, who is also from Wisconsin. She doesn’t party as much as I do, but I get her to come out every now and then. We go to yoga together, go shopping, and out to eat. The other good friend I have made is Jack from England. He drinks entirely too much and says the word “cunt” every chance he gets. But he has a pretty good attitude and sense of humor. His friends are all from the UK as well, and while I like hanging out with them, I can only handle the c-word so many times in day. Not only that, but they all make fun of my accent and my lack of knowledge of “football.” But I still beat them all in darts.

This morning I was in a rush to get out to meet some friends for “Kick Kelly Out of Korea with Kickball.” Kelly is a Wisconsin girl who is leaving on Wednesday. We have been acquaintances since I moved here. We were going to have a combined welcoming party for my friend Vanessa and going away party for Kelly, when it dawned on Kelly that the girl replacing here was named Vanessa from Wisconsin. Weird coincidence that Vanessa is replacing Kelly.

So I got to Kelly (now Vanessa’s) subway stop about 30 minutes early and started looking for some food. Nothing looked good so I settled on a can of Pringles and a can of beer (for the carbs of course). I sat outside the station waiting, just drinking my beer and enjoying the surprisingly 55-degree weather. I get stared at enough as it is, but put a beer in my hand in broad daylight and you can see the amusement rising in the Koreans' faces. There were two older men standing on the street. They didn’t know each other but the sight of me made them instant friends. They were laughing it up, staring and pointing at me. “What’s that crazy waygook up to now?”

The kickball game was played on a dirt soccer field near Kelly-now-Vanessa’s apartment. My team lost miserably, but we had a blast anyway. The constant beer and cigarette breaks needed by the various Canadians and Americans on my team should have been the first sign that we were going to lose. The park was very busy, and many people gathered around our game to watch. The Koreans were cheering for us and would shout “safe” or “out” from the sidelines. A couple of Korean people even joined us. Although they did have a hard time understanding the concept of running the bases, which is surprising considering how obsessed they are with baseball. One young boy kept running onto the field, sometimes picking up the Frisbees that we had set up as bases. I kept telling him “Kajuseyo,” which is the way an adult tells a child to scram. But he didn’t listen. We were on his turf after all.

Have I mentioned how terrible Koreans are at driving? Let me put it this way: In the past two and a half months I have been in a car accident and a bus accident (no one was hurt either time). After the bus accident, Joanna (my co-worker) and I transferred with everybody else to a new bus that would take us the rest of the way home. We accidentally left “Sparrow” (her US military friend) sleeping on the crashed bus that drove off in another direction. It was the morning after partying all night in Seoul on Halloween. He was dressed as a female tennis player. Imagine the shock on the bus driver’s face when he discovered a sleeping white guy dressed in a skirt on his broken bus. Somehow things worked out and about 30 minutes down the road the drivers of both buses discovered what we had been yelling about. The buses met up and Sparrow was put safely onto our bus.

I have a lot to say but I’ll sum it up here . Things such as leaving a passed out Sparrow behind are the kind of thing that make it all interesting. Missing subway stops, getting lost, getting stared at, wondering aimlessly... These are the things I love about traveling. I feel thrilled and rejuvenated and like I am on a ridiculous adventure. I am usually happy. I have been staying healthy. I eat, I drink, and I’m merry. Sometimes I miss my family and sometimes I miss my friends. Sometimes I miss pickles or pancakes. I miss North Avenue, Beans and Barley, and decent coffee. But I’m too distracted to ever dwell on these things. I am happy with my place in the world right now. Peace and love from afar! -Margie

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Comments

[Uncle Gary]

Another True Story
Dear Niece MARGIE???? Your story about your friend that uses the "C" word too much reminds me of a time when I was a young schoolboy. We had a substitute teacher whose name was Miss Prussy. When she introduced herself she asked us to not make fun of her name. And she spelled it for us. P-R-U-S-S-Y. She told us an easy way to remember her name is to remember that there in an "R" in it. The next day our regular teacher was still ill so she was the substitute again. She asked if anyone remembered her name from yesterday. No one raised their hand so she called on my friend Bubba Ganoosh. She asked Bubba if he remembered her name. Bubba hesitated...uhhh...uhhh... The substitute teacher reminded him that yesterday she said an easy way to remember her name is that there is an "R" in it. Bubba thought for a minute...uhh...uhh...and suddenly remembered. Oh yeah, he said...your name's Miss Crunt! Love, Uncle Gary

[Beth]

I believed Uncle Gary's story until he got to his friend Bubba.