My laziness continues. I felt no desire to go out on a Friday night – so I've decided on skipping the Friday foreigner gathering in Yeonggwang – it's less appealing now, given it's a 30 minute bus ride away, than it was when I lived there in the town.
So I came home, turned on the "radio" (streaming BBC), and cooked the most amazing ad hoc pasta dinner. Very simple: mushrooms, onions, garlic, stir fried in olive oil, with spices (including red pepper, oregano, basil, rosemary, ground bay leaves and coriander). Add Korean-style tomato juice (which comes across as diluted tomato sauce since it's unsalted) which I let boil down for thickness. Instant tomato mushroom onion pasta sauce. Dinner – all ingredients bought in Hongnong (except the dried oregano and basil).
I was kind of off my game, teaching today.
You can tell I'm not having a good day, when the highlight of the day is finding a crying child in the courtyard, late in the afternoon.
How can this be a highlight? Yu-bin was crying, some other kids were standing around. She told a story, in Korean, that I didn't understand – something about sports and anger. And then she pointed at a boy holding a badminton racket. And cried harder. The boy shrugged defensively. I got the picture.
Some other kids came around. But there were no other adults around. In bad Korean, I ordered the boy to apologize to Yu-bin. I didn't know what for, although I suspected some mild violence with a badminton racket was involved. He bowed and apologized, mumbling. I insisted he do it again.
Yu-bin stopped crying.
Life has small, strange victories.