Trot along

Day 89

Monday, Mondaaayyyyy. Gas heaters are in several rooms in the Hagwon. I'm not sure how much more it would cost to use the ondol (floor heating), but I am sure it would be much more pleasant, and much less pungent.


Day 90

Trot fills the air as I write letters and prepare packages to send to the States.
Did I mention the music stand I stopped at in Seoul? Perhaps not.

The search for Insadong...not much of a search. More like the half-hour it took to orient myself after getting out of the subway. Anyway, during the search for Insadong, I noticed a mini-throng of adushis (old men) crowding an umbrella covered table filled with cassettes and cd's in boxes. I joined the masses and took note of what the fellows beside me were picking up. I followed suit and grabbed a couple others with attention grabbing covers. Among the chosen was the image of a couple in Latin Ballroom costume, dancing on a keyboard, with a technoid-grid background.

The style of music is called Trot, and it is a variant of Traditional Korean music. However, the instrumental sections have been transcribed to Casio and the music has been put to a Casio demo beat. It's pretty great.

Work follows the peaceful morning, yoga follows work.

An invitation to chicken and comraderie follows yoga. I accept and spend an hour and a half vaguely understanding the discussion surrounding "saturi" aka "dialects". The fact that I can even vaguely understand what is being said is amazing to me. Thrilling. I know that once I leave the scene, there is little chance that I will remember much of what was said, but that doesn't matter. For the moment, I laugh with the rest as "anneyo" is changed to... changed to.. i forget, but I followed! I could follow along. And it was good.