Dreary and Happy: A Rant and a Random Note

Big shock. It’s raining outside. It’s rainy, cold, and as shitty as it’s been nearly every day I’ve been here. Why is it so shitty outside? Because I have something to do, that’s why. Today I have soccer practice for the third Wednesday in a row. The first practice it snowed, the second week it was forty degrees, and today… of course. When it isn’t raining or snowing here there is a yellow dust storm that makes the snow, cold, and rain seem like paradise comparably. What the h-e-double hockey sticks??? It will be April tomorrow and I have seen one sunny day in over three weeks. That was Sunday and it got up to a whopping 55 degrees. The extended forecast for the next week: cold and cloudy with a high of 14 degrees Celsius. Now I don’t know what this Celsius business means but I know what it doesn’t mean: It doesn’t mean it’s going to be warm!!! I’m starting to think that my plane crashed in the ocean and I’m in purgatory, where it’s spring but never warm and never nice. It’s cold and dreary every single morning I wake up and frankly (in case you didn’t notice) it’s making me batshit crazy. I’m really beginning to wonder if spring will ever arrive, because I haven’t seen the slightest hint of it yet.
Okay, sorry I had to rant and get that off my chest…
It’s not all bad here besides having the shittiest March weather of all time. Actually, things are going quite well. Last week was my birthday and the principal bought a big lavish cake. He called me into the teachers room and all the teachers were gathered around the cake to sing “Happy birthday”. It was very sweet, flattering, embarrassing, and creepy all at the same time. My best birthday present came a week later however when my bike arrived from Pohang.
I had bought my bike in 2006 after visiting Gyeongju, where I rented a bike and rode around the city for two days (see http://suwonteacher.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html). After returning to Suwon I had taken out a large sum of money from my bank to take to the exchange bank to transfer to my American account. On the way to the bank, large sum of cash on hand, I passed a bike shop, stopped, turned back, walked in and bought the Falcon. Now I should say that I blew a ton of money foolishly in my first tenure in Korea but this bike was a huge exception. In the long run the bike paid for itself several times over in the money I saved on taxis, not to mention the exercise it provided. When I went home I left her behind and it became one of the biggest, if not the biggest, regrets I had about leaving Korea.
Thankfully, I left her with Tom, my neighbor, co-worker, goalie, and friend. In the time that I had been away Tom stayed in Korea but moved far south to Pohang, where he left the bike after he moved back to Seoul, just a few weeks ago. Well, bless Tom’s fuzzy warm heart for agreeing to have the bike shipped back north to my school. He contacted the person he left the bike with and I eagerly awaited my bike’s arrival for the last ten days. Ideally, it would have been here on my birthday, yet ideally it wouldn’t snow four times in March either. Finally, two days ago I got a phone call from a random Korean and knew that was the delivery driver. The Falcon arrived at 1:00 Monday afternoon, filthy from the yellow dust and her tires were flat. That evening I took her down to the bike shop and had them clean and tune her up. Now she is as radiant and beautiful as ever and I can’t wait to take her down to the Han River Park on Sunday. What do you want to bet the weather is going to suck that day?