Christina in Korea: Mother's Day Edition

Whoa! It is Mother's Day, and I am just a little out of hugging range of my mother. How sad. I will have to give hugs with interest when I return. Also, I will now get mushy in full view of the internet.

My Mom is really, really awesome. Even now, she is my best friend and the one I call when I'm in trouble. I call her for two reasons: 1) she makes me feel better with alarming speed and 2) when she gives advice, she is always right. I mean always. I think I can count the number of times she has been wrong on one hand, and that's including that one time that she said we had milk and we didn't.

I never went through a rebellious phase when I was a teenager. Not even a little. Some people would attribute this to my natural distaste for conflict, but I think it's because I genuinely had nothing to rebel against. My parents provided everything for me, allowed me to do anything within reason, and made me happy. When I went through rough times outside of their control, they were my greatest support. 

Despite having every reason in the world to tell me, "I worked my way through college and pulled myself up by my bootstraps, so you should be able to do the same thing!" she instead made sure I never had to worry about money while I was in college. Since I have made friends who do, in fact, have to worry about money, I have become excruciatingly aware of just how uncommonly privileged I am.

My Mom is my role model, and I'm not just saying that because it's Mother's Day and that's what you're supposed to say. I look up to her and hope that, faced with the same adversity that she has conquered in her lifetime, I could be as clever, brave, self-reliant, resilient, loyal, and loving as she has been. I love you Mom, today and all days.


End mushiness.

This morning Eun-hyuk woke me up by climbing on me while I slept, looking me in my bleary-eyed face, and demanding, "Beyblade!" Uuuugh. At least he's more interested in the tops than my computer now. And it was good in the end because it kept me from sleeping the entire day away, which is what I would do with every weekend if I was allowed.

I went with the whole family to the waterfront park. We played badminton and soccer, and Eun-hyuk rode his bike. You know, I had forgotten how cathartic it is to kick a soccer ball. Nothing else has quite the same satisfying impact. Too bad I lost my one advantage in the sport when I hit high school, and suddenly I wasn't a head taller than everyone else anymore.

Kris took me to an indoor swimming pool. Let me tell you right now that Koreans have found a system of ways to take all the fun out of swimming. For one thing, they require swim caps. I HATE swim caps. Also, they don't have a free-swim pool or a diving board. There are only lanes. There is also a pool for swim lessons and a pool for little kids. The deepest point of the deepest pool was about four feet.

There are so many people that the water tastes salty, and you have to swim three or four to a lane. It gets interesting. Every hour, the lifeguard blows a whistle and everyone is required to go sit in the hot tub for a while to keep from getting too cold.

While we were sitting in the (extremely crowded) hot tub, I tried to explain to Kris that when I swam, I usually did it in an eighteen-foot-deep pool with no lane lines, where people dived off a diving board while other people paddled in the shallow end and still other people did water aerobics over to the side and I fluttered near the bottom and timed how long I could hold my breath. Also you could stay in the pool for as long as you wanted and go to the hot tub whenever you felt like it. Kris seemed to think that this was an overly chaotic environment, and wondered how people didn't drown all the time.

Oh, and hey everyone. Do you know who Joan Baez is? If so, why didn't you tell me about her? If not, she is a totally awesome singer with a huge, vibrato voice, and she MADE BOB DYLAN. Seriously. She was famous first, they started dating, and she dragged him out of obscurity.

So I first came across her in a clip from the Dylan documentary "Dont Look Back" where she sings Percy's Song, and I absolutely fell in love with her. I went to find the song and it turns out she never actually recorded it! She just sang a few verses to Dylan while he was typing one time, and the footage ended up in the documentary. And let me tell you, neither Dylan nor anyone who has covered it can sing it as beautifully as she did, and there's no official recording. ARGH.

But I was consoled when I found her version of Farewell Angelina. Oh my God, guys, this is my favorite kind of song, and I only find one like this every once in a while. It's long and rambling, whimsical and nonsensical, deep and soulful, sad and sweet, and beautiful. It's the kind of song I want to have memorized for when I'm alone somewhere and feeling introspective. I'm talking Tangled Up in Blue, On Raglan Road, Passing Afternoon. That's the kind of song Farewell Angelina is. I love this song.

Also, I have decided that I am going to learn to play guitar. I don't care how long this takes or how much I suck at it. But I want to sing Farewell Angelina and I want to be able to accompany myself. Tyson, do you think you could teach me a few chords when I get home?