Yesterday, waking up with just under an hour to put myself and my bag together, I found a little extra time to repair a blossoming relationship with Louis (the good pup), which I’d jeopardized the night before by being complicit in getting him a vaccination shot in the butt. (Due to the guard dog attack, I wanted one as well, but my friend, Princess Song (the dog’s owner), thought the vet was prejudice against humans. Too bad.) In any case, I hope things will be rosier when I next meet Louis.
In the end, I limped out the door with my swollen foot, banged up knee, and other battle scars, hopped on the wrong bus in my bewilderment, hopped off the bus and mended my way remembering the advice of Princess Song and Google: Red 100. (At the time I thought the two were chatting about drinking or football.) Eventually, I ended up at the bus station, waited around, and found my bus. There, I moved toward a comfy looking seat in back, further comforted by the fact that the two young ladies ahead of me were obviously excited about my arrival.
As I read, the bus rolled along without much incident other than a flurry of excitement in the seat ahead of me at the site of snow. This reverberated within my own heart and caused flurries there as well, which I hoped might leave enough of the powdery white stuff on which to float down a mountain on a board.
As we neared the destination, I saw the older of the two girls ahead of me, a high school student I guessed, was reading a pamphlet about Sakaiminato (in Japan). I asked her about it, triumphant in the knowledge that destinations and ways of getting there were some of the things I had studied in Korean. I passed the test (the kind you don’t have to pay for, which also provides more satisfaction)!
My brief conversation with the two girls led to a friendship for the remainder of our journey. At the bus stop, the girls said goodbye, but up ahead the mother (and the other’s teacher) waved at me to get into the taxi she’d just hailed. So, happy that I didn’t have to find my own way to the port, I hopped in with them.
Once on the ferry, I found myself in a room with a bunch of Russians who didn’t speak English. I wandered around the ship, chatted with my friends, and finally took dinner. Afterwards, I entered my room for a second, but left shortly thereafter when I saw a couple of the Russian guys bringing in a bunch of bottles of whiskey and vodka. I knew they’d ask me to drink with them, and I wasn’t really in the mood to join in with a bunch of guys with whom I couldn’t communicate.
So I roamed the ship. I stood for a long while on the deck of the ship, the sole being up there. The wind snapped against my cheeks briskly and the ship rolled and pitched on the waves in a way I hadn’t experienced before. Apart from having felt slightly nauseous since the morning (because of the dog’s bite?), I enjoyed it. So I remained on the deck for a long while, doing some pushups and situps from time to time in order to keep warm.
Later that evening, I crawled into bed, but not before the Russian who remained in the room offered me some vodka and tried communicating with me in Russian. Very kind of him, but I politely refused and tried to get to sleep. The next three hours, though, were filled with rather loud Russian television, loud Russian laughter, and other comings and goings. Fortunately, I had some earphones that blocked out much of the nose, but I wonder if it would be wise to request a room with Koreans instead of Russians next time. I hate to be such a downer, but my friends told me of the same experiences with Russians on that boat. I’m sure they’d rather party without the guilt of a sleeper in their room.
Before falling asleep, I also decided that I’ll run with a bat or big stick when I go back to Korea. If any dog tries the same thing again, I shall severely incapacitate it. Poor brutes.
