This past Sunday I went to lunch with a co-worker from my main school. It took nearly a whole semester for me to be invited to a teacher's house, and she isn't even an English teacher. Actually she's more of an academic director. From what I gather a counselor/development coordinator. She invited me to lunch with her family and I accepted. When the day came, I have to admit I was less than excited. Her English is not great and I resented spending my free day trying to communicate and fill awkward silences. I have to do that everyday at work. But, I was happily surprised with the day I spent with her and her family. It turns out her 19 year old son attended High School in Indiana and is fluent in English. I felt bad at his parent's unending requests for him to translate everything, but was relieved that the day wouldn't be spent in frustration and smiles of defeat when meaning was lost. We joined her parents and brother and sister-in-law for a duck lunch at a restaurant where I learned that her father is a former English professor and her brother possesses decent English skills as well. Of course, I was shocked at the amount of food brought to the table. I wonder if the day will come when I am not flabbergasted when they bring in the stone pots of stew to finish the feast. It's always just as my legs are starting to go numb from sitting on the floor and I'm tugging at the waist of my shorts.
After lunch, we went to my co-worker's parents' home to have a celebration for her mother's birthday. Her father showed me his photo album of his time in the United States with his colleagues. I saw him at Harvard University, by the Golden Gate Bridge, and at the Grand Canyon. Then he showed me his study. His section of Nathaniel Hawthorne was impressive and later explained when I saw the copy of the book he had written (in Korean) about the author. After that he led me to his wife's sewing room. In here the walls were full of fabric stuffed animals that she had sewn. They were actually quite interesting and in the back of my mind I was hoping she would offer me one to keep.. Though she didn't end up giving me a stuffed bird, she did present me with one of her latest projects- a doll that she was sewing for UNICEF. Someone explained that each purchase goes to vaccinating a child in Africa. She wanted me to have one and she would put on the UNICEF website that it was adopted by me. Finally the grandfather showed me his golf room. At first I was just shocked that their apartment home had space enough for a sewing room, let alone a tennis room, but one has never seen so many tennis shirts in one closet! That's pretty much all there was aside from the tennis rackets propped in the corner. When we returned to the living room the others were chuckling and I gathered they were laughing at the grandfather dragging me around the apartment. "There is nothing to see," they translated with smiles.
But I begged to differ. There was plenty to see! And plently to eat. The pound cake I had brought as a gift and a watermelon were sliced up and put on the table as the candles were lit on the ice cream cake. It was from Baskin Robbins, and much to my delight, it was mint chocolate chip! It thrilled me that there I sat in an apartment in Korea, celebrating a near stangers 70-odd birthday, sharing my all-time favorite cake and the exact same birthday cake I used to eat every year at my own grandparents' house.
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