Friday, April 29, 2011

A holiday kind of day

We didn't have to teach tonight because of the International Fireworks Competition.

So we got up at 6:00am (Eric) and 6:15am (me) and left to go running by about 6:50am. Contacts in, face washed, teeth brushed and all stretched out. We were sweating as we were tieing up our shoes in our entry way. It was humid!

We decided to walk today instead of run. So we walked just over the length of a free Dave Ramsey podcast.

I took a significant nap. I'm not sure why I was so tired. Possibly the late night before and the early morning. And the heat. That'll do it to you. This afternoon I returned to my Spanish-studying and decided I wanted to start learning the past tense, or in Spanish, they have two 'past simple' tenses: preterite and imperfect. Now I can say things like: Ayer, yo no hable espanol con Eric.

The sun went down, as it does, around 6pm and Eric took a very short nap. While he was sleeping, my phone vibrated. It was my landlord.
LLL: Karissa, where are you?
Karissa: I'm at home.
LLL: Why don't you go to the fireworks?
Karissa: We are. But they start at 8pm, so we'll go then.
LLL: Okay. Mr Dung (pronounced yoong) says that you should lock your doors. Tonight is a night when robbers come.
Karissa: Okay. We'll do that. Thanks.
LLL: Bye.

Now, we always, always lock our doors. As far as we know/can tell, we are the only white people anywhere near our neighborhood. We stick out like snowman in the dessert (It's the first analogy that came to mind). Our house is huge compared to most in our neighborhood, and our schedule is fairly consistent.

We do have two doors upstairs--like a screen door and wooden door. Except the screen door doesn't have a screen and it's bars--a safety thing. And we lock it, and our front door, with a U-lock. We keep the wooden door open to allow for some air circulation during the day. You can imagine that the fifth floor of our house gets hot and stuffy.

We left for the fireworks just after 7. We shared the streets with 10s of thousands of people. It was loud, but not overwhelming. It was busy and full, but percentage of people smoking was way, way lower than any coffee shop, so the smell wasn't bad at all. And the Han Bridge. Well, swarms of people kept walking onto it, so we joined them. But once it was so packed the crowd wasn't moving, we turned around.

We ended up meeting a couple from England who had heard about the competition earlier that day. Interestingly, England is one of the five country participants. When you share the day with the royal wedding, it's hard to get any media coverage.

The first country's fireworks we watched from the road. The second set we watched for a 3rd story foodcourt (eating amazing, cheesy, risotto) and most of the third country's display we were walking back home.

Fireworks are all the news here. I'm going to google this royal wedding. I've heard her tiara was something to talk about.

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