Because my TA plays the accordion. Obviously.
Maybe I should explain.
My beloved TA, of camera shop and adjunct meeting fame, had mentioned that her band (!) was playing at a jazz festival at Bubku beach tonight. How cool is that? I've never seen someone play this crazy instrument, Nick loves jazz, and I love Hee Eun, so it was a Family Outing.
Hee Eun texted me a couple of hours ahead of time - her band wasn't playing at Bukbu after all, but at Chilpo Beach. Even better!! Much closer to home, lots of free parking, etc. Long-time readers might remember Chilpo from our still-not-funny borrowed truck incident of two years ago. Two years to the day, actually. (Cue dramatic music.)
Shortly before we left home, while the kids hurriedly finishes homework and Nick processed messages from work, Hee Eun texted again. "Actually, its maybe just a workshop at Chilpo hotel - maybe not open to the public?" In my post-semester excitement, this potential cross-cultural cluster sounded better by the moment. We would play dumb way-gooks (foreigners) wandering around the hotel looking for "the band." Yes!
David decided he was not quite up to this level of embarrassment excitement and elected to remain home. I offered to drive so Nick could keep processing e-mail, and off we went, with Elisabeth expressing some mixed feelings about our precise plan for the hotel.
Now, getting to Chilpo from our apartment involves going under the highway, through a series of rice fields (lush with egrets watching for frogs amid reflections in the setting sun), and then choosing whether to continue through more fields or take a proper road through a tiny mountain village. Both ways are lovely. I elected the fields on this fine night, at which moment, if this were a movie, the dramatic music would change into a minor key.
If you have not driven Korean rice roads, you need to understand a few things. First, they are narrow. As in threading needles without your reading glasses kind of narrow. Second, although often made of cement, they are certainly not maintained; in Iowa we'd call this a "class B road" which is government-speak for "good luck." Third, the road is the highest point, with steep drop-offs into the watery fields 1-3 meters below. Some folks just refuse to drive the rice roads, and others of us, well, kind of like the challenge.
As a skilled rice road driver, I deftly avoided the potholes, looked a few fields ahead to make sure the next road section wasn't blocked by a rice farmer, gave a wide berth to a random cement curb on the left, and BANG. Flat tire.
We were quite literally in the middle of nowhere - we're not in a village, we're not on a road with a name, and the nearest building has a large neon sign that says, most unhelpfully, 모 텔 (motel). Not easy to communicate any of these in Korean to our insurance guy who would otherwise whisk someone out to fix the tire for free (it's part of the Korean car insurance system). Erg.
Well, well. Nick worked to figure out how to remove the spare tire (the van didn't come with a manual), Jeremy (and his boys) came to help change the tire, and Elisabeth and I entertained ourselves for the next hour as the mosquitoes came to investigate.
Hee Eun's band had long since finished its performance, so we headed home, our Chilpo adventure needs fulfilled for another year, at least.
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