The weekend

Today was a beautiful spring-like day in Korea. The sun was shining, and the weather was so warm, that after lying on the floor watching a couple of episodes of LOST in a row, I decided to get up and pump air into my bicycle tires for the first ride of spring.

It was a great day. I met up with one of my Korean friends for a great chat over coffee, then I met up with two fellow Torontonian ladies for a great dinner at an Italian place. The weather was so nice, that I also wore a non-down jacket for the first time in 2010 - busting out the faux leather bomber once again AND it was also warm enough to justify getting ice cream. So one of the Torontonian ladies and I decided to take our ice cream cones and walk home. This area of Daegu is pretty at night. We pass the river, the lights of downtown, and see flowers emerging.

As we were beginning to walk on the main road near downtown, I noticed that a tall white foreign guy was turning around every so often as he walked. This is common when you hear English in Korea - I often turn to look. Koreans often turn to look. And sometimes you do the expat-to-expat nod or what's up. Note that there are also black-to-black and hispanic-to-hispanic specific nods as well.

Dressed in jeans and baggy sweatshirt, he also had headphones on, and a general sloppy appearance kinda like those disheveled North American travelers/backpackers that give the rest of us a bad reputation for being terrible dressers. I noticed that he was walking at the same pace as us (not possible considering leg length difference when we are 5'3" and he is 6'4") and appeared to be straining to hear our conversation.

Halfway through the walk, my friend decided to pop into a convenience store to pick up a bottle of water. When we came out and stood to wait for the light to change, I noticed that the foreign guy was standing there. This struck me as odd, because in the amount of time we had taken in the store, he should have crossed already. Upon crossing the street I told my friend I had to check my cell so if we could please wait for a second. When he was out of earshot, I explained what I'd noticed, and she said that he was the reason she had suggested buying water. So we crossed the street, and continued walking and chatting.

However, a block later, we noticed that he had crossed the street to join us on the new side. This is when I knew something was wrong. He also looked too attentive - he was definitely not listening to anything on those headphones.

As we crossed the street, I debated on going into a bakery on the corner. As we slowed our pace, the foreign guy looked into the bakery window - he had clearly heard us.

So I did what any self-respecting woman should do. I stepped to the side of the sidewalk, much as I do to get out of the way when doing a cross-body lead, and I brought out my Esplanade roots that made me badder than Drake, and called out to him: "Hey! Do you have a problem!"

He immediately looked up after the "hey", proving that his ipod was off, and got a jumbled look on his face and shrugged a simple, no.

HA.

Somewhere around the time that I learned how to be strong after getting played by a gino in a souped up car, I also learned that I have power, in general. Why shrink into the corner? No one has the right to make you feel uncomfortable. There is one class of weirdo, that is just a lonely or awkward guy who stares because he is into you or wants friends or whatever - but the trick is recognizing that you have power to act in a situation. Obviously, you shouldn't stand up and antagonize a lone potential attacker in a dark alley, but a well-lit street in South Korea with significant pedestrian traffic, gets my approval for safe.

My friend laughed, and said, "there's that latin fire," a comment I hear frequently when I have loud outbursts or display "attitude" and put people in their place. Maybe it is - but call it what you like, it gets the job done.

After that, he picked up the pace and we kept an eye on him - then I got into a cab.

Home sweet home, imnida.

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Yesterday we were out filming for an English language news program pilot based on Daegu Pockets magazine. Lucky for me, the pilot had a segment based on an article I wrote last year so we got to visit some cool places.

We started off at the InterBurgo Hotel where there is the Instituto Cervantes-affiliated Centro Cultural Espanol. I met a really lovely Korean professor who had lived in Colombia and we agreed to meet up for coffee sometime. She laughed when she heard me say "chevere" because it reminded her of the good old days in Bogota. We also filmed some of the students. It was really cool for me to see Korean students speaking Spanish. Many of them were pretty shy, but they were very dedicated to their studies - a lot of them came in from out of town just to study on a Saturday. Some of them wanted it for work, to learn a language other than English, or just to travel.

After filming a segment with the anchors in a rented studio space, we went to a tex-mex restaurant. At this point, our camera man had to go, but lucky for the team, a professional cameraman from a major Korean network was available. He had filmed the magazine's executive team a few weeks before for a news show and they had kept his contact. So I got the chance to work with him, which was very cool. Through interpretation and body language, he gave really good directions. He was an intense perfectionist as well - I walked into the restaurant many times, from many angles, looking in many different directions. He explained when to hold the mic, when to wear it, and little details like - if you are going to take off your jacket, we should film you taking it off.

All that filming I've been doing at work for those ESL videos has really paid off - I stare into the camera like its the foreign guy I told off today.

After that, we filmed at our salsa class. This was funny because I clearly couldn't be like, "hey, here is some blatant self promotion! This is MY salsa class and you should come!" So Susy did a fabulous job as the singular instructor and talked up what we do. We filmed a rueda with our advanced students for b-roll - something I am very anxious to get my hands on, and talked about an ending. We needed some kind of group shot where we yell out something enthusiastically. What could we yell that isn't cheesy?

"I love salsa" was scrapped. But we agreed on turning into a vacila y sienta (basically a turn where girls end up sitting on the guys' knee with arm in the air in a very showy style) and yelled "Yo quiero salsa" which, although cheesy as in "yo quiero taco bell", was decided to be tolerable in terms of allowed levels of cheese.

A successful day, but I was tired as heck, and developed some weird red eye thing that looks like I got punched in the eye or smoked up - two things I avoid. So we ended the night with a drink and some dancing at the ghetto fabulous Old Skool. And boy, is that place ghetto. You feel like you're in a club in the states with all the military presence. And they do all their american dances, including line dances, but once in a while it has its charm. I've got a little bit of a gangster in me, or rather, an alter ego of the girl who wears Baby Phat (or fubu in korea... jajajaja) on the gangster's arm.

But as fab as ghetto can be, I get my fill real fast, and went home at the early hour of 12:30 on a Saturday night, with a role of kimbap (korean sushi) since I realized I forgot to eat.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the weekend.

jEs.