curious small bump on the joint of my left middle finger closest to my
palm and on the palm side. It is a bony nodule about the size of a
lentil. So Thursday morning I hit the Internet research and gave the
self diagnosis of a small bone tumor that is rarely mastitic, or, more
probably BPOP. BPOP stands for bizarre something something
proliferation and as it may suggest to you reader, this little lentil
might grow into something more, well, bizarre. This sort of growth is
known as Nora's Lesion after a doctor who described it in the early
eighties. Apparently it is an odd pathology that occurs most commonly
where it occurs on me in people my age. Next on the docket is to see a
doctor and get some documentation and recommendations. It is
removable, oftentimes with recurrence, presuming, of course, it is what
I think it is. On the other hand, if it weren't to bizarrely
proliferate, I am fine with leaving it alone for all of my days. It
doesn't seem to affect me much, except in knowing that it's there,
which has really bugged me the past five days. Also, it is "in the
way" in the sense that its placing is inconvenient for holding things
and pushing strollers sometimes. But no biggie. Yet.
So, how does one keep his mind off of a bone tumor? Well, on Friday we
took a day trip to a nearby flower festival, where I went on national
news again. Here is what I didn't tell them in our brief interview:
I found out last week that Friday was a school vacation day for our
school, so we planned on traveling to some nearby cities where they put
on festivals to celebrate the beautiful spring blossoms. We decided on
Samcheok, the next town over, which is putting on a canola or "rape
flower" festival. Did you know that canola's name as such comes from "CANadian Oil Low-Acid"? It's modified rapeseed, or as the Korean's call it, "rape flower". I
don't know if what we were in was canola, or actual unmodified
rapeseed. Probably the latter I guess.
So, we called a Samcheok Tour Info number and spoke with some people
about how to best get to the festival. We planned on taking the train
and it doesn't have a main "Samcheok" stop, but has a couple stops in
Samcheok. We were told to get off at the Shingi station, whereupon we
would take a bus into town and then another bus to the festival site.
Too many buses, I thought--we'd probably just take a taxi. But anyway,
we set out for our family adventure.
This is all after I went and exchanged some won for dollars at the
bank. My new idea is to change our money into dollars but keep it in
Korea, and if the exchange rate goes bad again, I can change dollars we
have here into cheap won, speculating that the won will get good (or at
least better) again. On the other hand, if the won keeps getting
better, that's okay, too. It keeps us from having to change money at
the worst possible rate. Unless of course it gets real bad, and then I
change my money back into won, and then it never ever gets good again.
The train ride was beautiful. Just leaving out Taebaek station, we
started getting into areas where the cherry blossoms were at their
best. Actually now, just a few days later, I am seeing more blossoms
in Taebaek too. I guess because of our altitude, we usually experience
the cherry blossoms up to a month later than elsewhere. Anyway, it was
wonderful to see the blossoms and the Spring scenery. This continued
on until our destination, the bustling Shingi station which is near the
middle of nowhere.
At the Shingi station, I realized that we were misled, because the
helpers there didn't seem to be very familiar with getting into
Samcheok by bus. Well, they were able to find out easily enough, and
they told us. There were two buses we could catch, and they showed us
where. One was leaving in 10 minutes, and it was a short walk. But
another was leaving in 40 minutes, in case we missed the first one. We
hiked up there and missed the first bus. Actually, we were in the
right place at the right time, but we didn't know it. Until later.
We gave up waiting for the first bus, which had already come to the
stop we passed up unknowingly. We then proceeded to wait for the
second bus, which was the right place for the first bus. We waited and
waited, and finally gave up. Now, I will admit, this would have been a
good time to have a timepiece. Because as soon as we crossed the road
to inquire at a convenience store/shop/restaurant about getting a taxi,
the bus went by, not a minute off schedule at 1:30pm.
I think any normal person would be experiencing dismay or anger at this
point. But not me of course. I garnered more chi and waited
peacefully for another 40 minutes for the next bus. Bonnie, actually,
was the peaceful one. We learned some Korean from a Learn Korean book
we thankfully brought.
It turns out, that not but a five minute walk away from where we waited
for more than an hour, is one of the most splendid looking museum
complexes I have seen.
click it to see more:
But, it's probably good that we didn't know it, or as opposed to
waiting around for more than an hour, we would have walked there, and
we would have been sucked in, and we would have missed the rapeseed
festival.
We did see it right away after boarding the bus, though, again to my dismay.
Getting into Samcheok was worth it though. The main bus terminal
offered the peace of mind I wanted because they had buses going back to
Taebaek later in the day that we could take, instead of getting back
out to the Shingi station or trying to discover an alternate train
route. The actual twon of Samcheok is right near the coast, so the
weather was milder (It was downright hot where we waited near the
Shingi station).
As soon as we got the taxi to the rapeseed festival, we were in another
sort of heaven. All the dismay and hot waiting melted away into the
distant past, as we watched the cherry blossoms fall like snow. The
fields of yellow lay ahead in promise, next to the festival tents, and
other colors drugged our eyes while the mountains on the one side and
the sea on the other made us forget all our troubles. Or, maybe it was
the beautiful smells. It was like sticking your nose in a morning
glory, without the trouble of keeping it there. Our atmosphere, for
the couple of hours we were there, consisted not of air, but of that
delicate delightful aroma.
When I was eighteen, and I lived in the little farm house east of
Jerome, and I moved a lot of pipe, I moved pipe in canola fields. I
did tell the interviewer that I had seen rapeseed before, in my
country. But I didn't tell him about the farmhouse.
The interviewer and his camera crew snatched us Taebeckers and took
their footage. It was a quick, pleasant experience actually. Of
course we didn't know for sure if we would make the news, but at church
yesterday we heard a lot about it.
We saw beetle grubs bigger than mice. We ate rapeseed pancakes. We played in bubbles and smiled and laughed. It was fun.
We took a bus back to Taebaek and that's the end of my rapeseed festival story.
However. That was just Friday. And now I realize I must hurry to
describe the rest of our weekend in just a few minutes. I have to go
to class, and I'm sure you have to do something important too.
Saturday morning we hiked with Trent to our exercise mountain. Then
instead of coming home the way we went, we took a roundabout
exploration that got us home seeing some new things, new routes, new
exercise stations. We saw the names of some flowers which I'll have
to describe another time. Later in the weekend we found that our
favorite exercise mountain bird is called a black-capped chickadee.
Yesterday we started our happy Easter by making use of our rooftop clothesline. That was fun.
And our Sunday included a hike up to another new place right outside of
downtown, which is another mountain climb. We just walked up a little
way to a neat resting place, temple, and coal workers monument (of some
sort). There are some beautiful tulip trees blooming these days. Some
girls were collecting dandelion greens. This was Trent and me, Orry
and Isaac. It was fun.
It makes me want to write about the Korean dead. Because on hillsides
like this, you'll see some graves. But I'll have to write about that
another time.
Then that evening we had porridge together with Nicole's parents. As a
Korean treat, we all went out after that to Noraebang, and we all sang
songs and laughed and danced.
To top it off, later that night, Bonnie and I watched a Woody Allen
movie we had downloaded. Michael J Fox, Woody Allen, and Blossom, of
all people. Don't Drink The Water.
What a week.
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