We sometimes stay at my father-in-law's place on Saturday nights. She generally cooks dinner for the three of us and then I get breakfast ready the following morning. He isn't fussy which means he's okay with me preparing eggs, beans, toast and salad, instead of rice, kimchi and soup as many Koreans are used to.
We then accompany him to church. Actually, he walks over there about an hour early while we're typically twenty minutes late. I would trade with all those believers I've known over the years who never bother attending service though I did recently start toying with becoming a 'reform Christian', someone who practices what Christ stood for and taught without necessarily loving him nor needing a made up creator to pray to. (Wait, isn't this called 'just being a decent human being'?)
Lunch following the service is always very unremarkable. They never serve anything I've ever craved but I do appreciate how healthy it generally is. I think they've finally begun to accept that we don't eat meat, just as they long gave up on trying to get me to teach English Bible study.
We don't tend to get home until around two. We sometimes stop at a park on the way to walk the dog a bit but the air was really shitty today so we came straight home. Nevertheless, I still took out our little puppy while my wife put everything away. We were only out for about ten minutes but by the time we returned, she was ready to take a nap. She told me to wake her up in twenty minutes but I know full well that she's going to sleep a lot more than that.
With the wife abed, I prepare some afternoon coffee. I would love to read a book on these chilled out Sunday afternoons but I never get enough sleep to be able to concentrate. So, I'm faced with Netflix or YouTube as my main options. The lift I get from a couple cups of coffee sometimes gets me to the office to begin blogging but it didn't happen quite as quickly today.
I check on my wife every so often but she keeps muttering in a mixture of English and Korean about how she wants to rest for another half hour. After a while, I basically give up. It's at this point that I begin to nod off myself. But while her naps can stretch to three or fours hours, I'm never able to get much more than ten minutes.
Stresses involving homesickness, my very unpopular, irrelevant blog, friends I've been avoiding, my boredom with teaching and the appalling state of the world eat at me but these lazy, go nowhere Sundays offer some reprieve. I may appreciate our lifestyle more when we're taking a trip to Southeast Asia or to South Korea's island paradise of Jeju-do but this is our real life and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I'd trade to be a believer who always gets to skip church but I wouldn't trade my home life for anything.
As for my thoughts on The Young Rascals' "Groovin'"? Those are my thoughts on The Young Rascals' "Groovin'".
Score: 8
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