Life as a leaf

Life as a leaf

december 2001
allright, this rabbit story got a little bit out of hand; suddenly i found myself in front of some 100 fellow level 1 students explaining my relation with yopki tokki for a speech contest. they all had a good laugh while my classmate natasha showed my silly drawings of yopki tokki, miffy, and the rabbit making rice cakes in the moon. by popular request, i put the link here again, hoping you can enjoy some rabbit nonsense.
my first term has finished, so no classes these days. the korean academic year ends in december, and the new one starts in march. luckily the language institute opens again in january. last week i visited the korean university of foreign studies. my japanese friends had assured me that some people there are studying dutch, of course i wanted to meet them. in a long corridor, with the name of a different language on each door, we knocked on the dutch door and found some of those korean students who decided to study dutch for 4 years. of course they were a bit shy, probably because language learning here does not focus on conversation, but they asked me to speak dutch and seemed to understand my questions- wonderful! they showed me some study books, all from the netherlands of course, but the teacher is a woman from antwerp who has been in korea for 20 years. on the wall there was a list of belgian beers and the portrait of van gogh. i will visit them again to find out more.
while i was having a drink in a bar the bar man explained that they were about to do something for a newly wed couple. they brought them to the middle and everybody started to shout 'kissu, kissu'. it took me a couple of seconds to realise, but what they were after was a PDA (public display of affection). the embarrassed couple could not escape, and their lips touched for a split second under loud cheering. normally the custom seems to be to go to one of the many discrete love hotels, some even have curtains to hide the parked cars. from the yonsei annals, an university magazine in english: 'though few, [some] extremely immature students have gone as far as sharing their intense feelings in lecture halls, in the library, and any other place around the campus. are these people trying to tease loners? if they are, they are being very successful. they just seem to be waiting for someone to tell them -get a room-.'
a while ago i was having a contemplative sunday breakfast in a park near my house. one by one the leaves were falling from the trees, and i reflected on the life of leaves. born in spring, attached to the tree for half a year, and then 7 seconds of glory and freedom before they hit the ground. i imagined the leaves waiting for the perfect moment to let it go and perform their short dance on the breeze. some fly far, some prefer to land close to their tree. i was happy to be there and witness their moment. then my feet got really cold, and i decided to by some extra winter socks. korea must be the only country on earth were sock sizes are expressed in centimeters. i had never thought about my feet in that way, so i went for the biggest size, 26 in case you are wondering. it is really getting cold now, but the sun keeps shining as it has done throughout autumn- most of the rain falls in summer here. i have always thought the sun was yellow, that is how i learned to draw it as a child. in this part of the world children are taught it is red and they seem to stick to it.