conversations

Me: Hey, do you have any bhat left?

A: Yeah, I do, why?

Me: I’m hungry. Are you hungry?

A: I don’t know. Maybe. But food is so far away, we just walked a mile to get to the gate!

Me: Yeah, but we’re going to be on airplanes for hours with nasty airplane food. I know you’re going to be hungry, you eat every hour.

A: But then we have to walk allllll the way back through the gates. Are you really that hungry?

Me: Well, if you’re too tired it’s OK. It’s up to you.

Coach: Haha. Man, she just guilted you.

S: Yeah, and you’re REALLY bad at this.

Me: What? He’s my brother. I don’t need to be good at guilting, I know he’s going to be hungry anyways.

A: OK, OK, let’s go.

So we walk up the ramps and out of security.

A: Hey noona. Now that I think about it, I AM hungry.

I really enjoyed having a brother for a week, esp. one that's so much younger so he was easy to take care of. He was a good dongseng. Even if I had to do his laundry. Haha.

So we found this Korean place in the Thai airport. The kimchee was close enough to the real deal to be satisfying. Rex found us and laughed at us – and showed us his British Harry Potter that he’d just bought. (He and I both collect the British versions, which you can’t buy in the US – we were very excited to find that the airport bookstore had them). But I had no bhat left and my credit cards were with our bags at the gate so we resumed our ramen and bulgogi.

A: So you really want that book, huh?

Me: Yeah well, I can’t get it in the States. But it’s OK, I have the American version.

A: Do you want it? Yes or no?

Me: Eh, I don’t need it.

A: I’m going to ask you one more time. Do you want it? Yes or no?

He bought me the book for “being a good person”. Whatever that means. I think he felt sorry for me that I had to endure captainship of a selfish team. Oh goodness, it was like dying to myself every day.

I've always have a hard time accepting gifts or help from my juniors or dongsengs. It’s a pretty common theme to learn to let that sort of pride go in certain instances. But, for the lack of a friend/peer this trip, I had to learn to do just that. Not to depend, per se – leaning too heavily on a 19 year old could only lead to disastrous expectations – but just learning to take the help when it’s needed. (Like when I busted my foot and couldn’t walk. He yelled at me for taking his arm instead of putting my full weight on his shoulders. I was like, I don’t need to burden you with all my weight, just give me your arm for balance. In the end, I couldn’t put weight on my foot, so I was humbled anyways. I hate being humbled.)

Other funny conversations:

So ever since the last Universiade, I really wanted a Swiss shirt. They have these really nice H20 shirts and gear, and they never want to trade. Especially since we weren’t staying to closing ceremonies, I was trying my best to work some transactions whenever there was free time. I was able to finally get a Swiss girl to trade a workout shirt with me – but it turns out she gave me an x-small. What the heck was I supposed to do with an XS? I’ve never been XS anything in my life!

Anyways, so one night S and I were coming back to the dorms and saw a bag of Swiss stuff that came back from the dry cleaning service.

Me: Hey, look, you should just jack that bag of Swiss stuff.

S: You want me to? I’m pretty tricky, it’d be pretty easy.

Me: S! Uh, commandment #8?

S: What? I’m just stealing – you’re the one who’s coveting!