brother's birthday plus fishing for lobster

it was my host brother's birthday like two weeks ago. trying to figure out a good gift was such a challenge. supposedly he likes baseball. so i thought i could either get him a famous baseball player's jersey, take him to a game maybe, or even buy him some baseball gear. i start feeling out the situation. and i cannot figure out how much he likes baseball. it really seems like he doesn't. he plays about one a month, according to him. he has no desire to watch a professional baseball game -- this means i couldn't get him the jersey or take him to a game.

some of his favorite toys include a ping pong ball, a baseball game on his cell phone, and a harmonica (which he recently obtained and i sometimes play guitar to haha). i asked his mother and brother what he'd like and his brother's response was, "he is a very simple person. he doesn't have much, yet he is happy. there is nothing that he wants." the only thing i've ever seen him get excited about was food. so i'm like, "okay, what about ice cream? i know he likes ice cream." both the brother and mother's eyes light up! food is definitely the way to this kids heart.

i find the baskin robbins to try and buy an ice cream cake. i stand in front of the freezer for a good 10 min trying to figure out what the different cakes are. but aside from the one that says banana in korean, i have no idea what they are. i can't even tell if their ice cream cakes or not. but i am at br, so i reassure myself that they must be. and then my eyes stumble on the one. or on the picture of what the cake is supposed to be. there's a baseball cake! how perfect. even though the actual cake doesn't really look like one and i hadn't noticed it until i saw the picture, i bought that. i had no idea what flavor it was, but who cares. there's a baseball. when my host brother saw the huge br box his eyes lit up and he started giggling and wanted to open it right away. it was pretty sweet. success is mine.

in korea, the birthday boy apparently lights his own candles

in korea, the birthday boy also sings to himself

although it might also have been that he really wanted to eat

the cake so he was just trying to speed the process along

i guess it kinda looks like a baseball...

Next story:

last friday i get home and my host father is like, do you like lobster. my eyes light up and i'm thinking, "lobster? you're gonna take me to go eat some lobster? oh hell yeah!" and then he asks me if i like fishing. i've only gone fishing once, and i've always wanted to try, so i say yes. and then he tells me we're going to go fishing for lobster.. this is when my enthusiasm begins to curb.. the heck does that mean? how do you fish for lobster? i also think back on all of our previous miscommunications and i begin to fear that i may have just gotten myself into another one of those situations. but it is too late. and the potential for eating lobster is too good to pass up. he tells me to put on my "fishing clothes." i put on some boardshorts. and off we go!

the "lobster"

the lobster in our ramen

we ate this too... kidding...

host father serenading me. in english, no less

conclusion:

fishing meant setting up traps for the lobster to swim into.

lobster meant some sort of shrimp/prawn kind of thing.

i had been expecting some fatty lobsters and i was even thinking to myself, "wow, it's this easy to catch lobsters? all you gotta do is set up some traps and eat ramen as you wait? why doesn't everyone do this?" wrong. those little babies were what we were after.