The sounds of my neighbourhood...

I hear kids playing outside at most hours of the day. The suburb, Paju, that we live in has so many kids running and walking around, roller blading, skateboarding, biking, scootering... am i missing anything? I sit in my house and hear them play down in the courtyard below.

We have a sweet courtyard below us (we are on the 4th floor) ... I love standing at my balcony looking down on it, or up at the starts at night. That's right, I can see the stars so clearly! Orion shows up above me around 9-10 pm every night... it's one of the only things that is truly familiar to me here. Not that they don't have milk, cars and sidewalks... but it's a familiarity that is different from those types of things... it's hard to explain.

About once a week I can hear the sounds of the market in the courtyard below...

I also hear piano echoing off the building walls. It is good piano playing, mostly classical... whoever is playing it must have a window opened. I love it!!

I hear kids practicing "tae kwon do" as I walk past the building where the lessons are. Then I hear them run into the streets when the lesson is over, still in their uniforms.

And now, as of Monday, I hear kids, making kid noises, in school all the time. I'm most happy when I hear them speaking English, because they aren't supposed to speak a word of Korean while they are in school.

I hear cars and buses going by... it's not too loud, but it's there.

I hear construction sounds all around our neighbourhood... everything is so new, lots of things still being built. It isn't something that wakes me up in the morning, it's closer to the downtowny area... if you can even call it downtown. Actually it's more like, "up town".

I hear music playing loudly in the streets when certain stores are having a promotion. Sometimes they are shouting out things over the mic... I wonder what they're saying?

I heard 7 older women chanting as they walked through the streets the other night, it sounded religious.

I hear crickets all the time.

I heard about 10 tanks roll through downtown the other day! They were loud... it sounded like a bunch of tanks rolling by... heh heh, sounds redundant, but that's what it sounded like... thunderous tanks!!!

I hear Korean everywhere I go... that's an obvious one. I am trying to catch onto the language. After about 2 weeks of being here Dan and I realized that when we thought we were saying "goodbye" to people, that we were actually saying "sit down". heh heh... that was a funny realization... I still say it sometimes... I can't remember how to say goodbye... "Han io sayo"? I don't know. Dan can say it...

Sometimes I hear updates of some sort come out of these speakers of our apartment walls... some Korean person just starts talking away and Dan and I just smirk as we look from each other to the speakers in the wall...

Many many sounds I hear... these are the sounds of my neighbourhood.

I hope you are all doing well! Love Amie