The 4th of July was pretty epic fun. Particularly since it started with not plan in mind. Out on the street, as I was heading to the store, I ran into a couple of folks from my building as they headed off to buy things including fireworks.

I ran with them a way (there was some promise of fireworks being available at a small store, but it turned out to be no more than sparklers), and then turned back to the lovely solace of air-conditioning and soju.

But a few hours later my phone rang and as I ran in from the deck to answer it, I heard banging in the stairwell. This was ADAM and his family, and Thumper McStomp heading up to BPU to set off fireworks on the soccer pitch (essentially sand formed into cement by generations of Korean spit). I brought my camera so that I could take pictures.

We were headed to the soccer pitch because this same group had started to set fireworks off by the second river but had received a group hairy-eyeball from a bunch of Koreans who were preparing for their weekly session in which they dress up as cows and protest pretty much anything that they can think of. In this case, it could have been fireworks, and ADAM and Thumper Mac didn't want to get into any of that. The soccer pitch had the advantage of NOT being the location of a demonstration as well as plenty of free space.

They began setting off Roman Candles (Korean fireworks are splendidly not-safe and not-sane) and all of a sudden a whistle began to blow from the building behind us. Thumper didn't seem to hear it and casually lit another Roman Candle. This cause the whistling to increase to a mighty level and Thumper heard it, but had just lit the fuse on a 10-ball Roman Candle. As each ball sped into the night sky, the guy with the whistle went a bit louder and a bit higher.

It seemed endless, but finally Thumper's Roman Candle guttered out and a security guy from another building came over and told us that we'd need a permit from the college to do things on the soccer pitch.

Oh well, chased away from the 4th of July twice now.

So it was back to the apartment and the certain solace of soju, where an hour later I heard English-speakers on the street. Once again it was Adam, this time with two other instructors in tow. They had bags of un-safe and insande fireworks and a two-liter plastic container of some ferocious rice-wine that they had purchased from a monastery (they said). A few more calls and we had a group of about 7 people and we headed, noisily I'm afraid, down to the closest confluence of a rivulet and something approaching a creek. There we proceeded to shoot of about an hour of fireworks and drink the rice-wine and some beer we had purchased on the way.

Thumper Mac was a bit drunk and both loathing and loving his wife's imminent arrival in Korea. This manifested itself in drunken male-bonding and alternating hollers of, "it's great to be a man," and "it's great to have a dick!" All this noise and light brought local Koreans out several of whom said something too us, but it was too indistinct to understand and they soon became bored with watching the waeguks have fun. A bit later a second group came out to watch us including one guy with a flashlight and another who just stood behind us and watched (the photo of the watcher). One brave woman actually wandered down the embankment and cadged a beer of off us. She stayed only long enough to drink it, and then scarpered back up the encampment.

The entire scene was a bit surreal (particularly as it all took place under the watchful eye of a neon church-cross) and this was exacerbated by the fact that, just that day, there had been an oil spill in the rivulet, so the water was greasily reflective and covered in swirly patterns.

I went home and the first song on the iPod was "Right Next Door to Hell" which I thought was just about right.

In that sacreligious spirit I leave you with a picture of Thumper Mac committing acts of indecency as the cross upon which Jesus died to forgive our sin looks sadly down.