Apparently martial arts classes don't count as fighting. Even though the hapkido instructor and I got into a bit of freestyle groundfighting after I escaped three joint locks in a row in my first class. (He won, but he makes sure to do locks perfectly on me now... anything less and I can escape.)

My social life up north revolves around hapkido.

The instructor is an employee at the mine. When he's up north, he teaches classes every second day. Since we're on different shifts, I get half a run's worth of classes - we're only both up north at the same time for a week and a half.

On the days without classes, I'll often join the instructor or other students for a game of volleyball or whatever else is happening in the gym on that night. The rest of the time I just do my own thing in the gym and surf the net.

There really isn't a lot to do up here, but since there's not a lot of time to do it in, it works out all right.

Korean with a Québecois accent

Of course, since this is Quebec, knowledge of English isn't required to work here. A lot of people do speak English, but even more only know a few words.

The hapkido instructor doesn't seem to speak English, or at least not well enough to want to chat in that language. He throws the occasional English word around, pronouncing it carefully and grinning like he just made a joke, and for a while seemed to have made it his mission to teach me Québecois slang as well as the Korean words and phrases used in class.

After hearing Korean words coming from both English and French speaking people, I have to wonder what they're actually supposed to sound like.

At first I sometimes couldn't tell if the instructor was using a Korean word or a French word that I didn't know. (If he translated it into French that answered that question, but even then he would sometimes explain it with a French word that I didn't know...) He started talking a lot slower in class, and was more careful about his pronunciation. I didn't realize just how careful he was being until I heard him chatting with somebody else, and between the speed and the accent I understood about every third word.

The Québecois accent drives me nuts sometimes. It's so far from what I learned in school that it can take me a few seconds to recognize it as French - at which point I've missed the first half of the sentence and have to ask them to repeat it. Maybe that's how the rumor that I don't speak French started.

(Rumors circulating about me? See my comment above about how much there is to do here when you're not working. Also, given the ratio of men to women, it wouldn't surprise me if all the guys up here knew every female's face, name, and employer. And even shift schedule.)

"The mine will miss you"

My contract ends and the water treatment plant closes for the season in November. After that, I don't have to come up here anymore. I've told this to some of the guys I talk to regularly, and I've gotten that response a couple of times.

I've also gotten some warnings about some people here. "Watch out for him, he likes the ladies." That always makes me want to laugh and ask, "how many guys here don't like ladies?"

Not that I hate it up here (of course I haven't been here in the winter), but I will be happy to work more normal-length weeks, and not being two days travel from my other half. 21 days is a long work week, and a long time to be away from home.

Two more days. But who's counting?