Good morning, Happy!

How happy I am! Looking down at a reservoir in the front of the house to be rebuilt last year, I am writing about my second life of what I have done for the last one year on an outdoor table under the rain shelter with a breath of wind in a country house with a hill to the rear.

“Good morning, Happy!” I make it a rule to say good morning to my pet, a jindo dog of one year old, called “Happy!” every early morning as soon as I wake up at around 5 o’clock.

For six years from 2009 to 2015, I had the week-day life at my apartment in Gwangju and weekend life for farming at Jangseong, but from last year after my retirement, I changed my life style for weekday life from Gwangju to Jangseong, which made me enjoy my greatest pleasure of being indulged in farming and listening to a variety of beautiful bird singing with the gorgeous landscape of a small hill full of all kinds of wild bracken, seasoned aster, and chestnut.

Last year I enjoyed sharing my article of “My second life”(March 25, 2016) just before I retired early with the plan of my second life for retirement; re-learning taekwondo after I had learned in my campus life of 37 years ago, newly-learning guitar, rebuilding my country house because of heating problem, and week-day farming at my country house. I had a wonderful and busy country house life, dreaming and acting out of rebuilding the house for four months from March to June with the joy of re-learning taekwondo by confirming my physical health and being satisfied with my curiosity of learning guitar by practicing and playing guitar in a vinyl house, a temporary camp, enjoying the process of rebuilding the house.

In the morning, I make it a rule to learn playing badminton and play games with the club members at Jangseong Honggildong gym for two hours from 10 to 12, enjoy taking a nap, work out farming such as picking up plums, mulberry, and blueberry, bringing up roosters, cropping garlic and onion, planting red pepper, sesame, and sweet potato, and take a walk with our pet, “Happy” around the reservoir for an hour with my wife who come home from work.

What I was happy with most in my country house life was my wife’s satisfaction with shortening her office-going hour from 50 minutes in Gwangju to 15 minutes at the country house because she dreamed of leaving a house after 8 o’clock in the morning for going to her work.

A wisp of gentle breeze from the reservoir makes me sit at the outdoor table under the rain sheltering and finish writing this article waiting for my wife’s coming home from work for a walk around the reservoir in two hours. A spray rising from the surface of the reservoir cherishes me with a string of cuckoo’s song every morning. I have no words to express what I am enjoying and how much happy I am at a country house as my second life looking at my lovely pet, “Happy” lying at full length and dozing off beside me.