I wouldn't say that there has been too much happening here as of late besides the constant thoughts running through my head about life, what it means, and where mine is going.
The weeks are all pretty much the same nowadays and are chock full of the same school crap. I don't mean that to sound like I think teaching is crap but there is always some baggage that comes with everything and after a while it can start to wear on you. Every so often there are complaints about how things are going at school which means that we have to continue to change how things are handled. I cannot be too sure but it seems like us foreign teachers a picked on a little bit. Maybe the parents expect more out of us for some reason but really they shouldn't since most if not all of the Westerners have never taught before. Mostly the issues are trying to find the happy medium between the extremes in teaching. You can't do too much of one thing because then it seems you are neglecting something else and vice versa. This means that there is a natural fluctuation here at least until we or the Korean teachers figure out the key to making this teaching experience easier for all parties. I think that point will finally be figured out by each teacher on their own pace while being here but knowing Murphy's Law it will not solve itself for me until I am about to leave. Nonetheless, I am just venting a little because I am sort of frustrated with a few things here but it is nothing too big.
Last weekend the adventures started out by us going out and meeting Leanne's parents. They were here for a couple week visit and it was a night they had to enjoy in Suji so we all go to meet them. Leanne's parents are very nice, and cool and I can see where Leanne gets a lot of her personality from. It is always interesting to meet peoples' parents since we get to see more into their history and why they are the way they are. Anyway we chilled out at a bar/restaurant with them and enjoyed a nice conversation with them. Leanne and her parents then needed to go, and Alivia, Paul and I went to Exit for the usual Friday night festivities. We stayed there for a while and enjoyed some drinking and dancing. Paul and I decided to leave and then we got a little sidetracked and Paul almost got involved in a fight. Long story short some Korean guys were hassling Paul for his good intentions and the communication barrier made it seem as though emotions were running high. Paul and I got outta there before anything happened. As we wandered back to my place we found some fun smashable trash, and since Paul was pissed about the random scenario that just happened, we decided to smash things. This means we made a mess of smashing things. We killed a dirty used humidifier, a printer, and a sink. There can be glory and beauty in destruction. This was a perfect ending to that evening.
Saturday I had a private lesson which was pretty cool. I had to help this kid polish up his speech so he could enter a speech contest. He had written a really good and inspirational speech about being a global eco activist. After the private lesson I went home and grabbed some movies, hopped on the subway, and headed into the city for a date. Here a quick update so you can catch up...a couple weeks ago I met a nice girl outside of a bar in Itaewon and we were talking and then after a couple weeks of talking online and on the phone we decided to go out. We went out for galbi and ice cream, and then watched movies and TV into the wee hours.
Sunday I met up with Paul in Hongdae to see if we could find some Halloween costumes, but no such luck. Instead we found some presents for some of our families members. After wandering in and out of stores there we finally went to a Mexican restaurant we have been aiming to try for a while, Dos Tacos. This place was actually pretty damn good. It was by far the best Mexican food that Paul and I have had while being here and boy do we miss it. We left Hongdae after enjoying our gourmet meal and we headed home. I hadn't been feeling well so I went home and slept. Apparently I had a bit of a throat cold but I am over it now. That is literally it for this past weekend. As I said it really was nothing to report. More to come soon after this next weekend.
Halloween is this weekend and it is the hardest of the three super hard days for me to miss from my regular life throughout the course of this year. They really don't celebrate Halloween here so I am a little sad. Oh well.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Your attention please. Please blog if you are paying attention.
Hello all you lovelies out there in non-TVland. We shall begin in the logical place of the last place I left off. No?
Last week Monday lots of us had off of school still from Chuseok break. Leanne, Alivia, Paul and I went to this Korean folk village and theme park in Suwon. There was a lot to be seen there and lots to do. We saw a traditional Korean wedding, a tightrope walker, a harvest dance with these dancers with long fancy ribbon hats, a korean folk village, the worlds second worst haunted house, and much much more. All of it was hella interesting and fantastic. My favorite was the haunted house because we went in there hoping to find something good but came out laughing. The haunted house was this dark twisting nether of little rooms with animatronic monsters. We went in the entrance to find an old korean man directly ahead of us. He kept shuffling into walls since it was difficult to see. I still think he went in there looking for the bathroom. We then made our way over to the traditional village museum and learned about many fun korean things. After that we went to the worlds worst theme park. Alivia and I rode the carousel while Paul and Leanne rode the Viking which looked like a pirate ship. I wanted to ride the horse backwards but they wouldn't let me. That and I had to buckle up...on the carousel. Then we rode the bumper cars and Paul got on his cellphone while driving. After our bumpy illegal ride we went on the worlds worst rollercoaster and it was so lame and short that we couldn't believe it. All in all it was great fun because we got to see a lot of things and experience funtacular ancient theme park rides.
This past week went by fast as usual and was the same as usual. The weekend came in another torrent of strange. I went to meet Paul friday night at a bar just outside his place and when I got there he and crew had left so we just ended up drinking at his place, listening to Ryans mix, and passing out. Saturday I remember we had lots of fun because we went on another Paul and Joel adventure. A few weeks ago Paul and I were in the neighborhood Jeongja Kraze Burger and we had magazines that we were looking through. We noticed an ad for these shoes that intrigued me. This was the MLB concept shoe. Apparently the MLB must use Korea as a test market for some things and as a good place ot ver merchandise themselves. I did some digging and found out where there is an MLB store here in Korea. Apparently the store is in Apgujeong, which is a place Paul and I have ventured to once before. We set out for these shoes. We got to Apgujeong and started walking when finally I stopped in the movie theater and asked the ticket office lady. She said Hyundai department mall and pointed. We walked back towards the train stop and found said mall. Upon entering this mall we were pretty blown away. This was high class fashion central as in you can find any and every desinger name in here. There were level upon level of uber expensive goodies in here. There was even a golden crocodile and a pepto bismol colored suit of armor. Anyway long story short we went up and down these levels looking for the MLB store and we kept getting different directions. Until finally we asked a guy in the adidas store and he pulled out a map and showed us that it was on the only floor we hadn't combed the surface of. We went down there and found the store and I wet my pants the first time. Once in the store we were helped by a korean woman in purple who had purple contacts in, thus making her eye color purple. She said they only had the white and brown versions of the shoe I wanted, but just then another clerk woman in there over heard and went to the back and brought me my shoes in the black color that I wanted. I tried them on, fell in love, and left happy. These are the shoes...
Those are my new incredible shoes and I love them. Post buying these shoes Paul and I went for a celebratory McDonalds meal. Then we headed to Gangnam to try out the shoes in the batting cages and boy was that weird. These batting cages are pretty awful because the ball is never pitched in the strike zone. All the pitches were either too high or too low. Even Paul thought so and he doesn't play baseball. In other words collectively we amassed about five hits on six or seven turns in the cages. I felt pretty pathetic but then I looked down at my feet and was reminded again of my love for baseball. Criticize me all you want about these shoes but the fact that the represent in my eyes how I feel about baseball and how it makes me feel is something that I thought could never be captured in an article of clothing or a material possesion besides a photograph. There is only one other thing in this world that makes me feel the same way about baseball as these shoes and that is the picture my father has on his desk. I will tell you about that sometime.
After striking out in Gangnam we met up with the crew in Itaewon for some fun adventures in alcohol. We hit a few bars and wandered the area. We ended up going through an area called hooker hill and I really don't want to talk about it because the whole thing made me very uncomfortable. I saw somethings there that I had hoped to never even see in my nightmares. We finally found the bar/club we were trying to go to and they had some crazy 3D event that was going on that proved to not be that 3D. Nonetheless I scored about 7 or 8 pairs of 3D glasses from that bar and so I am happy. We then ended up at another bar where I got bored and left. The next day, being sunday, we did a lot of nothing, played a short round of pathetic ping pong, and got some dinner at this crazy awesome buffet and steak restaurant called VIPS. That was it for the past couple weekends and now lets see what the next one brings...
Special blog shout out: This one goes to my Father for getting me into baseball. I love baseball more than I love most things and I miss it a lot. This makes me miss my father too. In other words Dad if you are reading this this baseball adventure and blog were for you. You can put it on the board...yes!!
Last week Monday lots of us had off of school still from Chuseok break. Leanne, Alivia, Paul and I went to this Korean folk village and theme park in Suwon. There was a lot to be seen there and lots to do. We saw a traditional Korean wedding, a tightrope walker, a harvest dance with these dancers with long fancy ribbon hats, a korean folk village, the worlds second worst haunted house, and much much more. All of it was hella interesting and fantastic. My favorite was the haunted house because we went in there hoping to find something good but came out laughing. The haunted house was this dark twisting nether of little rooms with animatronic monsters. We went in the entrance to find an old korean man directly ahead of us. He kept shuffling into walls since it was difficult to see. I still think he went in there looking for the bathroom. We then made our way over to the traditional village museum and learned about many fun korean things. After that we went to the worlds worst theme park. Alivia and I rode the carousel while Paul and Leanne rode the Viking which looked like a pirate ship. I wanted to ride the horse backwards but they wouldn't let me. That and I had to buckle up...on the carousel. Then we rode the bumper cars and Paul got on his cellphone while driving. After our bumpy illegal ride we went on the worlds worst rollercoaster and it was so lame and short that we couldn't believe it. All in all it was great fun because we got to see a lot of things and experience funtacular ancient theme park rides.
This past week went by fast as usual and was the same as usual. The weekend came in another torrent of strange. I went to meet Paul friday night at a bar just outside his place and when I got there he and crew had left so we just ended up drinking at his place, listening to Ryans mix, and passing out. Saturday I remember we had lots of fun because we went on another Paul and Joel adventure. A few weeks ago Paul and I were in the neighborhood Jeongja Kraze Burger and we had magazines that we were looking through. We noticed an ad for these shoes that intrigued me. This was the MLB concept shoe. Apparently the MLB must use Korea as a test market for some things and as a good place ot ver merchandise themselves. I did some digging and found out where there is an MLB store here in Korea. Apparently the store is in Apgujeong, which is a place Paul and I have ventured to once before. We set out for these shoes. We got to Apgujeong and started walking when finally I stopped in the movie theater and asked the ticket office lady. She said Hyundai department mall and pointed. We walked back towards the train stop and found said mall. Upon entering this mall we were pretty blown away. This was high class fashion central as in you can find any and every desinger name in here. There were level upon level of uber expensive goodies in here. There was even a golden crocodile and a pepto bismol colored suit of armor. Anyway long story short we went up and down these levels looking for the MLB store and we kept getting different directions. Until finally we asked a guy in the adidas store and he pulled out a map and showed us that it was on the only floor we hadn't combed the surface of. We went down there and found the store and I wet my pants the first time. Once in the store we were helped by a korean woman in purple who had purple contacts in, thus making her eye color purple. She said they only had the white and brown versions of the shoe I wanted, but just then another clerk woman in there over heard and went to the back and brought me my shoes in the black color that I wanted. I tried them on, fell in love, and left happy. These are the shoes...
Those are my new incredible shoes and I love them. Post buying these shoes Paul and I went for a celebratory McDonalds meal. Then we headed to Gangnam to try out the shoes in the batting cages and boy was that weird. These batting cages are pretty awful because the ball is never pitched in the strike zone. All the pitches were either too high or too low. Even Paul thought so and he doesn't play baseball. In other words collectively we amassed about five hits on six or seven turns in the cages. I felt pretty pathetic but then I looked down at my feet and was reminded again of my love for baseball. Criticize me all you want about these shoes but the fact that the represent in my eyes how I feel about baseball and how it makes me feel is something that I thought could never be captured in an article of clothing or a material possesion besides a photograph. There is only one other thing in this world that makes me feel the same way about baseball as these shoes and that is the picture my father has on his desk. I will tell you about that sometime.
After striking out in Gangnam we met up with the crew in Itaewon for some fun adventures in alcohol. We hit a few bars and wandered the area. We ended up going through an area called hooker hill and I really don't want to talk about it because the whole thing made me very uncomfortable. I saw somethings there that I had hoped to never even see in my nightmares. We finally found the bar/club we were trying to go to and they had some crazy 3D event that was going on that proved to not be that 3D. Nonetheless I scored about 7 or 8 pairs of 3D glasses from that bar and so I am happy. We then ended up at another bar where I got bored and left. The next day, being sunday, we did a lot of nothing, played a short round of pathetic ping pong, and got some dinner at this crazy awesome buffet and steak restaurant called VIPS. That was it for the past couple weekends and now lets see what the next one brings...
Special blog shout out: This one goes to my Father for getting me into baseball. I love baseball more than I love most things and I miss it a lot. This makes me miss my father too. In other words Dad if you are reading this this baseball adventure and blog were for you. You can put it on the board...yes!!
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
A note to any of my readers...
I was told through the grapevine that some people think my blog is too long. Whether that is true or not is not the case here. Hearing that people are bothering to follow my blog and then stop because it is too long is pretty offensive. If you think my blog is too long then go ahead and stop reading it. Instead do this just send me an email or message once in a while asking "How are you" and I will give you the simple answer, so you don't need any of this complex BS, of "Fine." I apologize if this has offended you but if you really don't want to hear every detail then do not read my blog because that is what it is hear for. I structured this blog to not only inform all about my adventures here, so they worry less, but also to teach my friends and family what South Korea is actually like and what is has to offer. I also have this blog as a place where I can write thoughts I have about life in general so that I can gather my own thoughts in an organized manner and come to some new realization. If all this is too much for you, then please I ask you to send me emails or messages asking me about my life here. I cannot promise I will respond to them right away but they will be responded to nonetheless. Thank you for reading this and considering your options. Please leave comments on my blogs as I find them fun and I would like to know who some of you are that are commenting on my blog. A new blog is on its way soon.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Choking smoker, don't you think the blogger laughs at you?
Here is the Chuseok blog and boy howdy is it full of good'ns....
Okay let us begin at the most appropriate place that I can; the beginning. Wednesday night I was finishing classes and about to go home when my director handed out Chuseok gifts. I got exactly what I had asked for, which was of course a case of 12 cans of Tuna!! I never thought I would be happier to get tuna. I have eaten a few cans of it already but my cupboards still look pretty full of tuna so I am a happy camper.
Thursday proved to be interesting because it started the Chuseok events off with a bang...sort of. I do not remember what I did most of the day but Paul appeared in the area around 6 and we went to meet up with some of our friends here in Suji so we could leave for Incheon. We were going to stay with about 12-14 people in a big hotel condo sort of place on the beaches in Incheon. Paul and I got to Leanne's apt. to find out that our friend Alivia had gone to a hospital for emergency surgery. Now this sounds worse than it was but it was necessary. Alivia had had an ear infection for a few days and it just kept getting worse until she decided to go find out what the real deal was. Long story short she had some sort of abscess at the back of her throat and they needed to cut it open and drain the puss inside. Alivia was going through the surgery as Paul and I arrived at Leanne's, so evidently we didn't leave on schedule because we wanted to find out if Alivia was okay. She came out of it alright and happy that it was all over with but she had to stay in the hospital for a few days so they could make sure everything was healing properly. This meant that Alivia was going to miss out on our Chuseok adventure/s. While waiting for Alivia to come out we all went and got some food and hung out for a while. After food Leanne decided she wanted to go to Alivia and wanted all of us to go to Incheon and she would meet us there the next day. Andy, Carl, Paul and I headed to the bus stop to catch the "Airport Limousine" which really is just a fancy bus that takes us to the airport. We waited for an hour and ten minutes and saw at least five buses go the other direction before we called it quits for the night. We then called Leanne and told her what happened and we headed to Exit to drink and worry about going the next day.
Friday morning Leanne, Andy, and Carl got up and started to get ready to go while Paul and I opted for sleep and leaving later. Paul and I ended up leaving Suji around 3pm and got to where we needed to be by maybe around 6ish. This was no problem since we were being pretty laid back about the whole thing but we had fun on the bus. We played an alphabet game where you say "I went to the supermarket/store and I bought (something/s that start with the assigned letter)" we only got to V before the ride was over.
Here is what we came up with:
I went to the supermarket and bought...
Alligators
Boner Popsicles
Catatonic cab drivers
Donkey Diarrhea
Eccentric Egomaniacal Elephants
Flatulent Flatwas (Paul said that is the Iranian air force or something I don't remember)
Gaggle of Gigantors
Hyper-inflated poop tubes
Immaculate Institutionalized Inuits
Jaguar Jacking off to Jumping Jack Flash
Killer Kangaroos from Krusty Burger
Leaping Lepers
Melted Masticating Mandibles
Narcoleptic Nachos
Oprah's Ornery Osteoporosis
Pangolin cleaning itself with a Penal Douche
Quarrel of Quintessential Queer Queens
Rowdy Rotunda of Robust Rabid Rabbits
Smelly Sacrilegious Systematic Somalian Sunnites
Terrific Trundle of Terrorist Tacos playing Tic Tac Toe
Ungodly Ugly Uruguayan Ungulates that are Uninfluenced by Ugandan Underwear
Ventriloquist that Vies to be Victorious over his Viscous Villainous Varicose Veins
And....you're there!!
We were there and we walked up to our ginormous hotel. We checked in and went to the room and waited for our friends to appear. Then we left with them to get some eats and drinks. We met up with the rest of the people staying with us once we were done with dinner and we went to the beach, drank, and lit off fireworks...a lot of fireworks. Paul and I then bought more fireworks to launch off. This was truly great as I love fireworks and Paul missed the fourth of July this year as I will next year. We then proceeded back to the room briefly until we figured out that some of us wanted to continue drinking and go to a Noribang (karaoke place). Leanne, Andy, Carl, Paul, Peter, and I went to the singing place and started to sing our brains out. Leanne and I did the most singing but Leanne did the best. I performed such lyrical stylings as Pardon Me, Run to the Hills, Californication, I am the Walrus, Hotel California, Paranoid Android, Hey Jude, Bohemian Rhapsody, Purple Haze, Stairway to Heaven, and some other awesome songs. We were there until the place closed at 3am. After stretching our vocal chords we decided to hang out on the beach. The tide there had come in a great distance and the evening scenery was amazing. Peter had left us by this time and everyone else was asleep in the hotel room. Leanne, Carl, Andy, and Paul all pranced on the beach and I sat back on the cement and listened to the harmony of the waves. After a few minutes of this Leanne and Carl lay down on the beach and Andy and Paul continued to prance. Then Andy jumped over that pair and Paul decided to as well. This proved to be a poor idea because Andy stopped just after the jump and went to turn around. Crack!! They smacked heads together and Paul went down for the count for a minute. Everyone was okay for the moment. We found an open convenience store and went in for edible goodies. I indulged in a can of tuna with some chopsticks and ended up feeding a good portion of it to the stray kitties in the area. As we wandered back to the hotel Paul's nose began to bleed. This was now at least a good half hour after the incident and his nose thought it to be a prudent time to have some human bean juice leakage. After a while Paul was fine and we made it back to the hotel alright. We spread our little beds out on the floor and called it a night although it proved to be a short night. Hitting the hay at 5 am made us barely get any rest as all the other people got up between 8-9 and we had to be out of that room by 11. We got up, gathered our things, kissed the beach goodbye and headed for the bus back home. We got back right around 3 pm which was exactly 24hrs after Paul and I had left, so that was kind of interesting.
Saturday was actually Chuseok so we really did nothing for it when we got back. Leanne decided that since all places were closed for food she would hold an impromptu cooking session and made us these odd and delicious sandwiches. We continued to hang out and bum around Suji for the next little while until Paul and I split from the crew and went off to meet up with some Korean friends. For the past week Paul has been sort of seeing a Korean girl who barely speaks any English. She is friends with one of Leanne and Andy's co-teachers who speaks both languages very well so we were invited out with them. Paul and I saw this as a good opportunity to have the bilingual friend of ours help translate between him and his new lady friend. We also decided since we had been drinking and having too much fun the past two nights to not spend any money or drink at all. We met up with them and then headed to this very westerny sports bar here in Suji. Once we were there more of their friends appeared and now Paul and I were the only two U.S. kiddies amongst at most ten Koreans, and that was really cool. We ended up having a lot of fun with them, learning some Korean (I can now count to ten), not drinking and not spending a cent. We were pretty proud of ourselves for exercising restraint while completely having temptation cast in front of us. Then we had to go back to my place to get all of Paul's things so he could go home. There were a few fireworks still left over so we turned towards the basketball courts near my place to set them off. When who should we encounter but a very strange, friendly, singing, dancing, and awesome Asian lady. I say Asian because we are not sure if she was Korean or not for reasons you will understand momentarily. We had run into her in the street earlier in the day and she screamed hello in Korean and Hello in English to us in a very friendly manner, so we found it odd to run into her again. She came over to us as we lit the five last fireworks so we let her light one too. Then she sang for us in Chinese, Mandarin I believe because she said "Ni hao" and then she grabbed our hands and danced with us for a minute or two. She was sooooo nice and friendly and completely off her rocker but in a great way. Then we parted ways from her and from each other. It appeared as though my night was over but it wasn't for Paul. He walked all the way back to his place to find out that he thought he forgot his keys. If you want to hear the rest of Paul's fun key story you are going to have to ask him yourself as it is not my story.
The past couple nights I hadn't gotten any sleep but on this particular night I got the best sleep I have had in Korea. I woke up Sunday morning to find myself with essentially nothing to do and it felt great. I have needed a new pair of jeans for a few weeks so I decided to head East and North towards Jukjeon/Ori because there are strings of high end fashion outlet shops there. I went to the Levi's shop to find things to be tooooooooooo expensive for my tastes. I poked around the area for a while longer until I decided to just go into the E-mart that is there. E-mart is like Target x 10 because it is way bigger and sells way more of the everyday necessities. I walked in and found the clothing section right away and found a nice pair of 36 size jeans that I tried on and they were too big. I next tried a 34 and they fit perfectly so I bought them. Yes they were designer too. I bought Calvin Klein jeans everyone. Next to the 34 tight black jeans I bought at the alley these are the smallest pair of jeans, regular fit, that I have bought in at least ten years!! I last fit into a 34 when I was in 8th grade!! I am for sure losing weight again here but it is also because I am working out again and walking everywhere. These jeans still have room in them too so it is really great. I then met up with Paul and Andy for a nonexistent game of basketball. After hanging out for twenty minutes Paul had to leave us to go on a date and Andy and I went and got some dinner. I now am thinking of bed and of tomorrow where I will apparently venture to a traditional Korean village and to Everland!! Everland is South Korea's major theme park!
Blog shout out: This one goes to Sarah and Jesse for being strong in their move away from Chicago. Thank you two for the great memories there, and for reading my blog. One day we will meet again and pick up where we left off. Keep on rockin you two.
Okay let us begin at the most appropriate place that I can; the beginning. Wednesday night I was finishing classes and about to go home when my director handed out Chuseok gifts. I got exactly what I had asked for, which was of course a case of 12 cans of Tuna!! I never thought I would be happier to get tuna. I have eaten a few cans of it already but my cupboards still look pretty full of tuna so I am a happy camper.
Thursday proved to be interesting because it started the Chuseok events off with a bang...sort of. I do not remember what I did most of the day but Paul appeared in the area around 6 and we went to meet up with some of our friends here in Suji so we could leave for Incheon. We were going to stay with about 12-14 people in a big hotel condo sort of place on the beaches in Incheon. Paul and I got to Leanne's apt. to find out that our friend Alivia had gone to a hospital for emergency surgery. Now this sounds worse than it was but it was necessary. Alivia had had an ear infection for a few days and it just kept getting worse until she decided to go find out what the real deal was. Long story short she had some sort of abscess at the back of her throat and they needed to cut it open and drain the puss inside. Alivia was going through the surgery as Paul and I arrived at Leanne's, so evidently we didn't leave on schedule because we wanted to find out if Alivia was okay. She came out of it alright and happy that it was all over with but she had to stay in the hospital for a few days so they could make sure everything was healing properly. This meant that Alivia was going to miss out on our Chuseok adventure/s. While waiting for Alivia to come out we all went and got some food and hung out for a while. After food Leanne decided she wanted to go to Alivia and wanted all of us to go to Incheon and she would meet us there the next day. Andy, Carl, Paul and I headed to the bus stop to catch the "Airport Limousine" which really is just a fancy bus that takes us to the airport. We waited for an hour and ten minutes and saw at least five buses go the other direction before we called it quits for the night. We then called Leanne and told her what happened and we headed to Exit to drink and worry about going the next day.
Friday morning Leanne, Andy, and Carl got up and started to get ready to go while Paul and I opted for sleep and leaving later. Paul and I ended up leaving Suji around 3pm and got to where we needed to be by maybe around 6ish. This was no problem since we were being pretty laid back about the whole thing but we had fun on the bus. We played an alphabet game where you say "I went to the supermarket/store and I bought (something/s that start with the assigned letter)" we only got to V before the ride was over.
Here is what we came up with:
I went to the supermarket and bought...
Alligators
Boner Popsicles
Catatonic cab drivers
Donkey Diarrhea
Eccentric Egomaniacal Elephants
Flatulent Flatwas (Paul said that is the Iranian air force or something I don't remember)
Gaggle of Gigantors
Hyper-inflated poop tubes
Immaculate Institutionalized Inuits
Jaguar Jacking off to Jumping Jack Flash
Killer Kangaroos from Krusty Burger
Leaping Lepers
Melted Masticating Mandibles
Narcoleptic Nachos
Oprah's Ornery Osteoporosis
Pangolin cleaning itself with a Penal Douche
Quarrel of Quintessential Queer Queens
Rowdy Rotunda of Robust Rabid Rabbits
Smelly Sacrilegious Systematic Somalian Sunnites
Terrific Trundle of Terrorist Tacos playing Tic Tac Toe
Ungodly Ugly Uruguayan Ungulates that are Uninfluenced by Ugandan Underwear
Ventriloquist that Vies to be Victorious over his Viscous Villainous Varicose Veins
And....you're there!!
We were there and we walked up to our ginormous hotel. We checked in and went to the room and waited for our friends to appear. Then we left with them to get some eats and drinks. We met up with the rest of the people staying with us once we were done with dinner and we went to the beach, drank, and lit off fireworks...a lot of fireworks. Paul and I then bought more fireworks to launch off. This was truly great as I love fireworks and Paul missed the fourth of July this year as I will next year. We then proceeded back to the room briefly until we figured out that some of us wanted to continue drinking and go to a Noribang (karaoke place). Leanne, Andy, Carl, Paul, Peter, and I went to the singing place and started to sing our brains out. Leanne and I did the most singing but Leanne did the best. I performed such lyrical stylings as Pardon Me, Run to the Hills, Californication, I am the Walrus, Hotel California, Paranoid Android, Hey Jude, Bohemian Rhapsody, Purple Haze, Stairway to Heaven, and some other awesome songs. We were there until the place closed at 3am. After stretching our vocal chords we decided to hang out on the beach. The tide there had come in a great distance and the evening scenery was amazing. Peter had left us by this time and everyone else was asleep in the hotel room. Leanne, Carl, Andy, and Paul all pranced on the beach and I sat back on the cement and listened to the harmony of the waves. After a few minutes of this Leanne and Carl lay down on the beach and Andy and Paul continued to prance. Then Andy jumped over that pair and Paul decided to as well. This proved to be a poor idea because Andy stopped just after the jump and went to turn around. Crack!! They smacked heads together and Paul went down for the count for a minute. Everyone was okay for the moment. We found an open convenience store and went in for edible goodies. I indulged in a can of tuna with some chopsticks and ended up feeding a good portion of it to the stray kitties in the area. As we wandered back to the hotel Paul's nose began to bleed. This was now at least a good half hour after the incident and his nose thought it to be a prudent time to have some human bean juice leakage. After a while Paul was fine and we made it back to the hotel alright. We spread our little beds out on the floor and called it a night although it proved to be a short night. Hitting the hay at 5 am made us barely get any rest as all the other people got up between 8-9 and we had to be out of that room by 11. We got up, gathered our things, kissed the beach goodbye and headed for the bus back home. We got back right around 3 pm which was exactly 24hrs after Paul and I had left, so that was kind of interesting.
Saturday was actually Chuseok so we really did nothing for it when we got back. Leanne decided that since all places were closed for food she would hold an impromptu cooking session and made us these odd and delicious sandwiches. We continued to hang out and bum around Suji for the next little while until Paul and I split from the crew and went off to meet up with some Korean friends. For the past week Paul has been sort of seeing a Korean girl who barely speaks any English. She is friends with one of Leanne and Andy's co-teachers who speaks both languages very well so we were invited out with them. Paul and I saw this as a good opportunity to have the bilingual friend of ours help translate between him and his new lady friend. We also decided since we had been drinking and having too much fun the past two nights to not spend any money or drink at all. We met up with them and then headed to this very westerny sports bar here in Suji. Once we were there more of their friends appeared and now Paul and I were the only two U.S. kiddies amongst at most ten Koreans, and that was really cool. We ended up having a lot of fun with them, learning some Korean (I can now count to ten), not drinking and not spending a cent. We were pretty proud of ourselves for exercising restraint while completely having temptation cast in front of us. Then we had to go back to my place to get all of Paul's things so he could go home. There were a few fireworks still left over so we turned towards the basketball courts near my place to set them off. When who should we encounter but a very strange, friendly, singing, dancing, and awesome Asian lady. I say Asian because we are not sure if she was Korean or not for reasons you will understand momentarily. We had run into her in the street earlier in the day and she screamed hello in Korean and Hello in English to us in a very friendly manner, so we found it odd to run into her again. She came over to us as we lit the five last fireworks so we let her light one too. Then she sang for us in Chinese, Mandarin I believe because she said "Ni hao" and then she grabbed our hands and danced with us for a minute or two. She was sooooo nice and friendly and completely off her rocker but in a great way. Then we parted ways from her and from each other. It appeared as though my night was over but it wasn't for Paul. He walked all the way back to his place to find out that he thought he forgot his keys. If you want to hear the rest of Paul's fun key story you are going to have to ask him yourself as it is not my story.
The past couple nights I hadn't gotten any sleep but on this particular night I got the best sleep I have had in Korea. I woke up Sunday morning to find myself with essentially nothing to do and it felt great. I have needed a new pair of jeans for a few weeks so I decided to head East and North towards Jukjeon/Ori because there are strings of high end fashion outlet shops there. I went to the Levi's shop to find things to be tooooooooooo expensive for my tastes. I poked around the area for a while longer until I decided to just go into the E-mart that is there. E-mart is like Target x 10 because it is way bigger and sells way more of the everyday necessities. I walked in and found the clothing section right away and found a nice pair of 36 size jeans that I tried on and they were too big. I next tried a 34 and they fit perfectly so I bought them. Yes they were designer too. I bought Calvin Klein jeans everyone. Next to the 34 tight black jeans I bought at the alley these are the smallest pair of jeans, regular fit, that I have bought in at least ten years!! I last fit into a 34 when I was in 8th grade!! I am for sure losing weight again here but it is also because I am working out again and walking everywhere. These jeans still have room in them too so it is really great. I then met up with Paul and Andy for a nonexistent game of basketball. After hanging out for twenty minutes Paul had to leave us to go on a date and Andy and I went and got some dinner. I now am thinking of bed and of tomorrow where I will apparently venture to a traditional Korean village and to Everland!! Everland is South Korea's major theme park!
Blog shout out: This one goes to Sarah and Jesse for being strong in their move away from Chicago. Thank you two for the great memories there, and for reading my blog. One day we will meet again and pick up where we left off. Keep on rockin you two.
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