summary: wasted, market, company dinner, wasted, palace
Korea Log 10
Sunday, March 15, 2009
I’m doing my best to get back on a normal schedule. Sunday really needs to be my day of giving all my subscribers the week in review! So I last wrote on Tuesday morning, let’s go from there.
Tuesday I get to have one of my favorite classes. It’s a class of four-two boys, two girls. The two boys are awesome. They are loads of fun. The girls…..well, one is great. She’s active, funny, a smart. The other one is very smart, but SUPER shy. Talks in whispers, not fun.
I only teach one class on Tuesdays, so I spent the next three hours grading essays. No big deal, I like grading essays. I took my sweet time getting them done, trying to give as many comments as possible and make as many corrections as I can. Parents like to see that when they look at their kid’s work, so I’ll do it.
After work, Kelly, Chris and I went to grab dinner. We went to this little fast food place called “Lotteria”, basically the McDonald’s of Korea. It was terrible. Never going there again.
Afterwards, we went to our good ol’ favorite neighborhood standard-Siena. It was about midnight, and we go in there, grab some drinks. We had the bartender all to ourselves, so we bought him a drink. Afterwards, he offered us some Lemon Drop shots. Now, I’ve had these before, totally lame drinks. They aren’t strong, all sugar. So when he asked if we wanted 151 or normal rum in it, I perked up. Kelly and I went with the 151, Chris got the regular rum. Bartender put the three shots on the counter, poured the rum, then laid flat a lemon slice on each glass. He placed sugar on top of each lemon slice, and spooned a bit of 151 onto the sugar. Each lemon slice was lit on fire, and we watched in amazement. It was very, very cool. After the sugar had burned away and the syrup was in the shot, we downed them. Add two long islands, and we were all feeling very good. We headed back to Chris’ place after Siena closed at 2, and we hung out there for a while. Apparently, I invited myself and Kelly inside. Damn Josh Drinkins! Always causing problems. We hung out there for a while, talking, laughing, telling jokes, the usual. We eventually decided we were tired and needed to go to bed. I got home, and was shocked to see it was already 4:30am. Oops!
Wednesday I met up with Chris and we decided to go to Namdaemun market. Frist, however, we enjoyed a delicious lunch at Bennigan’s. I enjoyed my delicious Monte Cristo, and afterwards it was market time. I’ve been wondering where we had to go to buy the really nice knock-off purses and shit. Found out! Namdaemun! It was crazy. You can buy absolutely anything there….I bought butter!! I’ve been freaking out, for the past month without any butter in my life, and I finally found some. I bought a huge tub of it, and carried it proudly all day. I was on a mission to find proper hiking boots, Chris wanted clothes, and Kelly wanted T-shirts. We got separated from Kelly, and we just went on a walk for a while, exploring places. I found a room where I was too tall to stand up in. Surprisingly, that’s not happening very often. Eventually, we found Kelly, and it was getting late, so he had to go to his pool game. I hadn’t found my boots, and Chris was still looking for clothes, so I told him I was going to pass on pool for the night. Chris and I found the hiking stores, and I went from one to the next, trying to find the one that has size 300 shoes, or close to it. 305 would be ideal, 300 would be comfortable. 290, as we found several times over, was just too small. Well, after 5 stores, I found a pair that were 295, but felt comfortable. 127000 won. I went for it. We then found a place that sold clothes for people our age, and I got a pair of jeans for 25000 won. I found a shirt I liked for 15000, and got it too. We were pretty beat by this point, so we headed home. I had a pretty lame night that night, just stayed in.
Thursday was work as usual. It’s my only day of teaching two classes. I went in early to talk to Jinhee. I was pretty upset about the schedule. I mean, I’m only teaching 4 classes a week, whereas other people are doing 7 or 8. I had to talk to her about it, since I had my proformance review say I was doing a great job, and had no negative comments, so clearly it wasn’t because I’m a bad teacher. Jinhee explained that she just needed someone to help her with the curriculum development, and she felt that I would be the best for it, since I could work independently and monitor myself. She said she didn’t feel like she would need to be constantly looking over my shoulder, making sure I’m doing my work, so she picked me. She said she was really happy with the stuff I am producing. I felt a lot better after talking to her. I mean, the stuff has to get done, and now I don’t mind doing it as much. They know I want to teach more classes, and hopefully next term I’ll pick some new ones up.
Friday was to be an exciting day. Work was development day, so I just did boring stuff all day. After work, however, things would be fun.
After work, we jumped in Jinhee’s car and headed down to the restaurant, where we would be having our company dinner. We went to a Korean Barbecue place, and it was GOOOOOD. I ate things I hadn’t ever planned on eating, namely raw beef and coagulated cow blood. The cow blood I could have done without. It was in a soup, and…meh. Nothing great about it. Not really worth eating. But the raw beef was fantastic. It was prepared in some sweet sauce with vegetables, and we couldn’t get enough of it! I wish I had a plate of it right now. It’s amazing. We did the usual other cuts of meat, and drank multiple bottles of liquor. Seung Hyun, one of our guys, was so red in the face, it was adorable. He apparently doesn’t drink too much. It was funny. Afterwards, Graham, Chris, Kelly, Hyuntae, Daniel, and I all went down to Gangnam. I had heard Gangnam was a fun area, but others told me it was all Koreans, so not much fun for foreigners. We stepped out of the taxi, and two drunk college students greeted me and told me to have a nice time. I was like “Shit! I love this place!” The streets were littered with street food and drunk people. Everyone was young, and yeah, Korean. No foreigners, which made me feel really safe to be there. Foreigners are the ones you have to look out for, not the Koreans.
So we went to this bar, and started the drinking. Two long islands, and I wasn’t feeling anything. This bartender clearly did not have the skill of Ryan or the Siena guy. These things were WEAK. Daniel then ordered a traffic light. The waitress brings three glasses-one red, one yellow, one green. We played Kai-bai-bok-or rock, paper, scissors-and I came out on top. That means I get to drink them. Start with red-basically vodka cranberry. Ok, fine. Now, quickly move to yellow-I think mango rum and juice, a little stronger than red. Finally, finish it off with green-Midori and Vodka. Green was a little rough. We ordered several more of those, and, if you see the pictures, you’ll know it was a damn good time. I don’t remember molesting Chris, but apparently she tried to climb over my lap, which is a bad thing to do around Josh Drinkins. After having a food fight, we left this bar.
And we moved to a Japanese restaurant! We apparently ordered food, I don’t remember exactly what we ate. Sushi rolls were involved, and some kind of pizza thing. Whatever it was, it was good. Then came the hot sake. We killed a bottle or two, and then headed out of there. Afterall, it was like 4:30. We had work in the morning. We took a cab and went home.
Saturday I went to work, with a nice sized hangover. The headache was there, for sure, and I was fighting bouts of nausea. Work was slow and long, and afterwards I went home. I grabbed dinner at Burger King, since I did not feel like dealing with Korean food. Just wanted something quick and easy. I got it and went home, where I watched some House and a movie.
I got up this morning at 11 to meet Chris at noon. We had agreed to have some Mexican for lunch, and so we went to COEX to eat at On The Border. It was ridiculously overpriced, but pretty good. Not great, but it was good, considering how far away we are from Mexico. We left there and went to Anguk station, where we found the Changdeokgung Palace. Technically, -gung means palace, so that was redundant, but we can’t expect you guys to know that!
We got our tickets for the English tour at 3:30, which gave us an hour to kill. We wandered around, and found this cool little Korean Folk Village Center. This nice guy gave us a bit of history about the traditional folk architecture, and told us where to go to find a neighborhood where all the houses are just like the old days, in true Asian style. We got lost, and found some castle looking building. We went up to it, and around it, and found a soccer game going on with middle aged people. Looked like fun, except that number 7 on the red team was blowing the game. We explored until it was time to get back to the palace. We joined our tour, and it was beautiful. The whole palace was far superior to the one we went to a while ago. We agreed to come back in May, when everything is in bloom. We took a bunch of pictures, even after my damn camera died. It’s new camera time, that’s for sure. After the tour we headed back, and grabbed dinner at this awesome little place. My meal was 3000 won. Dirt cheap! Current exchange rates sets that at $1.50!! And it was delicious. I also found a bakery, where I got some bread to go with my butter.
After Chris and I ate, she left to join her friend in Sinchon to play some card game. Kelly came over a bit later and we went to see Dragonball Evolution. We met this girl I had been talking to online there, and went in. She was pretty cool, and student majoring in Business and Spanish. The movie was pretty good. Definitely an adaption of anime, but it was pretty good. Too short, I think, but Sunju hadn’t ever heard to DBZ, so I think she was glad it wasn’t too long.
After the movie we parted ways, and I came on home, posted pictures online and wrote this.
So that brings us up to date on the week in review. Just curious, who all reads this? Leave me a comment if you read these either periodically or religiously, I am just curious. I mostly write this for my own future uses, but I certainly don’t mind keeping everyone up to date. Alright, take care!