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Wednesday, March 25, 2009
It’s that time again, friends. Time for the weekly review. It has been 8 solid weeks that I’ve been in Korea. This Saturday will make for 2 full months. I am glad to say, things are still going strong. This week has been a good one, though nothing groundbreaking.
Monday morning I finally did something I had been planning to do for qyite some time. I headed over to iGym, and I finally signed up. I did my first work out there, and it felt quite good. I’m glad I did it, now I just have to keep going!
Work on Monday was uneventful. We are in full swing at this point, being three weeks into the term. The kids are used to the routine, and nothing exceptional happened on this day to be worth relating. After work we grabbed some delicious Korean food at “The Spicy Chicken Place”, this wonderful little cheap Korean restaurant that serves a spicy chicken dish that Kelly thinks reigns supreme. After we ate, it was time for some drinks! We headed over to our good ol’ favorite neighborhood place, Siena. There was a lady in our seats at the bar, and we were most upset. We got seats next to us, and Seung Je made us our usual-LITs!! After a couple of those, we made friends with this younger couple down the bar, who introduced themselves as JK and MJ. JK and I had a long talk about God knows what, while MJ repeatedly asked Chris if she thought she was “lovely”. Everyone was sufficiently toasted as we left the bar, of course, when it closed. Sleep immediately followed.
Tuesday morning I was feeling a little too puny to head to the gym. I got ready for work, got dressed, and my liver was keenly aware that I was wearing green. St. Patrick’s Day had come, and all us Americans were dressed in our green. The kids, of course, had never heard of the day, and it was hard to explain the importance of it, without mentioning the whole “drinking” part of the holiday.
After work Chris, Kelly, and I went to this new little Korean place that Kelly knew of. I got Ton-ka-su, or fried pork. It was yummy. We weren’t feeling much like hauling across town to Itaewon, since we had gotten so trashed the night before, so we went back to Siena and had our obligatory St. Patty’s Day drink. After one round, we headed home.
Wednesday, our wonderful day off. Chris and I had agreed to meet at noon and go shopping. I was needing some tennis shoes for the gym. See, the gym has a rule, as most do here in Korea, that you have to leave a pair of shoes there, and those are used exclusively at the gym. That way, the gym stays cleaner. So it was my mission to find a pair of shoes. Having size 13 feet, or 310 Korean, it would be a serious struggle. We went all over Itaewon, and couldn’t find anything under 100000 Won. I wanted something more reasonable. We met this guy named Tim, who invited us to this party Saturday night. We agreed to go, and he recommended going to Dongdaemun to find shoes for me. We departed, and headed to Dongdaemun. Chris and I separated in the subway, where she would be going to join her friend. I went alone, and eventually, after about 8 more shops, finally found a pair of shoes that would fit. For 48000, I agreed. They weren’t especially nice, and they were a little small, but it had been 5.5 hours of shopping, and I had little faith that it would get any better than this. I came home and took a nap, and woke a little while later. Sunjoo had called me, and asked if I was busy that night.
We met up in COEX, and we went to get some food. We ended up going to TGIFridays, where we had a margarita and some delicious food. Very reminiscent of the States. After we ate, we parted for the night.
Thursday morning I woke up, took my new shoes to the gym, and had a nice work out. It feels good to finally be getting active again, after like…..6 months? After the gym, I grabbed lunch, went home and got ready, then went to work. Thursday is my favorite day of teaching. I have my fun 4:00 class, followed by my awesome 7:00 class. I had a new kid this day, and that brought the class number to 3 students, which is nicer. After work, Graham, Kelly, and I went to Gangnam station and ate dak-galbi, or Korean Barbeque Chicken. Graham was giddy over it, Kelly said it was really good, so I was interested. Personally, I found it to be too spicy. I’m still a wuss for spicy food, though I wish I could learn to manage it better. Most Korean food is very spicy. It was ok, not unbearably hot. We left from there, and Kelly came over for some hardcore Clone High action. We watched 4 episodes, stopping one shy of the Ponce de Leon episode. As my favorite, I insisted we wait until Chris joins us to go on.
Friday I went back to the gym, had a nice work out, focused on my legs. Work was moderately boring, this is my planning day. I brought my iPod, which made the day go by quite quickly. After work, we grabbed dinner and felt like it had been days since we last drank. It was time to go visit Seung Je, our wonderful Siena bartender. He, as usual, was happy to see us come in. It was also one of the employees’ birthday, so we got him a Midori/Vodka. 3 LITs later, we left and headed home. It was, as usual, tons of fun.
Saturday I passed on the gym, and slept in. Went to work I did, and did another long day. I went in early and got off early, and at 9 Chris and I met to go to the party Tim invited us to. We had several back up plans, just in case that this party sucked. We might meet Chris’ New Zealand friend in the area we were in anyway, or we could go to Itaewon and meet up with Nigel, her friend with whom she studied in Switzerland. On the subway, we were talking about how sick we were of foreigners ignoring eachother in public. We approached these two white people and started talking to them. It turns out they were living in the exact same part of town we were, and that they work about 5 minutes from my apartment. Very surprising. We decided we would definitely hang out with them.
We got to the party about 10:40, and the guys at the door wouldn’t let us in. He said they were about to shut down, and that it only went from 8-11. We were like…WHAT?! What the hell kind of party ends at 11? LAME. A little pissed, especially since we just traved an hour and a half to get there. Plus, it was raining. Pretty pissed off, we decided that Itaewon would be the best place to unwind. We head there and join up with Nigel at Metro, and we meet his friends. Brian and Mike both speak Korean fluently, and these guys are all absolutely hilarious. They’re so sick of trying to carry Western edaquitte into a culture where it just doesn’t exist. Instead, they intentionally do the same shit the Koreas unapologetically, though accidently, do. For example, when getting off the subway, they pick their man “That’s my Guy”, and they sholder the hell out of him as they walk by. Their stories were hilarious.
After a while there, Kelly informs us that he is at Spy. We head over there, and meet up with Ryan the Bartender and Kelly. We do a few drinks, and decide to continue our campaign of meeting foreigners aggressively. This one couple looked friendly enough. We start talking to them, and they are both models. The guy’s name is Josh, and he’s really nice. The girl, Emily, was from Atlanta, and so we had a good talk going to a while. Nice to meet another Southerner. She was really cute and nice, and I was thinking maybe this would be going somewhere, when Dasha walked in. When I saw her, I raced over and started talking to her. She is, you may recall, the very nice and hot Ukrainian chick. We talked for a while, played a game of pool, and then, suddenly, her friends took her home. Did I mention that she was leaving the country the following day? Sad Josh.
Well, I go back to my friends, and Kelly is macking on the Atlanta girl, Chis is going at it hardcore with other Josh, passionately making out by the bar. The models left, and the bar had become a sausage fest. I thought Chris and other Josh were making out on top of my jacket, so I just left it and went home.
The next morning, Sunday, I got up around 1, and Chris, Kelly, and I met up for lunch. Chris and I had decided we needed to buy post cards. We head down to COEX and buy them, then we had to figure out what to do. We decided going to Olympic Park would be nice, and it was a beautiful day. We walked over the canal bridge and went to the park. We then decided to figure out how to get to the river. We continued around Olympic Park, and found some kids on a rollerblading rink. We found an underpass to get to the other side of the huge highway, where we came out in this nice park by the river.
This park was AWESOME. There were people flying these huge and sophisticated kites, people playing basketball, windsurfing on the river, boating around the river. People were riding bikes and walking their dogs, rollerblading, jogging, or just enjoying the nice weather with a walk. We walked around, trying to find the place to rent a swan boat to ride on the river. We grabbed ice cream at this convenient store on the river, and kept wandering about. Eventually, we went back to our side of the canal, where we found this sweet go-carts track. These m’fers were hauling ass. These weren’t the FunStation kiddy go-carts, but hardcore manly ones. It looked like hella fun.
We wandered around some more, and found a nice little exercise park with fun and exciting free exercise equipment. We played on that for a bit, then went into the Technocolor Corridor of Doom (Kelly calls it the Trippy Tunnel of Awesomeness). This multicolored tunnel was lined with mirrors, and after passing through it, we found ourselves in another little park. This had kids playing soccer, and a huge white rabbit walking around. The temperature was quickly dropping, and I was cold. We retreated to a cab, getting out at Gangnam station, to have dinner at Dos Tacos. It was awesome Mexican food, and something we needed badly. After a delicious meal, we parted ways. I went to Itaewon to fetch my jacket. I think the other two just went home.
I get to Spy, and luckily my jacket was there. I get it and head home. Completely worn out, I decide to get of at Jamwon station and get a taxi the rest of the way home. I get out, and found that I was in the middle of no where. One tiny little 2 lane road. No taxis. All the buildings were just large apartment buildings. I finally find a cab, and take it home. I got home, and had a long, sleepless night. Maybe just too tired to sleep. It sucked. Around 4 I finally fell asleep.
Monday morning I get up, and decide I’m too tired for the gym. Work was nice, and afterwards Kelly, Chris and I grabbed a pizza and beer. After eating it, we parted ways, and I went home.
Tuesday was another normal day. I went to the gym. Had a great work out. Felt really good afterwards. Then I headed to work. The kids were especially bad today, and it was frustrating. After work, the three of us went to Spicy Chicken Place and ate, then went to see our good buddy Seung Je at Siena.
Seung Je was walking out the door when we got there, and we were most upset! The other bartender made our drinks, and eventually Seung Je came back. He really wants to practice his English with us, so he was hanging out with us for a while. His friends came in, and one was fluent in English, so she helped translate. Seung Je taught me a new shot, which was awesome.
He hands me two shot glasses, one filled with water, another with triple sec. He tells me to wet my palm with the water. He then lights the triple sec on fire, and tells me to cover the flaming shot glass with my wet palm. The fire went out, making the shot glass stick to my palm. I then took the shot, and he told me to breathe deeply. It felt really cool, but I’m still a little confused on the purpose of the breathing. Not sure what it did.
We closed the place down, and then went home. I called AGLAW, then went to bed.
Woke up this morning and now we’re waiting on Chris to hurry up and get ready so we can grab lunch.