Howdy! How are you doing today? What did you do this weekend? What will you do next weekend?
That is pretty much how I begin every high school class I teach. Then I play games. With no multi-media and no textbooks I am in a unique situation in this country. No other teacher I have talked to is in the same low tech type of place that I am teaching. I am not required to do anything per-se, but in order to keep the students involved, and actually work on creating stuff, we play a lot of games. Other English teachers, if you ever need a game to last all class, just ask me. I have two or three Waygook.org threads that I have been running off of, and I have created some games on my own, so just let me know if you need anything from "The Game Master." This week we were playing A-Z or scattegories as some people call it. I throw out a subject and they try to list a word for every letter. If the word is the same the two teams must cross it out. Whoever has a different word gets to circle it, and the team with the most circles wins that amount of points. Fun, fun, fun. My favorite two classes are with my smokin' hot co-teacher on Friday, and by far my favorite is with the girls class which is my last class of the week. Why, you ask? Because they are the highest level, and they have the concept of "Aegyo" down to a T. If you don't know what Aegyo is I will explain in story form. There is a girl I always say hi to at my school. She is cute, but not because she is tinier than average, or prettier than average, or anything really. It is because she always tries hard to say hi, and look made up, and she puts her voice up about an octave and uses a lot of inflection. I was walking behind her today and she was speaking normally, then as soon as she saw me her voice jumped an octave and she said "HI JEPPU!"
Here is an example from Korean mainstream media. I imagine most women would find it supremely annoying, but I think dudes can't really help it. I find it effing adorable personally. So where was I, ah yes, we were playing scattegories and the kids were really excited and cheering each other on. The category was animals, and we were on Y. The girls in order of their team number say "Yak. Yellow Tail. Yearling. Yorkshire. Yellow Jacket!" and everyone in the class cheers because they all got points. The next letter, building on that excitement, with each girl doing a different pose like someone is going to take a photograph; "Zebra. Zebra! Zebra!! Zebra!!! Zebra!!!!" and the entire class is howling with laughter. My co-teacher is almost doubled over with laughter, and I am guffawing loudly. I just love that class, and they are always excited to see me. So I finished the week on a good note, and the best way to enter the weekend is to do so excited about getting back to school the next week.
This weekend I had planned on going to cheongju to watch Sungha Jung play the guitar, but in the middle of the week I got invited to go to Seoul to see the lantern festival. All the Eumseong crew was going. I couldn't be the only one not going. So I packed up my stuff and gave Justin a call and headed out. I was in Seoul by seven. The bus moved pretty good but hit quite a bit of traffic. A bus to East Seoul (Dong Seoul) leaves every twenty minutes from my town, so any time I want to I can rocket up there. Once I got up there I took a couple of subways to meet up with Justin (I officially have earned my Seoul Subway Merit Badge) and once we met up I expressed my desire for Western food. We needed something quick though, so I got my first taste of Korean McDonalds. It is literally the same. That is not necessarily a bad thing when you have been eating kimchi every day for the last month. I still love kimchi, but sometimes it's nice to get a big mac, yaknowwhatimean? After that we dropped my stuff off at his place and went to meet with my peoples. They were all in Hongdae, which is like, Northwest Seoul, where I marked our hostile last time I posted about being there, and Justin lives in Bundang, which is like, Southeast of Seoul, which I marked in my first post about traveling to Seoul. This time I will mark City Hall, showing you where we went on Saturday night. Well we had to travel across the city, and were gonna take a bus to get us there, but apparently there was a wreck on a freeway and suddenly what should have been a forty five minute trip turns into about an hour and a half... well ok, there was no suddenly about it, but you get the picture. We show up at the bar everyone is located at after another subway journey, and it is almost literally everyone from Eumseong county. All eleven or so of us. They are all three sheets to the wind because they were drinking in the park first, so we have our work cut out for us. Two whiskey shots, Two Budweisers, 12 dollars. Not bad. Not bad at all. A couple rounds of that later and me and Justin are almost caught up. Everyone is drinking and dancing and having a good time. There was some debauchery that took place that I am not allowed to tell you about, but it is far less interesting if you don't know the people who were out with us. Anyway, at the end of the night one of the girls was sick, so while most of our crew goes on to another club, some of us are left to take care of the sick one. We try and get cabs... nothin' doin'. For a period of about twenty minutes I am left with this girl alone, while she is sitting on the curb throwing up, and I am trying to find her a cab, and all of my friends are off in the club dancing. I have a phone conversation with Justin, who is in a very very loud club, saying "Come out here and help me!" "We're in the club." "I know, I am alone with this sick girl and need someone else." "It's club NB2." "I know, I need help." "Just come in the club." "HELP!" "Help?" "HELP!" and then he comes out and gives me a hand dealing with this girl. There is a point where we had to move her down the block to another intersection, and I swear nothing has hurt my back more than trying to lift this girl up and drag her three legged race style towards this intersection. I don't remember who took over for me, but I couldn't have gone another step. I pull a completely drunk Phillipa out of the club, and then we wait around for a cab that looks like it can take us to the hostel. After a few tries Phillipa does exactly what should have been done in the first place and says "Eff this!" and hops in a cab without asking. We load the drunk girl in the cab along with the other people going to the same place, and they are off. Me and Justin are there alone not wanting to go back to the noisy club, and wanting to get something to eat. We head back towards his place and get some KFC and then meet up with a couple of his friends. I am about to fall asleep, but what is it that they suggested? The only thing that can keep a drunk and tired bear from his cave? That's right, you guessed it, noraebang. NORAEBANG!!! We head to one close by and proceed to sing for an hour or more, I don't really remember. I got to sing my Muse, and added another song to my repertoire. It was fun, especially because one of the girls was really talented, so I would sing one part and she would sing the harmony, or the other way around. Eventually we got back to Justins place right after the sun started to rise, and we passed out hardcore. Not so much from drunkenness as much as from general exhaustion.
The next morning came too quickly. Before I had time to think we were on our way into the city. I heard from Justin that they had an On The Border in Seoul somewhere, so we shot for that, as I had not had decent Mexican food in a long time. The salsa was lacking, but if that's the only problem I consider it a successful venture. We stuffed ourselves with cheese and fried dough and rice, then headed towards City Hall. The lantern festival was going to be taking place right by City Hall, and we had planned to meet up with Phillipa, and her sister Rowena. I only got to talk to Rowena for a couple of seconds, but it was awesome! Imagine telling someone where you live for two months and them not having any idea even where in the country that is, much less within your province, then all of a sudden someone says "Yeah, I used to live there. You guys have that awesome place X right?" Apparently Rowena and her brother are both twins, and Phillipa used to live right near them. They moved to Seoul this year and she stayed in the countryside. They are going home next year and Phillipa is staying. I imagine it must be hard on her part to have her family situation change every year, but she is a trooper. So we met up with them, but they hadn't eaten so they went on their way. Phillipa, Justin and myself then walked past a huuuuuge line of people to get to where we were meeting Theresa and Alex, and we decided that the line was way too long to want to get in. We walked along side of the path, and before long we were at the end of it. It was pretty lackluster as far as festivals go, but the lanterns themselves were excellent. I have a couple of photos that I will post soon.
We got some coffee then headed to a place that was right outside the lantern fest. It was called the "Texas Ice House" and it had a crap ton of beer. The bottles were all in the middle of the table, and you would reach in, grab one, drink it, and they would automatically charge you. It was kind of expensive, but not ridiculous. We had a couple beers, and shot the breeze for awhile before adjourning to somewhere else. We walked around and found a place called "700 Beer" that looked halfway decent. We ordered some beer and some soju, and before long were well on our way to that good feeling. Phillipa consistently tried to get out of doing shots of soju by pretending like she was drinking then setting her glass back down, but after doing that once, we caught on. She kept exclaiming, "If I have anymore to drink, I will die!" but she hung in like a trooper. Alex and Theresa were pretty much still recovering from the previous night, so they didn't have anything, but me and Justin were full steam ahead by this point. We downed a couple more glasses then headed outside. We decided that a noraebang was a good idea, (NORAEBANG!!!) so we looked around. In this country there is pretty much one about every block, and sure enough we saw two within sight of the bar we had just exited. We walked in, were shown to a room, and began a second wonderful night of singing. Phillipa sang, even though she claims she is awful, she isn't that bad. Alex did a lot of singing, and I sang just about every song you can think of. It was really fun. I felt bad for hogging the mic, so I paid the lions share and we left. That was pretty much the end of the night as a group as we were headed in opposite directions. Me and Justin went back towards his place and wound up at this bar called the Dublin. We had a couple of beers, but they tasted sour. Not like they had gone skunky, but like someone hadn't cleaned out the lines in the bar or something. We noticed they had hookahs, so we got one of those. It was cheap, only 8000 for one. Back in the states it's like 15 bucks. Granted this wasn't as big, or as nice, but the flavor she gave us, a mixture of cherry and menthol, was freaking great. It tasted so smooth, and before I knew it we were both feeling totally chill. We ordered another round of a different type of beer that also tasted sour, then some guy that Justin knows sat down to talk to him. He had some story about getting kicked out of a KFC because he wouldn't take no for an answer when they told him they didn't serve a certain type of wing. I contrasted this with last night when we were told they didn't have biscuits and said "meh" and moved on. We downed our drinks and headed back to Justins place and crashed out yet again.
The next morning we exchanged what was on each others hard drives and I headed out for the subway station. We went to a place called "Burger Hunter" that looked pretty good, and I got the "Angry Burger" which was like a spicy chicken sandwich. It was quite delicious. We then parted ways and I got a bus back to Gamgok with no problem whatsoever. I feel like these are starting to get kinda boring. Sorry if that is the case. I am not having as many interesting cultural interactions now that I am beginning to assimilate. To be honest that makes for bad blogging, but good living. It is starting to get cold over here, and there was frost on the ground this morning. Oh, and remember that guy who I said ran the radio station? Well I have been listening to his show for a few days now, and won a trivia contest of his last night. It was fun, he gave me a shout out and told everyone where I lived, then awarded me an 8000 won voucher to the bar where I saw him at. Yeah it is only 8 bucks, but that's like two drinks. I only answered one question anyway, but it's fun to know someone on the radio, and request the music I want to hear. They keep advertising jobs on the radio in that city, which is something I have always wanted to do, but this teaching gig is too sweet to give up.
Before I leave you,
here is some hot Korean girls dancing and singing. Enjoy. Notice how all the lyrics are both in English and Korean. English is everywhere over here. I am amazed at how little I have to use Korean, and even how everyone in Seoul seemed to know English.
