Seoul

Seoul last weekend was a lot of fun. I met up with my friend, Michelle, from Daejeon. We had some Mexican food, which is something I'm always craving. I think I'm gonna have to eat about five full meals a day when I visit home to make up for all the stuff I've been craving.

After dinner, we went to a soju bar where we met some really friendly Koreans who were having a birthday party. They shared some cake and soju with us. It was a lot of fun chatting with them. One of them looked like Harry Potter. It was adorable. Another said that her uncle produces Kim Ki-duk (a really good Korean director) movies, which would be a pretty random lie, so I guess it's true. But damn. If I spoke Korean, I would have asked for a hookup. Working in the Korean film industry would be pretty bad ass.

Then, we went to my friend Mike's party, which was held in a funk/soul bar called "Diggin." They had little dancing James Brown dolls on the bar.

After Diggin, we went to some other place just down the street. Even though the music was much worse, I had a better time dancing there. I went pretty "nuts."

Some other people moved on to another bar, but by this time, it was about 3:30 AM, so Michelle and I decided to split. We tried to find a nearby jim-jil-bang, which is like a bathhouse with hot and cold pools, saunas, and rooms for sleeping, but we ended up kind of lost. Then it started snowing! So, we finally found a different jim-jil-bang and went in for the night. I took a little dip in a hot tub before I hit the hay, which was nice.

By the time I made it up to the sleeping room, all the mats were taken, so I had to sleep on the floor in a corner. Korean men are absolutely disgusting. There was such a symphony of snoring, farting, belching, hacking, and grunting going on in that room that it's a miracle I fell asleep at all. Also, starting at 6 AM, someone's cell phone alarm started ringing and kept ringing and ringing and ringing. Jesus Christ, this is one of the most obnoxious Korean habits I've witnessed. People just leave their phones around, and then, either their alarms continually ring, or someone calls them repeatedly. I know all the horrible ring tones of the people in my office at school by heart because they all get no less than ten phone calls a day while they're in class. And all ten of those are probably by the same person. If a Korean person calls and you don't answer, they inevitably call back another time or two (and let it ring for a whole minute). If you didn't answer the first time, is it really likely that you'll answer the next time, or the next? AAAAAH!

Sorry, kinda got off on a tangent there. But Koreans and cell phones. Ugggh. Anyway, I maybe got a couple hours of sleep, total, but in the morning, I showered and lounged around in the scalding hot pools, which was nice. There's nothing quite like being the only white guy in a room of 50 naked Korean men.

Last night, when I got back into Chuncheon, I was feeling pretty beat, so I went to bed at 6 PM. I woke up this morning at 7:45 feeling like a million bucks (about 1.1 billion won).

Camp was good today. We played board games with the first class, and the second class did other various activities. I was a little worried that the kids would be bored with the game I had planned since they're older than the first group, but they really loved it, and one girl even asked if we could play it again tomorrow.

Often, Korean students choose English names for themselves. One of my kids is named "Micolfepus." The first time I saw it on his nametag, I wasn't really sure what to make of it, so I asked him. It's basically the Korean version of "Michael Phelps." Yeah.

Anyway, that's all for now. So long.