The Yangpyeong Casanova and other tales

Well, the last several days have been...pretty good. The week was terribly slow, but things picked up nicely as the weekend rolled around. Friday started off strongly, as I finally got my Alien Registration card, which basically entitles me to anything short of voting, and I got my passport back. With a legitimate id now in hand, I along with a fellow teacher, who suggested I refer to her as "Audrey Hepburn" to help me remember, headed out after school to pick up a cell phone. I won't actually get the phone until Monday, but still. I mean, cmon, its actually got a camera...very high tech for me. Ironically, out of the phones I got to choose from, I just happened to like the cheapest one...surprise, surprise. The good times kept on roling when I found out that the school was paying for the phone and I'm covering the meager $12 a month for the service. Wow. That brings my total expenses/bills per month up to $75 or so dollars a month, with cable/internet at $40 and utilities around $20. Which means I gonna be saving up a decent chunk of change, provided I don't blow it on drugs, booze, women, or any combination of the three. Given past experience, I should be okay. After our phone adventure, Audrey and I moved on to the local bakery, complete with pretentious french name to boot, where Audrey treated me to my choice of baked goodies. I chose the simple frosted and jelly filled donuts. While they were not Greenbush quality (frankly, Ill probably be disapointed for the remainder of my life), they were good enough to assuage my fears about baked goods in these parts. After settling back at the homestead for an hour or so, it was off to the soccer field for my second game with the soccer club. This time they assembled the whole crew and we had a full field and then some of players. As is becoming the norm here in Korea, everybody apparently loved me, so much so that they took me out to dinner with a bunch of the guys, paid for dinner and treated me to a liberal amount of sobaek (soju and beer tossed together in a class). Frankly, the stuff was very palatable since soju and weak ass Korean beer have minimal flavor. This is where the town Casanova makes his grand entrance. While drinking in large quantities, one of the table mates tells me that another tablemate was "Yangpyeong playboy, Yangpyeong Casanova". The aforementioned man seemed to agree as he began pounding his fist into his open palm repeatedly and motioning to his thigh and encircling his thigh with his hands then holding it up to show the size. I got the gist pretty easily. This wouldn't have bee quite as humorous had he not been at least forty and one of the smallest Korean men I have yet to see. I may have found my Jason/Rounds at long last. But in this case he really is a dirty old man. We left early before I got completely drunk and made a major fool of myself, as I had already spilled hot soup on myself twice, since I had to get up early on Saturday for the school's cooking competition. Apparently, all the schools students are broken into teams and they have to prepare certain dishes and when they are all done, the teachers get to eat them. I like the respect for teachers thing they have over here. For a couple of hours I got to walk around, watch the students cook or try to cook, then I got to sample the results. The only dark cloud on this wonderful day was my usual "indigestion" that kicks in afer I drink heavily that led to my disappearance for a considerable period and a hearty laugh by all the other teachers. It seems I may be slipping down to mere human status in these people's eyes. I will have to try to remedy that.