Now for the fun stuff

As a result of being really, really, really bored at work with nothing to do, I give you the weekend exploits that took place during my winter camp.

Now, after reading the previous post about all the nonsense during camps, it would not be strange to question just exactly how my brain didn’t explode from all the bullshit that went down the last few weeks. There are several reasons for this. First, Korea has helped me build up a massive tolerance to this kind of stuff. If there is anything at all that I can take away from Korea when I leave, it is this: People are quite often very, very dumb, and they say and do very, very dumb things, so just roll with it. I feel like that advice will serve me well in the rest of my life. Secondly, the weekend events have been interesting enough to distract me from the week and help heal all the mental damage the week had caused. This post documents the latter reason.

Since it’s been so long since I wrote about my life in Korea, I actually have to start way back out our group’s Christmas dinner. Amy found some French restaurant near the Hongdae party area, so we figured we would celebrate Christmas with some wine and fancy food. Jenna, Carrie, Amy and I were not disappointed. Well, maybe Jenna and Carrie were a bit, as the majority of the scrumptious dishes contained meat. While those two had to settle for appetizers and soups and what not (which were still tasty), Amy and I split their special, the 5 course meal. First course….massive oysters. Yes, yes and more yes. It had been a while since I had eaten anything like that. I also recommend, when eating oysters, to have friends present who don’t like seafood and are grossed out by the fact that you appear to be eating snot. Makes it even better. The next course was soup (or was the soup the first course?) and was also very good. The third course was the main dish, the stuffed chicken breast. It wasn’t super awesome, but it was good enough for me. Amy hated hers and gave most of it to me. Advice: always, always go out to dinner with your female friends. They will never finish all their food and that’s where you come in. One meal for 20 bucks? Pretty expensive. Two meals for 20 bucks? Exactly. Genius. They followed that up with tasty, tasty cake. Wait, that’s only 4 dishes. Perhaps the glass of wine was one? I guess I’m okay with that. The entertainment, as it always does when we are drinking, came from Ms. Carrie. She has the tolerance of a tiny new born infant, so one glass of wine and she hits the perfect level of ridiculousness. Not to say that the rest of us weren’t out there. I believe I won with the quote of the night, when I said: “Sometimes I wish I were a large black woman…you know for their incredible singing voices.” I do not, however, take that back. I wish I could sing like those ladies, instead of sounding like a young boy whose voice is cracking thanks to puberty (jurys out on whether I’ve actually gone through it yet). After dinner we headed out to the music bar where I had my horrifying encounter with the aggressive girl from Chicago, but thankfully she didn’t show up this time. We sat around for a while and enjoyed some beer with some actual good music in the background. When we left, silly Carrie saw some beautiful fixed gear bikes resting against a bar. Granted, I don’t see anything that crazy about bikes, but she loves the things. So much so that she actually went up and hugged the bikes. Naturally, the owners of the bikes thought this was weird and funny (there were just inside the window of the bar), so they came out and took pictures with Carrie. She didn’t really care for the pics, she just wanted some shots of the bikes. Ohhhhh alcohol.

The next weekend we got together was the first weekend back after Japan. It was Amy’s birthday, so she decided to go visit Anna and Carrie in Ilsan, rather than boring old Seoul again. We met the gang at an Indian restaurant in Ilsan’s really fancy mall for the standard wonderful Indian food (soooooooooooooooo much better than Korean food). After the meal we moved to some generic bar where the wait staff was super excited to see us, probably cuz there really wasn't anyone there. Being the crazy party animals we are, we lasted until 11:30pm before we were all really tired and bored with drinking, so we all crashed at Anna's apartment watching "Tropic Thunder". Love that movie. Somehow having entire scenes where I had no idea what any character was saying made me love the movie even more. Good, good stuff. On Sunday, we ate birthday cake and pizza while watching "True Blood" and old episodes of "Hercules". You know, the one with Kevin Sorbo. And did I mention it has Bruce Campbell as the King of Thieves. Ohhhhhhh yeah. Dude pulls out sick standing front and back flips like nothing. But then Hercules punches him through a tree or wall and it's usually over. Memo to Korea: Get a show, any show, that is remotely as cool as "Hercules" and I will watch it and stop talking about how your television blows (it most certainly does). That is all.

The following weekend, due to all our other friends having fallen down wells or having been sucked into alternate dimensions or having been kidnapped by North Korean guerillas, there was nobody else around, so Jenna was forced to hang out with just me. I can only imagine how intense her boredom must have been to willingly choose to spend time with me rather than watch paint dry. Since she had no school that week and was bored (see above), see wandered into town on Wednesday. We grabbed some Indian food (notice a trend?) and then some alcohol. What? Liquor on a weekday? My good, I'm turning into a Korean! Wait, I'm from Wisconsin. Never mind. Business as usual. As our friends were still dead to the world on Friday and Saturday, it was just the two of us again. On Friday, we met near City Hall and stumbled upon the greatest restaurant ever....The Manchester United Pub/Restaurant. That's right. The greatest football club in the entire world is such a massive brand that they now have their own restaurants. It was interesting, to say the least. The entryway was all terribly overpriced merchandise, will the walls were littered with photos of the team, tv screens showing game highlights over and over (I never get tired of watching John Terry choke in PKs in the Champions League Final ever), and player biographies. They had a really large variety of food. We settled on some yogurty drinks. I don't remember what they are called, but Jenna assured me they were Indian in origin, so naturally they must be good. Also, they had Wayne Rooney's name attached to them, so double win. We hung around for a bit, feeling awkward and a little weird about the very existence of such a restaurant. Ohhh, and the fact that we were the only ones in the restaurant didn't help either. Don't know how long the place will stick around if nobody's showing up so I gotta get Jamie (lifelong Liverpool fan) in there as soon as possible. It would be too much fun not to.

http://www.manutd-cafe.com/gallery5.php

There's the link to pics from the Korean restaurant. After our snack we left and headed to Myeong Dong to catch a viewing of "Sherlock Holmes". While it wasn't your typical Sherlock Holmes movie, I enjoyed it, as Robert Downey Jr. never fails to impress. Plus the beautiful bro-mance between Jude Law's Watson and Downey Jr's Holmes made me a little teary for the long lost days in the Mound house and the dorms before that. Rounds....sigh.

On Saturday evening, we headed out to the jazz club. We stopped off for some Vietnamese pho (spelling?) and soup first, where I classed up the joint by failing to deliver the spoon full of soup to my mouth on several occasions, making a sizable mess on myself and the table. Classy, as always. Once at the jazz club, we settled down for some wine and jazz. More like a bunch of wine. Over 2 bottles of wine between the two of us, we enjoyed some pretty solid jazz. The highlight was the odd coupling of a 50 something year old black guy on the piano accompanied by 3 20 something Koreans on the bass, drums and saxophone. The guy on piano was super charismatic and funny and hyper, flailing all over the place on the ivory like Stevie Wonder or something, while his Korean bandmates just stood or sat there, playing their instruments and that's it. They didn't even look like they enjoyed being there. I don't know if I'll find a better microcosm for my experiences in Korea. There's the foreigner, goofy, laid-back, relaxed and trying to have fun, and then there's the Koreans, stiff, almost robot-like, with ass cheeks clenched so tight they could make diamonds. At least the crew at the blues club seemed to enjoy playing. From there it was back to the Crazy Wine Bar. Unfortunately, no B-level celebrities this time. Just lots of darts. Embarrassingly, I did not win ever match. Hopefully nobody was watching.

The next weekend after that (aka last weekend), we headed to a house party in honor of the birthday of one of the girls at capoeira. On our way there, we decided it would be in good taste to bring our own booze. So we stopped at a nearby convenience store. They had 6 packs of Coronas, so naturally grabbed them. Especially when the price tag said 3,500 won (3 bucks). For six? Hellz yes. Cept that was 3,500 won...per bottle. 18 bucks later, we were on our way. Sure it hurt, but it definitely beats drinking the local piss water or paying 5 to 6 bucks for a Corona at a bar. Yeah, good beer doesn't come cheap here. Once at the house party, we attempted to mingle. I say attempted, as I really only talked to the few people I already knew from capoeira. But I was talking to people at all, so I consider it an improvement. Some time after, the group moved to nearby Itaewon for some dancing and more drinking. My advice to the audience: don't drink wine (before the party), then beer, then hard liquor. They don't mix well and makes Sunday a rather unpleasant day. At the club/bar, I was of course forced to dance. Thankfully, no one was hurt or died...this time. The venue changed as we found another more suitable dance floor for our large group. Here those in the group with some skill were able to show off their considerable moves while I watched from a safe distance. Some of the Koreans from capoeira even came too and showed off their moves. One of the fellows was too injured to participate in capoeira just hours ago, but he certainly wasn't too injured to keep from pulling off a 6 or 7 rotation head spin. Interesting. Noraebang room followed, which we quickly bounced from, as Miss Jenna really wanted some french fries. At 3:30 in the morning. Thankfully, bars understand the randomness of drunken hunger pangs, so we were able to get our greasy potato fix. Finally off to bed at 4:30. Ahhhhhh, sleep. Well, not before trying to watch a movie (not my suggestion) that lasted 10 minutes before people fell asleep (yeah, kinda figured that would happen). Sunday? Well, it was a Lazy Sunday, that's for sure.