Still Catching Up: Out on the Town

Yes, sprinkled in between trips to the serene wilderness, the trip with the rest of my school (don't worry I'll get to it eventually), and my parents vacation here, I managed to get out on the town, while drinking a bit too much and generally acting like an idiot with my friends. Plus there's a couple of my patented "Face, meet Palm" FAILS sprinkled in there too. And if I know my friends and family, there is little they like more than my fuck ups. Enjoy.

The first of my adventures took place in Hongdae. Not like the location matters at all. Hell, I could be ridiculous and FAIL plenty hard in my own living room. Actually, I think the Mound St. crew could attest to that fact. As usual I was out with all girls. Strange how that always works out that way. Was that way in Madison too. As a result I've learned many things. Terrible, horrible, awful things about how the female body works and about sex. From now on, I'm sticking to the stork story for where babies come from, as the details of that explanation don't make me want to cry. Although, I should apologize to the ladies though, as they always have me around ruining all their chances of getting hit on or finding a guy. I get it. Men feel intimidated with a Grade A specimen of all that is man like myself hanging around the girls. Obviously they know they can't measure up and just don't even try. So for being just too damn handsome and charming and awesome and tall, I am sorry ladies.

Perhaps because I'm always killing their game, the ladies decided to invite more people to join us, but refused to invite any women. So later in the evening when they all had somebody to cuddle up with, poor old Eric was sitting alone and not nearly drunk enough in the corner. Not like that particular feeling was new or anything. I happen to know it much too well.

Things got more interesting when we met an acquaintance from the Jeollanam-do trip. See, had it just been me on the trip, I wouldn't have talked to this particular and thus would have missed out on all the juicy gossip. So perhaps being social does have its advantages. But since Amy DID actually talk to this girl and get to know her on the trip, she recognized her right away at the particular bar we were at and struck up conversation. Cue drama. See, this acquaintance has had a pretty interesting last 2 weeks since we saw her. During the trip she was traveling with her steady boyfriend of at least a year. Everything seemed fine. Cept, a few days after the trip he just up and told her he didn't love her anymore and they were finished. Nothing too crazy right? But ohhhh there's more. What does she attribute the collapse to? Our mutual friend Jenna. She claims that Jenna done stole her man away cuz she a ho. OHHHHHHH SNAP! Well, she probably didn't say it exactly like that. But she certainly believed Jenna to be the cause. How exciting. It was like Jerry Springer, but right in front of my eyes. Awesome. If this is what middle and high school were actually like, let me just say that I'm sad I spent all my time actually studying. My mistake. I had major doubts about the accuracy of the girl's claims, given how easily some men (cough cough) take to following at her heels without any action on Jenna's part, but that doesn't make it any less exciting.

A few weeks later, we reconvened, this time in Anna's town of Ilsan. After some dinner we found ourselves at a music bar. Let me just issue a very heart felt thank you on behalf of all the foreign folk here dying for some decent (aka listenable) music after all the auditory horrors we endure (perhaps I may be exaggerating, but at this present moment 3 of the current chart hits feature choruses that consist of 1) "madonna donna madonna donna" repeated multiple times 2) "Wake Up" repeated 15 times per chorus and yes, I did count it out and 3) "beddie battie bettie boddie" or some other similar sounds/noises). You see, these "music bars" have the good shit, so to speak. Their walls are full of records and CDs of every foreign artist of quality ever. Want CCR? Done. The Rolling Stones? Done. Earth, Wind and Fire? Done. As you might expect, most of the clientele in these places are foreign, but their owners are always Korean and always the coolest motherfuckers around. I would posit that there is a direct correlation between having good taste in music and being an awesome person. That's not to say that Koreans don't show up, but you can always tell which songs they chose. Allman Brothers Band, Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Jason Mraz, Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, BB King. Which of those artists doesn't belong? If you said "Jason Mraz" you aren't an idiot. Personally, I like his stuff, but to be at a music bar with all that incredible selection on the walls and to have someone pick not one, not two, but three Mraz songs? Awful, awful, awful.

Anyways, we were enjoying ourselves when someone in the group (cough Amy cough) started dancing and suggested we all join her. Apparently we had a bit to drink, as we agreed this would be a good idea and joined her. Some time later, Amy decided to dance without her shoes because....well, I don't know. Because that's what Jesus would have done? I don't know. Again, we must have had a few because we also agreed this would be a good idea and joined in again. Now this wasn't your usual hardwood or concrete barfloor that stick to and such, as the floor was carpeted and relatively clean. Still, its a bar floor, so certainly not spotless. It did cause some confusion the next day when trying to understand why my feet were so damn dirty. "OOhhhh, right the barefoot dancing....."

When everybody was tired of dancing, they settled down to listen to the music and discuss my failure to get laid...wait, what? Yeah, I'm not so sure how we got on the topic, but all of a sudden I had several people swarming me, telling how I should respect myself more and what I should do to "get it done", so to speak. Hell, I was even getting lectured by a guy that I had just met 2 hours previous. Thanks guy whose name I don't remember, your advice was super helpful. I enjoyed their concern, but at some point I kinda just zoned them out. Probably right around the point where somebody suggested that to get myself out there I make a Craigslist ad. They were serious. And really drunk, by the looks of it.

Soon enough, the group lost interest in me and I was able to focus on more important things, like the 3 Irish girls that had entered the bar. Don't get your hopes up folks, I still failed in the end. But not without trying. Wait, they were actually Scottish. Shows how much I was paying attention when they were talking....or how much I know about European geography (always seem to confuse Ireland and Scotland, dumb I know) Anyways, with Amy already making conversation, being the super social lady she is, I had my easy in. We got to talking about Scotland and Edinburgh because no European really gives two shits about what life is like in America while I am immensely curious about life in Europe. After some time, I noticed that Amy and the rest of the gang were leaving. They said they were tired and wanted to go home, but I find that highly suspicious. Methinks they bailed to force me to talk with and try and pick up one of the girls. What can I say, they are always looking out for me.

After a bit, the ladies said they had to meet a few friends at their post-rec soccer league game celebration and invited me to tag along. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't 40 or so foreigners standing around and drinking outside a convenience store. The crowd was a large collection of players, friends, girlfriends and other there to celebrate the soccer club's rec league championship or something like that. I would appear that the group consisted of every Brit, Scot, and Irish living in the general vicinity was there, as I might have been the only American there. Which made the conversation difficult when it inevitably drifted to "What is your town in England?" or "What do you think of (insert random English town)?". Since England is considerably smaller than the US, it would appear that every Brit has been to every single city in the entire country and thus has a story/adventure to tell about Leeds, Sheffeld, Hull, Blackpool, or whatever. Even the tiny towns with one pub and 2 people living there, they've been there.

In time though, the little old lady running the convenience store we were squatting outside of shooed us off as it was 11pm or so and we were drinking and merrymaking outside near residential areas. The massive whitey fest disbanded and went their separate ways. I obviously followed my new Scottish acquaintances to the next bar, where is was time to work my magic. I'm just kidding, I have no moves. Clearly. Once at the bar, each male had to stake claims for the female of their choosing. Unlike the animal kingdom, where the males would have fought to the death, we humans settle the issue in a civilized way: super awkward conversations. A taste:

Other Guy: "Hey man, which girl you going for?"
Me: "What?"
Other Guy: "Well, it looks like you're going for that girl you've been talking to and I'm just wondering if its okay if I go for her friend over here."
Me: "Ummm...yeah go ahead man. Feel free."

Animals have it so much easier.

This however, was where it all fell apart. Sadly, I can't take much of the credit for this one. My body just betrayed me. After having survived an early onslaught of hard liquor unscathed, I figured my wussy stomach was gonna hold together. Not so, not so. A couple sips into my first beer at the new place and I knew that I was in trouble. Serious stomach queasiness set in and all other concerns were brushed aside. I can now definitely say that there is a primal instinct stronger than the need for sex and that is the need to not vomit everywhere. To hopefully help me out, I headed outside for air. On 3 separate occasions. However, even after the air breaks, judgement day still came. While on the way to the toilet for fear of the serious rumblings going on in my tummy, the proverbial dam broke. But since it was me, I played it cool. Walking to bathroom, turn head, open mouth, vomit, close mouth, turn head back, continue towards bathroom. All without breaking stride. And really you can't feel too bad for the hallway. I certainly wasn't the only one who made a mess there. Once business was concluded properly in the bathroom, I decided to leave, as I was obviously in no shape to continue. Tough luck but what you gonna do? So I headed out to find an ATM before grabbing the cab home. Upon obtaining my cash, something unusual dawned on me: I felt great. Stomach queasiness, fatigue, everything. Gone. I was then again faced with a choice: should I stay or should I go? Hey, that's a Fall Out Boy track isn't it? I'm pretty sure it is. (that ones for you Maria). Well, quite unsurprisingly, I chose to stay. So I rushed back up the steps to the bar, confident that luck and good fortune were on my side for once, only to find....that everybody had left. Crap. I guess I had disappeared for longer than I thought. So I went home, sad and alone.

Our final adventure took place several weekends later, at the final gathering of the crew. We had decided on dinner in Anna's town, then drinks for however long that took us. It was just the small group of us and one mutual female friend of Amy and Anna that I had never met. She seemed nice, but I really didn't make much notice of her. Dinner, nothing out of the ordinary. 1st bar, just drinking and chatting. It wasn't until we got back to that music bar from the previous adventure that things got interesting.

As it was a music bar, they have numerous pencils and sheets of paper available for writing down song requests. Funny that those little pieces of paper would have so much effect on the evening to come. While writing away, I noticed that Amy had suddenly gotten super secretive about her music choices, hiding the paper from view while exchanging hushed discussion with Anna. Obviously, this peaked my interest and I had to know what was on the paper. Hell, they were looking at me, while sharing their hush-hush conversation, so I knew it had to be about me. Course, that was probably part of their plan anyways. To get me interested in whatever they were writing.

I assumed it was some manner of goofy song or whatever. Just goofy kids being goofy. I was very, very wrong. Soon enough, they slid the paper sorta discretely under the table to me. What did it say? "Eric, Person A (for her sake, lets not use her name) told us she likes you. You should go for that." Person A being the mutual female friend who I had never met before that evening. But they told me via note? It's like the middle school I never had. Charming. But this certainly changes things. It's true that I still wasn't attracted to her, but now I had a legitimate opportunity. And given how desperate I'd been of late for anything, it took me all of a nanosecond to decide to go for it.

Since the group knew all too well how piss poor I am at picking up women, they did all they could to help me out, which was equal parts sweet and annoying. When we moved tables, the group conspired to have us sit together, despite not really having exchanged any manner of conversation up to this point. Poor unsuspecting Carrie actually sat down between us and then got yelled at and told to sit on the other side of the table with Amy. It was so incredibly not subtle that I broke out laughing. But it achieved the desired result, in that we sat next to each other and chatted. Mama Bear Powis, in all her meddling glory, actually dragged Anna away at one point because I was talking to Anna too much and thus scaring away the new girl, despite Anna being very much just a friend.

We chatted for a long time and actually managed to have some decent conversation. "you know, you are like the most beautiful person I have ever, ever met in like my entire life? No, no, I'm totally serious and stuff. You could be a part-time model or something." No, not that wonderful drunken conversation. We discussed comics and she told me how she knows Neil Gaiman and how she and her friends hung out with him a bunch of times and how her friend slept with Neil Gaiman for a while. For the record, I didn't believe a word of what she said, but that didn't make it any less interesting.

I realized at some point that the rest of the crew had pulled back and seemed to be simply observing what I was doing, which was weird but it certainly was sweet that they cared so much. Just wish they would be less voyeuristic about it. Take my conversation with Jamie a few days later: "Eric, I was a little worried at first, with you not making any moves. But then I turned to say something to Amy and when I turned back, you had your hand around her ass. Atta boy. I couldn't have been more proud of ya, son." Like I said, very creepy, but sweet.

Eventually the rest of the crew had had enough to drink and tried to ditch us in an attempt to allow some alone time for the girl and I. At least thats what I hope they were doing. The two of us decided to head to a different bar at the same the rest of the group was leaving, so we tried to catch up to them and share the elevator with them. They instead tried desperately to close the door before we got there. Again, I hope they were doing it to help me. Otherwise they are just huge assholes. Hmmmmmm.

The two of us headed to a new bar, where we chatted about various stuff and drank some more. THE END.

What you say? There has to be more to the story? Well, there is, but a public forum blog is not the place for that. Don't worry, there were certainly more fails to end this particular evening, but you'll just have to talk to me in private to get those details. Sorry.

Still Catching Up: The Jeollanam-do Post

Phew. With all the craziness of my parents trip to Korea behind me (don't worry I'll get to that post eventually), I can now settle back into my job at school, doing nothing. Meaning there is plenty of time to get some posting done. This time its the post about my trip to Jeollanam-do. Lets get to it.

About 2 months ago (JESUS, has it really been that long already??? wow), Amy and I decided to finally visit the southeastern coast of Korea, which is supposedly quite beautiful but (there's always a catch) has pretty much nothing in the way of cities, people and general civilization. Normally I like all these things, however in Korea, where I have no car, no civilization means no public transport, making navigation very, very difficult. Then there's all the staring and unwanted attention. Not too many foreign folks get down that way (see above) so we are quite the big deal. To avoid all these hassles and spend as much time as possible seeing the stuff we want (aka nature) and as little time as possible on the stuff we don't want (aka everything else), we joined a bus tour that would be flying all over the area. Plus, we would be able to meet new people on the tour. Well, alright, I wouldn't be, cuz I'm me, but at least Amy would make some new friends.

To get around the area and manage to get back to Seoul at a respectable hour on Sunday, the tour opted to leave late Friday night and drive into Saturday morning. Ohhh, and we were trying to catch the sunrise at a temple on the southern coast (spoiler: we didn't). To make it for sunrise the bus left from Seoul at 10pm, with Amy, our new friend James, and myself on board. A word on our new friend James: he has too much energy. He's one of those people that is always peppy, always cheery, always energetic. Over long periods of exposure, unless you are just as peppy as them or high on uppers or something, these type tend to wear on a person. And he did.

Since I knew we would be arriving at our destination by 5am or something, with minimal rest time after that, I wanted to get some rest on the bus. Too bad that that night was the second game for the US at the World Cup. So much for sleeping. This game just so happened to be the controversial Slovenia game. I could complain for days about all the shit that went on in that match, but for your sake I'll keep it brief. The US was terrible in the first half. They were wonderful in the second half. That disallowed goal was the biggest load of BS I've ever seen. That official was absolutely awful. The end. As you might imagine, I was rather wound up from the drama of the match, so there goes sleeping on the bus.

At some ungodly early hour we arrived at our destination along the southeast coast of Korea. Here we were faced with several options: 1) Remain on the bus and sleep until we head out in a few hours to our next destination 2) Hike up to the top of a nearby mountain, see the sunrise and hang out at the Buddhist Temple 3) Pay a little extra and crash for several hours in a little hostel room. I had paid for the hostel room, since I hate sleeping on buses, but I had to get my shots of the sunrise first.

So I set off to find the temple. Our directions were to follow the road up the hill to the temple, which sounds easy enough. It's a mountain for gods sake, you can't really miss it. However, finding the proper path up to the the temple was a bit more tricky and after several misfires, I finally managed to arrive at the temple. Freaking awesome sunrise here I come.





Damn you fog! Damn you to hell! Yes, the fog managed to muck up yet another lovely photo-op. No sunrise for me, try again next time. But you gotta make the most of whats available. I was still in a really cool temple on the side of a mountain (see video below) and the teeny tiny town below us was close enough to avoid the fog for the most part.



The best part of the temple? In order to reach the highest shrine, they had cut out (dug out?) of the mountain, leaving a really sweet tunnel. Just like the Batcave. At least in mind it was. At least in my mind.



After some futile cursing and praying for the fog to lift, I gave up on that endeavor and instead headed around the backside of the mountain to find the trail to the mountain's peak.



Man, fuck you fog. Obviously I wasn't gonna be able to see shit, but I did get some exercise out of the whole hike and I got to nap/relax on the absolute top of the mountain with some of the other tour folks. And I can't/don't get to do that every day, so minor win for me.

From there I headed back down the mountain to explore the bustling city nestled at the base of the hill. I visited some world class museums. I chatted global politics at the local Starbucks. I saw a beautiful rendition of "Oklahoma" at the local theater.





Okay, so maybe I didn't do any of those things in this particular "town", if you can call it that. But I did get stared at by the 7 or 8 residents, so that counts for something. Once down at the bottom, I found the hostel/room thingy the rest of the group was sleeping in and went to sleep for several hours. Or at least tried to. It's really hard to actually sleep on the hard floor. Don't know how the Koreans can do it.

With my nap finished, it was time to move on to Yeosu, a city on the coast, for a harbor tour. Yeosu is hosting the 2012 World Expo and they are wholly unqualified to host such an event. How do I know? Besides the fact that a town of 300,000 will be hosting an estimated 8 million guests and that its in the middle of nowhere and not easily reached from Seoul/Incheon International Airport/civilization? Probably the fact that the former mayor (from 2006 to early 2010) was on the run for 58 days after an arrest warrant was issued on the charges of taking bribes from contractors for construction rights and what not. Yup, politics K-style. Anyways, the city was pretty nice though.



Once in Yeosu, it was off to the harbor for a boat tour around the city and various surrounding uninhabited islands. Sounds cool. In theory. Well, for the most part it was. The weather was great. The view was lovely. The boat ride had water and green nature, which is plenty enough for me.



The catch? We were sharing this particular cruise with quite a few of the local elderly. I guess we didn't get the memo that this cruise was going to be a booze cruise. But drunken, way too friendly and super creepy old men is pretty standard fare here. The folks needed to be entertained while they drank. Obviously walking up on deck and actually looking at the lovely view was out of the question. Fuck that boring shit. Instead they got a musician who of course plays the music that people of that age seem to like....TROT. I shall not provide a link to such trash on my site because well, its awful. You have the internet, so you maybe search at your own risk. The best way to describe it is that you have one individual singer whose vocal delivery can be referred to as "warbling" (cuz they really wander all over the place with their singing), over a simplistic and very cheesy electronic piano beat that would probably be passed over for a porno soundtrack. To say that it sounds like farm animals giving birth is an insult to the the beauty of birth.

We really couldn't avoid the music, despite being up on deck, as they had it cranked up so bad. Many of tour members seriously considered throwing themselves overboard (myself included). In time the music shifted and we could definitely discern that this was all coming from a stereo, that someone was actually playing this stuff. That and I could have sworn I heard a saxophone, drum and harmonica. Now I was intrigued. Sure enough, at the center of the storm was this amazing performer.



No idea why he felt the need to dress up like a clown and wear the fake detective glasses with mustache but whatever. In spite of the poor music choice, the guy could play. He definitely had some talent on the sax and harmonica all while having to keep beat with that monstrous drum on his back. Sadly, his talents were wasted on the particular music.

Back in the harbor, still moving in a daze from the "music" and sensory overload while on the boat, we boarded our bus again and headed off to the Suncheon Bay Ecological Park. Yes, surprisingly in this case they are actually conserving the nature instead of rolling right over it. Kudos. Anyways, this particular bay features quite a bit of boardwalk that snakes through the marshes allowing the guests up close and personal exposure to the locals, like this guy:



And this guy:



Those fellas really were everywhere. You couldn't find a patch of marsh without 10 or so of each of those buggers. So we wandered through, taking pictures of the scenery and generally enjoying the fact that there wasn't a million cars around, or a million people or a million of anything. Very nice.



We wanted to catch the sunset at the Ecological Park, but as you might have guessed, the fog impeded us. So we headed early to our lodging for the evening. We were fortunate enough to stay in a recreation of an old timey village, which is great expect for the sleeping on the floor thing. Although, their mattresses suck too, so you are just universally fucked for sleep.



After dinner, some of us decided to head off reservation and wander into town for alcohol (or I should say more alcohol, as most of the travelers drank with their dinner too). We quickly found a convenience store and a space to plop our asses down and commenced with the merriment. While drinking we got to hear some crazy stories. Like the one girl who got charged by a silverback while studying in Africa, among other animal stories. Or the guy who saw a monkey masturbate using a frog in a zoo, then toss the traumatized frog away when he finished. Or the couple who used to work at Disneyland. Those were some stories. Watching Baloo and King Louie of the Jungle Book fight it out back stage after a performance. Or how an old Giraffe got struck by lightning in the safari while visitors were going through. And the stench that followed. Or how they had to cut him up with a chainsaw to move the body. All super good stories. I ended up giving a capoeira demo that was too bad given how fatigued and alcohol-adled I was. Didn't even fall on my face once. At the early hour of 3am, we finally called it a night and headed to bed.

After sleeping in and missing the trip to some famous tea fields in the area (ehhh, no big deal), it was time to move to a smaller tea plantation for tea picking and tea making. At this point in the trip I was very grumpy and not all together cooperative (see shitty sleeping conditions rants 1-1,000,0000,000,000), so I wasn't super enthused about making tea. First, we had to pick our tea and were ranked on who picked the most and best tea leaves. I wandered away from my partner during the picking and instead just relaxed in the fields with the plantation's famous tea-leaf eating dog.



We walked. We ate. We shat. We had our bellies scratched. From there, we went inside for tea drinking and eventually tea leaf cooking. Again, I just wanted to wander around outside with the dog and the cats (they had those too). Lucky bastards just got to sleep and relax on the deck while I had to sit inside listening to a speech about how their tea was so awesome cuz they sprinkle them with gold dust. I don't know if the dust makes the tea better, but it sure makes it more expensive. 1,200 dollars for a package of tea? No thanks. We cooked the leaves, we flipped the leaves, we pressed and rolled the moisture out of the leaves. Personally, I just like drinking the stuff. Could care less about the prep. But it was educational.



For here we were super time crunched, so we rushed to a local bamboo forest, took some pics and left. Seriously. We were in and out in 25 minutes. No foreplay either. Cuz that's how we roll?



Our last stop, just as rushed as the bamboo forest, was a road lined with sequoias. Nothing miraculous in itself, but the trees were all planted by the Park Chung Hee regime, a military dictatorship that ruled Korea quite brutally for several years in the 70s, I believe, but also helped industrialize and build up the country. So its more famous as a historical spot than anything. But it still was pretty. Too bad I only got one pic before my battery on the camera died.



That's it. Trip over. I'll toss a few of the videos down below, but if you are really inclined to see them all then just head over to youtube and type in "talldudeinasmallwld" and search for what you like.

The World Cup Post

Yes, I've finally caught up enough to write about the World Cup here in Korea. It was an interesting ride to be sure. I know I originally promised myself that come June 2010, I would find a way to be in South Africa, but I lie to myself all the time, so I got over it. As far as fall back locations to be during the tourney, I could have done much worse. I'm really thankful to have been here for it all, as the atmosphere was nuts. Although, come to think of it, it would have been awesome in basically every country but the US. Man, I wish the US would get with the program. Ohhhh well.

After several months of the banal commercials and lousy K-pop songs and corporate sponsered cheer, I was ready for the freakin' games to start. If you were subjected to this shit, you'd be ready for them to drop the ball too.





Those girls are attractive, granted, but having to listen to that music is just not worth it for some simple T&A (well, not so much T...or A for that matter).





The first game of importance was Korea's match against Greece on June 12th. The game fell fortuitously on a Saturday evening at 7pm, meaning there would be considerable crowds down at City Hall, which was where I wanted to be. Imagine something like this:


(not my pic, obviously. Thank you Google images)

Having lived in Korea for the last 1.5 years, I had obviously heard about the legendary crowds and outpouring of World Cup fever that hit back in 2002 (they never shut up about it...) and wanted to get in on that for this world cup. Sure the crowds wouldn't be nearly that big, as they were hosting the damn thing back then, but still there would be a couple of people there to party with. So when Saturday night rolled around, Jenna, Anna and I headed out for City Hall to watch the game. Too bad the weather didn't cooperate. It rained. So after we picked up our Red Devils (the nickname for the Korean national team) merchandise, namely some cheap little light up devil horns, we headed off to a bar just down the street from City Hall. We thought about gutting it out in the rain, but we generally didn't care that much about the Korean team to be wet for 2 hours. Plus, in a bar we're much closer to the booze. Double win. The atmosphere at the bar was awesome, but it was nothing I hadn't seen at Green Bay bars during Packer games. It's when the viewers and fans spill out in the thousands to the streets that you can really grasp the unique energy that is the World Cup. But that was weather permitting.

The game itself was all Korea. I had predicted a tie, with neither team being that good. However, Korea shocked me with how well they played and Greece shocked me with how shitty they were. They really, really sucked. At one point during the match, after witnessing some of the enthusiasm and energy the locals were putting into cheering, I said something to the effect of "If only they put this much energy into getting busy and making babies, maybe they wouldn't have such an awful birth rate". Then several days later I read the newspaper article talking about how condom sales were up 66% or something huge immediately after the Korea win compared with regular sales. Wallin the seer strikes again. Though, you're gonna have to "forget" the condom if you really want a better birth rate Korea. Just saying.

With the game over, the group moved to Hongdae to continue the evening. There we saw more and more jubilation. People jumping on car roofs, hanging out of car windows, jumping and running around in the street. Perfectly normal for a Madison friday night, but pretty uncommon for the more reserved Korean residents, especially since it was only 10pm. With all the celebration, you would have thought they won the whole damn thing, but when you think about it, they've only been decent for the past what, 3 world cups? So ever win means a little more. Although, I've been to no other soccer mad countries during the world cup, so this may just be standard operating procedure. Part of me hates all the celebration here because I know 95% of the fans are just fair weather/once every 4 years fans who know absolutely nothing about the game, but in the end I guess I'll take any support for the world cup, regardless of the source. We slowly made our way to some random club for dancing, but the people we were waiting on never showed up, so we just settled for watching the Argentina match. Soccer instead of dancing? Must be my lucky day.

With the Argentina game over and our friends clearly not coming, we decided to go home...on foot. Yes, despite being a considerable distance from our respective homes (me being the closest at 40 minutes by subway) we decided to walk. Was it for the fresh air? Possibly, but I wouldn't really call Seoul air "fresh" by any means. Maybe its because we actually see so little of Seoul because its so damn big and we always travel underground cuz its much cheaper. Whatever the reason we walked it and after 2 hours, had traveled 4 subway stops. Since we still had 8 subway stops to home, we decided to take a cab the rest of the way, which worked out perfectly as the US game, slotted for a 3:30am Sunday start time, was just starting. Which I watched (and enjoyed terribly. thanks Robert Green!) and then promptly passed out at 5:30am. A good day it was.

Korea's next match (June 17th) fell on a Thursday night here, so no big viewing party downtown. Well, there was, but I had work in the morning and again, I don't that much about the Korean team. However I did watch the game from one of Seoul's mexican restaurants with a mostly Korean crowd and that did provide a different a much different experience than the bar for the Greece. The experience was different mainly due to the final scoreline. As you might remember, this was the Argentina game and as everyone (minus the Koreans who were convinced they could win it) expected, the Argentinians rolled big time. During the whole game it was difficult for me to decide how to feel. Part of me enjoyed their suffering as retribution/revenge/justice for the awful home field advantage officiating and classless play that helped power Korea to the semi-finals back in 2002 (yes, I know thats an insanely long time to hold a grudge, but when Korea insists on replaying and reliving 2002 every other day, no joking, it doesn't really feel like 8 years ago) as well as their poor sportsmanship/whining about calls that didn't go their way at the 2010 Winter Olympics. The other part of me, however, felt sorry for these good people who really genuinely care about their team (at least during the world cup) and don't deserve to see their boys getting handled that badly. Make no bones about it, I was rooting for Argentina, as they are entertaining and exciting to watch while Korea....are not, but I didn't wish that kind of loss on them. 4-1 was a generous scoreline for them. Could have been much worse.

However, when it was all said and done, I remembered why I prefer watching the World Cup alone. As previously mentioned, I figure around 90% or so of the "diehards" that crawl out of the woodwork every 4 years are in fact fair weather fans that have no clue about anything involving soccer, whatsoever. These people do not bother me as long as they don't talk. However, several of the ladies did not do me the pleasure of remaining quiet. As they knew nothing about soccer, they would begin shrieking and screaming if anything, and I mean anything, positive happened for Korea. Korea gained possession and moved into Argentina's half of the field? Clearly this was something exciting and stressful, so you have to begin shrieking. Literally my friend and I had this conversation upon him returning from the bathroom: "Eric, what did I miss? I heard some shouting and yelling? What happened?" "Ummmm, nothing. Korea got ball past midfield then Argentina took the ball away. That's it." "Really?" "Yup."

Nothing really to report for the Nigeria game (June 23rd here) as it fell on a Wednesday morning at 3:30am. Just me watching it alone in my apt in my underwear. The way sports were meant to be watched. Sans pants. Korea did just enough to get through.

The final game for South Korea in South Africa was against Uruguay, which again fortuitously fell on a Saturday night at around 8pm (June 26th). This time, though, I would be watching from a bar/club that was holding a concert/fundraiser for orphans. The details: one of the better clubs for music acts would be holding a concert fundraiser for a local orphanage as well as serving as a viewing party for the Korea game. Now, I know what you are thinking, "Wow, You are a much better person than I am Eric. How can I ever hope to be on your level?" Well, you can't, but that's not the question here. I mean, I help old ladies across the street and breast feed orphaned baby puppies, so whatever. Jenna happens to volunteer as a English tutor at the orphanage in question down in Suwon and had volunteered to man the information booth during part of the concert, and as such invited me to help the orphans too. And how could I have said no? The proceeds all go to orphans and North Korean refugees, they are stopping the concert for the Korea game, and the music lineup features one of the only Korean musical acts I would actually pay money to see live.

Before the concert, we grabbed dinner at a Italian restaurant that happened to be a converted house. And as it used to be a house, it of course had a bookcase filled with old looking ENGLISH books. Nothing unusual there, as I'm sure everybody, from Germany to Malaysia, fill their book shelves with distinguished and intellectual English books, rather than their own language's books cuz English is soooo cool. This place was no exception. Book of famous quotes from poets? Good, but we can get wordier and intellectual....ier. A book on molecular biology, right out of some Masters course? Better, but still you can do better. A Box Car Children book? That's what I'm talking about. That is some high level stuff.

With our reading done for the evening we moved to the concert. We arrived just in time to catch the Korean act I really wanted to see, The Rock Tigers. They classify themselves as rockabilly, which is the same genre as the Brian Setzer Orchestra, so they use a stand up bass and dress like they are members of John Travolta's gang of greasers from "Grease". It is definitely something to see Koreans rocking a pompadour straight out of America, cerca 1950. But they can play.



Not the greatest video of theirs, but whatever. It's just really sad to see a good band like this, who has received some international press attention, playing in a tiny little venue in front of almost all foreigners. Whether its because the Koreans don't like this kind of music (which is laughable considering the shite they do seem to like) or just nobody knows about them (since only K-pop gets any airplay and media attention), I can't say. You thought being an underground/struggling artist was tough in America? hahahah. At least there you can possibly make it big. These guys here will never, ever achieve any manner of success, at least not in Korea. Just not going to happen. And that sucks so so much.

After they ended their set, it was time for the Korea vs. Uruguay game. Or so we thought, but their screen projector failed us on several occasions, so the viewers had to switch several times between the downstairs and upstairs televisions. From what I saw, Korea looked pretty good, but just not good enough to win. Which was unfortunate as I would have really liked to see Korea and the US win so I could savor the US then wiping the floor with Korea in the next round. Sadly, it was not meant to be. And they had such an easy bracket too. Ohhh well. America and Korea just aren't good enough yet.

After the game and the rest of the concert ended, we moved onward to find a different bar to watch the US game. Only problem being that most places are closed down by 3:30 am and all of them are closed by the time the game ends. We did finally find a place to watch the game, but we ended up sleeping through nearly all the first half before they closed up at halftime. Not really like we missed anything. At that point we admitted defeat and just headed back to our respective homesteads, where I managed to catch the extra time period only to be let down again by the US team. Thanks guys, love that defense.

I'll let the Rock Tigers play you out.

Desperately Trying to Catch Up, Part 5

Well, the World Cup is over, which saddens me, but maybe now I can get a decent amount of sleep at night. Maybe. As for the final, the more I read about the Dutch whining post match about the officiating, the more glad I feel that I was rooting for Spain. I find it quite ironic that players who were on the receiving end of such generous calls against Brazil would have the nerve to whine about no calls against Spain (I'm looking at you Arjen Robben). Besides, the Dutch should have gone a man down just 20 minutes in, when De Jong cleated Alonso in the chest. I mean, he kicked him in the chest. Last time I checked the chest is in no way easily confused with a soccer ball. Hell, the one guy not bitching about calls? De Jong, cuz he knows how damn lucky he was. But I can't hate Robben too much. He did lead to a wonderful new internet meme: The Robben Ball. Enjoy.









Teeheheheh. Good times.

As for school updates, there really are none. This is the last week of school before camps and there are almost no classes to be taught. The first two classes of the day are taken up with the students participating in some special math camps, so no classes for me. They haven't been rescheduling the classes either, which rocks. Today I have zero classes as the 2 classes I was supposed to teach have been knocked out in favor of standardized testing for the 6th graders. Major wins all around. Camps start next week, but I'm working all of them with co-teachers, which is wonderful for discipline issues during the camps as well as planning. The next few weekends should be interesting though, as I take a school trip to some resort location with the school. Don't really know what to expect, but I hear these things usually devolve (or perhaps they were always intended to be such) into huge drunkfests, which can be interesting or horrible. Don't really know which way it will go. The next weekend after that will be our little group's final goodbye trip, which most definitely will be a major drunkfest, but on the beach. Then the weekend after that my parents arrive, which will obviously require major amounts of alcohol for all 3 of us. 1.5 weeks alone, just the three of us? Yikes.

Now to the recapping. We are up to the last weekend in May, which is still a long, long ways back (I'm not really catching up here am I?). On this particular weekend, Carrie, Jenna and I decided to grab dinner at the same little bistro-thingy down near Jamsil that Jenna and I found the previous weekend. Naturally, we discussed Korea and life after Korea (given our ever dwindling time here), which combined with alchol got ever more silly and entertaining as the night progressed. Shocking, I know. With Carrie in her last 2 months, and Jenna and I with just half a year left, the end is fast approaching, but the consensus between the 3 of us seemed to be that it couldn't come fast enough. We've seen it, done it and are now ready to move on. Plus, over time we've just gotten fed up with some of the various BS that Korea has to offer. We miss the US's Grade A "BS". Well, not really, but we are excited to get back.

After downing 2 bottles between the 3 of us at the restaurant, we decided it would be a good idea to move to different environs to continue drinking. We chose the man-made lake across the street. So with our super classy and super expensive ($10) convenience store bottle of wine, we headed down to the pond. Despite it being 10pm on a Friday night, the walking track was full of locals walking up a storm, which we found incredibly amusing. Maybe it wasn't actually funny, but we had been drinking, so that changes stuff. After seeing all the joggers, one of our group decided it would be fun to go for a run around the track, despite being dressed in regular street clothes and being full of food and alcohol. I won't say who it was, but I'll give you a hint: it wasn't Carrie or I. Around the second bottle of convenience store wine (ohhhh yeah, we went back for seconds), the ladies started debating about the our school experiences. One claimed that every time we say hi or interact with our students (which, if you you teach in elementary school, happens several hundred times a day) we are having an impact on them, we are making a difference. The other believed this viewpoint was overly idealistic and that we are basically a novelty to them, thus all the attention, and our impact is much less than believed. I, as is typical when I drink, didn't really care a lick about the conversation/argument going on around me and just wanted to sit (hahah, I accidentally typed "shit" the first time...freudian slip) in silence and enjoy the pretty lake. To keep myself from talking, I filled my mouth with the wine, thus consuming damn near the whole second bottle.

From there, we decided to head to a hookah bar in Gangnam for a bit before riding home for the night. Despite our different final destinations, we all shared the consequences for our drinking: sickness. According to sources that may have been Carrie herself, the only thing she remembered after getting in the cab to go home was "losing her dinner". Jenna lost hers as soon as she got off the bus back in Suwon, and I managed to survive the taxi ride home, despite major tummy rumblings, and got back to the apt before I had to have my heart to heart chat with my toilet. Let that be a lesson kids, alcohol is bad.

Now for another Robben ball break. Enjoy.









The next weekend (the first in June) didn't have quite as much excitement as the previous weekend, or as much drinking, but was amusing nonetheless. On Saturday, I met up with Anna and Amy for a tea fair at one of the big expo halls inside the COEX Mall. Not much to say about the fair itself, as it only really featured green tea. I was hoping for a little bit more variety, but then I remembered I was in Korea, where "variety" is a unknown word. They do things one way and one way only, end of story. They did have some nice tea sets for sale, as well as lots of Buddha garb, but what use did I have for either? Would have loved to listen to the Buddhists talk, but they were obviously speaking only in Korean and probably talking only about tea, which isn't all that interesting.

That's not to say we didn't meet any interesting people. Take this guy for instance.



Who is he, you might ask. Well, from what I gathered from his business/trading card, he is the protector of traditional tea culture. Cool costume and cool idea to spice up a kinda dull tea fair. I believe the fella might have actually been Japanese, since I think his handlers were as well. Why am I laughing in the pic? Well, about two seconds before the shot was snapped, while moving in for a sweet pose, the superhero had rubbed up on my thigh with his utility belt and his cod piece. My resulting laugh was certainly one of those awkward and uncomfortable type ones. Also unfortunate for him was the fact that I was about a foot taller than him. A bit emasculating for a superhero, but what can you do?

While at the tea fest, we also made a new Korean friend. Well, I didn't obviously, but Amy and Anna did. Or I should say he made new foreign friends, as the guy in question, approached both the girls and just started talking up a storm. Super peppy, lively guy that we weren't surprised to learn was only 19. Damn kids and all their running around with all that spunk of theirs! Hahah, I just said "spunk". Ewwwwwww.

The next day, Carrie, Jenna and I reunited, properly recovered from the previous weekend, for a picnic with some of Carrie's best students. The story goes that some of Carrie's 2nd grade (juniors in High school) conversation class students (all of whom are really cool kids, supposedly) wanted to have a picnic as a end of the semester reward, and they wanted Carrie to invite some of us, her foreign friends. She did, and we showed up. 5 of Carrie's students showed up too and they were cool enough to bring lots of food, meaning we had way more than we needed. Which is the best problem to have. I brought some crackers and the watermelon I had won earlier in the week, Carrie brought her veggies, and Jenna brought other snacks. But the students? They outdid us all. Sandwiches, burgers, sodas, a cake, assorted other baked goods. Wow. We all assembled at Ilsan's Lake Park, located right in the middle of Anna and Carrie's town of Ilsan. As you might expect, the park features a large lake in the middle, probably man-made, but I really don't care. We found some shade and got to eating and chatting. This girls really impressed with their English ability, especially the ones that hadn't studied abroad. One girl had fluent English, but she lived in Belgium for 3 years, and given how well Europeans can speak English, her ability doesn't shock me at all. We chatted about how much high school sucks in Korea, with all the testing and testing and testing and classes 20 hours a day and never sleeping and all other kinds of good stuff. Since all the students were females, the conversation eventually shifted to talking about how much boys suck, which meant it was time for Eric to quietly eat his food and ignore all the gendered hate being tossed around. What's a guy to do in that situation? Fellas do seem to suck, alot. Not much I can do......(sad). I know what can cheer me up! More Robben Ball pics! Yes!!









Anyways, the excitement wasn't over when I headed home, as Jamie was bored and decided to stop by my apt to waste a few hours. While walking to my apartment though, he ran into several friends he had met on a previous weekend, so he called me out to drink with all of them in front of the local convenience store. Now, generally you would think drinking outside a convenience store, unless your names are "Jay" or "Silent Bob", is a bit weird, but here its one of the best places, as they actually have outdoor seating, unlike 98% of all other restaurants. Sure its only cheap ass plastic lawn furniture, but really who is complaining? The new people certainly were entertaining. Many of the group were U.S. Army servicemen and women here at GyungHee University (just down the street from my house) doing a 10 week intensive Korean program as part of their training as military translators. I most enjoyed that 2 of the members of the intensive Korean program were actually Korean-Americans or half Korean, meaning they already spoke Korean. Which means the whole program was a 10 week vacation, on the US govt's dime. Gotta respect that. They are stationed in Hawaii, so they had plenty of interesting stories about how native Hawaiians hate outsiders. Lovely.

Most interesting to me was how much the Koreans in the group seemed to dislike Korea. One of the guys was 100% Korean, but had moved to Texas when he was 8 or 9 and had nothing in common with the pretty boy dandies that make up most of Korea's young male population. The guy said he also isn't interested in Korean women cuz they are crazy and super high maintenance and prefers white women. The poor bastard. Trust me man, if that is your preference then there is nothing for you here. One of the girls was half Korean and she had some lovely stories about growing up with full Korean grandparents. She said growing up her Korean grandmother used to come up to her, pinch her "fat" and say to her, "You need to lose this". Thanks grandma. Luckily this girl didn't grow up with a incredibly fucked up perception of herself or terrible self-worth issues because, as she put it, "I ignored everything she said, cuz she is crazy." In the end, I feel much better about my issues with Korea, as these people hate Korea so much more than me and they can actually communicate/interact with people here. So I'm not crazy. Of course, no interaction with military folk would be complete without one stereotypical creeper. This guy, after drinking...a bit, decided he was gonna turn his chair around to people watch and try and say hi to every attractive woman that walked by. Maybe he wasn't being creepy, but judging from most of the women's reactions, they thought he was too, so I can't have been too far off in my judgement. Course, the ladies didn't hear all the stuff he was saying about them under his breath. Ohhh, and he's married. Classy. Ohhh, I'm sad again. Time for more Robben Balls to cheer me up! Apologies if everybody else doesn't find these as amusing as I do. I just couldn't settle for my favorite one or two. So I grabbed almost all of them.




















Lake Park:

Desperately Trying to Catch Up, Part 4

Well, the World Cup is just starting to get good and my sleep schedule is suffering terribly for it. Watching a game from 11pm to 1am, then napping till the 3:30-5:30 game, then sleeping again till 7:30am doesn't equal much sleep. But what am I supposed to do? They put the Brazil matches at 3:30am and leave junk matches like Paraguay vs. Japan for the early (well, earlier) games. God, that game was terrible. The rules dictate that one team must win, which is disheartening as they both deserved to lose. But now I get a few days to sleep. My weekend? Completely shot, with two games Friday night and two more Saturday night. I'd be more upset if I actually had a social life, but obviously I don't, so I'm not too worried.

As for my hotly anticipated vacation to Southeast Asia, well its been put on hold. Jamie pulled out due to cost concerns and not having enough vacation for it. Frankly, I can't blame him. The tix to Vietnam, where I was planning on going, were double what I expected, plus you had to add in an additional 80 bucks for the entry visa. That and 7 days isn't really enough for me to get around and see everything like I wanted. So it appears I shall instead save that vacation and use it during the winter break on a Southeast Asia trip, that will hopefully include some of the crew, or use it to come home to America a week early. Both of which sound like good ideas to me.

Now to the recapping. Korea used to have lots of Buddhists. Then the Christians came in and ran most of the Buddhists out of town, which makes me sad since Buddhism and Buddhists > Christianity and Christians. However, Buddhists still have enough of a legacy here that the country celebrates Buddha's birthday as a national holiday. To my delight, it fell on a Friday (May 21st), so I had a 3 day weekend in which to seek enlightenment and cast aside material pleasures, as per Buddha's wishes. So I decided to spend that Friday laying in the grass at Olympic Park. Cuz that's what Buddha would have wanted. Or maybe it was because I had nothing else to do. Can't really remember exactly. Regardless, the decision was a good one, as the grass was just as comfy, green, quiet and non-judgmental as I remembered (don't you just hate judgmental grass?). See for yourself how wonderful it was.



Living in a dirty metal monstrosity such as Seoul, I sometimes forget that Korea even has simple delights such as grass and nature. Quick more nature!!



I wasn't the only one in need of some serious relaxing, though. Jenna also decided to partake in the relaxation. In order to meet up with her I relocated near the entrance, set up shop, and starting practicing berimbau. What I didn't count on was having lots of people stop to watch me play. People stop to listen to street musicians all the time. Hell, that's what you want. I guess I just never thought of myself as a street performer and thus was a bit weirded out by people stopping to observe me. If they stopped by to listen to the music, that's great. But since I live in Korea and experience has skewed my opinion in this particular direction, I tend to believe they stopped to gawk at a white person, regardless of the music. So I ended up feeling more zoo animal on display than street performer with a crowd.

Later in the day, we decided to grab some dinner in the area,as its a major metropolitan area in Seoul, so there is bound to be some decent food somewhere. We just have to find. I wish I could say that we found tons of incredible restaurants along the way, but Seoul is not Madison or any other American city. Blocks and blocks of fried chicken or Korean food, if thats your flavor. It was not ours, to no one's surprise, so we had to continue. After some amount of time we found a small little Italian bistro and subsequently settled down for pasta and wine. Hell, we even lucked into a pretty decent view. Right across the street was a decent sized man-made lake (built as part of the Lotte World amusement park complex) with trees surrounding it. Major win.



Sure, those trees are actually from Olympic Park and not the scenery I was just talking about, but still. Outdoor deck seating with a view of nature? Am I sure I'm still in Korea? I don't even know anymore.

Well, after dinner Jenna got it into her head that we should check out the jazz club, which is always a good idea. Because I'm a huge buzzkill, I said that we probably wouldn't get in considering what we were wearing. See, the jazz club is a classy place and supposedly has a dress code. At the time, I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts while lugging around a big wooden stick, while Ms. Jenna was was a tank-top and shorts. Not exactly business casual. However, Jenna doesn't ever listen to a word I say (or anyone else for that matter), so we decided to give it a shot. Surprisingly, we were let in. They actually were more concerned about the big stick I was carrying (they actually asked what the hell it was), then our attire. Sure they stuck us on the second floor in the corner where we couldn't be seen, but not like we cared.

The next night we caught a wacky new Korean film, The Housemaid. Technically, its a remake of a 1960's classic, but it was new to me, so whatever. The basic premise is that a housemaid for a super rich family gets involved in a love triangle with the husband of the super rich family and craziness ensues. The movie struck me as incredibly Korean (perhaps stereotypically so) for many reasons: 1) The film follows an uber rich family, the same subject matter of 99.9999999999% of all Korean TV dramas, despite that depiction being grossly out of touch and sync with how the vast majority of Koreans actually live. Sure America has plenty of those shows too (cough Gossip Girl cough), but the majority aren't. I mean, Lost? They are on a freaking deserted island. 2) It features suicide and some strange perceptions of it (at least to me the westerner). In the story, one of the characters is wronged (quite terribly) by some other characters and this person, to get revenge, kills themself in front of their adversaries........WHAT????????????????? How exactly is that going to achieve any manner of revenge? Apparently coming from the crazy Western (aka logical) standpoint, this strategy makes no sense to me. If one wants to seek revenge, one must inflict pain, physical or mental or financial, on one's opponent. Also important, in my opinion, is being around to savor your eventual victory. Being dead kinda hinders that. Sure, sometimes suicides can affect the enemies, but thats generally when the suicide brings global or news attention that puts pressure on the opponents. This suicide did not. 3) The employer vs employee dynamic. I kept waiting, after all the shit the housemaid goes through, to just turn to her employers, give them the finger, and say, "Fuck you, I quit!". But she never does. She just takes in the ass (figuratively and literally in a few scenes). I will never understand this idea of taking shit willingly just cuz someone is higher on the supposed food chain than you. I will probably never hold a real job for an extended period of time due to this, but so be it.

The most amusing scene for me, was when the husband of the uber rich family, drunk off his ass on wine and power, wanders into the housemaids room and gets her to fellate him. While he was getting "worked on", he is so impressed with himself that he, with half full wine bottle in hand, turns to an enormous mirror and starts flexing his "guns" for his amusement. When I saw that scene, all I could think of was "Man, I bet Rounds has done that." Cmon, you all know Rounds has done something like that.

And with that pleasant image I shall leave you for now.