Acquired Tastes and Bumps in the Road

The two week silence isn't because life has been boring - the complete opposite. I've had so much to write about that I have been so intimidated by the ideas that I've avoided this thing. That and the combination of last week's complete despondency (which was not helped by actions this weekend...oops).

Weekend of the 13th involved The Beck!!! As Japan is quite close to Korea, she was able to jet over on her vacation and spend some quality time in the Land of the Morning Calm. Beck brought me Japanese candy (half of which we ate and the other half was left....somewhere) and introduced me to Tim. We went to norebang (we're going to ignore the spelling in the last entry) and I felt quite intimidated with them - I am tone deaf like a seal, and they are both champions. Despite that, I somehow managed "Phantom of the Opera" (which was chosen because our microphones had so much echo and it seemed the only fitting song) and "Lady Marmalade" (Tim..such a champion).

That night, we went to this all you can eat galbi place. Just 8000 KRW - only in Korea. Not sure how much I ate, but it was probably too much. This was also the night that Audrey learned about the dangers of soju. First, it's a good thing that stuff gets to you so quickly because it tastes like rubbing alcohol. With the terrible overblown sense of confidence that comes in these situations, I decided it would be a great idea to turn to the table full of Korean guys behind us and ask if they spoke English. I'm not entirely sure what I said - but thank goodness our table involved a few native Koreans who could translate whatever it was that I said. Turns out the guys were in university studying medicine and law, and did speak English (which seems to be a pre-requisite here if you want to get into a decent school).

A few quotes from Beck's visit:
Rebecca, to Chae when he wouldn't drink, "Excuse me, are you a North Korean? Are you a communist?" Chae gave in to the peer pressure - that's apparently the line that works here =p

Me, on seeing a man walking a gigantic dog and watching girls jump away from it, "Everyone is scared of his dog."
Rebecca's response, "They're scared because they're looking at it thinking, 'I can't eat all that!'"

The following week brought our new director and a few new rules. Normally at Chungdahm, we write comments/evaluations of students three times a term. Our new director decided that we would have to write them daily - an idea, to her, that would improve our connection to the students. I think this may have been poorly translated - it doesn't improve *our* connection to them, but does let other staff know what's going on with the students. This is a good idea in theory, but it creates so much work for everyone that they just don't have time to care about the implications behind what we wrote. The new rule isn't that bad in itself, but it did kind of create this idea of "Is this just the start?"

March 20th became the day of Laura! The fourth member of our Facebook email exchange finally made it to Korea - however, based on her status updates, she didn't have nearly the hard time with training as we did. I think it's become the thing to take the new recruits to Dr. Fish (although, now that Laura is here, I have a feeling that we're done with the new recruits in our group). Laura took the unique pedicure like a champ, but her roommate, Kira, was even more squeamish than Christi. So glad I survived with my fingers intact - not sure I could translate what happened to a Korea doctor. Later that night, thanks to Anna, we discovered strawberry makgeolli, which is a much nicer substitute for soju. We then headed in search of a place in Gangnam that didn't have an insane cover and had *something* going on (yes, I know we should've headed to Hongdae, but we didn't want to lead the girls too far from the Coatel....plus, by this time, I still was under the delusion that I would actually make the last train to Jukjeon). We found this bar with loud music and four bartenders who were too busy blowing fireballs onto the ceiling to take our orders all the time.

Around 3:30, we decided it was time to leave, but were stopped by two of the bartenders who decided they wanted to go clubbing with us when they got off at 4. Several of their friends joined us - by 4:15, we were standing in the subzero weather waiting for people to withdraw money from the ATM, and by 4:30, we were in this sardine-mob of a coat-check line. As soon as we were free of that, the guys totally ditched us at the club. Lesson learned. Not too put out, though - the club was awful! I can't stand that techno/house stuff that is the same thing over and over - it was like 90 mins of Sandstorm.