(no subject)
April 5, 2009
North Korea launched their missile and managed to not wipe out Seoul, so just given that I think it is fair to say it was a good week. Kelly was caught a cold, which put a damper on Drinkins’ social life, but we somehow survived.
I woke up late on Monday morning, and have to bypass the gym. I made plans to meet this guy and buy a phone off of him, since I absolutely hated my current one. This took longer than expected, and I was nearly late to work. Work was its normal little self. After work Kelly, Chris, and I headed down to the Spicy Chicken Place and had dinner. Kelly was seriously not feeling well, and so after dinner he headed home. I managed to convince Chris to join me at Siena for one drink, and then we headed home.
Tuesday morning I got up, headed to the gym, and did a little shopping at E-Mart for groceries. I took my food home, ate lunch at home, and headed off to work. I taught my first class, which is a fun but troublesome bunch. Afterwards, I taught a second class, a new one added to my schedule. It was just one boy, probably 13 or 14. He’s really smart, and freaking adorable. I can tell I’m going to really enjoy that class.
After work, we got dinner, and Kelly was still feeling yucky, so he and Chris went home. Michelle and I met up at Siena for a drink, and we had a good time. Failed to get exceptionally wasted, but that was no problem.
Wednesday, the wonderous day off. I had no plans to do anything, nor any desire. I just wanted a nice day of chilling out at home. I played some video games, and got a lot of rest. I met up with Jinhee around 1:30 and went to COEX. I was finally able to ditch that old em effer and activate one that isn’t completely counterintuitive. I went home, took a nap, played some video games, and called Kelly to see if he was up for getting Chinese for dinner. We had the sweet and sour pork, served with black bean sauce and fried rice. So delicious! After dinner I went back home.
Thursday I was again too lazy to go to the gym. Dammit was acting strange, like he had no energy. I could tell he hadn’t eaten the night before, and he was whining a lot. I was really scared for him. I could tell he didn’t feel good. I decided that if he was still looking this bad Friday morning, I would take him to the vet. Regretfully leaving him, I headed off to work. My first class was completely out of control. My boys were being awful, and I for the first time got mad in class. I didn’t yell, but I was fuming mad. They could definitely tell. That class ended, and I shoved kimbap down my throat for dinner. I taught my second class, and they were very good. It saved the day.
I came home and called Jackie for a few minutes, then Kelly and Chris came over with wine. We drank this absolutely awful wine, two bottles of it, and watched Clone High….the last three episodes. It’s tragic to know that it is over. But we watched it, and ate lots of unhealthy snack foods. Squid chips aren’t too bad!
Things happened Friday that were just terrible. We’re still very upset about the events of the evening.
I woke up that morning and had no desire for the gym. Yeah, not a good week for me! I ate lunch and went to work. Friday I do not teach the first class, and so I did boring work until my second one. In this one, I had one kid. She is the absolutely most shy thing that has ever lived. I had her last semester, and she was always annoyingly quiet. But in this class, it was a nightmare. It took this girl 10 minutes to work up the courage to give her presentation-that she clearly worked hard on. It was thoroughly frustrating. I just can’t comprehend how someone can be that shy.
After work we headed off for our weekly tradition-twaeji galbi and Siena. We were super excited and starving. We went to our place and ate a delicious meal. The energy was a bit low, since Chris had a headache. We finished our food and headed to Siena. We convinced Chris to join, and she agreed. We got there, and had our drinks. Seung Je was acting strange. I could tell something was bothering him. His girlfriend came in, and started talking to us. Mostly, she was talking to Chris. It was clear that she did not like Chris. Chris played nice, and complimented her, but the girlfriend just started throwing the insults. Poor Seung Je was thoroughly embarrassed and awkward. Finally, the girlfriend says that she doesn’t want us to come back there, and if we do, she’s going to break up with Seung Je. Well this pissed us off, and Chris goes into bitch mode. They had a nice heated conversation, and Chris grabs her jacket and leaves. I try to reason with the girlfriend, but she keeps on being a total bitch. Finally, Kelly and I left. I felt really bad for Seung Je, because he didn’t do anything wrong, and I could tell he hated the situation. We left the bar. It was about 1am at this point. Chris and Kelly were ready to go home, but I needed a drink after that episode. Our good friend JK joined me within minutes. He used the bathroom inside Siena, and then we headed to another restaurant. We got a beer, and he wanted to know what was going on. He told me he saw the girlfriend crying inside the restaurant, with Seung Je trying to console her. I filled him in on everything, and he called Seung Je. JK told me that he was going to quit working there, for his girlfriend. JK said he would talk to Seung Je and try to persuade him otherwise.
This was the first time I’ve ever remembered hanging out with JK. He’s actually a hell of a lot of fun. I love this guy! He wants to come to America with me when I go back, and see my city-especially BULLWINKLES! Around 4:00 AM we part ways, and I fell fast asleep.
Again, I missed the gym Saturday morning. I went to work and had a long and boring day. At 9 Kelly and I went home, and got a bit of rest. Around 9:30 we meet back up, meet up with Chris, who was thoroughly drunk, and head to Itaewon. I had made plans to join my friend, Erica, to go Salsa dancing there at Club Caliente. We went to Spy first for a real drink, then I went to Caliente. It was packed and blazing hot, but we had a really good time. I went back to Spy for another real drink, since the ones at Caliente were just too weak. I went back, danced a little bit more, and then decided that I had enough. I bid Erica farewell, and went to Spy for some more drinks. Chris left shortly thereafter, approaching hour number 10 of being drunk. Kelly and I hung out for a while, talking to people we’ve met there. According to Kelly, around 3:30 I told him that I was ready to go home, and so we left and went home. I guess I wasn’t having a very good time, or I was very sleepy. Regardless, we left and headed home.
I woke up this morning around 11, and met Chris at 12:15 at Daechi Intersection. We waited for Kelly, then went to COEX for lunch. The plan was to go to Seoul Grand Park, and see what was there. It was very crowded, and we weren’t sure what exactly we were going to find. We walked along a pedestrian road, and passed many street vendors. Many of them were selling the same thing, two large steaming pots. One had little tiny shells in it. I think they were snails or something like that, which people sucked out of the shells. The other one, was disgusting. For some unknown reason, the Koreans like to eat these silk worms. They smell like death, that’s for sure. It just was not going to happen. I’m not eating that.
We stopped over at the Family Mart and got some water. A young guy in there said hi to us, and started to talk, but his rude ass girlfriend stopped him. These damn Korean girlfriends keeping the nice guys away! It’s ridiculous. We decided to follow them for as long as we could, just to piss her off. We walked over to the sky lift, and got a ride. We had no idea where it went, but it sounded fun. The line was long, but it went by relatively quickly. Once we were on the thing, Chris got kind of freaked out. Not sure why, since there as a net to catch people if they were to fall off. Along the ride, we passed over the children’s petting zoo, and saw pigs, sheep, and monkeys. Anyway, we got to the end and found that we were at the entrnce to the zoo. It seemed like the logical thing to do, so we got in and got in line for the second skylift. This one stayed inside the zoo, and the sign clearly, with poor English, said “Take lift to back of park and walk back to enjoy park in most comfortably way.” Yeah, most comfortably way. Nice.
We stood in line for a long time, but the children in front of us were absolutely adorable. Two girls and a very young boy. One thing about Koreans, all of the boys are freaking adorable. They’re so funny. They provided quality entertainment the whole line, and we took our ride to the back of the zoo. We couldn’t see much from the ride, but we did see the hippos and the lions. That was impressive. The lions were very cool.
We landed and went to the very back of the park. There were a couple of smaller animals, most of which I had never heard of. I laughed when I saw the North American raccoon, since I had never seen an animal in a zoo that I had hit with my car before.
Next to the smaller animals we found a leopard, a jaguar, then a white tiger. The tiger was impressive, but it just laid there. I with it would have moved around a bit, but it just sat still.
Moving alone, we found the Siberian tigers. Those were impressive. Several of them were walking around. It was awesome. Unlike the white tiger, these had an open air area to wander around in. There were two sections of them, and then we moved on.
In the next area, I saw a cute kid with an awesome mullet. We then found the lesser pandas. If you’ve never seen on of these, you’re missing out. These guys are ridiculously cute. They are red, and have the most adorable faces imaginable. So cute.
Next we found the bears, and they had 4 different kinds. One was a little bit ugly, and about the size of a large dog. It was a Malasian something bear. He was fun, though, very playful, in hopes that people would throw him food. I liked him. We found the three other kinds of bears, then moved to the peafowl village. There we were able to get very close up to peacocks, ducks, and their relatives. The peacocks never opened their tails, sadly, but they were still so beautiful.
There were tons of other animals we saw, like bison, deer, that sort of thing, and then we moved to the South American themed area. Here we were able to find capabaras, giant ant eaters, monkeys, crocodiles, turtles, lemurs, and more.
Next we found the African area, with elephants, camels, rams, cool stuff like that. I was very excited when we found the rhinoceroses, since I had never seen one before. They are impressive animals.
Chris and Kelly dragged me into the insect area, where I spent the entire time creeped out. They had some sea-life things that I was excited to see, like axolotls. I’ve seen pictures, but never one in person. Very cool things these are.
After that we found the kangaroos, then the giraffes, and had pretty much done the park. There were a few things we didn’t see, but we headed out, since the sun was setting and the temperature was dropping. We hopped on the subway and went home.
We parted ways, since we were all exhausted. I spent the rest of the night at home, resting, videogames, watching House. Just relaxing and getting ready for another week. Found out that North Korea launched their rocket, and we’re still alive, so I guess that’s good. We’re not sure what do to about our bartender situation, since I haven’t heard from JK about it. But we’ll see what happens this week.