Birthday Prelude

I won't lie...that days leading up to my birthday have been kind of foreboding. It's just me being too much inside my head, but it sucks knowing I'll be celebrating my birthday without my fraternity brothers, or my girlfriend, or my family. But, that's really being a bit too negative. After the days/hours leading up to my birthday, and those that followed shortly thereafter, I felt the necessity to blog about this moment in time.

First, I should mention that I feel particularly lucky that I've gotten accustomed to Korea so quickly. I've probably said this before, but without people like Caitlin pulling me out into the world, or people like Casey willingly building me a social network (when it really doesn't benefit either of them at all), I would still probably be sitting at home feeling sorry for myself, or just calling it quits and hopping the next flight home and really never self-actualizing the way I am now. I honestly don't even know what self-actualizing means right now...it just feels right. I'm 알딸딸 (tipsy) on makgeoli right now, but whatever. Blog when the good mood strikes, right?

I'm really lucky as shit. I work at a great school. It can be frustrating at times but other times the kids are really awesome and we just connect and it feels really cool breaking down language barriers and sharing our cultures. My directors are nice and my co-teachers are even better. I can't praise them enough for how genuinely awesome they are. They're always so nice and helpful and welcoming.

Boram's going-away dinner =[

My director loved having me take shots of soju with him.

I got to have Korean BBQ TWO days in a row!! Once for Boram's going away party and once at school...for dinner at work! It was the best week ever =]. But I really will miss Boram...she always helped me so much with my Korean and was pretty much the coolest person. Plus her mom makes the best eel I have ever had. I hope we can hang out when her mom gets better. I wen to visit her mom in the hospital and it was super awkward because none of them really spoke English. When I feel pressured to speak Korean, I just freeze up and can't remember anything. I'm sure I'll get better with practice.

My Dogye coteachers always cook the most delicious food,
but Samgyeopsal? At work? The most amazing day ever.

I've been introduced to a cool group of people that's constantly expanding the more I put myself out there.  Naz, David, and Catherine are super cool and chilling with them feels kind of natural. I hate when people have expectations for an evening and then you have to spend all night trying to fulfill those expectations. It's exhausting. These are people who go with the flow and you kind of have to in Korea.

We went to a crazy Japanese photobooth...
my students later thought I was really in prison.

Friday night, we went out and met up with Andrew, Myeongwon, and Andrew's girlfriend (who I apologize for her name escaping me at the moment)....we also ran into a bunch of really cool people who I ALSO don't remember the names of, but I'm sure I'll see them again. One guy made tacos. He had a red beard. I definitely won't forget him.

The reason I'm blanking on everyone, is because Casey and I are sufficiently awesome at beer pong and couldn't stop winning. Which you think is good, except we didn't like DOMINATE win....we just kind of...won. So we drank a LOT. This was already after a ton of beer and makgeoli. I'm pretty sure at some point I took my shirt off, stole an American girls umbrella (to be fair...she did accost me in the elevator and then claim I was trying to kiss her = crazy), Casey made me give it back, we walked home half naked in the POURING rain, I got home, passed out, woke up in a pool of my own vomit like a college freshman. At some point David and I won at pool. And then we lost at pool to Naz...or no...we lost at beerpong to Naz and lost at pool to some Korean guy who looked like a member of the Japanese Yakuza.

This kid is like 10...and much better at saxaphone
than I will ever be at anything.

That was a decent Friday night. Saturday, we took it a bit easier and went to Sangnam for the laser light show at the lake. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was actually pretty freakin cool. There was even one part where the projected scenes from the Lion King? Idk how this is free every weekend when I have to pay 80 bucks to see it at Epcot. And some little 12 year old was solo rocking a saxaphone not giving a fuck...so good for you little saxaphonist...but maybe head across the street to the record store and pick up some American jazz. Oh...and I discovered for 3 bucks a street vender will give me a giant bag of THREE different kinds of hodugwaja (walnut-shaped cakes)...literal heaven right now. We also grabbed the most delicious Indian food and hit up a plethora of other little joints for food and makgeoli and all sorts of hedonistic pleasures (wait...that sounded wrong...).

Sunday was meh, because it was pouring rain all day so I just stayed inside and played video games like a dork. Should have studied Korean, but really had no motivation. I finally got my motivation about fifteen minutes after my birthday in the Eastern Hemisphere. Casey took me out to a coffee shop to meet some cool people who invited me to their potluck this weekend, and afterwards we headed back to his place so he could check me out a bike to ride home. What ACTUALLY happened, was that we went into Family Mart and got some alcohol and proceeded to sit outside and talk about future-type boring shit that you as a general audience don't care about, but there were two Korean guys sitting next to us (presumably doing the same thing) and all I kept thinking was...at some point we're going to start talking. I don't even remember what triggered it, but soon enough we had all scooted our chairs together and were introducing ourselves to one another. Can you believe for all the Korean I've bothered to learn, I still don't know how to introduce myself or ask someone their name? It's kind of stupid.

Some board game I don't even know...
But I'm pretty sure we did more talking than playing

So there we were...1:00 am...sitting around on some plastic patio furniture. Casey and I doing our best to fumble through some broken Korean that we knew and these two men doing their best to fumble through some basic English...and we happened to reach a middle ground that was enough for us both to understand one another. They asked us about our homes and jobs, we asked them about their families, we talked about booze. We boisterously shouted for people to take pictures of us together, and they did, then they told us to shut up because we were being very loud, so we said our good nights and scurried
off.

These guys made my night

Because..you know...Gangnam Style...

But that ride home was just like... "I want to do this forever. This is the coolest thing that has ever happened to me." I love communicating with people and sharing cultures and languages. There is no feeling like this anywhere. I'm really finding a hard time coming up with a reason to go back to America for grad school to have my head buried in a book forever. Experiential learning is just... irreplaceable. It's definitely making me want to study harder.

I think Caitlin has birthday plans for me tomorrow and they some cool stuff planned this weekend. We'll see what happens, stay tuned!!!