Concerning a Koreantastic weekend

Hey everyone! Friday we had a little Easter celebration and it was pretty cute. After some quick prep work, UCLA came into the class and I solemnly told them about the Easter Bunny and his chocolate egg hidery antics. They could barely contain their wide eyed ecstasy when I informed them that the Easter Bunny had, in fact, come to ECC earlier that morning and specially hid a little pink egg carton of candy for each student in the room. A quick hunting frenzy followed, ended by malt-ball, seven year old heaven. Brown and I decorated hard boiled eggs but not properly with die, we cheated with markers. A distant second, in my opinion, but they had fun so meh.

After work, my march o' Koreans weekend began. I had some much needed fajitas with Ella at a restaurant about 10 minutes down the road. YuuuuuMY. Ole. (Actually olleh considering where I am- a cell phone company called KT made an advertising campaign by reversing hello and now it has become the slang word of the century, entirely eclipsing and even replacing yay, wow, woohoo, yeah, cool, and any other positive affirmation in both Korean and English...that's one good marketing department, but I digress...) We caught up and had a nice, relaxing dinner over which I proved my fledgling Korean literacy to her.

The next morning, I woke up at an earlyish time and met Carol, Debbie, (two Korean co-workers at school) and Chad for a nice hike. We drove for about 30 minutes and came to Gusongsa (I think...?) which means 9 Peak Mountain. It wasn't too bad though- after a walk past a retirement village with a sign warning us against elderly heckling, we came to about 15 minutes of typical Korean slavish climbing but it lacked the duration, intensity, and insecure footing of Gyerongsan (remember WAAAAY back when, when I almost killed myself shlepping over a mountain between two temples in October?). After that, we were on the backbone of the ridge and had a nice view of the city, with all of its iconically Korean apartment buildings, and the countryside with its unrelenting jagged hills (no, Korea, that's not, in fact, a mountain, but keep trying). It was really nice, there was a little river down below. We spent the next 30 minutes clambering over the 9 "peaks" which were more like bumps, but the trail did involve some rock climbing and creative acrobatics. After that, we went down as dramatically as we came up (again, a Korean hallmark), and meandered along a country road until we came to the car. Then, we drove to a galbi place and had beer and lunch. I tried some more new foods including: white kimchi (not good, sweet, which is weird), a cousin of ginseng (good with a sweet spicy sauce but TERRIBLE in health drinks as I found out today), and cold noodle soup (interesting, tastes like a soup version of cold, green pasta salad with a boiled egg floating in it). We fought the intense traffic back (Saturday afternoon....no idea....) and I was home by 3. The day was too glorious to waste away indoors, so I strapped on a spring shirt and some sandals and braved the watery sunshine for a nice little walk outside. I went past the art center and circled down to the river back to my apartment...but not before stopping by Paris Baguette to get a little chocolate brownie thing as a treat. I had some yummy ramen for dinner and caught up on all my bad TV shows before getting really really restless around 9 and texting everyone I know in Daejeon. Eventually, Helen texted me back around 11 and we met at 12 for a few beers at two different bars.

The really interesting thing about that was that Helen explained to me some more about the various species of night life in Daejeon. Exhibit 1: hof, typical bar. Restaurant style tables, soju, beer and mokkoli (rice wine, remember?), snacks customarily ordered, especially in the form of fried chicken. Exhibit 2: western style. Noisy, lots of music, dancing, cocktails, beer, maybe wine. Exhibit 3: Korean style club. Cover charge, dancing, all types of drinks and a pimping waiter service. You order your man (or woman) along with your drink and the waiter parades around a selection, or maybe parades you to a selection as the chips may fall. You are completely free to dismiss and move on as you choose, until you find something to your liking. Needless to say we have set a date to sample this one within the next few weeks. Exhibit 4: host/hostess bar. For a couple of hundred thousand won, you can spend the evening in one of these and be served by either your own personal bikini clad girl or a be-suited young man. They pour your drinks. You buy them theirs. They do magic. They entertain you. They flirt. You pay. Exhibit 5: the scandelous, under the table club. Apparently there's one in Daejeon called "Grip" and for the reasonable sum of one million won, you can have your own personal stripper. Shirtless, gyrating, and a steady hand with the drinks don't come cheap. I find those last two types particularly fascinating as Korea is so so discreet with sexuality, to the one point that one of my Korean friends told me stripping was illegal here...but apparently, things just pop back up in the darndest places.

Clearly that was a lively conversation and I bumped back to my apartment around 3. This morning, I got up and had a lovely skype chat with the whole fam. My sister's boyfriend works at Microsoft so he's graciously agreed to look into some jobs for me around the time I get back so that's an interesting avenue that I'll be pursuing. I've been giving the whole future-career-vocation business some more thought and no matter what, even if I end up applying to a PhD program by some miracle, I need to work for year anyway. So, I've narrowed it down to an office job because I want coworkers and predictable hours. I did see an intriguing job on Amazon as publicity assistant for kindle which would be awesome. Marketing seems a little daunting because of its competitiveness but it would help me to feel passionate about it instead of cynical if I was invested in the product, which I most certainly would be. It is still 5 months until I get back so I am sure this specific job won't be available but it has opened another avenue of consideration in terms of company. One could do worse as a book lover than Amazon.

After talking about all that with the fam, and hearing my unsentimental but still caring oldest sister refuse appetizers because "My sister is more important than an oyster" I was in a good mood and went to the gym again. I had a nice run, I tried an interval suggestion that Kels gave me with good effect. After a quick shower, I met Korean number 5 of the weekend (look at me go!) Eun Ju at Costco. We had some good ol American style pizza for lunch, I picked up the basics, and then we went and saw "Clash of the Titans." My eyes bled. It was the worst movie ever and more disappointing for the fact that it has Liam Neelson, Ralph Fiennes, and Theoden from Lord of the Rings....oh how are the mighty fallen! It wasn't a film, it was a game of "let's see how many Greek myths we can bastardize and fit into one incomprehensible and trite and pretentious two hours." And it even lost that game. It did scratch the Sunday movie theater itch, I'll say that much, and then we went and got our hair did. I got straight down bangs which I like....the body wasn't styled so well, it looks way to Asian school child for my taste but a night's sleep will bring down the rounded volume. I really like the bangs though so yay. That just about catches us up. Love! Next up...Thursday Thursday Thursday Thursday.

B