belated weekend recap

originally posted Wednesday, November 08, 2006

So I'm a little overdue on the blogging. Since I'm a librarian in korea, I should know how to say "overdue" in korean. Alas, I don't . that's neither here nor. But there's no better time to recount the past weekend than with the next one rapidly approaching..

Okay, weekend happy fun time party days. Let's see, Friday night what did I do…. I went to the outback steakhouse, and did NOT eat a bloomin' onion. But I did drink two, large, overpriced beers, which set the tone for the rest of the evening. Post outback, decided some jamie time was in order. Which really means I go home, shower, nap, put on some face paint, all while drinking whiskey out of the bottle (I guess not during the nap…). I don't know why it's worth mentioning that I drank whiskey out of the bottle, except that I don't ever drink whiskey here NOT out of the bottle. So there. Then I walked back to downtown to a soju bar called the fish and grill. Drunkenly called my dad to tell him happy birthday (my first phone bill is going to be ridiculous. Hey, I'm innebriated, time to drunk dial…my parents? Yup, that's how I roll). After the fish and grill and a decent amount of soju, ended up at juliana's. for a place I didn't think I liked very much, I sure end up there a lot. And I know I'm drunk when I actually start dancing. Some hip hop was actually played, albeit briefly, but I'm sure it was on just long enough for me to embarrass myself. Either that or me removing layers of clothes that didn't necessarily need to be removed. That's usually the point I realize I should go home. So I walked home at 3 am. It was very difficult to maintain a straight line, I might note. But at least there was no one else on the sidewalk.

The next day there was the potential for a hangover, but nothing that a loteria bulgogi burger couldn't fix. I woke up at noon-ish, went and ate lunch, came back, took a nap, then woke up to clean up and go out again. Saturday was EPI day, hence the nap. A bunch of my korean friends who were in a 6 week class at my university office in co, mo this past summer were in town. I may not speak korean, but that translates to copious amounts of soju. So the first thing we did when we all converged on the university (we=a bunch of koreans and most of suncheon's mizzou contigent) was eat dakk boki while we waited for any stragglers to appear. But my korean friends told us, "don't eat too much, we've still got dinner to eat." So hey, the thought of more food always makes me exceedingly happy. After dakk boki we killed some time watching this shitty korean band dick around on guitars. But they were kind enough to let us take pictures.. they also had a girl playing bass, and that's something I can whole-heartedly get behind.

When our posse had all arrived, we went to dinner at some bamboo rice place. Turns out this fantastic meal I had been eagerly anticipating was all oceanic in origin. Great, I've always found that a hard, long night of drinking is something best supported by meals involving tentacles, eyes, and shells. But when in korea, eat squid, snails, and octopus as the koreans do. And also drink a whole bottle of soju and two narsty bomb shots with your meal. What the fuck was I thinking? But a good time was had by all.

Post dinner, we went to some bar somewhere, but I'll be honest, I wasn't feeling too coherent or pleasant at this time. Thought I might yak, so I hung out in the bathroom for a while, then I walked around. And my dutiful korean friend followed me around the whole time, eager to hold my hair, should the occasion for such a chivalrous gesture arise. But it didn't. after the walk, I had gotten my will to drink again! Didn't gain any of the coherance, but if I had been given a choice, I would have sacrificed that anyway. Which is good, because then we ended up at some chicken place. And with chicken, comes…BEER. So I drank more, gave the korean waiter my number, and didn't realize I saw a lot of people that I actually did see. And I honestly don't know if we all went to the norae bong upstairs before or after the chicken. Actually, I guess the norae bong came first. Whatever. All I know is that I felt like molesting people in the norae bong, and I tried on numerous occassions to take clothes off of my protesting friends. One of my korean friends, min-jae, danced like a stripper the whole time, and must have done the splits at least 20 times, most of the time as he was diving between my legs. That's hot. Then he did some awkward pullups on the chandelier, or something hanging from the ceiling. I remember trying to be seductive singing 'like a virgin." But it's a little hazy. Then chicken place. Post chicken, my korean friends were smart enough to realize it was time to go home. But not me. I talked the mizzou peeps into going into juliana's to see if there were any "prospects." Heh heh. I'm funny. Not like I would ever even hit on anyone I was interested in. Hello, socially awkward! But yeah, I nursed one beer for two hours, convinced myself to play pool miserably and got to hear some shins and jay-z. that made me quite happy. I think I also sobered up a bit. Always nice to sober up at 4:15 am. But as we were drunk and overzealous, me, erica, and scott made plans to go "exploring" the next day.

So 1 o'clock on Sunday rolls around and I feel like hell. Tried to make myself yak, but no luck. Then I sat in my shower for a half hour trying to let the water wash away the soju and unsettled stomach. It was at this point that I got text messages from erica and scott asking if we were still going exploring. Carpe diem, mother fuckers! Good gad.

Erica was in a rough way too—which was oddly comforting—and I think this all confirmed for scott why he's content to not drink. Anyhoo, we met at 3:30 to take a bus to nagan folk village. Excellent. A nice windy bus ride into the country to make me forget the queasiness. In all honesty, I have no idea how I managed to not yak on the bus. But I didn't. as soon as we stopped though, I made a beeline for the nagan toilets. It's like my stomach new it was near an acceptable vomit receptacle. The nice thing about ye olde squatter toilets is that if you're barfing up ramen and you sort of miss the trough, you can just shovel it all into the floor with toilet paper., isn't that a nice visual? Anyhoo, I felt a lot better, and ready to explore the folk village. It was cool, I guess. You've seen one thatched roof house, you've seen them all. I think I prefer touristy sites that you can actually have some sort of physical interaction with. Seonamsa was great because I had to hike up a mountain to even see anything. The temple became some sort of reward for exercising my body. Me likey. But nagan was cool. I've seen it now, so that's all that matters. As we were leaving the seemingly deserted labyrinth of houses, we heard a cow bellowing. It sounded pretty close to us to. Just as I asked "hey, where's the cow at?" erica says "oh, it's heading straight for us." So I turn and, indeed, there is one tan-colored rabid looking cow bucking and thrashing his way towards us. There were a couple koreans around, so we looked to them to gauge our own reactions. But they all started running. So we sort of start to back away, but I'm the closest to this creature. Erica and scott turned away from it, but I just stared at it for a minute. He pushed his ears back and flared his nostrils and made some sort of noise akin to a dog growling. But then an agima came to the rescue and corralled the beast and order was restored. Pretty damn funny. Pretty damn unsettling. Pretty damn random.. oh but wait, it gets even more random.

After we made it out of the village, we had to wait for a bus. We had just missed number 63, and didn't realize that the next one didn't come for 2 hours. So we settled in for a long wait at the bus stop. Then a van pulled up in front of us and a korean asked where we're going. We said suncheon, he said he'd give us a ride. so we say "sure. We'll get in a van with a complete stranger in a foreign country when it's dark at night and there are probably lots of peeps here who hate us amer'cans." But we sit down and dude immediately hands us apple beverages and tells us to put on our seatbelts, although erica's didn't work. . he was a terrible driver and almost ran off the road on several occassions. And maybe his van smelled like soju. I can't be sure. Anyhoo, the whole time, erica managed to engage him in korean conversation, so we were able to discern that he was a military man and the reason he gave us complete strangers a ride was because he had the utmost respect for the american military. HUH? So after he dropped us off at city hall, he turned right back around and drove 20+ minutes back to nagan where he lived. Needless to say, I was very pleased that I dragged my ass out of bed that day.

I think my liver is excited that I have no major plans for this weekend. I guess it doesn't take much planning to get drunk though….