more birthday shenanigans

my birthday this year was a lot less depressing than last year, mostly because i was too drunk for 3 straight days to dwell on the fact that i was spending it away from the like dna. which is not to say that last year was totally depressing. it wasn't. it was just the first time i'd ever been away from jules on our "special" day. even when i lived in texas i made it home so we could imbibe together. what can i say, i'm committed (to drinking, not to julie).

day one festivities (birthday eve eve):
there's a korean man who lives in columbia that i tutored when i first considered coming to korea. i met with him regularly the whole time i was trying to get over here the first time, then briefly between korean stints. he's one of my favorite people, hands down. anyhoo, he's in korea now for about a month, so i got to meet him on sunday last weekend. it was sort of surreal to be in korea seeing a "familiar" face from columbia, missouri, which meant seeing a korean. actually, two of the most recent familiar faces from home have been korean men that i knew in columbia. strange.

we met in gangnam, after some miscommunication about time and place. ate some korean food and drank a bottle of soju a piece (that's good for me, since i hate soju and have significantly lowered my alcohol intake since i moved to ilsan from suncheon). then we looked at pictures on his laptop for a while. good times.

after that we went to a restaurant that his sister owned. i think she was sick, or maybe her voice just naturally sounds like an 80 year old chain-smoking man. round two of eating and drinking. not sure exactly what i was eating, but it was slimy and came from the sea. mr. kim (my friend) kept saying his sister was a good cook, which confused me as things weren't so much "cooked" as they were plucked from a shelled creature. but i guess even that takes a prowess i don't have. drank some baeksaeju (sp?) and beer. this was a little awkward for me as 2 other women, in addition to his sister, showed up. of course he had lots of catching up to do with them, so there was a lot of semi-drunk korean speaking. but i used that time to just drink silently.

a little while later another man that i knew from chuncheon met us. this was a guy i used to meet for dinner once a week. he tried to help me, jules and rory when all the immigration shit went down the first time (www.shakespeareseast.blogspot.com). so it was also good to see him, despite the fact that he gave me a lukewarm reception. perhaps that's being generous...

after this it was time for the norae bong, which i admittedly hate. hate hate hate the norae bong. and yet, i was one of the only two people who sang the whole time. that's what happens i guess when you starting doing "bomb" shots of whiskey dropped in beer. great.

after the whiskey themed norae bong outing, moved to a gamjatang place. 3rd meal. i didn't need to eat anything the next day. nor could i, on account of the aforementioned bomb shots. good gad. i really don't drink too much these days (compared to shakes or suncheon), but my brain sort of forgets that sometimes and tries to channel my inner drinker. and then that same brain (no, my other brain?) pays for it the next day.

so that was birthday eve eve.

day two festivities (birthday eve):
hadn't really been planning anything, especially in the wake of the whiskey induced brain pain. but then i got to work on monday and my korean co-teachers said "we're going out later." yikes. for as much time as i spend at home living like a hermit, this was one day when i was really really looking forward to being that recluse after work. no one thought to call me and tell me during the day either. i hate making plans, but i also hate not knowing something ahead of time. yup, quite the contradiction, i know i know.

so i hang out at work for 6 hours, not even teaching any classes, just reading and grading essays (note: this is not a complaint. i'm cool with getting paid to be bored on occassion). then we go eat korean barbeque until 1 in the am.

i thought that would be it, then i heard murmurings of a disco/night club. yikes. i was not wearing my party boots that night. so we go to this nightclub called "shampoo," where it was obnoxiously loud, obnoxiously neon, all manner of obnoxious in general. particulary when some uniformed man tries to pull you, rather forcefully i might add, from your table to go to some strange, private room full of men. i'd heard about these places before, but i was underwhelmed. the worst part was that it was a monday night/tuesday morning, so there were hardly any people there. but there was this sprawling, empty dance floor and djs who looked out of place in their business suits, standing immobile at the helm of a futuristic neon altar.

at one point in the night there was a break from the djs to have these hip hop duo "perform" onstage. these guys dressed like twins, dancing and rapping. and then they took each other's shirts off. nothing sexier than two dancing dudes undressing each other. i think that's what justin timberlake does to attract the ladies, gets another dude to strip him down. there's a picture of me with my hand on one dude's overly-toned abdomen.

this nightclub excursion was another firsthand manifestation of korean collectivism, as none of us were allowed to leave until we all wanted to go. they practically had to drag me there in the first place. i'm sure there were tears in my eyes when i heard the first "disco" utterance. so we didn't leave until about 4 in the am. despite the fact that the majority of chicks at our table are just sitting there looking at the empty beer bottles that had accumulated. i was thoroughly annoyed by the end of it all. it meant another wasted day on tuesday, recovering from the debacle that was "shampoo."

day three festivities (birfday, woo hoo!):
went to work. when i got in the elevator, there was a sign that said "happy birthday jamie." got to the 5th floor and all my korean co-teachers ushered me into a room because i was too early. about 5 minutes later i was told to follow the arrows taped to the walls, where i was directed to a dark room and presented with a birthday cake. and of course i cried, because i'm a fucking sentimental fool. they smeared icing on my face and presented me with gifts. all in all, it was a great beginning to my day. even better was that i got to just sit around for the next 6 hours (kids preparing for middle school tests means jamie's not needed). i got a lot of reading done. so that was a nice, productive thing to show for my day. various students also presented me with gifts and donuts. the best being when two of my favorite students giving me two heart shaped donuts, and then asking if they could have one back. of course i said yes.

at the end of the night, went to gangnam to meet some friends from high school. i was surrounded by dudes on my birthday, so that wasn't a bad thing. drank beer and soju, ended the night eating chicken assholes. i guess there's no better way to ring in 29...

shampoo

rang in my birthday at a night club here in ilsan called "shampoo." one of those places where dudes come and try to drag you from your table into a back room no doubt full of lusty korean businessmen.

more details forthcoming.

pastry politics

my school is in the same building as a dunkin donuts. during the summer all the teachers here went to dunkin donuts religiously, particularly for the tasty and refreshing grapefruit coolatas. i hadn't really noticed the steady decline of d.d. patronage until today, when a co-teacher came back to the school with a bag from the rival bakery that just sprouted up across the street, paris baguette.

then i heard the co-teacher bad-mouthing the d.d. ajuma (shopworker/keeper). the harsh reality of korean pastry/educational politics was driven home today as i was informed that the dunkin donuts owner, who has academy-aged children, sends those kids to another english institute. not ours, the school that showed its coolata loyalty during those trying summer months. so we have, in effect, boycotted dunkin donuts and its traitorous owner.

i just thought it was funny. i'm still buying my hot choco from dunkin donuts. because as far as i can remember, it was at a dunkin donuts on the "boulevard" in jeff city where i spent a few angst-filled hours of my senior prom, reject that i was, and not at a paris baguette.

the face of the earth, and how i've fallen off it.

i sort of feel like i've fallen off the face of the earth. i guess i should have taken preventative measures... i think i'm living a different, extremely isolated version of korea than most other foreigners, most notably when one considers the fact that i live in a suburb of seoul, thus having lots of foreigners with whom to associate, should i take it upon myself to do so. but i have definitely failed in that regard. i guess 6 days a week as the only foreigner at my school would be a logical place to point one of my two pointer fingers, but beyond my job, i just haven't felt very social as of late. the only people i see with any regularity are my students. is this totally pathetic or totally cool? i think i know the answer...

the idea of "trying to make friends" as a 28 (almost 29) year old human just seems really fucking lame to me, very high school. it sort of felt that way in suncheon, too--cliquey. i guess i need an attitude adjustment, but i'm not really into those, either. hmmmm...

i should note, i feel completely ambivalent about my antisociality. it makes me neither happy nor sad, as it is a mere fact in my brain right now.

oh, i went to a palace today. it was quite possibly the coolest thing i've seen in korea. also, it was really fucking cold outside during my touristy excursion. jacket weather is over, party people. we've moved into full-on coat season.

excitement! well, not really...

this past week could arguably have been the most boring week of my entire life. i guess that's easy to say now, since i'm still in the thick of it. anyhoo, this all due to some minor problems at my school which it's probably best that i don't disclose in detail at this point.

that said, it was really strange to go from working 6 days a week to having an unforseen amount of free time, not knowing when i'd be cleared to work again. i really didn't know what to do with myself to occupy my time. i've found that if one is going to have an impromptu vacation, it's best to have large reserves of money (oh, and having friends who just happen to have an impromptu vacation fall into their laps at the same time is also good). but, given the very nature of this vacation and its unpredictability, i happened to have absolutely no money. for some reason, maybe to doom this here vacation, i sent more scratch home than usual this month. so here i've been, totally broke, with more free time than i've had since i went to tibet last year for christmas. and i won't get another significant chunk of time off until sometime after the new year. and there's this shitty feeling that i've totally squandered my free time. i guess i don't really have a lot to show for myself besides prison break, basketball, some light (very light) reading and a couple of lame friendship bracelets. now i just need to find some "friends" to give them to. easier said than done...

i was motivated to actually pick up the basketball for the first time in ilsan after going to the outback steakhouse and watching some korean women's teams battling it out on the tv. it was really really strange to observe professional athletes shooting a basketball with two hands. they also just seemed to run a lot, set no picks, run no plays and breathe triumphantly for no apparent reason. also lots of missed free throws. the next day i was out on the court, smiling smugly at my very nice arch and the fact that i could still shoot nothing but net, despite the fact that there was no net to begin with and i hadn't touched a basketball in damn near 7 months. the court is charmingly "sparse", if that's the appropriate qualifier. thin pieces of plywood splintering at the edges, trembling with each gust of wind. not the best of facilities, but i'll take what i can get. it's also fun to try to dodge the little kids simultaneously playing soccer, their flat ball constantly threatening to twist one or both of my ankles, thus ruining my lucky i-haven't-broken-a-bone-or sprained-anything-in-my-entire-life streak (excluding, of course, my janky back. but that shit's hereditary).

lucky me, i had to go to the immigration office earlier in the week. to kill time before i met my "escort" i tried to find the closest kimbap joint. no kimbap, but i did find an uber-zealous ajuma eager to practice her english skills and push her kimchi jjigae on me. fair enough. she was so damn happy to see me in her modest little restaurant. we both practiced our very limited knowledge of each other's native language, both botching it, but managing to tell each other that we were very smart and beautiful and that we could both speak said botched languages very well. before i left she asked me to write down how to ask someone if they wanted more food in english. so i wrote down "do you want some more?" but she couldn't read it in english, so i wrote it in hangeul. the whole situation was very comic, but also endearingly earnest. it's those small, innocuous encounters that make me exceedingly happy these days. a noticeable shortage of them as of late.

in other news, my own stupidity was revealed to me last week when i finally realized, after about 4 months, that my fan death proof fan doesn't have to shut off every 2 hours. there's a function on it where it actually stays on all night. so the triumph of that discovery was countered, ever so soberingly, by the fact that it took me, a full-grown adult with all her wits and faculties about her, 4 months to think to switch the fan to that mode. i'm an idiot.

last weekend i went to some german-esque brew house here in ilsan. there was a filipino band. they were amazing. i went onstage to dance with them (their request). i got my moment of fame, but then security came and told me to leave the stage. i guess "my science was just too tight", as young folks nowhere say.

so that's all. pretty ho hum these days. i need to go hike a mountain or something. gain some perspective and get my ass (and lungs) kicked by nature. seems like that was something i should have done with all my free time. it's official: i'm lazy.