I don't care what you say, I'm not calling it 'football.'

I've pretty much given up on a regular update schedule, I think. Still! Obligatory update to let you know I'm still alive!

Things at my hagwon have been pretty damn crazy for the last week or so- the last week of the month is always a bit nuts. But it's Friday now- and a Friday leading into a three day weekend! As per the usual, I'm not entirely certain what I'll be up to, aside from 'something.'

But enough about THIS weekend- it's time to tell you about what I did last weekend! So apparently, it was foreigner night at the World Cup Stadium for a K-league soccer game. Neat!

So tickets were under 10 bucks, and you got a free (warm) beer and a (cold) hot dog. Neat! My Cousin went as well, but she got there before I did and likely got better seats. In any case, I went with some of my Ilsan-based friends (namely, The Welshman, Gundam Guy, Mr. Gyopo, and the Vegan Canadian Girls- all of whom I have arbitrarily given codenames to), and had a good time of it. I'm not really much of a sports fan in general, but I always enjoy going out to watch a game. And really, Soccer's a pretty fun game to watch.

Unfortunately, I wasn't sitting in the super-hardcore fan section- and I kind of wish I had. There was a big mass of black & red (badass team colors, I must admit) where people had flags and drums and all kinds of crazy stuff.

The game itself was kind of a beat-down- Seoul FC beat Daejon 4 - 1. Still, I guess I was rooting for Seoul, as I live closer to them. And, of course, they have the rad team colors. Makes me kinda wish someone was tooling around in a Harley Quinn getup, but I fear most Koreans wouldn't get it. Pity!

In any case, after the game, we puttered around- and wound up meeting up with some other friends of The Welshman's. Neat folks, really! One of them happened to be Iron Maiden Guy from awhile back, which just shows how incestuous the expat community over here is. Worse than living in a small town, really.

By this point, there's like a dozen of us. And we take the subway a few stops over to Hongdae. Unfortunately, this was one of those situations where there were too many people and not enough initiative- personally, I could've taken more of a leadership role, but I really didn't know them that well, and just busting out with 'FOLLOW ME, LADS!' wouldn't have gone over that well. I need to work on my charisma.

In any case, the lot of us wind up at some seafood place in Hongdae, which was actually pretty tasty. Now, my original plan was to eat dinner, then catch the subway home at a halfway decent hour.

...This didn't happen.

As The Welshman, Mr. Gyopo, and Gundam Guy said 'No! We'll hang together! We'll all just pitch in ten bucks and take the taxi home!'

...This didn't happen either.

Again, the lack of initiative in our big mass of people hurt us, as we spent a good while kicking around The Park in Hongdae. Which, admittedly, is kind of a neat place to be- there was some band rocking it pretty hard, but I'm afraid I only caught the end of their set. Not to mention it was hella crowded, so I didn't get a very good view.

By the time the band wrapped up their set, I'd lost track of my little Ilsan crew. I wound up tagging along with the remnants of The Welshman's friend's group, and hit up some club called 'Freebird' where his friend's band was playing. They were called something like 'The Scott Logan Experience' or...something. They were just a cover band...but at least they were a GOOD cover band. Eventually, they wrapped up their set with a pretty good C-Lo Green cover, and that was about that.

There also was a ninja. That happens sometimes.

In any case, around, uh...2:30 AM, I decided to call it a night, 'cause I'm an old man like that. So I meander out of the bar to get some fresh air, give some directions to a be-kilted scotsman, and I wrapped up the rest of the night by holing up in a PC Bang, where I watched random youtube crap in varying states of consciousness 'til the subways opened up again.

Sunday, obviously, was a recovery day.

So yeah. As I mentioned before, the week's been busy, but I survived! Weather's also gotten a bit cooler- some of the Korean folks are bundling up in fancy pants windbreakers and scarves and such. I might even go for the fleece myself tonight. Just a reminder of the impending bitterly cold Korea winter, I guess!

At least I've got good socks.

Two weekends of hijinks!

First, Chuseok! Or, to put it more simply, 'Korean Thanksgiving.' For those who don't feel like hitting up google or wikipedia, it's a typical harvest festival. Lots of family, lots of food, and so on. One of the particular things is that EVERYBODY heads out of Seoul to visit their grandparents in the the countryside. Given how I'm not, well, Korean, I was left to roam a quiet and mostly empty Ilsan (and Seoul, later). It wasn't quite 'I am Legend' empty, but it was far quieter than what I'm used to.

Despite being a four day weekend, I honestly didn't get up to all that much. Which was kind of nice anyway- I'm a big fan of being able to just take it easy. I did do a little bit of exploring anyway. I meandered through Itaewon a bit (because where else will things be open?) and I'm rather glad I did, as I managed to find myself a bootleg Defensor. Yay knockoff transformers! The plastic is pretty flimsy, and I can spot at least a half dozen places where corners have been cut- but at least when you put him together, he looks pretty cool. Funny that it's taken me 7 months in Asia to find good bootleg transformers- guess I'm just not looking hard enough. 

Chuseok itself fell on a Monday. I took the opportunity to meander by Gyeongbokgung palace again, as it was free to the public that day, and they were having some sort of cultural folk festival or something. Unfortunately, the festival itself wasn't too noteworthy (at least the stuff I saw), but it was kind of neat to poke around the museum parts I hadn't seen before. In particular, there's a 'folk village' that's set up to reflect what stuff looked like during different decades. One touch I really liked was that they had a 1970's-ish era comic book shop as one of the exhibits. Neat! Once again, I manage to find the nerdiest thing in any given area. It's a talent.

Perhaps to make up for my boringness on Chuseok weekend, I actually went out and about this previous weekend. More specifically, I went on a big expedition with my Cousin and a bunch of our friends to a little town called Sokcho, out on the east coast.

The bus ride was pleasant- though one of the things I've found in my (admittedly limited) travels in Korea is, well...a lot of it looks the same. Heavily forested mountains, and little towns tucked into the valleys. Sometimes picturesque, but a little repetitive.

In any case, the bus went through a couple of tunnels on its trip...and when we went through the last tunnel...it was raining on the other side. Not...exactly the best beach weather, but what else can you do? Thankfully, I remembered to bring my gore-tex jacket. Be prepared, and all that.

Despite the rain, this didn't stop us from having a good time! It was a little chill, and perhaps a little crowded, but there's something to be said for sitting around, watching TV (SWAMP SHARK), and of course, drinking. Many boozes. We found a new use for the rice cooker, as you can see.

When it got later, we hit up a rather tasty galbi resturant (as we usually do), then we hit up the local Norebang (as we usually do). Really, add in coffee shops, mini-marts, and PC bangs, and you've got the most common buisnesses to be found in Korea. Norebang's by far the most entertaining option. I think it's the required way to end an evening whenever you get a certain number of expats together. Or maybe it's just OUR required way to end an evening whenever you get a bunch of us together.

I guess that's kind of rad, right?

Sunday was a little more low key- we lazed around, slept off our hangovers- and even if it was still raining, we played around in the big-ass waves anyway (I even went sans-gore-tex that time) and finally cleaned up and made the trip back to Seoul. Not much to say there (though I did spy another, smaller bootleg Defensor set at a rest stop on the way back. Who knew?).

I'm not sure what I'm getting up to this weekend, but I'm gonna make it a point to do something interesting. Stay tuned!

Also, it's kinda cold all of a sudden. Ridiculously abruptly so. It's like someone realized 'Oh, it's September!' and flicked on the 'cold' switch. I think that's how things work here.

Beach party!

Yes, I skipped a week. But mostly 'cause "I had to spend most of the last Saturday in August in a training seminar of dubious usefulness" would make for a pretty short (and dull) blog post.

Meh. Work progresses as it shall. Just yesterday, one of the Korean teachers asked me to use smaller words so the students would understand me easier. I thusly jotted "use less extensive vocabulary" in my notebook. This...might be part of the problem. Eheh.

Thankfully, I've been up to more interesting things since then! Namely, this past Saturday, I got together with My Cousin and her friends J and New K (I've decided people get rad codenames on this blog now) to hit up the beach. More specifically, we went to a beach on a little island called Muuido- it's really close to the Incheon Airport.

Unfortunately, despite being close to the airport, it was somewhat difficult in getting there. Mostly because there were two buses that headed in completely opposite directions...despite having the same number. Seriously, it wasn't even a matter of doing opposite directions of the same loop- one of the buses went to where we wanted to go...and the other didn't.

We wound up on the wrong bus. It was a bit unpleasant (if hilarious in hindsight). For the record, this was not my fault.

In any case! We finally did make it to Muuido! (It's the little island to the south, on that map) As far as beaches go, it was alright. I may be a little spoiled, having gone to Hawaii so recently. Still, the weather was nice, and the beach wasn't even that crowded. Though one of the real kickers was the fact that, when we got there, the tide was out. Way out. Ten minute walk across some mudflats out. Huh. 

And so, we were left with little else to do but sprawl out, make idle conversation...and drink crappy beer. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon, I would note.

Oh, and there was a hovercraft parked on the beach. Rad as hell. I would not object to being able to put 'hovercraft driver' on my resume.

There were a bunch of other expats on the beach as well, and thus it was fun to make some idle conversation with them. A good number of them had arrived for the first annual 'Burning Man Korea.'

For anyone familliar with both Burning Man and Korea, the concept of such a thing is both amusing and somewhat confusing. Mostly because Korean culture is so buckled down, the general craziness expected from Burning Man just couldn't go down.

I'd like to note that our beach trip coincided with the whole Burning Man thing entirely by accident. I didn't know about it 'til the night before, wherein my friend the Welshman said 'oh, going to that Burning Man thing?' and my natural answer was 'Wait, what?'

In any case, I happened to know some of the folks AT said mini-burn (because the expat community is a bit incestuous like that- you'll almost always know somebody, wherever you go), so I steered by to catch up. I will say that the burners were having a good time, so good for them! Sure, there weren't truckasauruses or flamethrowers or naked people painted green, but again, it was the first year (and it was early, too).

For all I know, things may have gotten crazier once it got dark (as things tend to do). But we wound up packing it in around 7pm. Perfectly understandable, given that we'd been there since noon. I could have stayed overnight if I'd really wanted to. I'd taken the precaution of packing the survival essentials: knife, nalgene, matches, towel, etc. Ultimately, I didn't feel like going all Les Stroud, so I didn't. Probably for the best, given how much sand I've got in everything as-is. 

I think this was an important Hite, because I took a picture of it.

Sunday was, as the best Sundays are, 'laze around and work off that hangover' day. And back into the workaday schedule and all that. Though this next weekend is Chuseok- essentially, 'Korean Thanksgiving.' I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do during the holiday, but you can rest assured I will keep you posted on these misadventures.

...once the hangover's passed.