Debbie Downer

After re-reading my post from Friday, I realized that it kind of sounded like I’d taken one too many downers and was in need of a serious, uplifting kick in the you-know-what. On the contrary! I’m loving the time I’ve spent here and know that I will continue to do so. (Ok, so work’s a bit rough but whatever. The kids are cute and the staff are awesome). In order to convince everyone that I’m not at risk of spontaneously showing up in Toronto, or Townsville for that matter, I thought I’d give you an idea of how my weekend unfolded.

Saturday began with a little World of Warcraft, which is, of course, the only way to guarantee a great day. It’s been scientifically proven. At eleven I met up with Caitlin (I’ve recently realized that I’ve been spelling her name incorrectly, so from here on in the spelling will change) only to discover that her wallet has gone M.I.A. After a bit of drama with no success, she resigned herself to being wallet-less and we met Alistair (another work friend, this one’s a kiwi) and grabbed a bus into Seoul. On this day I was to have my first Itaewon experience.

Itaewon is where the American military base is located and is therefore the place to go if you want Western food or need to find a service in English. Our specific purpose on this particular trip was to book our tickets to Thailand for Christmas break. YAY!

The unavoidable motion sickness that I experienced on the bus was quickly combated with what was possibly the best curry I have ever eaten. No jokes, this rivals Wagamama. If I’m making claims like that, you know I’m talking business. Delicious Thai food (half of which inevitably ended up on my shirt) was followed by a delicious trip to the travel agent.

Koreans use the word “delicious” to describe just about everything so yes, the trip was delicious.

Carrying on... On December 24^th at 9 pm Alistair, Caitlin, Scott (another work friend) and I will be aboard a Thai Airways flight to Bangkok, after which we will spend nine glorious days relaxing on the beach and celebrating the lunar New Year. I know, we’re pretty much rock stars.

Alistair had business to attend to back in Bundang so after we’d found our tickets Caitlin and I decided to wonder around Myung Dong and do some window shopping. Or real shopping in Caitlin’s case. Mum, you would be proud of Caitlin’s shoe fetish; you two could do some serious bonding over footwear.

Once six rolled around we grabbed a coffee and a green tea latte and met up with Kyle and his girlfriend Ji, and Caitlin’s friend Rachel. We had plans to celebrate Oktoberfest, Korea-style. Seeing as Oktoberfest doesn’t exist here, it was a bit of a stretch, but to summarize it involved a German restaurant, a large cheese tray, numerous shots of Jagermeister, copious amounts of sausage and beer, and a trip to Hooker Hill.

Hooker Hill is, well, where the hookers are. There are also a few cool bars/ clubs there so we headed to one called Polly’s something-or-other. The name’s not important. What is important are the 2 litre pop bottles we each got that were filled with soju and a Kool-Aid-like substance. Holy ridiculous.

They played some decent music, so Caitlin and I got our groove on, even joining in on the line dances that seem to be so popular here. If you ever want to see people line dancing to hiphop, come to Seoul.

Needless to say, the rest of the night was a bit of a gong show, but we managed to catch a bus back home and I was in bed by 3:30.

Sunday was spent lazing around my apartment, enjoying bread and watching the Tudors. By six pm everyone was feeling a little less like death so we decided to grab dinner and a movie. Dinner was great—I’ve found the ultimate hangover food. Donkass (basically pork schnitzel) in ramen. Ya, that’s right. IN ramen. Deep fried, spicy deliciousness. There’s that word again.

We headed over to the DVD bang (a place where you can rent a movie and a mini theatre for $16, super cool idea that we need to get going in Canada) and Kyle picked the movie, “Wolf Creek”. Assuming it was going to be an entertaining werewolf movie, we settled in with our sour gummy worms. It ended up being what is quite possibly the worst movie ever made. Do not, under any circumstances, rent/ buy/ watch this movie. That would be generating revenue, thereby encouraging “them” to make more films like it. We had a good time making fun of the film as we were watching, and had a good laugh on the way home discussing just how terrible it really was. I got home, read a little (Guns, Germs and Steel, in case anyone’s wondering) and went to bed.

Solid weekend.