Slacking

So I have been slacking on writing here lately. The good news is that I have been getting out more and meeting more people. One of Dan's coworkers, Nick, has a habit of saying "get involved". I have started to take that on as a personal challenge. I've never been the most socially active person, and I think it is important for me to change that.

Work has been slow lately. We haven't had much excitement, and apparently this is the longest stretch of the year without a holiday or some sort of vacation. That is until Christmas rolls around.

On Friday we had school pictures. I was told about them previously, but they were mentioned as "graduation pictures" for the 7 year olds. Well, on Thursday they told me "don't forget to wear a suit tomorrow". Luckily my suit was clean and not too wrinkled. All of the teachers and some of the students commented on how handsome I looked in a suit. It was kind of nice, but as soon as the pictures were over I went home and changed.

This weekend I went out on Friday with Dan and Nick and toured the inner city line. We went to a lot of different places. I also finally ate some chicken kebabs from a street vendor. They were delicious.

On Saturday we went to the COEX Mall. It's a huge underground mall that is like a maze. It was cool to see all the different stores. They even have a 7-11 in the mall. I ate some good pizza at some restaurant there. It was also cool to go into some of the electronics stores and see some of the cool technology. I found some tiny laptops that were only like $350 dollars. After walking around for a few hours we went and saw Tropic Thunder at the movie theater in the mall. It was hilarious. If you haven't seen it, please do. It's worth it to see Tom Cruise as a bald, fat man with anger issues.

Afterwards we headed to Sinchon to go to a bar that Dan had heard about. It was a decent place that played some good music and had a good mix of Koreans and foreigners. After that we hiked to Hongdae to meet up with a girl I had met last week at the climbing club's dinner. I ended up going out to Burger King with her and her friend afterwards and then catching the early morning subway home.

Next week I am going climbing. I will bring my camcorder to get some video, and I will post any pictures taken by the other people that go. I am also supposed to meet up with a girl who is a friend of one of my friends back in the states. She apparently works for a PR company. It sounds pretty interesting.

I am also not looking forward to dressing up as Santa at school. I guess they told the parents that I was going to be Santa, and the parents saw it in their best interest to inform their children that I would be Santa. So now all the kids already know this, and some of the younger ones are apparently worried about how Santa is going to send his suit to me so I can be Santa, or how I will know what they want for Christmas. Crazy.

I met some people

So the climbing group that I signed up for online had a dinner for the members. Of course, not everyone showed up. I met some interesting people and had an all around good time. It was nice to converse in english, and also to share stories about our schools.

After the dinner we went to a noraebang. It's a place where you can rent a room to sing karaoke. We sang everything from 'Sweet Caroline' to 'Under The Sea' (from The Little Mermaid). It was my first experience with one of Korea's favorite pastimes.

From there, we went to the club district in Hongdae to check out a fundraiser/block party for World AIDS Day. For 10000 won we got into 5 different bars/clubs, and also got a free necklace and pin made by little kids in Africa. It was pretty fun.

Anyways, here are some pictures from the night.

More Pictures

Here are some pictures I yanked off the school's website. Enjoy!


5 year olds on Halloween




Passing out candy to John




Passing out candy to the 6 year olds




Me torturing a little kid on my first day of work.




Kids torturing me on my first day of work.




"Why don't you say something to the kids?" As if they could understand.




Making applesauce with the 7 year olds.




More applesauce.




Even more applesauce.




PAY ATTENTION!




Pretending to work for the camera.




Hot for teacher.