Transcontinental Dance Coach

Well I am late by a whole week but here goes. This was what was going on in my life from April 13-19.
This week was pretty slow and laid back. We were all excited about the great weather that has been going on and were spending a lot more time outside both before and after work. Then it happened. The funniest thing that I've heard in a long time. Margaret, a teacher, from our IVY program told me that one of her students asked if she could dance. Margret answered 'no' to which the student replied 'well teacher Mark can', so intrigued Margaret asked the girl to show her how I dance and the girl did the shopping cart. So it was when Margaret asked me 'Did you teach your kids the shopping cart last term?' that I laughed so hard because yes I did show them and I couldn't believe they remembered.
The rest of the week went by at a decent pace. We were informed that we would be getting a couple days holidays the next week but that the foreign teachers had to come in for a work shop because the director was unhappy with some of us. Mostly the douche bag Korean-American/Canadian foreign teachers that keep getting complaints. Also, Amanda and Margaret had come up with a great plan to get away on the weekend to the town of Boseoung to see the green tea plantations and hangout near the beach. We all thought it was a great idea so we got bus tickets and waited for Saturday morning to come.
Unfortunately when Saturday morning came around I had a global electronics failure in my house. My alarm clock shut off, and my cellphone turned itself off so I woke up late and missed all the calls that had been coming in. It was OK though I was up late but still had 20 minutes to get to the bus station. So, I called everyone as I ran out the door to let them know what had happened and jumped in a cab. It was a heart pounding 15 minute drive to the bus station, off and on the phone with Blake the whole time with updates on if they were loading the bus and how far I was from the station. In the end I made it with literally seconds to spare and we set off on the five hour ride south. When we got to Boseoung we had to then get on a city bus to get to the tea fields. A bus we had to share with about 30 high school students who were all super nervous to practice their English with us. Eventually we got to the tea fields put our bags away behind a storage shed and headed to take a look.
It turned out to be quite beautiful and peaceful. Even though there were lots of people there just being out of the city commotion and dirty air made it seem like you were in a place all alone. We walked around, took lots of pictures, and some of us even got our hair felt up by some older ladies who thought dreads were the coolest thing they ever saw. After we were finished with the tea fields we got back on the city bus and headed a little further south the the beach village of Yolpoe to find a place to stay. Since it isn't quite tourist season yet many of the rentable places, called Min Baks (like a hostel but at a persons house), were still closed, but we managed to find one at an elderly ladies house who spoke no English and insisted on talking in Korean very quickly to us. It took about 20 minutes to get it figured out and in the end we just handed her money and put our bags down. She got the hint.
Then we hit the town. All 3 square kilometers of it. We went up and got some beers from the convenience store then went and drank on the beach for a bit, after that we went for some appetizers and beers at a local western style pub. There we met up with another foreign couple and we invited them to join us for the night, which worked out well because they were really cool. After that we got some dinner and a Galbi place and headed for Noraebang to do some singing. We had a hilarious night and drank lots to the singing room before heading back to the beach for a few more beers.
In the morning we all felt a little under the weather, especially Brian, but we managed to get up and get completely confused about how to get home. It turned out that there were no buses from the place we got dropped off back to Seoul. Instead we had to take a bus from Boseoung to a larger town called Kwang-Ju then transfer to get back to Seoul. Not particularly pleasing but hey when can you do. So we spent the better part of Sunday on buses getting back home. Not exactly how we would have preferred it but what can you do. Once we got home we all retired to our houses to get some rest before the week started.
Stay tuned, there's lost more coming.