And Away They Go - Friends Leaving, and Vacations Planned

July 19-25, 2010

Back to the grind this week, I was once again just taking up space at my desk. I did however have the chance to get out of the office on Monday in order to go to the Immigration Office to apply for my Alien Registration Card, which would make me an official worker here in Korea. It was a good couple of hours killed and I couldn't complain about that. On Tuesday, it was finally recognised that I have just been sitting around twiddling my thumbs, and with summer intensives starting on Wednesday, the director put together a class for me to teach starting Wednesday; and running Monday's, Wednesday's, and Friday's for the duration of summer intensives. The class is a simple conversation class with the middle school students (Ace Level), and all I'm required to do is sit around and talk with them so that they can develop more comfortable speaking skills.
When the classes started Wednesday, they were only 30 minutes long, and I spent the first day with all the kids, compiling a list of topics they would like to talk about in class. From there I used a book of conversation topic introductions that the school had, to put together the first class of actual conversation, on Friday. It went pretty well and mixed with the few elementary classes I have, made the second half f the week go by pretty quick.
Outside of school, Blake, Nathan, and I were trying to organize our own trip to Mudfest. Having missed it last weekend, we really wanted to get there and take part, since it will be most of our last time. Blake and Nathan did most of the work, as I was working on organizing our summer vacation trip to Busan. In the end we decided to buy train tickets on Wednesday to get to Mudfest, and figure the rest out from there. Then, on Wednesday night we all got together at the restaurant beside Blake and Danielle's apartment for Danielle's going away party. She was officially leaving on Friday morning, so we wanted to have some drinks one last time before she left. It was a good night and the group of 12 of us partied until around 2am, which left me feeling terrible the next day. Feeling bad aside, after work on Thursday I headed back to Danielle's to help her pack the last of her things. In the end to was mostly Blake and I packing, because she is not very good at it and was quite flustered in general. We rapped it up around 2am, and let her get some sleep before her 10am flight to Vietnam.
Friday at work, one of my new coworkers Jean, was able to find a pension for us to stay in for summer vacation. I was amazed, because it is the peak season and most places were booked solid. It is going to cost us on $400 for 5days and 4 nights, which is quite reasonable given we are splitting it between 3-4 of us. After that I booked train tickets for James and myself, leaving Blake and Nathan to get theirs ,because they are not sure of when they will be coming and going. After getting the essentials arranged, I got on the extra curricular, booking a shark dive at the Busan Aquarium for the Saturday. With everything settled, and deposits paid, I taught my classes with ease.
After work Friday, I went to Gagnam for another going away party. This one was for a few girls that I didn't know that long, but they were Danielle's friends and I wanted to make sure they had a good time before they left. Maggie, Keeren, and Brittany, were the three girls leaving, and Nate, Blake, Emily, and I stayed for drinks until about 2am again, before heading home to get some rest before Mudfest. I got home and quickly packed the few things I would need for Mudfest, then hit the sack for a few hours of sleep before I had to leave at 1015 the next morning.
Waking up at 930, I had a quick bowl of cereal then took off to meet the guys at the train station for 11. They were running late when I got there, so I had to wait around until 1120 before they got there, and Nate got our tickets. Then we grabbed some Pizza Hut and jumped on the train at 12. The 2 hour ride went pretty fast, and when we got to Boryeong, things fell into place quite easily. We got off the train and there was a bus to take you to the beach, and when we got off that there was a guy trying to fill his pension. Since we didn't have one, we went to check it out and eventually agreed to stay there, and that's when it got hilarious. We left Nathan in the room (he had to use the washroom) and Blake and I went to pay. As we were going down the stairs, a group of Korean girls was going up, and we overheard them saying or room number. Then when we got downstairs we were told that we had been taken to the wrong room. Blake quickly called Nathan to warn him, but it was too late. The girls walked in on him in the washroom a moment before Blake called. Laughing, we told the lady at the counter what happened and she also laughed, then we went up stairs to get our things and move down the hall.
From there we got changed and hit the beach, and never saw those girls again. Once at the beach, we tossed around a football Nathan had bought, and made friends with some older Koreans beside us, who liked us enough to share their lunch and Soju with us. After talking to them for a bit, we hit up the mud, got coated then went back to our spot for some pictures with our new friends. We didn't do much other than that, because the lines were too long for the mud games, and Nathan wasn't that interested from the start. After about an hour and a half, we washed the mud off in the ocean, though my hair never came close to clean, and then tossed the ball around some more before heading to the hotel to shower and get dinner. After a huge galbi dinner, we sat on the beach with a ton of other people and watched the tide come in, drank a few beers, then called it a night around 1am.
Waking up Sunday morning, we packed up our things and checked out at 1130am. Since I had dinner plans with Lauren, a girl I met a few weeks back, I took off to the bus station to see if there were any available seats on any buses. As it turned out there was an open seat on the noon bus, so I hopped on and took the two and a half hour ride home, while Blake and Nathan stayed at the beach. Getting home around 3pm, I jumped into the shower for about 40 minutes, and still didn't get all the mud out of my dreads, and then made plans to meet Lauren in Gangnam at 630. Once we both got there, we went to Havana Monkey for some drinks and then to King's Tap for some dinner and more drinks. We hung out until midnight, before saying our goodbyes and heading home. It was a good night, and hopefully it isn't the last time we will have the chance to hang out.
Once last thing before I go. I forgot to mention that I was given a counter top two burner hot plate at the end of last week by my school. So I have been able to cook my own meals this week instead of eating corner store sandwiches. Not a huge deal but it was nice to be able to make my own food. And, with the arrival of a slow cooker from Amy and Mark, maybe I will make some stew in the future. I'll keep you posted.

Take care and enjoy the summer.