The Day We Were Waiting For

June 6-12, 2011

Monday the 6th was Memorial Day, which meant it was also a day off of work. So keeping in true lazy fashion, Lauren and I took our time getting up and motivated on the day, despite an early call from John to go and see the new X-Men Origins movie. It worked out in my favour in the long run, because just after 2 I got a call from Frank about a posting on the Facebook support group for Wesley about him being awake. i quickly got up and tried to make some phone calls to see how real the news was, but they went unanswered, so Lauren and I got ready to head to the hospital and check it out. We were starving however, so stopped for some Subway with John, then went to the hospital for 530. When we got there, Wes' room was full of other friends who had come to be with him, and we unfortunately missed Monitta by a few minutes. I got filled in on the story, and it seemed that he had been declared "awake" by the doctors after showing improved signs of cognitive awareness and compliance to directions. He was still however, in a vegetative state, as is to be expected after being in a coma for 80 days, but everything takes baby steps and just having him wake up is a major step. After the hospital, as I was before, I continued to make phone calls to friends and supporters from hockey to let them know the good news, while I headed to Itaewon to let Dwayne from Stompers know the good news. Lauren came, and we had a drink while giving the details, then before it got too late headed out to get home and get some sleep. Lauren went back to her friend Azeem's place, and I went home and did some laundry and made the phone call home I had missed the night before. After that it was straight to sleep for some sleep before school the next afternoon.
Tuesday, it was back to the grind, so I got up early and cooked some food for work, then headed to the office to see what the damage would be like. It turned out better than I thought, and I only had to teach 3 very spread out classes, leaving me lots of time to do a bit of blogging, and story telling about our weekend. After work, I went to the gym and got in a good workout before meeting Lauren and going to drink some Korean wine called bokbunja in the park. It is something I haven't drank often since it is usually beer on the menu with all my friends, so it was nice for a change. When we were all finished, we went back to my place and threw on a movie to finish the night.
Wednesday I got up determined to make it to the hospital and see Wes and Monitta as I usually do, and secretly hoped that between Monday and then a miracle had occurred, and that he would be up and running laps around the hospital. It wasn't a realistic, but one can always dream. It was a good visit, and Wes had made some improvement in his ability to move his fingers in response to counting, as well as in his general expressions when he was being talked to. After the hospital I went off to work for my exciting day of no classes, which I filled with blogging galore in a futile attempt to get caught up on the weeks of notes I had drafted up. After work, I went to Gangnam to meet with (Spencer) Rocchi for a couple beers as well, because he was leaving at the end of the week, but I was all booked up with other meetings. He was there with Wes Koch from back home, and Dan Galdamez from hockey, and we had a few 7/11 beers, but called it an early night on account of it being a school night and Wes and I took the last subway home at 1245. The last subway however, only goes as far as Seoul University, so I got out and walked the 15 minutes home, grabbing some water along the way.
Thursday morning, I got up feeling pretty good since I had come home at a reasonable time and only had a couple of beers. I got up and went to the gym to get in a workout, because I knew I was not going to make it after work due to it being Alex and Louise's last night, and we planned on having a few drinks at Gold Bar. John and I got through our day at work, then hoped on the subway for Sincheon. We had talked about it being an early night all afternoon, and when we got there, it seemed like an achievable goal. But then, the party happened. Just after midnight, before the last subway would have been passing, Alex Beanland came in for his last round at Gold Bar as well, and though he said he was going to be there at 11 so that I wouldn't have to stay so late, it was a must that I have a drink with him. While we were having our drinks and saying our goodbyes, trays of tequila shots started coming around, and they had DOOM written all of them. I thought a couple shots wouldn't be a big deal, but when Louise wasn't doing hers, but instead feeding them to me, as was her coworker, I quickly reached my capacity for drunkenness, and stumbled into autopilot. Eventually, it was 4am and we called it a night and John and I shared a cab back to Bongcheon, where I dragged my smokey self home to crawl into bed. The worst thing about it all was that earlier in the night when John and I had planned on making it home at a good hour, Lauren had agreed to come and hangout at my place, and in my drunk dickery I had left her there alone. Though she was about it, and had told me to hangout as long as I needed, I still felt like a total dick, having left her alone at home. I slid into bed, unaware of how bad I smelt, and quickly passed out.
I woke up feeling less than up to par on Friday, and was quickly informed that I smelt like a brewery by Lauren. I wasn't ready to get out of bed yet, but to the hint and jumped through the shower to get the smoke and alcohol off me. Clean, I crawled back into bed and told Lauren all about how the night had gone, and about how John had returned the watch with no problems to ChaeChul. Eventually, it was time to go to work, so we got up and got a move on. Work was a bit of a struggle until I started feeling better in the evening, but there was still nothing I wanted to do more than just go to the gym after work and have a good sweat. That din't happen though. Instead, John convinced me to go to Itaewon for Adam and Fiona's goodbye/birthday party at Roofers. We were even ale to convince our coworker Jennifer to come with us, since she had only been back in Korea for several months and was unfamiliar and nervous about the entire Itaewon experience. Once there, Jennifer was blown away by it, and couldn't take it all in no matter how big her eyes could open. We went to Roofers, and after a couple beers I felt better, but still not like partying. Eventually the party moved from the roof to the bar, and by 230 it was high time for me to take off. Jennifer was ready to go as well, so we went out and got a couple kebabs, then walked up and down the street eating them, while I pointed out some of the different things/places she could do/go. When we finished eating, we got in a cab and came back to Seoul University, where she got out and I continued on to Bongcheon. I was home and in bed by 330, which was a step up from what could have happened with the group we were with.
Saturday morning came a bit earlier than I had expected it to, but I was feeling alright, and after a shower and some food, I was ready to go see Wes in the hospital. I made it there by lunch time, and was joined by Dallas who had also come in to see how Wes was progressing. His progress was only slightly further than that of Wednesday, but definitely in a positive direction making everyone happy and hopeful. I was a little aggravated about how Dallas and Monitta were trying to over stimulate Wes, and asking him to do more things than he could process, but I kept my mouth shut, because everyone is just trying to help. Eventually I left the hospital to meet John at Boramae Park, for what was supposed to be a relaxing sit in the park, because we both had playoff hockey the next day. When I got there though, he was drinking with some friends he had made, so when I sat down and they offered me a drink, I accepted and became the second one to break our no drinking pact. After the new friends left, we went to Sillim to get some fries at a place in the PODO Mall we always go to. It took a lot of convincing for John to get me to go there, but I caved and was glad that I did. Once we sat down, John we to the "bathroom", and came back with a new pair of running shoes I had been talking about getting for hockey since my other ones were pretty warn out. He confessed that it was a whole day set up to get me there, and it was really touching at how much thought he puts into his friendships, and how much he values the little things that I do for him during the week, like bringing him pasta salad at work. After our fries we headed home so we could get some good sleep before our games the next morning, John's at 10am, and mine at 1230. Once I was home, Lauren popped a little intoxicated from a party she had been at, and to give Azeem some space in case his date turned from just dinner into breakfast too.
Waking up Sunday morning, Lauren felt a lot like I did on Friday. I got ready and left for hockey at 11 so I cold get there and watch some of John's games, and left Lauren to get some more sleep. I got to the rink at 1130, just in time to watch John's last game, which they unfortunately lost to the Tea Baggers, putting them out of the past playoffs. My tam was up next, and for the first time in weeks we were back to full strength. We warmed up and got ready to play The Red Army, who had really put on a show in the last half of the season. We were sure we could beat them, but thought the best of three series would most likely go to three games. Our dreams of championship gold quickly began to fade in the fist game, as our team struggled to make the solid plays on the ball and to backcheck, leaving a lot of odd man rushes and scoring chances for a team with the best player in the league. It didn't take long until The Red Army scored, and from there, our goalie seemed to be out of practice and let in a few more easy goals. We lost the first game 5-3, but took it all in stride and tried to regroup for the second game. We came out stronger in the second game, and even Lauren, in her hung over state, came out to see what all the fuss was about. We took an early lead, and were playing hard, but again our fundamentals started to slip and the little mistakes were leading to goals against us. I had a few good hard moves on the ball, one that left me with a scoring chance and the ball just missing the net, and the other with me wiping out and losing my stick only to get up and charge the ball like a soccer player. It looked like we were going to be able to hold on to a win until a few stupid penalties, and some lucky bounces for the other team, crushed our lead, and gave them the go ahead goal. It was a crushing blow to be the second place team all year, then slip to third in the final weeks, only to get beaten out by the sixth place team, but they deserved it more than we did. After our games, we were all exhausted, but wanted to see how the rest of the games turned out; so I talked with Lauren for a few minutes, until she decided it was time for her to go get some more sleep, then grabbed a few beers and spent the rest of the day watching the other games and upsets. After the games we went to the baseball stadiums convenient store for a few more beers, before getting out of there. I had been texting with Lauren, and decided to go meet her at Azeem's place for a movie, so I took the subway over to Daebang and went with her to Azeem's. We were watching really weird movie, that was broken into 3 parts, then between parts 1 and 2 Lauren told me I had to go have a shower because I smelled bad. She just ins't used to hanging out with jocks, that's all. Having been smelly all day since hockey, and around other smelly guys, I guess I had forgotten how bad I must have smelled. I apologized for being the smelly kid at the party, and went to wash up before watching the second part of the movie. By the time part 2 finished it was nearly 330 and we were all looking tired, so I excused myself and wandered the foreign neighbourhood until I found a taxi home. Again, home to late to call home, I crawled into bed, and went to sleep.