67) Two weekends

The last two weekends have proved to be pretty fun. It started out last Friday with Chip and I going to a club in Hongdae. The club was jammed with people (including its fair share of Korean models)- and that didn’t stop us from putting on a virtual clinic on the dance floor, we were getting down and dirty for hours. My calves were sore for 5 days after that! I didn’t get home until six or seven that morning.

The following day was pretty low key, I met up with Adam (one of my co-workers) and we got some food, and then went to a bar in Sinchon with his girlfriend Joo Hee and some of their friends.

Then on Sunday all I wanted to do was get some groceries and meet with a friend I hadn’t seen since I had been back to Korea. I never got the groceries (which by this day I have needed for a couple days now) but I did get to see my friend Sam, and his girlfriend. I taught Sam while I was living in Suji- he is a Korean guy, just starting college. We went out for Japanese food in Gangnam, and then to a noribang- which I am not the biggest fan of (noribang is like a karaoke room that you and your friends rent by the hour). But I hadn’t seen Sam in several months- and he really wanted to go to a noribang, so we had fun. I am pretty sure that Japanese food had me sick for several days- maybe some type of food poisoning. I left a little early that night because I wanted to get back by the subway. About halfway back on the sub it stops at a station and there is an announcement in Korean, and everybody clears out, and the lights go off. Apparently it was finished for the night- which is great, because I have no idea where I am. After some searching and calls I figured it out and took a taxi home.

The school week went by pretty fast- which they tend to do here- one day it is Monday, and then all of the sudden it is Friday. This Friday I stayed in and went to bed early because I was filming for the TV show again on Saturday, and I have to get up real early for that, and it usually lasts all day. Last time it was nearly a 24 hour day from when I got up to when I got to sleep. I think my roll was smaller this time than last time- but I am not too worried about it. Doing the show is nice because I get to see parts of Korea I would otherwise never see. This time we went about 100km east of Seoul, it was very mountainous and beautiful, and there was snow on the ground (something I don’t see often in Seoul). Some of the locations make me forget where I am- it is not often there is any silence in Seoul. I was able to leave early because one of the guys who had a similar roll to mine had a car there, and was going to leave when he finished. So I got home in the early evening.

So Chip and I went back to the same club we went to the previous weekend. This night didn’t start out too great. First I missed the last sub, so I would have to take a taxi. Then the taxi driver decided to pretend to understand what I was saying, but really had no idea. So my quick 7,000 won taxi ride turned into a long and confusing 15,0000 won taxi ride. I was not at all pleased- and worse yet, I ran out of money on my phone, so I couldn’t make any outgoing calls. I could only text and receive calls. So I am texting my friends- desperate that they will get the text and call me back. Thankfully Adam did and straitened out my taxi situation. Once I met up with Chip and we got to the club, we had a good time, but the music wasn’t as good as last time- and for some reason we had a hard time meeting girls this time. Last time we would just be out getting our groove on, and girls would come and dance with us- this time wasn’t so easy. The girls that wanted to dance with us were not girls we wanted to dance with, and the ones we wanted, refused our offer. It didn’t really matter; we still had fun, and still stayed up all night dancing.

I think today should be pretty low key. I finally feel better today after feeling sick for over a week. I think it was the food poisoning from last Friday that still had my system messed up. I got some medicine from Adam, and when I ran out I went to try to get some more from a pharmacy, because the last thing I wanted on Saturday was to be running to the bathroom between scenes. So I took the new pills on Friday night and Saturday morning- only to realize that I think the bastard at the pharmacy gave me laxatives, not the opposite!

I really only have two things that I want to do, and one that I have to. I really need to get some groceries today- I have put this off for over a week- and it is getting close to the time I was working for the Forest Service in Washington. My friend had just left for the summer, and I was alone. I didn’t go shopping for far too long, and was eating rice for two meals a day! The nice thing about Korea is that if you don’t have any food in your apartment it doesn’t matter, because you can eat a cheap restaurant anywhere. That was not the case in Washington. Quinault is a city of about 300, and there is virtually no place to go shopping within an hour of it. There were a couple of restaurants within an hour walking distance- but we had a bad experience at one of them- so I steered clear of that hazard.