March Madness
Again, I apologize for being lazy and not keeping up on my half of the deal, which is writing about what’s going on over here. It’s been a ridiculous couple of weeks.
The last time I wrote, it was just coming up on Jeremy’s birthday. The week before his big day I decided I would make him a cake from scratch for his birthday party at the German pub. I enlisted the help of my friend Katie, who has unbelievable baking skills, and we sat down to make a ‘death by chocolate’ cake the Thursday night before the party. All went off without a hitch, until mysteriously the cake wouldn’t bake. We retraced our steps and came to the conclusion that we did everything as per instructions, so decided to wait a bit longer….but to no avail. It was then that we were shocked to realize that in the process of making stove-top cream icing, we had knocked the dial for the oven and turned it off. At that point, I decided to let it re-bake and that I would deal with the consequences in the morning.
Baking a cake is not exactly my forte, as unlike in cooking, I can’t taste and adjust as I go. In the morning I was doubtful of the quality of the cake, and quickly set to making two more cakes - one a flourless chocolate one and the other a standard glazed. I ended up bringing the original cake and the flourless to the party as the glazed ended up looking like a massive dunkin’ donuts concotion that I was immediately disgusted by.
We dressed up and got down to the pub Friday night fairly early because our friends from Mokpo, Leah and Jamie, were in town and waiting for us. We hadn’t seen the pair since the fall, so it was awesome to get to catch up and share some travel stories….and hear their surprise news that they had made a trip to the courthouse to legally tie the knot! (Jamie is American, Leah is Canadian, so they wanted to get the long visa proccess going before heading home).
After a bit, all of our ‘guests’ showed up, so we sang the standard birthday bit and cut the cakes…both of which ended up being de-licious. There was a clear divide in opinion on which cake everyone liked - it seemed the guys liked the death by chocolate and the girls preferred the flourless one….but they were both good, and I was relieved that I hadn’t mistakenly served my friends garbage or caused any form of food poisoning…ah-sa!
We had some late-night sausages (which are delicious, the German pub knows how to make a good platter), and then headed to Speakeasy for some dancing, and were home in bed by 4amish. Overall, a pretty good birthday party for Jeremy, friends, food, drinks, and dancing…nothing to out-of-the-ordinary happened, although there were some odd love tristes going on at the bar, but it was Friday the 13th, so it could’ve been stranger.
The next day we lounged at home, and then broke out our green to head back down to the pub for the St Patty’s day celebration. We were pretty tired of drinking from the previous night, so we decided to go with some of our guy friends to see a late-night showing of “Watchmen” instead. Luckily, Koreans are wimps about the cold, so the heat was on nicely in the movie theatre as I was wearing a green strapless dress for the intended St Patty’s night. We got some popcorn and the guys brought in some beers and soju, and we settled down for the 3-hour comic book extravaganza.
I enjoyed the movie, although it was reminiscent of “Sin City” styling, but nevertheless, worth the money to see it on the big screen. By the time it finished, it was almost 2am in the morning, so we thought we’d head back to the bar to see how the night was going.
At the bar we were greeted with a packed room of highly intoxicated people, spilling glasses, flailing cigarettes, and sloppy kisses. Being completely sober was a new experience for me at that point in the night, and I gotta tell you, drunk people are highly unattractive. I made my way through the pulsating crowd to say hello to some friends, narrowly avoiding mooning the entire bar on three counts where drunk friends decided to pick me up for hugs…needless to say I was not very impressed, so I had a coke and then we went home. Happy St Patty’s day, eh?
The next day (Sunday), was Jeremy’s actual birthday, so we went to homeplus to get some grocceries so I could make him a big birthday dinner. I made eggplant parmesan, stuffed bell peppers, and of course, another cake. We had a very relaxing day at home, and called it an early night.
The following week at work nearly killed me. I decided I’m very VERY over living in Korea, muchless teaching in Korea, and so I spent the week convincing myself that it wasn’t worth it to just pack my bags and leave (financially), and that I would tough it out to at least September, if not next February. I did, however, spend every free moment I had surfing the web for jobs in other countries. Although the need to leave Korea has become rather suffocating, I don’t think it’s financially viable, as I want to pay off my student debt and have some money for after next February for travel plans…so I’ll have to suck it up and stay, le sigh. Regardless of my feelings, my contract ends in September, so it’s up to my boss to decide if he will extend me for only 6 months or not (can’t sign on for a standard year contract as I want to finish at the same time Jeremy does). I figure that if he won’t sign me for a mere 6 months, I’ll head to Australia in September on a work holiday visa and pick some asparagus and cherries for 20 bucks an hour…anyone keen to join me??
I finally got through the week, which was slightly improved by hearing from Caitlin, Kevin, Chantelle, and Russ that they had all fleed the country and were living it up in Tokyo. They had all worked for my previous employer, Sewoon/ABC, and had been so screwed around and had so much money kept from them that they decided to leave without notice - kudos! I was hoping that the lack of teachers would close the nasty hagwon, but unfortunately they replaced them quickly. Regardless, now I only have a couple friends stuck at that place, so it’s less stressful overall.
On that note, Sharon and I went back up to Daejon this past Saturday to visit Annie and get our second round of laser hair done. Annie informed us she has been awarded an internship dealing with nationals regarding nuclear technology, so I was proud to note another friend moving up in the world (all my friends at home are moving up too, yay!). We had a quick lunch and headed to the clinic, where the doctor greeted Sharon with, “Ah, yes, I remember you. Drunken patient”. Hy-sterical. We finished up at the clinic and grabbed some coffees at a nearby cafe. We sat outside to enjoy the nice weather (it went up to 24C this past week!), and decided to head straight to our favourite Italian joint to keep the conversaion going.
We had an awesome dinner, drank some wine, and soon realized it was getting late. As a class-A worrier, I mentioned that we really ought to get going if we were planning on making the second last bus…but the girls were too relaxed from the wine. We missed the second last bus, and then it was time to go so we could get the last bus home at 10pm. Again, both Annie and Sharon seemed unconcerned by my insistence that it was time to go, and by the time we got to the bus station (5 mins before the last bus), the bus ticket counter was closed for the night…that’s right, my worrying was fully granted. We hopped back into a cab to go to the train station, only to find that the next train wasn’t until 1am.
We decided to head out to a bar for some more drinks while we waited, and had some delicious Irish stew as well. Sharon and I barely made the 1am train, as it was pouring rain and cabs were sparse for Korean standards.
We collapsed into our chairs and promptly passed out - a day of lasers, heart-to-hearts and wine will exhaust anyone. We got into Gwangju just before 4am, and we made our separate ways home to our beds. It was a very long day.
Sunday night I slept in late and was visited by Boram and Katie early evening. We decided to meet up with the guys for dinner at a kamjitan (spelling is so wrong) restaurant near the back gates of Chosun. Kamjitan is a big communal pork spine soup, which may sound a little off-putting, but I assure you it’s awesome - the meat falls off the bones and it has a delicious broth, with veggies, noodles etc. After dinner it was pretty late so I called it a night as I have a set skype date with my parents. Jeremy went back to Stu’s to get some white chocolate cheesecake Katie had made for dessert. He brought the cake home, and although it was dropped promptly on the floor (doh!), it was awesome, as we expected from the kitchen of Katie:).
The week has started off alright, although our boiler was momentarily broken, which meant I couldn’t shower for work on Monday…whoops. Yesterday I got the good news that our mid-term trip to Japan was approved of by the director, so we’re going to visit Caitlin and Kevin in Tokyo from April 18th-21st, so I am pumped:). It will be short, but so worth it to see Caitlin, plus our flights were ridiculously cheap (about 250 canadian round trip), so we just had to do it.
Aside from that….I’m now at home nursing a cold, which I think was caught in my office as it seems we spread them around pretty easily. Jeremy’s on his way home to bring me tomato soup for breakfast, yay:).
Until next time, ciao.
