the continuation of the To be Continued

Disclaimer: After receiving some feedback, I want everyone to know that I don't drink that much. Maybe half of the posts I write contain some form of alcohol, but remember I only write one or two posts a week. So it may seem like I'm drinking a ton, but I'm not. In reality, this blog magnifies the amount of drinking done. In fact, I have never been healthier. I go to the gym four times a week. I eat more veggies and fruits than I ever have, and I drink 2 gallons of water everyday. Just because I'm at a bar doesn't mean that I am drunk, believe me I am never as bad as my Korean counterparts. The stories that contain alcohol are events that happen, and usually have a story worth telling. If I just wrote I woke up, watched "The Young and The Restless" taught some ornery kids, ate gimbap, watched Letterman, and went to bed. Would that interest you? That being said, this post contains alcohol.

The continuation of the To be Continued
After the tiring competition, we ate some pork belly and then headed home and fell immediately asleep. Right now you must be thinking, "why didn't he just finish that last sentence on his last entry?" Well, I am thinking the exact same thing myself. What a waste of a to be continued! Apparently, I had other ideas for the story, but I have lost them over the course of a week.

That Sunday we saw Hellboy 2, which was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I usually can watch and appreciate B movies too, this one was hard to stomach. The only American movies that come to Korea are action adventure and family movies though, so I'm sure I'll see some more duds. The plot had some historically bad love flings, the cheesiest dialogue, and bizarre characters. Star Wars characters look normal compared to these dudes. Awful. I really want to see the new Cohen brothers movie, Burn after Reading. One reviewer said it could develop a cult like following. Sound familiar anyone? If you have seen it please drop a comment.

Sometime before this weekend, Meg, John, Doug, and I were playing darts. We met a Korean man named Hyuksu. Doug and John left to go meet up with Zach, and we decided to stay because it was getting late. We wanted to stay closer to home. We talked and talked to Hyuksu. His English was way better than our Korean, but that is not saying much. Body language was the key to our communication. We ended up playing games and made plans to go out to dinner with him and the bartender. He actually lives just a few minutes away from us. We were like 15 minutes away from our home at the time, so it was pretty random in a big place like Seoul.

Well, true to his word, Hyuksu was in the lobby of our building at 4:00 with word that Duyoung (the bartender) was not going to be able to meet us. He took us (in his car) to our favorite place. The place that hosted Crazy Worker Party I and II. We ate great food.* Then he snatched up the bill, and simply refused our requests to pay for it or at least give him some money. We met up later at a western-style bar called Beatles.** We played more games, and relived the night we had the previous Thursday.

* The best part of the night was Hyuksu could hardly speak English at first. The obvious reason was he was sober. So, does drinking help when speaking a language? I think he needed booze to loosen up and not be afraid of making mistakes. Sure enough, he got better as the night progressed. This phenomenon reminds me of dancing, you may be a sloppy dancer while drinking but the inhibitions have been lowered and by God you're out there, in the middle of the floor, doing the Macarena with one hand on your hip and the other holding a beverage thinking to yourself, "I need a hat next to me, so I can get some money like those bums downtown. This show should come with a ticket price, it's that good! Yeah!!" So, at the end of the night Hyuksu was lecturing me on Korean history, American beef, melamine, and Kim Jung Il like he was a professor. His seminar didn't make much sense, but he's out there trying, speaking English like it was easy, holding a beverage in one hand waving the other madly, thinking to himself, "Man, I should charge these ignorant Americans money, this knowledge shouldn't be free, yeah I'm that good!
Liquid Courage...

This little tidbit was good too: he had an engagement to go to, and he was driving. While we were eating he refrained from drinking beer, but that didn't stop him from topping off his soju glass from time to time. Soju is of course stronger than beer, so you tell me if that makes sense. Koreans well, they're just different. They don't make sense a lot of times. He ended up taking the subway.

**Western-style bar just simply implies that it's a normal American bar. Korean HOFs (bars) require you to get food when you drink. This bar also has thousand and thousands of vinyl records. Comment some good song choices that I probably haven't heard in a while, please.

Side Note
Korean's don't throw away their waste from the bathroom, and by that I mean toilet paper. Gross, I know, but ask yourself, does it make sense? Anyways, I flush my paper. I don't know what kind of damage I'm doing to the sewage treatment center, but it can't be that bad. A toilet at work backed up on me and left me in quite a dilemma. I blame the toilet paper. First, came embarrassment, not this kind of embarrassment though. Next came the decision making process. Do I tell someone, do I try and find a plunger, do I flea the scene? Honestly, I just left the bathroom and prayed that a student would be blamed for my surprise. Nothing ever came of it though.

That's what is going on over on this side of the world, I went to a monastery last weekend. I'll post about it later on in the week. Check out the pictures down below.