What a great weekend I had! It was so good to get out of the apartment, and it was really nice to spend some time with friends instead of only pallin' around on my own. Don't get me wrong, I'm really enjoying my independent exploration of things these days, but it was a really nice weekend!
Sunday after Butterfingers I met up with Chelsea and Christina, two of my partner teachers from work. Christina is my classroom partner, she looks after my kids when I'm not in the classroom. She has just gotten a job as a junior graphic designer, so she's leaving sometime in April - booo! They both speak a lot of English, and though Chelsea is a bit braver, Christina has a much bigger vocabulary - they both kick butt over my Korean, let me tell you! We went to a theatre that I didn't know about up by that crazy mall I showed you before (AK Plaza) to see the movie Titan (I think it's called Revenge of the Titans at home?). It was pretty good. By the time it had ended we had decided the world needs more Perseus (or Per-see-oos as they kept calling him)!
After the movie we went to La Merce, a little Mexican place the girls at work talk about sometimes. I think you might even be able to see it in the video I posted when I was at AK last time. In true Korean style, Chelsea and Christina did not order ANYTHING Mexican off the menu, we ate Korean, lol... I really giggled when the food arrived, I'm sure they thought I was crazy. I explained to them that typically if I go out to an ethnic restaurant of any kind, I tend to order that food from the menu - Korean restaurant, Korean food: I wouldn't order a hamburger when I went out to New Seoul, you know what I mean?? However, we shared an order of chicken with mixed rice and ddokk-bok-ki, a dish I'll have to show you a picture of sometime because it's hard to explain (it's on the left in the picture below).
Around 7pm. 2 of Chelsea's came out to visit. One (TaeJeong) said she didn't speak much English (though it sure seemed fine to me!) and she was really nervous to come, and the other (Jun) spent 2 years in India so his English was pretty good. Taejeong is working part-time in a shop up the road, and Jun works for a hairdresser as an apprentice, they're both really cute (and all 4 are so young). I drank long island iced tea (otherwise known as Rong Tea), and they shared a 2000cc mekju (beer) which came in this crazy thing...
Chelsea (right) and TaeJeong (left) with mekju
The seafood dokkbokki is on the left, the chicken and rice on the right... Chelsea is cuttin' up the chicken because typically out with Koreans you order a few different dishes and share them all...
My partner teacher Christina, she's wonderful!After a couple of drinks and dinner, we made our way back to our respective abodes (4 of us in one direction, 1 in the other on the train). We wandered up the same little street and bought chicken-on-a-stick (I should have taken a picture, though it's really just hot chicken and peppers on a skewere - it's wonnnnnnnnnnnnnderful!), which came in very handy in Jun's lesson...
If you've read my blog or looked at my Flickr photos before, you might have seen the billboard ad in the subway station for "ManStar", where there are 2 nicely dressed men at the urinals, and one is gasping in awe while not-at-all subtly ogling the guy next to him over top of the partition... now all I could self-translate was "Man Clinic" from all of the words on the sign. I thought, surely, this wouldn't be an ad for enlargement, would it?? Really??! In the Subway station??!!??!! Nahhh.....
We passed the same ad on the way home Sunday night, and Jun explained it to me like this...
[he wouldn't look at me while holding up the sticks because he didn't want to be associated with the explanation, I was almost doubled over in laughter when I took the picture] So Jun said, "Ok, ok, I'll show you, here... Korean man, (holding up 1 short skewer in right hand) Foreigner man. (holding up 3 regular skewers in left hand). What you think about that?"
I nearly died of laughter right there on the subway platform!!!! Sometimes things really are just what they seem, aren't they?
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