pho jang ma cha

deery-lou.
well here it is monday night once again. what happened to my weekend? it seems like it was just monday. i had every intention of having a relaxing do nothing kind of weekend. unfortunately it wasn't. my need to catch up on sleep did happen. friday night after tawkwondo i once again got some beer and retired to the roof for a little relaxation. i love my rooftop. probably as much as hez loves her backyard. even more so. i needed to get some chairs or something though. sitting on the concrete gets kind of annoying after awhile. back inside i cranked up bagel radio and chatted with misty on yahoo. usually i'm not home on fridays to catch the live broadcast so i was kind of excited to be able to do that. especially since i got to requests played. YEAH!! before i knew it, it was 3am. right around then kate popped up on yahoo so i chatted with her for a bit and then realized i should get some sleep. which didn't really happen. i tossed and turned most of the night. at 8:30am my doorbell was ringing non-stop. it was the office managers who came to fixed my broken mirror and toilet seat. excuse me! don't you all know its 8:30am. the nerve of them to bother me on a saturday morning. seeing that i needed the things fixed i let them in. they were talking to me about something in korean. i stood there half asleep half awake nodding. it took them a totally of 10 minutes to fix them. seeing that i was already awake but not feeling too motivated i watched some tv shows i had downloaded. thats when i heard a big crash. i went down to check it out. fearing the worst. of course i was right. the mirror they put up had fallen down again and broke. obivously the mirror was too heavy for the glue and adhesive and slid off the wall. with a piece of mirror in hand i went downstairs to find the manager. i ran into as i was coming out of the elevator and showed him the broken mirror. he started rambling in korean so i need what i do best and nodded. the otehr guy came up and took the mirror away and cleaned the glue off the wall. well at least this time the toilet seat didn't break. so close. the rest of my morning/mid to late afternoon was spent watching tv. can i tell you how much i LOVE "oth". so much. i hope it gets renewed.

around 10pm i got a call from my friend jae hong asking if i wanted to go out and drink some soju. after some deliberation i figured why not. i got the 10:40pm subway and made my way into seoul. i've never been on the subway this late going into seoul and i kept thinking what if it shuts down. its weird what your mind thinks sometime. on my hour and a half trek into seoul i got to talk to my sister. it was her birthday so i wanted to make sure i talked to her. a friend of hers is visiting for memorial so i sent off a package of various snack foods so they can play fear factor korea. i can't wait to hear all about it. i met jae hong close to midnight at insadong and from there we went to a pho jang ma cha [its an outside tent type place where people drink soju and eat late night food]. i've seen pho jang ma chas several times but had never experienced one. it was blast. there we sat on plastic chairs by the roadside under a canopy drinking shots of soju. i felt so korean. the ajumma brought us a bowl of soup and a side dish of cucumbers and carrots. jae hong order a plate of dak kko chi. when i asked what it was he said "chicken". it looked like some kind of spicy thai beef dish. i ate a few pieces which were spicy and chewing. i asked what part of the chicken it was then told him not to tell. a few more shots of soju and a few more pieces of mystery chicken later. i asked if it was chicken ass. not sure what made me think of that but i did. and guess what…i was right. so there i am under a canopy, on a plastic chair, on the street, drinking soju, and eating chicken ass. i love me! we ordered another bottle of soju and then his friend joined us. a lot of the conversation between the two of them was done in korean. i kind of felt like i was in a b-movie. you know the kind where the characters are in a cafe smoking and drinking and talking french or german. it was like that. it made me think of a and how i knew she'd love it. its funny because she and i have this little scenario we came up with. after years of doing whatever we run into each other at a german cafe. all hard and rough around the edges we're smoking cigs, drinking, and speaking german. saturday was dedicated to you my friend.

i'm not sure how long we stayed at the pho jang ma cha. at one point i couldn't drink any more soju. it was time to leave. we ended up going to itaewon at found ourselves drinking at soho. deja vu anyone. it took about 20 minutes until i realized i knew the girl sitting next to me. her name was sheena and i met her at in jungang-dong a few months ago. what a small world. we decided to exchange numbers and go for a pint sometime in jungang-dong. it was cool running into someone i know. the bartender "cherry" also asked me if i was here last weekend. am i becoming a regular already. throughout the course of the very late evening cherry set us up with shots. at least the soju buzz had worn off a bit. jae hong's friend showed up too so for a while they were hanging out while i spoke with sheena and her friend teresa [at least i think that was her name]. sheena, teresa, and jae hong's friend all left so now it was jsut hte two of us and the bartenders. it seems like cherry likes practicing his english so i became the lucky target. he actually spoke pretty good english. he asked me my age and when i told him they didn't believe me. out came the license. everyone here is amazed when i tell them my age. they all say they think i'm 25. i wish. sheena even asked me what i use. the funny thing is that i really don't do anything. just lucky i guess. at 5am we headed for the subway station. the station opened at 5:30am and it was now time to go home. on the subway ride home i couldn't believe that it was starting to get light out. i don't think i've ever stayed out this late. at least now i know that if i don't want to go to the sauna there's always drinking to 5:30am. i was surpised to see so many people out doing the same thing. by the time i arrived in ansan it was 7am. now if only the management doesn't come a knocking i'll be fine. i eventually got out of bed around 4pm. grabbed some breakfast/lunch/dinner and then went back to bed and had a wonder woman marathon. around 8pm i heard some noise coming from the street. i went to look and saw a parade passing by. it was for buddha's birthday. i stood in the windowsill and watched. it was cool.

it was hard to get out of bed today. i procrastinated big time by watching dante's peak. it was on the tv. right before i was leaving the doorbell rang. it was the manager guy telling me they were coming to fix the mirror. i figured out that weren't coming until 2 so i gave them my key since i wasn't going to be here. sunday was also teacher's day so i thought today was going to be filled with presents from students. NO. so much for the big build up my boss gave us. i did get a box of candy and some after shave. oh the joy of it all. at taekwondo i gave my sabom-nim the dittos i printed out for him to learn english. he looked at them and said "very hard". we're going to start with the very basics: greetings and go from there. i found out that he's studying sports medicine and he told me that learning english was important. now that i know what he needs it for i'm going to try to curb the lessons to fit his needs. the class went all right. i'm still doing something wrong. old habits are hard to break. the sabom-nim told me with a years worth of training i should be ready for a black belt. at least he didn't tell me to pack it in.

be well…

favorite moment of the week:
zander telling me :ethan teacher i love you!