you can't walk in your sleep

deery-lou.
while sitting in the park today i saw a little girl riding a bright red bike. as she rode passed she was singing to herself. it reminded me of the days when i use to play chips on my bike. i was always jon. hehe.

this past weekend we had an office retreat. the destination was stone story in incheon. stone story is a korean style hostel located in the middle of nowwhere surrounded by rice fields. the road to get there was quite narrow and i'm sure that if there was major rain its be flooded.

stone story sign & rice field

we left friday after work and got there around 10ish. jk's friend who also happens to be an investor in our school was there too with his company. they were already there when we arrived and had the bbq going in full force. we dropped off our bags into the room and went down to eat. there were plates after plates of various meats, shrimp, and kimchi. there was also plenty of beer and soju flowing. i ate until i could eat no longer. we sat around mingling and drinking until it was time for the games to begin. yes we had games. this retreat was well organized thanks to jk's pal. the first game was yut [four sticks game] where you threw four sticks and depending on how they landed was how many spaces you moved. the first team to successfully move all four of their games pieces around the board won. we were divided into 4 teams of five. we were each giving 50,000 won. before playing each player gave 20,000 won for the pot. the winning team would divide the money among the players. my team lost in round one. after the dice game was over there was a another game to play. earlier in the evening we all wrote down our name on a specific date on a calendar. originally i went for 30 but was told that the numbers stop at 23 or i opted for 22. exactly how the game was played i'm not really sure. all i know that when they got to our number they went to another piece of paper and followed some maze until they got to a prize. so basically everyone was a winner. gotta love games like that. my prize was a 70,000 won gift certificate to lotte department store. which i believe i can also use at lotte mart. score!! once the games were finished we went back outside for more drinking and eating. at 3am jk decided to have our staff meeting. it was chaos because most of the staff was drunk and not listening very well. it was during this time that jk announced to the staff that i was promoted to head teacher. yes, i kid you not. after thinking about it for some time i decided to accept the offer. not really sure why because i really don't want all that extra responsibilty but jk and christine insist that it won't interfere with my regular work. it basically means that i have to check all of the teachers' lesson plans and be the point person for any complaints or request. should be easier enough. i finally decided to go to bed around 4:30am. when i got to the sleeping room it was already pretty full so i grabbed a space in the corner and tried to sleep. didn't really get much that night. beside the room being extremely warm there a constant snoring that was louder than anything i heard before. i woke up numberous times throughout the night to find a pair of feet in my face. oh, the joy. i found it hard to function on saturday. besides the lack of sleep i couldn't cool myself down. it was like being in a sauna. we packed up and headed to a school where they had a kick ball game organized for the day. i'm still amazed at how the koreans can drink all night then get up and play sports like nothing happened. i opted out of the game. i wasn't in any condition to be running around a field. after the game we grabbed some lunch. the restaurant was across from the beach so afterwards we took a little walk to the ocean's edge.

group shot

we got back to ansan around 4pm. i spent the rest of the day in bed in my aircondtioned apartment watching project runway. good times.

be well…

photos from stone story retreat