dancing with the Australians

[pant, wheeze]

Welcome to the sixth consecutive day of posts regarding my recent trip to the U.K. and Ireland. For those of you who are just joining the party, here's a recap:

My Canadian friend Jeff and I, who were visiting some English friends in Newcastle, England, slid west into Dublin for a day or three. We'd survived the first night, and were now onto the second: a pub crawl chaperoned by the city tour guides. It was due to start at 7:00 at the Purty Kitchen, in Temple Bar (the touristy-party district of southern Dublin).

Jeff and I washed, waxed and dried (figuratively speaking) at the hostel, then sauntered out into the slowly darkening day. I say "slowly darkening" because, as has been mentioned previously, night comes extremely slowly to the northern regions in summer. It takes the sun about three hours to set, and even then it doesn't get completely dark. Evening goes on forever. (You can get a good idea of what I mean by watching the movie Gregory's Girl, which takes place in Scotland.) It's probably the most charming temporal thing I've ever experienced.

It also meant that Jeff and I had plenty of time (and light) to get to the Purty Kitchen. We almost ran out of the former, if not the latter. We couldn't quite remember where the danged place was. Cillian (our tour guide) had only shown it to us once, and Temple Bar, though composed of only two or three streets running east-west (south of the River Liffey), was a nightmare of byways, alleys, and cobblestone cross-streets. We didn't remember whether the Kitchen was over to the west, closer to the cathedral; or east, towards Westmoreland Street.

After a few disagreements about cardinal directions and a lot of guessing, Jeff and I managed to muster up a whole brain between us. We located the rendezvous point with minutes to spare. It was blatantly obvious. The Purty Kitchen was just on the other side of the New Theater (where U2 was first discovered, remember?). Plus there was a whole line of people outside, waiting for happy hour to hit. Most of them had been on the tour with us, including a couple of the Americans (Oklahomans, fresh out of college and having a fling before settling down).

So we queued up. When seven o'clock struck an erratic sort of relay race began. We'd snatch a ticket for a free beer (eight-ounce cups of Foster's, a severe gyp to the palate, but better than nothing). We'd dash inside, get served up, chug the brew as soon as possible, dash back outside and repeat the process. The beers were only free until eight. The chaperones doled out the beer stubs like they were candy, and the rest of us nabbed what bits of conversation we could between slugs of beer and increasingly haphazard runs for the door. Jeff surrounded himself with several Canucks of various sexes; a boy and girl from Montreal, another man from Toronto. I stood at a high table with a couple of Australians: a man from Queensland and a girl from New South Wales. (To make things even more ironic, she was from Newcastle, New South Wales.) Her name was Angela. She had been around with us on the tour. She was, if I may say (platonically), rather cute. About 5'5", petite figure, short dirty-blond hair, fair skin. Positively charming eyes, and her accent wasn't bad either. She was a student at the University of Newcastle and was taking a summer break abroad.

I was rather enthused. This was precisely what I'd been hoping for all along: to meet some young, good-looking, free-spirited foreign girl while overseas. Just to talk with her, honest. If anything else happened...well, that would be an added bonus.

Don't bother tuning up. Nothing happened. Neither of us went to each other's hostel room and engaged in a wild romantic encounter. (Good thing, too...she was staying at a rather shifty hostel. Wouldn't have wanted to leave my pants lying around there.) I'm simply mentioning Angela here, now, because she will be an important player later in the drama—when we all began to dance.

In the meantime, I was in a rather special place, chugging beer with an attractive Australian. I must admit, her male companion was rather good company as well, funny as hell and just as opinionated as me. The World Cup, my constant companion wherever I went, was on the TV. South Africa was losing tragically to Uruguay. Jeff was scintillating and chafing beautifully with his companions over at the bar. I was working up a good buzz and feeling fine.

Eight o'clock struck. Duly fraternized (and moistened), we moved en masse from the Purty Kitchen to the next venue, Peadar Kearney's. The place was claustrophobic up top and spacious down below, the bar barely having room to swing a cat in, but the downstairs (with plentiful pool tables) darkly lit and cavernous.

Angela, Jeff and I ordered up some drinks. How we managed to push and shove our way through the wall-to-wall crowd remains a mystery. Word of a beer pong tournament swept the room shortly thereafter, and Jeff and I dove down the narrow staircase and into the basement to take on the Oklahomans. We lost, miserably. Those Okies know their business. It was my first time ever playing, but still, I would have though a Canuck and a Californian would have been able to hold up their end better.

I was just about lit by this time. I wandered back upstairs to refill my glass and join the Australians in a rousing chorus of "Waltzing Matilda." The Irish guitarist on the tiny stage crammed in the corner strummed and hummed, and the rest of us filled in the words. At the bar was a blond, bearded fellow from Manchester, England. What his name was I've long since forgotten. Solid bloke, though. The two of us sat and discussed the broader issues of life and world travel until it was time to switch pubs. Like a horde of thirsty locusts, we tourists swarmed the door and hung a left up Dame Street to Sweeney's.

This last was just a long, low room with several levels, each decked out with tables and chairs. Tequila shots were one euro apiece. The Montrealese and the Torontan had joined us, as had Angela. We'd lost Angela at Kearney's, but I (despite weaving a good deal) ran back down the sidewalk, rounded up all the stragglers, and herded them back to Sweeney's. Thought it was a gallant sort of thing to do, go back for the damsel left behind. Jeff and I sipped beer, shot tequila and talked with the other three until...well, until none of us were in any shape to talk anymore. I remember the Montreal-man just sort of keeling over slowly, like a ship foundering, until he was prostrate on the bench. I don't remember where the Toronto fellow disappeared to. I wasn't sure what kind of shape Jeff was in. Angela was taking things quite easy; she was still in good shape. I was feeling no pain. I was about to go ask the owner if he could stop the bar and let me get off.

But we weren't quite finished yet. There was one thing we had to do before calling it a night: clubbing. As it happened, our starting point, the Purty Kitchen, was in possession of an upstairs club. So back (and up) we went.

The remainder of the night passed in a blaze of strobes, pop music, and gut-shaking rhythms. The Canadians, the Mancunian, Angela and I all formed a sort of hectic six-square on one side of the dance floor and cut loose. I haven't gone that crazy in a while. All of us were soaked through in a matter of minutes. We kept imbibing, too: Smirnoff Ices were going like hotcakes at the downstairs bar. Jeff wound up jaw-to-jaw with a pretty girl from Wisconsin as the Mancunian and I hosted a dance-off in the corner.

I'd love to be able to show you pictures of some of this, but I left my camera in my room at the hostel. I knew I'd be getting soused, and didn't trust myself to hang onto valuables. I'd like to give you a more coherent rundown of the night's events, but as has previously been mentioned, I was soused. You should see the notes I took while out on this pub crawl. My writing, as it moves down the page, gets progressively more illegible until it fades finally to gibberish. Much the same is true of my memory. Angela disappeared sometime shortly after my memory fades away. I believe she, the Mancunian and I exchanged Facebook info, but I was never able to locate them. Such is life. Ships that pass in the night. Freak-dances in Dublin. Se la vi.
I vaguely recall stumbling away from the Kitchen with Jeff in the black of night, which had finally arrived; stopping off in some convenience store for a (large) bottle of water; traipsing back into the hostel, doffing my shoes and collapsing onto the upper bunk. It was as well that our flight out of Dublin back to Newcastle left in the early afternoon; we were going to need a serious lie-in.

But that's a story for next time. Next up on the Sententious Vaunter, bog bodies: the final day in Dublin.

Busan: the last shout

I wrote some time ago about the grand send-off we gave to Andy Smith in Busan. We elected to do the same with me. Our master plan was to go to Busan for the weekend, as we'd done several times before, and spend a couple days raising hell. We had quite a grand scheme as far as that was concerned, what's more. We were determined to go shooting, a rarity in Korea, a country that outlaws private gun ownership. Jeff had located a gun club in central Busan, however...conveniently located right next door to the all-you-can-drink bar. They had an evening special, six to eleven on Saturdays, where you could have as many beers as you wanted for ₩12,000 per person. After that we didn't know what we'd do. Go dancing, mayhap.

 After meeting up outside the shady chicken place (which re-fries its chicken I don't know how many times; it's run by a leather-faced lady who's openly suspicious of foreigners) at 7:00, we hailed a cab, waltzed into the bus station, secured tickets for the Busan Express, and then spent the next two and a half hours stuffed into a cramped, airless, hot, lurching sardine can. The bus ride was only ₩13,000 and that STILL wasn't worth it. I resolved, stepping out of that torture chamber, never to set foot on another intercity bus as long as I lived, at least one without the benefit of opening windows. We stopped off at McDonald's (I was too queasy to get anything), then headed into the subway. We resolved not to waste time traveling across the city and back to Haeundae to get our rooms immediately; we'd explore a little, dump our stuff off, and then go shooting and drinking around dinnertime.

For the early afternoon, however, we elected to hit up Jagalchi, the massive Busan fish market spread over half the harbor. I was elated; it was on my to-do list but I thought I'd never get the time to see it over all the other stuff I wanted to get done. Now was our chance, and we took full advantage of it. The market was a bit gloomy under the overcast skies and the air was admittedly odoriferous, but the profusion of sea life was intoxicating nonetheless. Jagged rows of stalls and booths, overhung with shabby tarps and gaudy-colored umbrellas, sprawled in every direction. Everywhere we looked, there were vendors frying unidentifiable foods; enormous fish laid out on trays of ice, white underbellies gleaming invitingly; squid and octopus draped over crates and planks, tentacles dangling; and utterly amorphous chunks of sliced seafood and entrails stacked in heaps. One fellow we passed was shaving rinds from one such block (it was shark, we discovered) and handing them out as free samples to the crowd, inviting them to sit down and try a full dish for only man won (₩10,000).

Off the streets the sights and scents didn't diminish. If anything, they increased. We passed into one of the gigantic warehouse-esque buildings that thrust itself out of the center of the open-air market; it was likewise filled with vendors, immaculate in yellow and pink rubber aprons and gloves, surrounded by glass and plastic tanks of their wares, oxygen bubbles concealing their slimy, piscine contents. Unable to restrain myself at the sight of a live octopus the size of my head, squirming its way around its submerged colander (and the insistent urgings of its owner) I caved and ordered sannakji once again. In five minutes (and ten thousand won) a majestically writhing pile of tentacles, seasoned with sesame oil and sliced onions, was brought to our table. I partook with gusto, having regained the appetite I lost on the lurching bus journey. Even Adam and Jeff pitched in a bit. This was real sannakji; I could feel it sucking on to my cheeks, tongue, teeth and gums, its suckers like little tiny hooks. I devoured the plate, thanked the proprietor and moved on.

Two warehouses down I was overcome with a burst of gluttony once again; I ordered a couple of strings of giant abalone for fifteen thousand (about twelve bucks), and munched them raw as we sauntered out of the fish market and into the souvenir market and tourist mall beyond. It would have been better with ssamjang, but I was content to slurp the shellfish down as they were. I had to leave the last two, though; I got full. I felt bad, forking over money only to waste it and some fisherman's hard work. I couldn't have saved them, though...they were already beginning to turn in the hot sun. I'll know better next time.

 I washed my hands in yet another McDonald's (Adam, Elaine and Jeff hit that place at least five times in three days), and then we headed out into the souvenir market. We wandered here and there, looking in the shops, the clothing stalls, the tiny seamstresses' cubbyholes, the western clothing chains, the fast food joints, and the actual souvenir boutiques themselves. We stopped at one (real tourist trap) and I purchased a Korean fan for my mother and an emblazoned business card box for my father. It may have been a tourist-trap shop, but I think Mum 'n' Dad will appreciate the gifts nonetheless. We also stopped off at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and polished off a box of a dozen between the four of us. They were nice, but blander than I recall (I haven't had a doughnut in a year, remember). It would have been better with some milk. If I hadn't been so fixated on getting some chocolate in my system, I might have had the courage to try one of the oddball Korean doughnuts with green tea icing.

Done with Jagalchi and the markets, we headed back to the subway, rode thirty minutes to Haeundae, checked into our usual love motel (wonderfully inexpensive at ₩35,000 per night, or about $28), relaxed at the beach for a bit, and...well, it was at the beach that the real surprise of the whole weekend came, one that totally made my month. Adam and Jeff slid off to get drinks (non-alcoholic; we weren't going to drink before shooting, no way). I should've known they were up to something, 'cause it took them a long time...long enough to be lost. Elaine went on the cell phone and directed them to our location on the boardwalk. The first I knew that they had, all three of them, tricked me, was when the Papa John's large pepperoni pizza with a side order of cheese sticks plopped down on the grass behind me. It was a plot. Adam and Jeff had sneaked away on a prearranged scheme, and Elaine had stealthily covered for them over the phone, like a seasoned black ops pro. I had not the slightest inkling of their intentions. I was struck speechless. For a moment my mind would not even comprehend what I was seeing, as my brain tried to force my body and face into expressions of nonchalance. It didn't work. Soon as my teeth sank into that first cheese stick, I was gone. I poured out disjointed words of gratitude, not nearly enough, while I chewed and swallowed. I will never be able to thank those three enough for ending my deprivation. Having stood my complaints about the lack of Papa John's in Korea all year, my three friends had graciously, thoughtfully, generously, wonderfully concocted this covert operation and carried it off without a hitch. That alone made it the best send-off ever. I am truly blessed with true companions (and pizza, munch munch munch).

 Anyway, we carried the leftovers (what little there were) back to the hotel, showered, changed, and then boarded the subway for Seomyeon and the center of town. We wandered around a little, taking in the sights and smells of this new corner of the city (only Jeff had ever been here before). The streets were narrower, the buildings somewhat dingier, but the streets were lively and full of all sorts of people, and the sidewalks were jammed with tiny shops and food vendors giving off delicious odors.

We wandered about for a time until Jeff's nose kicked in and we discovered the Seomyeon Gun Club, tucked away on the second floor of a glass-fronted building at a small three-way intersection. We ascended the steep, dark staircase and received an effusive greeting from a young, thickset Korean fellow in glasses.

"Shooting?" he asked. "Come this way!"

The waiting room resembled my family doctor's, only with more toy guns. It was sparsely decorated, but the couches were soft and the small coffee tables arranged pleasantly. There was a long, L-shaped counter at one side of the room, on which a pleasant-looking, skinny woman leaned and smiled at us. There were some empty water-cooler bottles lying about. The targets of previous shooters, pocked with bullet holes, were hung on the walls. A few copies of American gun magazines were on the tables and couches. One entire wall of the room, however, was taken up with an enormous color poster with photographs of the available firearms, their names, and for the most part their calibers as well. The jovial, thickset proprietor directed our attention to this and then stood by eagerly with a notepad and pen.

Elaine and Jeff were a little nervous (it was their first time shooting real guns), but I did my best to put their minds at ease. I selected weapons and calibers that I thought would be best suited to their tastes, which our host jotted down on his notepad. Selections completed, he ushered us through a door and into the actual range itself, which resembled any indoor range in the States: booths with targets set up on lines. From a gun cabinet at the rear the man produced our weapons and ammunition. I was first. The proprietor had me demonstrate checking the gun for cartridges, and then had me dry-fire. Satisfied, he let me go ahead. I originally opted for the Desert Eagle; but they didn't have it. I was going to go for a .44 Magnum next...but they didn't have that, either. So I went with the .357 Mag. That was a fun little number, and made quite a bang.

In the next booth, the man was attempting to explain to Jeff how to use the sights and so forth, but his English was not up to the task. So after I was finished, the man brought me over and asked me to explain. I told Jeff the rudiments of using handgun sights, and then Jeff went ahead with shooting, steady as a rock. We had ear protection but not eye protection, which turned out to be a bit hard on Jeff, because he was in the last booth down and the shell casings ejected from his nine-millimeter Beretta kept bouncing off the wall and came close to hitting him. One actually did smack him on the tip of his nose. Jeff finished all of his rounds, however, and scored 74%, which I can assure you is excellent for a first-timer. (Most people can't even hit the target at all.)

Elaine and Adam were next. Elaine was using a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver. The proprietor asked me to show her how to cock it. I did, and Elaine just took over from there. She was phenomenal. Her aim was steady, her form was flawless and her scores reflected it: 82 percent. She even got two rounds through the same hole, Robin Hood style. She said herself that after the initial shock of the first round going off, she settled right down and got into it. I think she had fun, to say the least.

 Poor Adam was in a bit of difficulty, which was all my fault. I'd picked a .45 Colt for him, but the stupid thing kept jamming, so the Korean proprietor had swapped it out for a different forty-five semiauto. It fired better, but still kept jamming. Also, the kickback gave Adam some problems...forty-five slugs are heavy buggers. Nonetheless Adam's hand was steady. He jerked the trigger a bit at the outset but once he started squeezing his aim improved considerably, and he scored 75%. He enjoyed it, he said...he even grabbed two of the Magnum revolvers and posed for a picture with them, reminiscent of Clint Eastwood on the movie poster for The Outlaw Josey Wales. Matter of fact, we all grabbed a gun (Elaine with a .44 Mag, Jeff with a Walther, and myself with my trusty nine-millimeter Beretta) and posed for a gunslinger-style shot.

The proprietor tallied up our scores, rolled up our precious targets with holes rendered by our own hands, and bowed us out of the shop. My .44 cost ₩50,000 to shoot; Elaine's revolver and Jeff's automatic, ₩40,000 apiece; and Adam's .45 was another fifty grand, I'm reasonably certain, total cost therefore being ₩180,000. Expensive though it may be, nothing replaces the thrill of shooting, particularly since I'd been separated from it for so long. Adam enjoyed it, Jeff is coming around and Elaine, I think, is hooked. I'll have to open up the gun cabinets for all of 'em when they come visit me in the States...

Then we went drinking. The place still had the sign over the door reading Dojima; but it's since been changed, if Lonely Planet is to be believed, to the Barony Brauhaus. (German-themed drinking establishments are quite popular in Korea; there's a couple on this island, even.) We opted for the all-you-can-drink option, knowing we were in it for the long haul, and then sat through the next four hours sipping beer. I say "sipping" because the glasses that we were given didn't really lend themselves to chugging. They were much smaller than even the standard beer mugs we get at the Local in Gohyeon. Skinnier, too. Now that I think back on it, such tableware is probably insurance. They know people can and will go hog-wild with this liquid buffet, so they serve it up piecemeal, in very small increments. We arrogantly thought, as the dutiful waiter shuffled back and forth to our table every five minutes, that we'd tire him out with our pace and force him into granting us more capacious drinking vessels...but no such luck.

The atmosphere in Dojima (or whatever) is fine; recessed lighting, dark wood furnishings, and a decent view of the city streets out one wall of windows. The establishment also boasts something known as "the Beerzooka," a plastic tube about six feet high and graduated with measurement markings; large parties can order "one foot" or "two feet" or the whole "six feet" of beer and spend the rest of the evening slowly lowering the levels from a tap at the contraptions base. It was more economical for us to take the option we did, but had we been pressed for time or not so hard up for cash we probably would've tried it. "Beerzooka," indeed...the name still makes me chuckle. Who thinks up this stuff anyway?

Well, we were in fine shape when we departed. I'm afraid I don't remember what the bill was but it must have been just, for no fights broke out over it. (We've had our fill of fights over drinking bills; did I tell you about the street fight we got into yet?) We caught the subway over to Sinchon, the swingin' university district. We danced our shoes off at a couple of clubs, most notably Vinyl Underground, famous throughout Korea. The staff was fluent in English, there was no cover charge, drinks were plentiful and the music wasn't half bad. I was up on the stage quite a bit, too. (Insert embarrassed grin here.) After this, we got some Turkish food at a stall outside, then got a cab back to Haeundae. I was dead beat. I opted out of Adam and Elaine's plans to sit on the beach awhile with some more beer and snacks, and collapsed into bed.

There remains yet little to tell. I woke up with a pretty decent hangover, but a couple of ibuprofen tablets, a liter of water and an hour in a dark room got me out of it cleanly. We recovered, freshened up, paid the bill and went out and sat on the beach. It was a gray, overcast sort of day, as it unfortunately always is whenever we go to Haeundae Beach to swim. Meteorological racism, that's what it is. Those darn Korean clouds won't let any sunshine fall on non-Koreans at the beach. After a brief splodge (Geordie lingo for "wade"), we discoursed about our plans. A, E, and J were all for sticking around in Busan to go see Terminator: Salvation. I wasn't too keen on it; I was still a bit beat, and wanted to have a bit of time at home to relax...plus I didn't want to take the bus back, no matter if my good friends were on it. I'd beaten my hangover but there was no sense in tempting fate. So we split up on the subway at Seomyeon; I rode to the coastal ferry terminal and caught the Pegasus for Gohyeon (₩21,500), while my three cohorts rode on and saw the movie. I spent the rest of that Sunday on my bed, chillaxin'.

And that was the last weekend in Busan.

a farewell to Andy

What follows is a thoroughgoing divulgence of all the venial sins I committed last weekend. I went to Busan, saw a corporate baseball game, consumed dried squid whole, went subway surfing, piddled in an an alleyway, shot fireworks into traffic, won twenty grand at the casino, challenged the East Sea, chatted up a Korean lady, switched hats with a soldier, owned a dance floor, stood on the pitch of a World Cup stadium, dove across the trunk of a car (with the driver inside), and slept in a love motel. Beat that litany if you can.

Busan at night. Not my photo.

Andy, the laid-back Englishman with hooded eyes and a lazy Manchester drawl, was having his last weekend in Korea. He invited everybody up to Busan for a wild night. Accordingly, we met up at 10:30 or so at the Gohyeon ferry station (the expensive passenger ferry for ₩21,500, not the cheap five-grand out of Guyeong or Nongso). By "we all" I mean a good chunk of the expatriate English teachers in Gohyeon: Andy, Jamie and his girlfriend, a new South African couple, Chris (from England) and his girlfriend Melissa (from the U.S.), Adam, Elaine, Jeff, myself, and a few others.

The passage was rough. It was a cloudy yet windy day, and the straits between Geoje and the mainland were awash with some rather energetic waves. Out on the open sea the boat went up and down like a...like a...well, like a boat going up and down on some rather energetic waves. I'm sure anybody out there who's ever done anything like this will know what I mean. We'd hit an oncoming wave, the entire deck would tilt up at an impressive angle, then we'd crash down again with a bang and a spray of water. After thirty minutes of this, most of the passengers looked pretty green. I must admit, sitting in that stifling cabin with the cloying heat and moisture of a hundred human bodies, I got a bit queasy myself. Out on the rear deck it was better, with the fresh breeze blowing in your face (I had to hold on to my hat tightly). I even dared the waves a little. Similar to jumping in an elevator, I'd wait until we were at the peak of our ascent up a wave and about to drop down once again before jumping into the air, hanging suspended for an extra second or two. Similarly, I'd wait until we were just about to strike head-on, then jump and get a jolt to my knees as the ferry deck rose to meet me. It was good fun; sometimes the sun even broke through the clouds and made one feel as if all was right with the world.

We hit Busan and negotiated briefly for a cab. After learning that the aggressive big-city cabbies wanted to charge our twelve-person party ₩25,000 per cab, we left them and their poor haggling skills and took the subway. We weren't so far from Haeundae (as we would have been if we'd taken the cheap ferry; that landed you in Jinhae, at the far western edge of the city). The coastal ferry terminal was smack dab on the southern end of downtown. But we weren't going to Haeundae first. We'd received word of a soccer (football, as Andy and Adam and Chris insisted on calling it) game at the World Cup Stadium, so we endured the long subway ride in that direction.


While we did, I noticed a particularly attractive young Korean lady in a white pantsuit with big, pretty eyes and attractively cropped black hair. Having been too chicken to try out my Korean pick-up lines on the cute cashier in Top Mart (thus far), I opted to try them out in consequence-free Busan instead. I caught her attention and said, clearly: "Yeppun yeoja imnida." ("You are a pretty lady.") She smiled and said thank you...in English. We had a very nice little conversation: she asked me where I was from, and how long I'd been in Korea, and so forth. She seemed a little flustered, but she was smiling and friendly. I was quite sad to part with her at the door of the subway, for our station arrived mere minutes later. Ships that pass in the night, strangers on a train, and all that jazz...

We emerged from the subway into the turbulently breezy day and soldiered to our destination. Despite the fact that the whole stadium (ticket booth, seats and pitch) was as deserted as the premier of the movie Beerfest should've been, we went confidently in and took a look around. We even eschewed the stands and walked right out onto the field. But for ourselves and a couple of guys setting up the sound system, we were alone. This struck us as odd, seeing as how the game should've started twenty minutes before our arrival. So we asked the two electricians.

"Gaeim isseoyo?"

"Ne, ne."

"Eonje imnikka?"

"Yeodeolpshi imnida."

Yes, there was a soccer game...in seven hours. We'd showed up at one o'clock; the game wasn't until eight. That would rather put a damper on the binge drinking we had planned later that evening, so we said screw it, marched a few hundred yards to the northeast, and bought baseball tickets instead.

Then we had a burger at McDonald's (Jeff had two; he's a machine) and then adjourned to Haeundae via the subway to get our rooms and prepare for the night's festivities. We had a couple hours before the ball game started; we planned to get changed and have a preparatory drink in Haeundae and then head back to the stadium. This we did. We had about three beers each at an open-air bar just down the road from the beach. Other foreigners walked in and out, scandalously clad Korean women in tow; but the service was good and the spiced popcorn and salted pasta sticks were in plenty.

After an hour we paid up and headed for the stadium. Before that, however, we stopped in at a convenience store and loaded up: a bottle of soju each, as well as some makgeolli. This last is a different kind of Korean liquor, the color of milk, also distilled from rice but sweeter than soju or baekseju. It's less than ten percent alcohol, but you've got to try it once. Unfortunately the brand we got was utter crap. It was fizzy, for one thing; that should've tipped us off right there. But we reluctantly sucked it down. Andy had perfected an alcoholic technique where one purchases a bottle of soju and a liter of Chilsung cider (remember, that sickeningly-sweet Korean lemon-lime soda), drains half the bottle of cider, and pours the soju in. The result is a whole bottle of mixer. Drinking on a subway is an interesting experience, particularly if you're already buzzed. Forming a wall around each other to screen our activities from innocent bystanders, we alternated taking shots of Andy's soju-cider mix.

It was then that I got up and tried subway surfing in earnest. You've heard of "train-surfing," right? Where you stand on top of a moving train and just ride up there with the breeze in your face (I hear tell some nuts even do it with bullet trains)? Subway surfing is similar, only for obvious reasons you're still inside the car. You just have to stand without touching anything and brace yourself with your legs. It would've been quite tricky on the older Seoul Metro, which lurches and leaps like a drunken jackrabbit. On the Busan subway it's pretty easy...unless you're buzzed. Fortunately I was at the rear of the car and there wasn't much risk of falling on anybody.

We arrived. I'd stupidly neglected to bring a coat, citing my Norse heritage and claiming it would protect me from the chill. There wasn't much chill, but it grew as the night went on: a stiff sea breeze was blowing in which developed into gale force by the time we left the baseball game and lowered the temperature into the 50s, I'd reckon. But none of that mattered. Our excitement grew as we approached the stadium. The red sun was sinking behind it and happy shoppers and sightseers crowded the streets. We were late. We could hear the roars and screams of the excitable crowd, even as we exited the subway hundreds of yards away.

We got separated in the rush to get inside; eventually only Jeff, Darren (the new South African guy), his girlfriend and I made it to the gates. Jeff was clutching a bag with our soju and remaining makgeolli; the guards detained him. Bringing in outside drinks to a baseball game is verboten no matter where you are, we'd known that. But we thought we'd try it anyway. I'd already shown my ticket and entered, so we were stuck with Jeff on one side of the gate and us on the other. Darren and his girlfriend went on ahead; I dithered while Jeff waited for Elaine (with her Miraculous Gigantic Super-Colossal Concealment Special handbag). Then, on a sudden impulse, the imperious cry of a nigh-forgotten ambition, I took off like a shot down the concourse. I'd remembered what I'd wanted to do ever since coming to Korea, and even before: ever since I'd read what Koreans snack on at baseball games. The concourse was wild with people. Vendors were on every side: hot dogs, mandu, ddeokpokki...the smells were bewitching. But I did not find what I sought until I'd gone 50 yards further along, following the curve of the stadium...where was it, where was it? If I didn't get back soon, Jeff and the rest might get through and sit down without me, and without a phone I'd never find them in this anthropic mass.

Ah-ha! I espied it! Flattened, beige-gray body, skin without sheen! Tentacles coiled in death and desiccation, shrunken and twisted! Head held wide by a piece of wood! Yes! I'd found it! DRIED SQUID! Whole dried squid were sitting in a rack beside this one young man's food stall. I jumped up and asked him how much it was.

"Sa-cheon won," he replied.

₩4,000! A bargain! I laid my money down and watched impatiently as the young man got out a small gas burner, lit it, and toasted my squid over the flame. It seemed to take forever; he was very thorough. Then he put it between two pieces of paper and delivered it into my eager hands. I snatched it, muttered a hasty kamsa hamnida and ran back through the throng to the gate whence I'd entered. To my relief I found Adam, Andy, Jeff, Elaine, and Dominic (an Englishman working in Busan, and an acquaintance of Andy's who'd rendezvoused with us at the World Cup Stadium earlier) standing in a circle, talking. Jeff and I stayed to get hot dogs (we were into the classic baseball game food that night) as I commenced to gnawing on my dried squid ferociously, to the amusement and disgust of nearby Koreans. I also sucked down a lot of beer. You can drink freely in the stands at Korean baseball games, and in light of this liberating discovery we all went hog-wild. Jeff and I nabbed a plastic pitcher apiece and accounted for it all during the course of four innings; Adam and Elaine were taking shots of soju behind the stands during their smoke breaks; and the rest were having some mix of the two.

The game was terrific. There were a couple of players who did these really cool things, and...well, yeah. My memory gets a bit blurry from here on out. I remember all of us sliding surreptitiously out of the stadium around the sixth inning or so, when the Lotte Giants were down by eight to the LG Twins (out of Seoul); I remember meeting up with a bunch of drunk Koreans on the way out, including a very friendly soldier whom I swapped hats with (only temporarily, fortunately); I vaguely remember getting the subway back to Haeundae. Then we hit the bars. We went to the Fuzzy Navel, a fine little two-story, wood-trimmed bar with some delicious Mexican-themed snacks. I seem to recall a rather poorly done flare show down behind the bar, and lots of shouted conversation. I met some new people whose names I don't recollect, only inchoate faces and half-imagined snatches of discourse. I consumed an unknown number of beers.

Then we adjourned to Mix, the club across the street, newly opened and without a clientele yet. We went to the VIP room, but it was too quiet, so we headed back down. I remember eating some of Mix's nachos, sitting at the bar and trying to persuade Adam to knock back a tequila slammer with me, and getting down all by my lonesome out on the dance floor. That was embarrassing (Andy filmed me doing it) but not as embarrassing as that yet to come, however.

I'm not sure what persuaded us to go back out into the night, but we did. Across the road, just outside Fuzzy Navel, there was a booth set up, a dart-throwing scam where you got five shots at pink balloons with the possibility of winning some paltry prize or other. The prizes turned out to be fireworks, and Adam turned out to be steady-handed enough to win them. I think he lit his with his cigarette and was standing in the street, firing it, much to the dismay of the booth owner. Trying to top him, I shot mine into the street. Andy got this on film as well. Picture me, marching down the sidewalk with a cavalcade of hooting merry-makers ahead of me, holding myself like the end of ages is at hand, grasping my thin tube of fireworks like a sword or a bundle of fasces, pointing it at the four-lane boulevard and firing off sparklers at the SUVs and sedans streaking by. Thank good fortune itself that I didn't hurt anybody. I'm sure nobody liked seeing sparkling fireballs whizzing by their windshields and doors.

We wandered up and down the streets a while, buying more booze and snacks as we went. We went into a club, but it was too expensive at fifteen grand. Leaving the club and crossing the parking lot, I decided it would be a good idea to take a belly-flop across the trunk of a parked car. I didn't notice the driver was still inside it. He got out and you could almost see the steam coming off him. I mustered my remaining mental and ethical faculties, bowed, apologized, and admitted that I was an idiot (in Korean). The man let his bellicose stare linger on me for a moment longer, blew out a sigh, then walked back to his car, shaking his head and muttering. That, I think, was the closest I've come to being arrested in Korea.

There follows a long, blank, foggy space (sometime during which I relieved myself in an alleyway that was deserted except for the guy on the scooter who fortunately came along too fast to get a good look at what I was doing).

After that there's the casino. We went in and had a look around. I remember it was pretty plush, lots of recessed lighting, soft furnishings, and black marble. Jeff did his level best to stop me donating my money to the one-armed bandit, but I was not to be deterred. I felt lucky. I came out in the red, I think; I spent about fourteen thousand and wound up winning about twenty, if my booze-soaked memory serves. I'm just glad I wasn't so utterly foolish as to try the tables. There were games of poker, blackjack, and hold 'em going on, as well as a few I didn't even recognize. I stopped and stared at three-card draw, but couldn't for the life of me remember the rules. I wanted to set myself down and try my luck, but even I could see that I was in no fit state. Jeff steered me away. We probably spent no more than 30 minutes there; it was a pretty poor set-up now that I think back on it (soberly). The nearest halfway decent gambling to be had is in Macao, I hear, and that is only halfway decent. Saeongjima.

We'd been steadily losing people all night. We'd bumped into a few people at Fuzzy Navel; some had bugged out early from Mix; a few others had likely trailed off during our walk through the windy chill of the spring night. (I was no longer ruing my decision not to wear an extra layer; I was too drunk to feel cold.) By the time we got back to our little love motel, it was just Andy, Adam, Elaine, Dominic, and me. We sat in A & E's expansive room, turned on the Manchester United game and drank soju and mekju until late into the night. We switched on YouTube (A & E's room came with a computer) and put on everybody from Curtis Mayfield to Groove Armada.

I finally left at around 3:30 or so. It wasn't that I was chickening out or anything silly like that. Nope, I was just dog-tired. I couldn't keep my eyes open. I'd been screaming and cheering and stomping and chanting at the Giants game, dancing my shoes off at Mix, and running around the streets of Busan shooting fireworks into traffic and diving across parked cars and whatnot. I bowed out amid good-natured banter and collapsed in my room. A few hours later Jeff came in and followed suit. I found out later that he'd been sent out on a booze run about an hour after I left, and had come back to find everyone passed out. So then he'd gone to the sea (like we'd all talked about doing), in the pitch black of five in the morning, and taken a dip in the freezing water. It was quite an adventure. The water was frigid; he could barely see; and his head was swimming as well as his body. He lost the room key in the water, too. He'd had to dig for it in the wet sand as the waves crashed around and over him. Just when he was about to give up and go back, he'd managed to grab it, sunk deep though it was. That Jeff's a real crazy boy. Only he would consider going to the fanciest beach in Korea in late April, blind drunk, at five o'clock on a Sunday morning and going for a swim. I wish I had half his spirit.

Needless to say, we woke up very late the next day. I woke up soonest, drank some water, and peered owlishly out at the bright day. It was about eleven. After allowing myself a little HRT (Hangover Recovery Time) I went downstairs to inquire about check-out time. I caught the landlord's eye and tapped my watch. He held up ten fingers, then two. Twelve o'clock; we had fifteen minutes. I wandered upstairs, not knowing what to do. I was raised in a country where lodging rules were ironclad. Either you made it out by that time or you paid for another night, no exceptions. In a kind of bleary, half-hearted panic I walked up and down the hallway and banged on the other guys' doors. Andy finally answered his and I filled him in. He'd actually been up for a while. Casting all fears about disturbing other possible patrons of the motel aside, I finally gave up all pretense and yelled in at Adam and Elaine's door that it was go-time.

"ADAM AND ELAINE," I intoned sonorously, "IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, THE TIME IS NOW ELEVEN-FIFTY. CHECK-OUT TIME IS IN TEN MINUTES. WE HAVE TO GO."

There was a brief pause.

"DO YOU WANT ME TO DO MY ONE-MAN BAND IMPERSONATION?"

"Yes," came a muffled Manchester drawl from behind Andy's door.

I had only just begun to warble my best trombone when Adam finally answered his door. Somehow we got our stuff together and wandered out into the streets. The plan permutated a bit, but it remained essentially the same: go to the beach and get a burger. Andy had a tip on a place over at Gwangalli Beach that served up massive foot-tall burgers. That sounded like it would hit the spot after last night, so we went to the subway and rode a few stops, then endured a rather lengthy 500 meter hike to the beach. The day was muted and hazy, with a gentle but chilly breeze blowing. We found the joint and ordered up. They forgot mine. Everybody else munched theirs and huddled under the heat lamp while we made small talk.

After a few hours of watching the waves, the sun, the serpentine kites flying high in the sky and the numerous tents grouped on the sand (there was a fish-catching festival similar to the one I spoke of before going on, with a plethora of tent restaurants in tow), we went back to the subway and traveled to the bus station. It had pretty much been decided yesterday that we weren't going to attempt the ferry again, not after the somewhat tumultuous crossing we'd endured before. I would've been fine ordinarily, but was not willing to tempt fate while hung over. Not that I had any precious lunch to lose, that is. (I'd contented myself with merely writing a civil comment about writing orders down instead of memorizing them at the burger joint rather than complaining; I didn't want to hold up the parade.)

So we got our tickets, went back into the shopping mall that separates the bus station from the street and got some McDonald's (for me), and then headed out. The bus ride was long and agonizing. I used to be ambivalent about buses but now I hate them with all the seething flames of Hell. They're hot, stuffy, bumpy, noisy, uncomfortable, crowded, close, and interminable. That goes double here in Korea. The bus drivers leave the heat on even when it's 60 degrees outside, and they've all got lead feet. Lots of squirrelly stops and starts, never a smooth moment of cruising. Plus they're always swerving into other lanes to go around people they perceive as being too slow, and/or honking at said people. I think the next time I ride a Korean bus I'll seat myself behind the driver and every time he jams on the brakes at a red light or a bus stop I'll pitch forward and land on him. That'll learn him.

And so we arrived in Gohyeon, said our farewells to Andy, and went home. That is the full summary of the weekend's weirdness.

To Adam: Thank you for swigging that tequila slammer.

To Dominic: It was nice to meet you.

To Andy: The very best of luck to you, pal. I hope it was a good send-off.

To that Korean guy in the parked car: I'm sorry. I really am.

teachers-in-arms

I think it's high time I told you a bit more about my coworkers. Charles you already know, if you've been keeping up with this blog at all. But there are a few more I have yet to describe in detail. I want to make it clear right now that whatever I say next is said with the utmost seriousness, and I have no desire whatsoever to impugn anyone's integrity or cast their integrity or goodness into question.

I guess I'll start with the Korean teachers. The staff and studentry of our hagwon all take on English names (or "Anglo aliases," as I call them). The youngest Korean teacher (and in my opinion, the cutest) at Reading Town goes by the Anglo alias Gaia. She (currently) has dark, wavy brown hair. Her face is charmingly round, her eyes dark but cheerful. Her skin tone is somewhere between Esther's fair complexion and Erica's deep olive. She dresses like many young Korean women: baggy sweater jackets, long-sleeved shirts with hems that come down to mid-thigh, T-shirts with vests, paired with tights or ruffled skirts. Her feet, however, are incongruous with this immaculate raiment. Her feet are the feet of a peasant girl: big and rough. I do not say that in a negative tone. There's something strangely attractive about this cutesy Korean English teacher whose pretty street shoes conceal slab-like feet and toes. "How beautiful are thy feet with shoes..."

Under her girlish trappings, however, Gaia is a woman. She's nearly in her thirties. She's traveled to Canada; she lived there for a bit back in the day. Her English is excellent. She doesn't like Reading Town, however. She's worked here for quite some time; I think the kids have finally worn her down. She never hesitates to commiserate with us about a particular bad seed or chronic disruptor.

"Rrrrrr," she'll growl in her endearing, husky voice. "I hate him!"

Gaia seems to be a frustrated woman. She lives with her parents in Okpo, the next city over from Gohyeon, about twenty minutes' drive to the east. She is unmarried, and at her age she's within an inch of becoming an old maid. In Korea, if you're not married off by the time you're thirty, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion. After that, your parents step in and arrange a marriage for you. It would be sad by Western standards, but here she's not quite so badly off. First of all, unmarried women are expected to live with their parents, so at least she's got an accepting roof over her head. Second, Gaia doesn't want to be married. She's a free spirit. She's one of the heartiest party-goers among us, and can keep up with all of us when we drink or dance. Indeed, she usually outstrips us. But she's still forced to work at Reading Town, where she's set upon by both the management and the students.

Gaia is the most unpopular teacher at Reading Town. All the kids uniformly hate her. Every time I ask them why, they claim that she's mean and ugly, like some witch. I didn't come up with that simile, either: the kids automatically label any picture of aliens or monsters in our storybooks "Gaia." The going theory among the native teachers is that Gaia is strict, leading to a sharp downturn in her popularity. Nobody ever likes strict teachers, even if they get results. So Gaia whiles her time away, working at a job she dislikes by day, partying hard on weekends (and sometimes, judging by her zombified appearance on some afternoons, weekdays too). She's still friendly as all get-out, though. She's always up for conversation, never hesitates to recommend remedies for ailments or delicious foods to try, and even gave us her number the first time we took a trip to Busan in case ought went amiss. Apparently she's pulled Elaine aside several times and expressed concern that she (Elaine) is wasting away from starvation. "Elaine," she said, in a sentiment echoed by the other female Korean teachers, "you need to eat." She's a cheerful, outgoing sort of person, harangued mercilessly and unjustly by her students, inconvenienced by Korean social expectations (and the occasional weekday morning hangover). I like her.

Widely believed to be the most beautiful by the Reading Town student body, Esther is slightly older than Gaia, and unlike her is married with two children. She has straight black hair that reaches to her shoulders, big almond-shaped eyes, a delicately light skin tone, and a collection of very elegant outfits. I was particularly impressed the day she came in wearing a long grayish-blue pea coat with black leather gloves. Esther is in no way ostentatious, though. She lives in an apartment complex not far from Reading Town with her family. As such (and again, I mean to cast no disparagement whatsoever upon her by noting this) she is usually the first to leave at our get-togethers. She's a family woman, and though she'll still party and drink, her responsibilities are never far from her mind. She's an admirable lady; she seems to have the most aplomb with the students; I've heard Gaia and Erica yelling at their classes, but never Esther. (For the record, I yell too.)

Of all the Korean staff, Esther seems to garner the least criticism from the studentry. (Perhaps this has given rise to the belief that she is the most beautiful while Gaia is the most ugly.) Also unlike the rest of the Korean staff, Esther is a transplant: she's a native of Seoul. Everybody else is from around here, good old Gyeongsangnam-do, with its rough dialect that Esther gently teases Charles about sometimes. Esther is a gentle and benevolent woman. She wouldn't harm a fly. She tests my Korean every now and then, and doesn't slow down unless I ask her to. She's also very complimentary of my language skills. She loves a joke, too. Sometimes she will pretend to be conceited. She and Gaia are like sisters. They talk together and joke together and sometimes even make fun of each other together in English, much to our amusement. Being able to chaff in another language is a weighty achievement indeed. Whenever Charles and I are discussing Korean dialects, and there's mention of the harsher Gyeongsangnam-do dialect, Esther will stick in a pseudo-haughty "My Korean is perfect. I'm from Seoul."

Erica is the oldest female teacher at Reading Town, somewhere in her mid-thirties. She's also the roughest. She's the hardest drinker, the lustiest singer, the fiercest disciplinarian and the most casual dresser. I see her wear work boots and jeans more often than Gaia's trendy togs or Esther's elegant wardrobe. She has a darkish complexion, short black hair (which she curls), and a friendly, toothy smile. She speaks quickly, whether in English or Korean, and I must admit her accent is the most difficult to understand. She, too, does not appear to enjoy her job much. She seems frequently harried, though she's as friendly as the rest. She's always one to give you a big smile or a genuine thank-you. I've heard her out-and-out screaming at some of her more misbehaved students, though. I've found myself wishing I could match her sheer force of will (and lung power).

Erica and I have a special kind of relationship going, I guess. I showed her around my apartment a while back when she was apartment-hunting here in Gohyeon (she, like Gaia, is a native of Okpo, and was commuting here every day until she moved into a new place a few months ago). I also obtained her a bottle of Italian salad dressing from the foreigner's market in Okpo after she expressed an interest in trying some. All of us foreign teachers owe her a lot. She has relatives in Busan (even lived there a while, I believe), and it was she who's given us the most travel advice about moving about in Korea so far. (Charles is fast closing the gap, however...he found me some dirt-cheap flights to Jeju-do and even discovered one deal where you can rent a scooter for a day and sleep in a hotel that night for a combined fee of 40,000 won. Awesome!)

Erica royally saved our butts last September, when we were headed out to Busan for Chuseok. We were originally planning to take the passenger ferry out of Gohyeon; she piped up and told us that that would be impossible. That ferry would be packed to the gills. No seats would be had unless we'd booked months in advance. As we were collapsing in our chairs, resigning ourselves to a sweaty seven-hour bus ride through holiday traffic, she told us of a glorious alternative: take the bus up to the tip of the northernmost peninsula of the island, to the principalities of Guyeong or Nongso, and catch the larger and considerably cheaper car ferry to Busan. This we did, for eighty percent less than we would've paid on the Gohyeon ferry, and for a substantially better view and reduced sailing time, not to mention a more direct route. That was our saving grace; we never would've made it on time and that glorious trip might not have materialized at all (meaning we never would've spent all night drinking beer on the boardwalk overlooking Haeundae Beach and then doused our hangovers in the East Sea the next day).

Erica has many friends, though. She's quite passionate about having fun. As I mentioned, she really knows her way around a noraebang, and seems to know all the good ones in town. She can drink us all under the table and likely would've been the last to leave Charles's housewarming party, along with Gaia and us foreign teachers. She got very sick that weekend, unfortunately, and had to go to the hospital it was so bad. Sometimes none of the teachers at Reading Town seem to have any luck. They've all had some kind of unhappiness or personal tragedy or frustration (or all three) in their lives at some point.

Take Julia, for example. She's one of the newest additions to the staff, along with Charles. She was present at the conference in Changwon (Charles's hometown, remember) where we all met. I'm afraid I really don't know much about her. I believe she is also a native of Gyeongsangnam-do, but where she lived before coming to Reading Town in 2008 is up in the air. I do know that she's married and lives in one of Samsung's huge apartment blocks just down the road to the south, visible from the rooftop of the academy building. She is usually the second one to leave our parties after Esther, but not because she's got a family. Indeed, she would much rather stay out later, but she has a rather clingy husband. The man, I've gathered, is a traditionalist who does not like his wife staying out late after work. Heck, he doesn't even like the fact that she's working at all. He'd rather she stayed home and was his housewife. As a result, they get into the most tremendous fights when she gets home after a bash (by her own admission). I actually heard Julia say last time (at Charles's housewarming party; more about that later), "I'm going to have a big fight with my husband when I get home!"

The following Monday, as she walked into the teacher's room, she raised her fists in triumph and said, "I had a big fight with my husband when I got home!"

She's very amiable, and also quite good-looking. She has short black hair, a very slender build, an attractive yet modest wardrobe and a very soft voice. Her English, along with Charles's, is incredible. But the poor woman seems very tired all the time. I'm not mentioning any particulars, but she had a pregnancy-related tragedy not too long ago, too. I'm not sure how it's affected her. When she reappeared at work after recovering, nobody seemed to notice why she'd been gone. There was no exchange of gifts, nor expression of sympathy as I recall. Everybody just kind of glossed the whole thing over, and we foreign teachers (not wanting to drag the business back up if it had been buried) went along.

Julia never seems to get enough sleep. She also gets off early on Mondays and Wednesdays so she can catch the bus home; she does live a ways out of town. Sometimes, though, the management reneges on this accord and keeps her until the end. Then I don't know what she does. Perhaps Jacob stumps up for cab fare; perhaps not. It just seems like Julia might have the worst lot of all the teachers: a tough job, lack of sleep, a bus ride home, and a nagging husband.

But how could I forget my Geordie coworkers and that Canuck reprobate! I shall now introduce the Newbies, the name for the hard-drinking, hearty-partying clique of wet-behind-the-ears English teachers on Geoje-do. Founding members and acting administration consist of Adam, Elaine, Jeff, and yours truly.

Adam and Elaine hail from the Newcastle region of Northumbria, in Northeastern England. Adam is a youthful, vigorous 25 years old (wink wink) and got his degree in business. Unfortunately, he went and got himself a job in advertising for Maxim magazine. It was brutal work and unfulfilling, and what's worse, he never even caught a glimpse of a single model. Elaine started off in social work but her working environment wasn't ideal (if I can remember what she told me that night we all went to the beach and drank whisky). So they both quit and came here. This is just the start, too. After their contract expires in August they plan to head south to Bali for a while, then make a slow, shrinking spiral through the rest of Southeast Asia: Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia. Should take about seven months, money and visa acquisition permitting. Then they'll head back and get married in the winter of 2010. (I've been invited! Yippee! I'm so honored. A relaxed Geordie wedding, football matches at St. James Park, English breakfasts, Northumbria, the North Sea, downtown Newcastle, and more pubs than you could ever hope to drink dry.)

Adam is as tall as I am, six feet. His face is incessantly covered in stubble; he claims that a completely clean shave wreaks hell on his skin. Seeing as how I cut myself every time I try to shave, no exceptions, I can see his point. Anyway, the stubble suits him. His hair is usually kept short; if it gets too long it starts to get spiky. Elaine is also tall (for a girl) and willowy, with large eyes and short blond hair. Both of them are jolly, profane, and fun-loving, like me. Adam loves meat and Elaine can't stand seafood (although tuna is acceptable).

It goes without saying (heh heh, there's a pun) that A & E both have broad Geordie accents. To clarify, "Geordie" is the slang term for English folk in Northumbria who live along the rivers Tyne and...darn, what's that other river Adam told me about? Rats, I forgot. Wear! That's it. Tyne & Wear. That includes the cities of Newcastle and the surrounding villages, like Tynemouth (Adam's hometown), and farther down along the river and its vicinity. The theories surrounding the origin of the word "Geordie" are multifarious, but the one that sounds most plausible to me goes something like this: when the Scottish were rebelling, they hailed the English folks living around those two Northumbrian rivers (Newcastle and its environs are very, very close to Scotland) and asked them to join the cause. The English folk refused: they said nope, we're going to stick with King George. Hence, they were dubbed Geordies. See?

This is going to sound extremely subjective of me, but I warned you about that in the disclaimer, didn't I? It almost goes without saying that since Adam and Elaine (and Jeff) got here, my life in Korea has become approximately 87 million percent better. We knock around a lot: we frequent our favorite pub (the Local), we go out for sogogi, we head down to Arabian Nights and dance our shoes off, we went hiking up Gyeryongsan, we sampled sannakji (more about that later), and we all went up to Seoul together. They're the most fun people to be around, highly sociable, unendingly hospitable, as friendly as you could hope for and just jolly folk in general.

That goes for Jeff, too. He was raised in Ottawa, Canada. He's been around. He did the Inca Trail in the Andes a while before coming here, and during school vacation at his hagwon (Uniworld) he spent a few days in Borneo, the lucky bugger. Jeff is a tall, skeletally thin fellow with short brown hair and an unexpectedly deep voice. Being from the province that he is (Quebec) he speaks French, though he won't hesitate to tell you that it's Quebec French, somewhat differentiated from French French. Jeff is a good guy. He loves food; he's usually the last one eating when we all sit at a table together and can polish off unholy amounts of food. We left the equivalent of at least three huge Tupperware containers of food on the table at the conclusion of our epic Christmas feast; he polished it all off with his slow, methodical munch. The man's a bottomless pit, of friendliness and adventurousness as well as hunger. He invited us over to his place for fajitas once; he'd managed to smuggle some El Paso mix into the country, as well as procure some miraculous sour cream from the foreigner's market in Okpo. That was an epic feed, rivalling Christmas.

I'm ever so glad we all met, 'cause the four of us really work well together. Whenever we get together we have a tendency to bounce off one another and goad each other on into doing things we wouldn't sanely do; usually this means drinking a lot more than we planned and winding up blind drunk. Good times: those nights in Seoul, or at the top of Gyeryongsan, or in the bars and clubs of Gohyeon. Think of all the symbolic convergence we've created. As Jeff said, "We're going to have a lot of inside jokes that nobody else will understand." That's quite true.

Now I'm going to go play Crackoley. Figure that out if you can.

Korean nightlife

Last night (Friday night over here), I was treated to a marvelous night out on the town, Korean-style.

Brown Eyed Girls, a K-pop group. Not my photo.

First, our boss treated the entire staff to dinner. It's customary for the director to pay for everybody's meals, but he isn't required to take us out to eat. Our boss is a nice one; he takes us out a lot. We went to Chaban, a Korean "fusion restaurant" combining elements of Western and Eastern dining, as I suppose the name to mean. Ergo, you sit on a cushion on the floor and eat Korean food that you cook up at the table like any other Korean restaurant, but there's also a salad and ice-cream bar. Hmm.

Anyway, the meal was delicious. It was hangjeongsal, similar to what I ate with Charles (see a Korean folktale). I think the optimum mix of ingredients out of the myriad to choose from is as follows. A large leaf of lettuce, crisp and fresh; a bite-sized piece or three of meat, piping hot and dipped in salted sesame oil and/or ssamjang, spicy meat sauce; blackened garlic and fried kimchi, also fresh from the grill; and some greens and onions steeped in soy sauce. Wrap the whole affair up into as elegant a bundle as your clumsy, untested foreigner fingers will permit, and chomp on it. I'm drooling as I write this, and I just polished off a boxful of Korean fried chicken. (There's this one particular fried chicken place I've been wanting to try since I got here, just down the street from me on the main drag. NeNe Chicken, it's called. I had the chicken with bulgogi sauce, the non-spicy variety. In my opinion, it's not as good as BBQ Chicken, a similar place in the other direction towards Adam and Elaine's, past Ganiyeok. You get more side dishes, true: in addition to the standard pickled radish cubes, you also get sweet pickles and pasta salad. But the quality of the chicken, especially the sauce, is substandard in my book.)

I had some beer (maekju) and soju, and when that ran out I drank a little cider. I should clarify here and state that Korean cider is not what Americans or British folk are used to. As an American, I define cider as a slightly tangier version of apple juice, something you drink around Thanksgiving time. Say "cider" to Adam or Elaine, my Geordie coworkers, and they think hard cider. In Korea, cider is lemon-lime soda. The taste of the main brand, Chilsung, is similar to Sierra Mist (although some have compared it to Sprite, or even 7-Up), but sweeter. It's pleasant if you're in the mood for it or if you're mixing up a Rum Cooler, but not much use for anything else.

After the meal was over, Jacob and Lily (the boss and his wife) went home, but not before giving us teachers a wad of cash and telling us to spend it how we would. (Like I said, he is very generous, Jacob is. And I will not tarnish that fact by suggesting that its cause is the current bout of thunderous prosperity that Reading Town is enjoying, to the extent that Jacob plans to open a new hagwon in the neighboring and only slightly smaller town of Okpo.)

On Adam's recommendation, Charles, Gaia, Erica, Julia (all Korean teachers), Adam, Elaine, and I (the foreign ones) headed for a bar that we foreigners had frequented before. Jazz Bar it was (and still is) named. It's a Western-themed bar, with portraits of American movie stars on the walls, 1950s kitsch, California license plates and the like. It's also got a pretty good dartboard and an unusually up-to-date music selection, albeit mostly insufferable pop tunes. All the same, it's always a good time there. We bumped into some other expat friends of ours, South Africans working for a rival hagwon. I had a Long Island Iced Tea and a
--> Piña Colada and shot some darts with the gang.

After this we went to another bar we were acquainted with, Geogi (pronounced guh-GI, literally meaning "that place" in Korean). We had more beer, and Adam had somaek, the Korean term for a soju bomb (dropping a shot of soju into the beer). Somek is the Korean words soju and maekju run together. And we had snacks. This is another thing I love about Korea: whenever you go to drink somewhere you don't just drink. You eat and drink. I'm used to just getting peanuts or pretzels in bars back in the States. At Geogi that night we were first served a soup of sprouts, rich in acids I can't pronounce which would work subtle magic on our stomachs and lessen hangovers in the morning; salad with Thousand Island, and corn salad; then an eggy soup (protein, also helpful for the morning after); and finally a heaping plate of different kinds of French fries with ketchup. At some bars, particularly the German-themed ones, you get heaping plates of seafood (insanely cheap here) and meat. When I say "meat," I mean good meat. Barbecued chicken with mustard and sauce. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Nothing beats sucking down a frothy beer and nibbling on chicken strips and fries. Fancy stuff like that costs extra, but not what we ate at Geogi that night; that all came with the beer. Nobody better try to tell me Korea is not a great country.

After Geogi we headed back out into the night. Julia and Charles headed home; the rest of us singles (well, Adam and Elaine are engaged, but they still know how to party) stayed out and headed for Arabian Nights, literally the only nightclub in Gohyeon, and possibly all of Geoje. The joint was still hopping at three in the morning. It took a while for me to get worked up into the mood, but after a couple more beers the rhythm finally got into my legs and I was out on the floor. I must've been in fine form, too: a couple of homosexual Koreans, one in a suit and the other in a Samsung dock worker's uniform, prepositioned me on the dance floor. I turned them down as politely as I could, drunk as I was and still attempting to dance. I suppose I ought to feel flattered. Back at the table to rest, I drank more beer and nibbled on an enormous plate of nuts and sliced fruit provided courtesy of the kitchens. Yep, you eat well at the clubs, too. At five in the morning we bugged out and I fell into bed back home, drenched in sweat and feeling that I'd done a very thorough job taking advantage of a Friday night (and Saturday morning).

These are the cardinal aspects of Korean nightlife: the dining (which in itself frequently involves drinking), the drinking (in the bars) and the clubbing (which is infrequent out here in the boondocks, but more common in the big cities like Busan and Seoul). And I had experienced all of them in a single night. It really gave one a feel for the celebratory atmosphere of a Friday evening. The Korean people really put their heart and soul into having fun, once they've set their mind to it. The Samsung workers in particular march on the bars every Friday night, indeed, even most weekday nights. I've seen gaggles of 'em, hard men with weathered faces, sitting around tables in restaurants with as many as six or eight empty soju bottles on the table between them. I don't know how they do it, having to be at work at seven the next day and all.

The only thing I didn't experience that night (though I have tried it before), itself innately Korean, was the noraebang. It literally means, "singing room." It's the Korean take on karaoke. You go to a singing room, pay a fee, and you get a private room to yourself with as much booze and snacks as you want, TV screens, surround sound, even tambourines for accompaniment. You can belt out as many tunes as lustily as you like and the soundproofed walls will protect you from embarrassment. I've done this before, both sober and drunk, and it's a lot of fun. It's rough on the vocal chords and even rougher on the ears (depending on your companions) but it's a heckuva goofy good time. Even in this small town they have a decent selection of Western tunes in English that a weguk (WAY-gook, the Korean word for "foreigner") can comprehend and sing. I'd like to suggest that you try something similar if you ever come here. If you run the entire Korean-nightlife cultural gamut all in one night (dining, drinking, singing and clubbing, in no particular order) you won't soon forget it.