Friday Friday, Gotta get down on Friday

Another Friday in Gwangju, another night of feeling tired from school and not that energetic. School is nice because we don't have to do any work outside of our school hours but hour upon hour with little kids is verrrry draining. We went out for dinner tonight with our neighbours, the couple that lives beside us. We actually took over their classes as we arrived the day they left to go to Stephanie's sister's wedding in their home town of Philadelphia. They are pretty cool people, we seem to get along well and had a good time at dinner. We went to the ice bar for a beer to show max the situation there. Adam hit an OJ again, but we didn't wait around for it. One of the funniest parts of going out with foreigners is talking about the weird parts of the Korean culture. The restaurant we went to had a shared bathroom. There was a urinal, men's stall, women's stall, and a sink. Earlier, we went to a school "excursion" to a place with separate bathrooms but the doors were just straight glass. No frosting, no nothing, just straight glass. Very strange.

One of the other things that I find very very strange is the fact that everything will smell very good here while walking down the street, then there is 3 seconds of brutality followed by a minute of normal followed by 3 seconds of sewage smell. I know this happens at home, but this is constant and everywhere. It can be downtown, near the house, near a mountain. It doesn't matter, the stench can follow you anywhere.

Tomorrow is the day to celebrate halloween here and we will be going downtown as a tacky tourist/cleopatra. I know that my tacky tourist costume sucks, but there are no second hand stores around here. So much of the Korean culture is based upon materialism and appearance that second hand stores do not exist. Therefore, the existence of reasonably priced halloween options is so low that it is not worth the effort to try to do them. Regardless, there is such a small foreigner base here that any effort will be noticed and appreciated.

On that note we went to "the first alleyway" and the "underground grocer" last night. Both foreign establishments owned by the same group, they stock foreign items and provide a place to meet other people who speak english. They seem really laid back and have opposing hours (10-7 for the grocer, 5-10 for the restaurant) but there is a chance that I might find a group to play hockey with. regardless, they have kirkland coffee (all coffee is espresso or instant coffee here), A&W rootbeer and Dr. Pepper in stock along with a few smaller items. Not a lot but enough to give you a fix for home.

Off to bed for the night, need to get up in the morning for world series game 7! I love early morning Saturdays and Sundays because I get to watch the Friday/Saturday night games live. Sad I missed game 6 though, sounds like an unreal event.