2nd Last weekend in Korea - Last Weekend in Daejeon

And the countdown begins. I've cleaned out my cupboards, given away various food items, books, toiletries, and any other junk I refuse to pack up and bring home. All my cards have come off my walls and the pictures are next... I'm starting to feel a little more confident that most of my stuff will fit back into my suitcases. My abilities to carry them down the three flights of stairs is a different story altogether.

It was a surprisingly relaxed weekend again... we must all be getting old or something. Had a birthday dinner for Tom on Friday and then went on to a bar called Monkey Banana where the drinks are really cheap and the atmosphere is nice, despite the fact that we seem to be the only people who know the bar exists. After that we went on to Jay Club which was also rather quiet so I decided to call it a night and head home. The others continued on at Jay Bar, went to a club called Boobi-Boobi, sang their hearts out at noraebang and finished the night with McDonald's breakfast at around eight in the morning...so it must just be me that is getting old.

Saturday we went out for our work dinner to a place called Kingdom Buffet. It was fantastic. Sushi as far as the eye could see, salads, potatoes, spaghetti, chicken, beef sashimi, everything you could want at a buffet. Brian, the owner also gave a short good-bye speech in Korean, and when asked to translate, all David said was "Bye-bye Diana," but I'm sure that was the gist of it. After that Richard, Martin and I met up with Tom and Trey and headed to Brickhouse for some British soccer match that was being shown there, which eventually led to the poker chips and felt being brought out and that is how I spent the remaineder of the night.

Yesterday was beautiful weather and we had a bbq at Tom's, along with some scary movies. It was nice and relaxing and allowed me to neglect finishing all of my report cards that are due to today.

This week is a short week. Wednesday will be my last Monday, Wednesday, Friday class, and then we are off to Jeju island until next Monday morning. Then I will finish packing on Monday afternoon, go for my last day of work, go for my last night of poker and head out of Daejeon on Wednesday. I'm not too sure when I'm going to disconnect my internet so this might be my last post for awhile...

See you in Canada!

TGIF

Friday! I am finished my last full week of work as of 9:10 tonight!!! Next week I work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then head off to Jeju on Thursday. I come back the next Monday and work the Tuesday as my last day! Originally I was going to be done the Wednesday before Jeju but my boss was able to switch my ticket which means that I have to work my last day. That itself isn't such a bad thing, but it makes me think about crowded that plane is going to be, being that it had a waiting list. I enjoyed my flight here where there were only a hundred of us or so on the flight and I had three seats to myself.

My replacement teacher arrived yesterday, Martin, and he seems like he will settle in nicely. He seems to have a much friendlier attitude about children than I do, (hard to believe, eh?) so I think he will probably enjoy the job quite a bit.

Not to sure what we are doing this weekend, it's Tom's birthday, my last weekend here, and the welcoming of a newbie, so whatever happens I'm sure it will be pretty wild. Tomorrow night we are going out for a work dinner for a farewell/welcome party. We are going to some place called Kingdom Buffet, and I don't know much about it but some friends have been there before and they thought it was the greatest place ever so that is good to hear.

I also need to start thinking about packing this weekend and geting rid of some things from my apartment. It's amazing the things I've accumulated in the past year.

Anyhow it's already noon here and I need to get ready for work. Have a good weekend!

Third Last Weekend

And what a lazy, lazy weekend it was! I don't know if I've had a less productive weekend since arriving in Korea. Friday night Tom, Trey and I went to Santa's Bar across town and met up with some friends for a few drinks. It was okay, though nothing terribly exciting.

Saturday morning I got up and headed downtown prepared to do some shopping and spend a bit of money. I went into Innisfree, which is my new favourite store for shampoos, face washes, etc. Made a few purchases and gave the girl my card, which she declined. I was slightly confused but I know the swipe on my card has been tempermental lately so I chalked it up to that and paid for my things with cash. Next I jumped on the subway and headed to the other part of town where I wanted to get some groceries and various other odds and ends. I decided to grab cash out of a machine just to be on the safe side and when I used my card the machine's (not so perfect) English read: Sorry, card is unusable this time. Excellent. I didn't have a clue why but this meant I had no money on me, other than bus fare home, so defeated I headed back home. I called David and he had no clue why this would happen but promised to take me to the bank first thing Monday morning. My biggest concern was that the last purchase I had used my card for was the flights to Jeju and maybe there was some sort of problem with that. Fortunately I checked our reservations and they were still good to go. Anyhow later that night I tried again and the cards worked fine so it must have been the bank having a minor meltdown earlier in the day.

Last night was Trey's birthday party so we all went to his place for the greater part of the night. Had a good sized crowd going for most of the night and then around two we decided it was time to hit up a noraebang (singing room). We got outside and half the group decided they were headed downtown instead which left only three of us for noraebang. Despite my being tone deaf it was a pretty good time and we sang our hearts out for an hour or so.

Today I did nothing. Nothing. I woke up, I showered, I went back to bed. Tonight I went and got pizza which was the highlight of my day, despite there being no sauce on it and the picture showed it would have tomatoes, mushrooms and various other veggies, yet all it seemed to have was pineapple and meat. Meh, it was alright, I guess.

Don't have much planned for this week, other than poker on Tuesday. I suppose I need to start figuring out what to pack and what to throw out and doing a general clean up of my apartment in preparation for my departure, which is May 29th at 5:25 pm, in case you hadn't heard. Anyhow hope everyone had a good weekend, see you soon!

Hurray!

We got tickets for Jeju!!!!! My last weekend in Korea will be spent in a tropical paradise!!!!!

I Won...sort of

Okay well win might be a strong word. I placed fifth. So I beat four people and I lost to four people. So I guess I didn't really win at all. But I still got 100 000 WON for it, which is better than I had hoped for. Though I did pay 100 000 WON to enter the tournament so I guess I'm even.

It was kind of crazy because we had all payed the money to join six weeks ago and there were 14 of us at the time, which made our pot worth 1.4 million...that's right million; it's so easy to be a millionaire in Korea! So before we started playing Eoin got out the winnings to show what we were playing for and being that they don't have bills higher than 10 000 in Korea, it was A LOT of cash. There were 4 Korean men sitting at the bar and seeing that pile of money on the table sure got their attention. It was a good night, everyone was in good spirits and it was a nice end to the past six weeks. I guess I will miss out on the next tournament but hopefully there will be some cash games before I leave, as I would be lost without something to do on Tuesday nights.

Unsure about Jeju at this point :( Apparently all the flights are sold out from all four airports near us. Our other option is to take the ferry but that is over eight hours, right now we are looking at maybe being able to fly there and ferry back...but it doesn't seem hopeful. Might have to wait until I'm back in Canada for some tanning and casino action...

Fourth Last Weekend

At least the countdown stops me from thinking of original titles...

Went up to Seoul on Saturday for some wandering around and shopping. Richard's mother and brother are here, so Tom and I went up with them and then split up to do our own wandering, versus getting stuck in the tourist trap. It was so hot out but we managed to walk around for about five hours and picked up some boot-legged dvd's and some English books. The plan was to meet up with Richard and crew around seven for some dinner in Itaewon, the popular foreigner spot in Korea because it is located near an army base and thus full of Americanized goods. Being that we had been walking around all day, in the sun and hadn't eaten at all we were STARVING, but Richard and them were still in line to go up Seoul tower a few subway lines away. Tom and I went in search of a restaurant to eat at once everyone arrived and we would hungrily press our faces up to the windows or menus trying to see what looked good. The international food festival also happened to be going on so we walked down a street full of delicious smelling food which only made things worse for us. Finally we sat down in a bar and had a drink while we waited and drooled over the appetizer menu; we were just about to cave when we got a text from Richard saying they were on their way. At about 9:00 we ended up in a buffet Indian restaurant which was fairly good but I had waited so long to eat that by the time we actually sat down and started eating most of the hunger had subsided and I had a dull stomachache.

Yesterday I went for a walk around town before meeting up with Tom to watch one of the movies we bought and then ended up over at Trey's for dinner for even more movie watching. And he taught me how to play Black Jack because in a few weeks we are headed to Jeju-do island which was been noted as Korea's Hawaii and Korea's vegas, so it should be good times with fun and sun during the day and some gambling at night.

Tomorrow night is the final poker tournament as well, keep your fingers crossed for me!

Oh Really...

Before I get started I just want to brag , say that I made it to the final table of the poker tournament!!!!! Hurray!!!

Okay, that's all I will say about poker...for now.

So in a few weeks it is Mother's Day, which I will miss, but I missed Father's Day last year, so it's only right to keep it fair for everyone. That way there is no favortism. In light of the upcoming Hallmark holiday I would just like to point out that over the years of being a kid, I always asked if there was a Mother's Day and a Father's Day, then how come there was no kid's day??? And the response? The cliched answer of: "Everyday is kid's day."

Well just so you know, May 5th, this Saturday, is kid's day in Korea. So there.