it's ok...i'm with the band

ok so a lot has happened since my last blog and i suppose i should start where all stories start...at the beginning.

school has been going by in a blur, and apart from the random rediculous things some of the litter children do, it is becoming a routine fixture in my life. the smaller children in the english school hagwon are a riot though. i have learned a lot about koreans from spending time with these tiny human-esque creatures. the funniest story i think i have about them comes from earlier this week. jenny had lost her voice and asked me to cover one of her classes for her. in this class there is a little girl named jinee, who is rather...er...affectionate towards me. everytime i see her she hugs me and buries her head into my stomach. in class, jinee immediately came up to me for what i assumed would be a typical 'jinee hug.' well, i was wrong. she wrapped her tiny little korean arms around me and buried her head into my stomach, and then she did the weirdest thing ever...she started rubbing my butt. i quickly pulled away from the hug and told her not to do that. i felt really awkward and embarrassed, and she was confused as to what she had done wrong, which confused the heck out of me. was this a type of normal behavior that i was unaccustomed to? well, apparrently it is! seriously. i told the story to one of the korean staff at the school and she informed me that it is a comforting gesture. korean parents often pat their children on the butt to comfort them, so jinee apparently was trying to comfort me. it's kind of funny, because where i come from, we call that being groped.

anyway, on to the rest of the story. i was supposed to go to sokcho this weekend with lee, but he got sick and cancelled, which was ok because by friday, i was completely worn out and ready for some destressing. i had no intention of going out until jenny called and asked me to come to dinner with everyone from work. after dinner, we all decided to head to sunny's but not until after ben and i took a much needed trip to costco for some 'pre-gaming' supplies. we spent a few hours at sunny's partaking in our normal friday night...er...escapades. after several pitchers of beer and shots of soju, one of us got it into our heads to go to a karaoke room, and so the adventure began. with half of us blitzed out of our minds, we went in search for a noraebang where we enjoyed more drinks and we able to sing off key to our hearts' content.

we finished at the noraebang around 2 in the morning and went back to my place to pick up some bedding for her guests and then we all returned to turk's for a few more drinks and hang out for the night. i ended up not really getting home until around 8 the next morning.

as soon as i got home i took a shower to wash away the smell of cigarettes and stale beer that i had aquired and tried to sit down and be productive, but it wasn't long after that i got a call from yoona asking me if i wanted to do lunch. i headed to yoona's where we decided to head to western dom to have a girly day and do some shopping. we got back around 6 and met up with turk for dinner and to decide our plans for the evening.

we were trying to figure out what to do and we were not really feeling sunny's when yoona suggested we head to la festa. it sounded like a plan, and so off we went. we walked to la festa which is about a 30 minute walk from baeksok station where we live and we went to a bar called frog and toad and had a couple margaritas and met a canadian guy named mike. i was feeling a bit tired, due to the lack of sleep from the night before and asked yoona if she would go with me to pick up a coffee. on the was down the street to get the coffee, we passed a restaurant with a group of guys eating and i noticed them looking and yoona and me. on the way back to the bar, i noticed them again and so i waved and said 'hola!' they responded excitedly in spanish and were thrilled to have us join them. we talked for a bit and found they were all from argentina. they asked if we liked tango dancing and music and when i responded that i loved it, they told me that they were the band from fever tango, the performance group that was performing that weekend in la festa! i immediately texted jenny to let her know what she was missing out on and continued to have random conversation with them all in spanish when yoona and i realized we needed to get back to turk. i invited them all to come back to the bar with us and so they did and we ended up spending the whole evening with them at the bar above.

it was a fantastic night and what was even better was the fact that emilio, the double bass player, decided that he fancied me and wanted me to come to the performance the next night. well, you had to make reservations and the tickets were almost 100,000 won (about 100 american dollars) and so i told him we wouldn't be able to. he told me not to worry and that he would call me the next day and he would get me in. at the end of the night when we all said our goodbyes, i didn't honestly expect him to come through. i got in around 3 in the morning and completely crashed.

the next day, i woke up after noon with david at my door bringing me a muffin in hopes i had a mop to borrow. jenny called me not even 5 minutes after that asking if i wanted to get lunch and catch up, so i took a shower and headed out the door. we talked for a bit and turk and yoona joined us and we were trying to figure out what to do for the evening when i got a phone call from emilio from the night before! i couldn't believe it! he told me he really wanted me to come to the show and that i had 5 tickets waiting for me at the door. so, the four of us headed back down to la festa to enjoy a night of amazing latin music and tango dancing. we got to the center where the show was being performed and walked up to the counter and informed the woman that emilio had left us tickets, and she immediately knew who we were and showed us to our seats. we sat in the 6th row, so it was actually pretty cool. i figured he would get us the generic seating tickets, but it seems like he pulled some strings and got us some pretty good seats!

afterwards, we went to dinner and emilio called me again to ask me how i liked the show. he had to do a phot shoot and go to a party for the cast after the show, but he asked me if i could meet him for dinner monday night. i told him i would love to, so apparently now i have a dinner date tomorrow night with an argentinian musician. i absolutely love how random my life has become now that i am in korea.