What did you do with your weekend?

A few of my friends are leaving the Uijeongbu area within the next two weeks, and it's customary to do a "last night out" for ex-pats who are leaving. Emily-Jane is moving back to Canada after being here for three years, and Kathryn and Gary are moving into Seoul after having been in the Uijeongbu area for about a year and a half. So it was decided at Wednesday night dinner that we would go out for drinks and such on Friday night. At first it was just the four of us, but we were joined later by Chris and Stephanie. We decided to stay in Uijeongbu (thankfully, as I was really tired), and ended up bar hopping.

We started out at Tom's Ville, partially because Kathryn had never been there. I'd been there many times but wasn't thrilled with it, partially because they play the (bad) music so loud that you can't hear the person right next to you, and mostly because it's frequented by US military boys. After one drink, we moved outside, and saw a bar none of us had ever been to, called Mia's Western Bar (anything that says bar in English is usually a good sign).

Me, Kathryn, and Chris at Mia's Bar

I now think of that bar as Mickey's bar. One of the bartenders there was very... boisterous, and told us his name was Mickey - pointing at his shirt as he did so.

After that we headed to Garten Beer, or Beer Garden. They have the single, double, and triple beer glasses with chilled lit-up holes in the table to keep the beer from getting warm. I discovered some of the led holes actually had writing in them:

After Beer Garden, we went to Mix bar, a familiar place that has Jenga and a few other amusing bar games you can play (like a little shark that randomly snaps down on you when you press its teeth). At this point it was around 3am, so everyone decided to call it a night, and Chris and I split a taxi home, since the buses stop running at midnight.

Stephanie had mentioned to me that she was going to see an art exhibit in Seoul on Sunday and asked if I wanted to come along. There was a Baroque exhibit at an art gallery - I can't remember the name of the place. We looked around at the exhibit for a while, and then went exploring a bit in Seoul, which I hadn't really done since the weather got cold.

I can pretend to be one of the Three Graces, but I don't think anyone would be fooled.

The main artist on display was Rubens, a Flemish baroque painter.

Stephanie was as confused by the cute cartoon dog in the museum as I was.

He's just too cute to belong in a Baroque exhibit.

Street chestnuts being cooked by rolling them around in hot gravel. Not at all tasty.

A weird shell-cone thing in Jonggak surrounded by police buses.

The Cheonggye Stream, with the cone thing in the background being guarded by more police.

Another view of the stream. I can't wait till it gets warmer so I can come here to read on the weekends.

The police were out en-force this weekend. Apparently this area is where they hang out. I've seen them lined up with riot gear before, but never so many at once (this was just a few of them).

Old and new can co-exist rather well.

The Samsung Jongno Tower in Insadong

Piano street. Apparently it's like the piano in big, and it lights up and makes music, but it wasn't plugged in that night.

Afterwards we ended up in Insadong. We went to a vegetarian restaurant, then coffee, then home.

Monks eating at the table next to us at the vegetarian restaurant in Insadong.

A large white bird sculpture in a bakery. No reason. Just because.

Stephanie's White Swiss Chocolate, and my Mocha Latte. I thought the place was called Live Free - it's actually Lime Tree.

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I am currently doing everything in my power to avoid packing. This includes, but is not limited to, writing this blog, and going to James's apartment to watch movies and eat dinner with him and Cherita. I've known for a few weeks that I have to move apartments this weekend. Normally this would be a looming task that would require at least a week's worth of preparation and packing. But seeing as how I brought 2.5 suitcases with me, and haven't purchased anything of any significant size or worth in the past 3 months, there's very little of my own things to pack. Everything is else is also minimal, and mostly furniture. Therefore, I have very little actual work to do, so I've been putting it off until tomorrow - the day before I move. 

I'm not really looking forward to moving - It'll be about a 25 minute walk from work now instead of a 10 minute walk. There's also an overpass that I have to walk up stairs and then down, and I'm on the third floor. Normally all these stairs and walking wouldn't bother me, but with my knee, it's just gotten to where I can walk the 10 minutes to work without too much problem. I am, however,  looking forward to being in the same building with Gina, my partner teacher (I'll also be three doors down from Cherita). I've been helping her with her homework, so now I'll be able to do it at home, instead of staying late at work. She's taking two classes at a Univeristy in Seoul, both educational theory taught in English, and she's having to do A LOT of work. It's pretty close to the stuff I had to do for my bachelors. But it's in her second language. So I've been sumarizing some things in her textbooks, and checking her grammar on her assignments. It's fun, really, and it's gotten us talking, which we didn't really do the first month or so I was here. I sit next to her in the office every day, and we share Lemon and Cherry class, so I think it's really important to have a good relationship with her, in and out of work. 

So James is cooking "spag-bol", which is short for spaghetti-bolonase? It's just spaghetti and meat sauce. He calls it minced meat, we say ground meat. Either way, he's cooking for the three of us, and then we'll watch movies until it's time to go home. We invited the Korean girls, but they all have schedules and can't ever seem to get together with us (probably because we're always last minute with these movie nights). I did manage to get out of all of them that the 6 of us will have dinner together the Friday after Chuseok (a harvest holiday here that we don't have to work). It'll be the first time that the 6 teachers have been together, without our boss, since I got here, and apparently since James or Cherita got here too. Julie is taking the 6 of us out to dinner on Tuesday to a galbi restaurant, but it's a different atmosphere when your boss is there too.