I've been having a lot of fun this past week, and it has continued into the weekend. Friday was Sopranos with a couple coworkers, which is a reliably good time. Must remember to eat dinner next time, though. Luckily the convenience store in the lobby of my building, which is open 24 hours, has some food in it, and I was able to snag a sammich along with my beers.
Saturday I had to work, but it wasn't so bad. It was Market Day. Let me esplain. The way we motivate the kids at school to behave well and complete their homework, etc., is through a stamp system. They get a photocopied sheet of paper with a grapevine on it. Each grapevine has like thirty grapes, just circles, where we give them a certain number of stamps for certain kinds of behavior. We can also give them minus stamps, which is to take away a stamp they've already earned to punish them or correct bad behavior. So why do they want these stamps? They turn them into the front desk staff for $1 each in like fake Monopoly money, and twice a year they can spend that money at a special event we hold called Market Day.
Market Day has a face-painting room, a snack room, a movie room, a game room, and most important to the kids, a toy/stationery room. It's all very inexpensive stuff, the kind of prizes you might win at Chuck E Cheese, for example, but the kids really love buying that stuff, and it totally makes the stamp system work. I'm kind of amazed that they're able to sustain enthusiasm for something that only happens twice a year, but they are. I was posted for an hour in the toy/stationery room, then in the game room, then in the facepainting room. They should really rename that one the handpainting room. My coworker Daniel was the only person to get his face painted...all the kids wanted it on their hand, which kind of took a lot of pressure off me, the totally inexperienced facepainter. Painting a questionable dolphin on a kid's hand rather than on their face isn't nearly so nervewracking. Miraculously, not a single kid complained about my shoddy artwork. My coworkers took a lot of pics, so I'll post some if I get my hands on them.
Saturday night I had plans with buddies from training to meet up in Hongdae for funtimes. The problem is that none of us have phones yet, so meeting up is very difficult. The plan was to meet at the Hongik University subway exit #5 at 9:30. I confirmed on FB earlier in the day that it was still on, and I left my place at 8:20. I figured out the subway system and made two connections to get where I was going, all pretty uneventfully, except that I didn't get there until 9:35. Well, I figured they'd wait around five minutes for me to show since I don't have a phone. So I emerge from the exit, look around at the sea of people, and see no familiar faces. I stayed there until 9:50 waiting for friends to show and then took a walk to buy a phone card and just look around for my friends a bit, although in a place that crowded, that would be pretty futile. Around 10:10, I called Daniel, my neighbor, from a pay phone in the subway to see about meeting up with my coworkers where they were in Itaewon, and not 5 seconds after I hung up from making arrangements to do so, I hear my name. Andrew miraculously found me...he said it was the red hair. So we went out, first to a bar, then a dance club. The pics of Andrew and Josh raising the roof were at the bar, not the dance club, by the way. That's just how they roll when Numa Numa comes on. Good times were had, though I'm not sure my ears will ever fully recover.
Yesterday I finally got cable in my place, yay! Then last night I went out with coworkers for Indian and saw Ninja Assassin, which was so much blood and so much fun. And man oh man is Rain hot.
