Chinese New Year....
Trip Start
Dec 11, 2008
1
7
32
Trip End
Dec 13, 2009
Seoul,
Korea Rep.
Friday, January 30, 2009
I enjoyed a lively start to the extended weekend, as I accompanied Julianna and her boyfriend to a nearby barbecue restaurant. I knew that her boyfriend would be a nice guy as Juli is incredibly sweet-natured herself, often in the face of some ridiculous requests at work. I find it more difficult to bite my tongue, but Juli urges Hew and me to wait until the walk home, then the three of us can vent together and get it out of our systems!
I received a text from Hew after leaving the restaurant, asking if I wanted to join him and a few of his Korean friends for drinks. It sounded good to me, so I got the subway to Hyewha, and was pleasantly surprised to find him drinking with four Korean stunners - the old dark horse! We ended up drinking lots of soju, and I enjoyed winding the girls up about the Hula Hoops that are always supplied on the table. For some reason, there are always a few random green ones included, and I had them worried that eating them would result in a bout of illness the next day! It was good fun...
Naturally, we all went to the noraebang afterwards, and I did a duet with one of the girls, namely "Stand By Me" by Oasis, which was apparently her party piece. I always enjoy a good bout of noraebang action, but part of me craves the karaokes of Japan which are far superior in terms of choice and price, not to mention they organise songs by Artist order as opposed to Song Title order...
Later on in the weekend, I met up with Julia, a Scottish girl that I'd kept in touch with ever since rejecting my first job offer back in September. She works at the school I turned down, but was very honest when I was asking about work conditions, staff etc. So we arranged to meet in Myeong dong and go and watch a movie, but this idea hit a brick wall when it appeared that the entire population of Seoul had also decided to go to the cinema - most decent movies were fully booked! Still, we weren't exactly devestated and chose to go and get drunk instead, although it must be said that we were both culpable for unintentionally taking the scenic route to Sinchon...
I'd only been out in Sinchon once, on New Year's Eve, but Julia knew her way around, so after grabbing something to eat, we parked ourselves in a bar and shared a couple of pitchers. It was interesting to hear her stories as I was close to joining her at that particular academy, but alas I didn't, and the occasional vent aside, I'm pretty happy with the way things have turned out. Julia still has 7 or 8 months left on her contract, so I'm sure we'll meet up again soon for a big night out...
