You know I wrote this on April 6th but then never got around to posting it until now(Apr.14)...hmm.
Been awhile since my last entry...well I guess I've been a little busy. Although that doesn't include today. I spent most of today tidying up my messy apartment. I still haven't washed the floor, but I did buy a mop so I'm halfway there.
Last week was the end of the month, so I had a bunch of crap to grade. Mostly correcting writing, which is exhausting to say the least, cause most of the time I end up trying to guess what the student is trying to write about and write the whole thing for them. Well, MOST aren't that bad. The good news is that I mentioned I had too much (comparitively) writng to correct and they switched one of my writing classes to a listening class. A listening class is a whole lot easier to teach and there's no correcting. Maybe I should have spoken up sooner.
Nothing much has happened recently of note...same old same old I guess. I bought a cell phone on Saturday. Not that I really need it though, I've had a grand total of 4 calls this week...poor lonely me. :(
I met Soo down at Techno-mart where I bought the phone. It's incredibly small (the phone) and has a lot of really neat features. Or so I'm told, it's hard to know when the manual and display are in Korean. I can sound out the Korean characters, but of course, I have little idea what I'm reading or what it means unless it turns out to be an English word. I figured out that there are games on it this way. The Korean word for "Game" is "Game".
Anyways, after buying the phone we played some pool and then went to "The Best Chinese Restaurant in Seoul", Soo's opinion, but I can definitely say that it was good. After that we went out for beers. I think it's possible that we started on the beer a little too early cause he was ready to go home at 11:30. So, we walked to the subway station and he went home and I headed for Hongdae. The official score is no 2-0 for me. (inside joke)
In Hongdae, I ran into a girl I know, and hung out with her and her friends for awhile but then I came to realize that I was more than just a little bit tipsy so I figured it was time for home. I made it to Sinchon in time for the last bus to Ilsan (1:45am) and then proceeded to fall asleep (maybe pass out is a little more appropriate) on the bus. I woke up when the bus was pulling into the bus station to park for the night. The bus driver was hollering at me, and the 5 or so other people to get off the bus. So, I hopped off and started looking around, trying to figure out where I was. I couldn't see very well cause my contacts had dried out and I was still half asleep.
I looked around at the buildings in the distance and they looked sort of familiar, so I figured that I probably wasn't too far from home. I hoped I was in Ilsan but I couldn't be sure seeing as I didn't know exactly how long I had been asleep. It took me about 5 minutes of blinking to realize that I was standing right across the street from a Wal-Mart...my Wal-Mart. Turns out that I was only 2 blocks from my apartment...how's that for strange?
Sunday, I was supposed to meet a Korean girl in Seoul, to give me Korean lessons. I met her over the Internet at a language-exchange web site. She wants to practice her English writing, so I help her and she helps me. To meet her, it's about 45 minutes from my apartment, so I left myself an hour to spare. Lots of time...or so I thought. It turns out there was some kind of traffic jam in Ilsan and it took me 45 minutes to get to the subway station on the bus when I can walk there in about 30 minutes. Stupid, but I figured, "No problem, I've got a cellphone now, I'll just phone her and tell her that I'll be late." Well everytime I tried to phone her I got some message in Korean, saying who knows what. So by the time I got down to where I was supposed to meet her I was 40 minutes late! I looked around for the place where I was supposed to meet her but couldn't find the exact place, not that I really expected her to still be there.
Prior to this, it occured to me that she had possibly emailed her number to me wrong, or that I had written it down wrong. So I set off in search of a "PC Bang". However, by the time I found one and realized that I (moron that I am) had written it down wrong, it was already 75 minutes after we were supposed to meet. I did manage to get her on the phone though and she was still (sort of) in the area. She had given up on me, but wasn't too far away and still wanted to meet. It all turned out well in the end. She's incredibly nice. We spent about 3 hours and I think I learned a lot. Next time, we're going to meet in Sinchon cause I can take the bloody train there straight from my apartment. That way nothing short of a derailment will keep me from getting there in 45 minutes.
That's about it for today...later.
