"Yo Ho Yo Ho, a Pirate's Life For Me"

Work was pretty much uneventful. I worked on some lesson plans, or at least what I could. According to Kimberly I don't start teaching until June 22nd. I will only be teaching 2nd and 3rd grade (8th-9th). Basically I'm going to only do 3 lessons though for both grades - one a week until they have final exams and then vacation in July. I've made a lesson about who I am, and another about American Independence Day. My 3rd will probably be about Summer. It kind of is pointless to teach out of the book yet since they are winding down. I've already put together some introductory material for the next semester which starts late August. It also turns out that we have 'test' days. According to Jordan we don't even teach on those days and sometimes we don't even teach the week of test days because the teachers want to get all the standardized info in the kids heads and not our Western mumbo-jumbo.

Last night Jordan and I met for dinner in a place that is attached to my building. It serves hot porridge. The varieties that were offered were mostly seafood based; octopus, squid, oyster, tuna, etc. I chose chicken. It wasn't the greatest stuff - mainly a bland rice stew with little chicken chunks, some vegetables, a prune, some sort of root, and ground seaweed. It filled me up - that's all I needed anyways.

Afterward we met up with Ivan and his girlfriend Emily and a guy named Chuck. (Emily is Korean and an English teacher, also a really fun girl. Chuck is a hagwon teacher originally from Las Vegas.) We met at Pirate Bar (I think it's really called The Ice Pirate Bar - but no one refers to it that way). It used to be the big hangout for foreigners, but since a ownership change it isn't as popular anymore.

We got a couple pitchers of flavored soju cocktails. Soju is a rice based vodka. Everything was similar to Smirnoff Ice, so I was happy. My favorite was a yogurt one which I highly recommend. We also had some cheap Korean beer that comes in a mug made of ice. You can take the ice mug and throw it at a target and if you hit the center, the machine does the whole "no whammy, no whammy, no whammy - stop!" thing with lights and sound. Whatever picture it winds up at you win. Prizes range from orange juice, free beer, or a bottle of whiskey.

I took a picture of the target.

Afterward, we took a couple taxi's to another bar that is co-owned by a foreigner people know. I forget the name of the town, but its not far away, it supposedly has a large foreign population as well. We met up with some more people - Nick from Nebraska (he's fun), and Steve who I met my 2nd day in Korea. We drank some more and chatted it up.

Ivan and I were pretty tired and decided just to head back to Sanbon while the other guys went to a place called MC Bar. I was exhausted, and had spent too much money (I'm supposed to get my arrival settlement on Monday or Tuesday of 300,000 won).

Today a bunch of us might go to Sinchon in Seoul - about an hour away on the subway. We're going to try and watch a rerun of the Stanley Cup Finals, and maybe hit up Hongje (party central of Seoul) on the way home. I'll let you know how it goes.