On Thursday night everyone from the academy went out for supper to say goodbye to one of the teachers who's leaving to have a baby. We went to one of the restaurants we had gone to the first week we were here. We had a good meal and tried a few new things. Afterwards a few of the teachers and the directors wife went to a "norae bang". It's basically a bunch of private rooms with big screen TV's, karaoke machines, and a couple of microphones. I thought i would need way more soju to get into it, but after a butchering a few songs i loosened up. C started me off by forcing me to sing a version of Ricky Martin's "She Bangs" that would put William Hung to shame. After a few more C and i ended up doing a little duet to Aqua's "Barbie Girl". Even though the secretary speaks almost zero English, her and the other teachers would laugh hysterically every time i said, "Come on Barbie let's go party." They said that had to be our song. I ended up with the last song of the night. The big finish was a rousing personal rendition of Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline". I even added some "Bump, Bump, Baaa's" in the chorus that everyone seemed to love (laugh at). It was a really fun night that i actually look forward to doing again some time.

Not much happened this weekend. C's been pretty down lately, especially today. My sister called in the middle of the day, which seemed to lift her spirits quite a bit. We went for a walk downtown and after buying some blankets stopped in at Baskin Robbins for a treat. As we sat in the window right on the corner feeling like animals in the zoo, some old crazy looking guy banged on the window trying to get our attention. When he finally got mine he shouted something at me through the glass and made some motion with his hand towards the sky. I pretended like i understood and he left. To me, it looked like he was telling us to get the hell out of the country or something. Ignorance really is bliss. Because of my extremely limited understanding of the language i don't know when someone's telling me to fuck off. From what i've read on other blogs there are a lot of Koreans who don't like foreigners and aren't afraid to tell them. My limited knowledge limits those bad experiences. I don't plan on learning much more than i need to get by.
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