Birthday Weekend

Another week has come and gone without a single post. Oops. So much for trying to do it more often.

The truth is that everyone around the entire country seems to be extra busy these days. The regular schools (elementary, middle, and high) have summer break from July 23-August 24 so those of us at academies are left to pick up the slack. Every academy runs summer 'intensive' courses, sometimes instead of regular classes and sometimes in addition to regular classes. Of course, ours in additional rather than substitute. I am travelling to another branch of our school (about 30 mins by bus) for 2 classes, 3 days a week, which adds an extra 4 hours onto my day. Kelly is busy with some other stuff that she can explain, but neither of us have it as bad as Leah who is at our school from 9am-9:30pm 5 days/week.

We all brushed aside our fatigue and rocked Seoul pretty hard this weekend. Friday night Kelly and I went to Outback Steakhouse - who give away a pair of complementary steak knives for birthdays - and came back here to meet people. Jennifer, Jeremy, Leah, Andy, Mark, and Jessica came over for a night of chilling with beer, wine, and soju. Jessica is Leah's cousin and Mark is her boyfriend. They are replacing Mark and Julia, who went back to Ontario this week after 11 months of running amok. Sad to see them go, just as North America must've been sad to see Mark and Jessica come our way. You gotta give up something to get something, as Bryan Colangelo has taught us all.

Saturday was the real fun however. Jay Huth, a friend from Laurier who lives down south of Seoul, Jennifer and myself all celebrated birthdays in the weekend so we had a three-way party. It started with 2 hours of all-you-can-eat-and-drink buffet in a university district called Hongdae. Most of the people you've heard about were there, including Seoul's freshest couple Justin Page and Erin Brownlee from Orillia. It felt like we had just seen them last week.

After the buffet we hit Rocky Mountain Tavern, a 3-store chain of Canadian bars. The pictures that Kelly will post tell most of the story about that stop, but let it be said that I was outperforming Michael Jackson at his own game. They also did an awesome birthday shot routine that ended with a bartender lighting his fingers on fire and spitting alcohol across them resulting in the bar catching on fire. The drinks were also delicious.

After too many drinks for everybody involved we hit up a luxury noraebong for some karaoke. The details are a little hazy, but everyone seemed to have a good time and I have yet another palm bruise from my overzealous tambourine playing. We cabbed it back after that, Justin and Erin slept at our place after some McDonald's.

Now for the best part of the weekend....my gift (I'm a narcissistic bastard). It started off great, with a Buckaroo t-shirt (my favourite Korean brand, hilarious to see people walking around with a giant BUCKAROO across their back like a baseball jersey), a little coffee table book about the history of the Raptors, and an Adventure Korea trip to go rafting. It got exponentially cooler when I followed the book's directions to look under the bed. I pulled out a blown up picture of the 8 guys who gained fame (in apt. 305 where Laird and I lived at least) for spelling Bargnani across our shirts (if you don't know about that, we don't talk enough). I was happy with that, enjoying the view for a while before I realized that IT IS SIGNED BY BARGNANI HIMSELF!! Definitely A1 gift giving on Kelly's part. I don't know how she does it, I just hope it doesn't stop.

We're going on a little 4-day vacation Thursday-Sunday this week, but I hope to post 1 more time before that. I'd like to give a little insight into Korean life, maybe starting with their insane driving.