We are blowing Yeongam's collective minds.

So, we have had a lot of guests in the last few days.
Steve and Crystal came on Friday, for a relaxing weekend of small town hospitality. We spent Friday night just venting (as per usual), and I made a home-cooked meal of garlic mashed potatoes, carrots and broccoli, and of course, chicken-ham. It was pretty standard for us for dinner (except for TWO vegetable sides), but Steve and Crystal were really happy to have some home-cooked food. They eat out a lot (a result of options, mostly) and they have a really tiny kitchenette in their apartment, so that kind of a meal isn't really an option for them. We had a pretty chilled out night, and then we took a walk around the city. The weirdest thing was that we walked the track and saw the usual dozen or so people walking laps. It's this thing I've noticed a few times on walks, just people walking around the track. Doing laps, over and over. I guess the town doesn't have the excitement when you've explored it all of your life before.
When we got back, we watched "Wet Hot American Summer", which was a hit with all assembled.
On Saturday, we had a big breakfast, and we headed out for a hike. It was pretty non-hikey, it was more long-walky. We walked around the rice fields behind our apartment building, and then tried to head up the mountain, but we took a wrong turn, so we wound up running out of path, and heading back early. We took them to the market, just to contrast it against their big-city market. It was just lucky that they happened to be here on a market day.
We headed to Gwangju, got some coffees at Starbucks, had some great Italian dinner, and headed to the Speakeasy for drinks. We ran into some hagwon teachers that Jessie and I had met on our GIC tour (remember the winery and nude spa?), and they will be teaching in Yeongam on Thursdays this semester! Craziness! We went from three foreigners to seven in the blink of an eye (of course, back down to five as soon as Steve and Crystal leave, but still, it is big). Anyways, we came back early, and wound up drinking into the night over a game of poker. Then, we listened to some music.
On Sunday, we woke up early, had some breakfast, and got them out in time to get their 1 pm truck. The rest of the day was spent resting our queasy (hungover) stomachs and resting after a weekend of hosting.
On Monday, Shona, Rodrigo and Sarah came over for dinner. They arrived around 2, and we showed them around town, and brought them home. I made a mom-style stirfry, which turned out well, in spite of flour-thickening fears. We had a good time, and watched "Wet Hot American Summer" again. Afterwards, we were starting to worry about the bus, since the last bus from Mokpo to Yeongam leaves at 9:20, so maybe it went back, but we wanted to be sure, and it was getting on 8:30, so I figured we should just go straight away to be safe. Jessie thought we should ask the Ryus, in case maybe the buses ran later, and then we could hang out later. I thought it was better to be safe, but Jessie went over anyways.
It turned out that we were both wrong. The last bus left at 8:00 for Mokpo, so they were spending the night!
That was when the real drinking began. We went through five bottles of wine, and a considerable amount of scotch. Whee! We played some poker, some asshole, and Jessie and Rodrigo (the latest convert) played Kingdom of Loathing. Then we worked out the sleeping arrangements, luckily the mattress was still out from when Steve and Crystal were over.
Breakfast was french toast and juices, purchased on an early morning run, made AFTER Rodrigo came back from an early morning coffee run. How he found the grocery store by himself, I don't know, but apparently my mention the previous night of "It's straight out and to the left" was enough for him to find it. Jessie can't believe it either. It's really strange.
So, that was three foreigners to ten in the span of five days.
And the local kids will probably still call everyone "Matthew".