Random vacations and Nagan tour

So last week, we had another random holiday. This time, it was Wednesday, the Korean election day for Provincial and Municipal elections.
So on Tuesday, I left right after school to go meet Jessie in Gwangju. She and a bunch of her co-JLPers were heading to Gwangju for the holiday, and I decided to meet them there. It was a good plan.
I met them at TGI Fridays, which was cool. It was a good mix of a gang, and the dinner was highly entertaining.
Providing a good deal of the entertainment was a guy named William who basically was the living embodiment of Steve's impression of a nerd. It was hilarious. I had been told about him, but the fact that he reminded me of an impression by Steve meant that I was laughing before he even started talking.
Basically, he was just totally clueless about everything. We were talking about dogs, and then the dog cafe. And then Jessie mentioned that there was a Collie there, and then he said "Oh, you have a collie?" Next thing we knew, there was this whole story about a collie, named Matthew, which William commented was very good with cows. So, that was great. You have to understand, this went on for about ten minutes. Mary, Vanessa (other JLPers), and I were crying from laughing so hard. He was so incredibly clueless, and he just kept taking it farther and farther, no matter how crazy Jessie's story got.
After dinner, we headed to the Speakeasy, and had some drinks. It was FUN! We played a few drinking games, and it was very fun. Oh, if my frosh could see me now...
As we were leaving the Speakeasy, I noticed that my fly was undone. I was embarassed, so I tried to do it up... and it was broken! Unfortunately that meant I was to be open to the breeze for the rest of the night. Luckily, I was plenty drunk.
We followed up the Speakeasy with some Norae Bang, which was also great fun. Unfortunately, Canadians are not nearly as eager to sing as Koreans. I can't let a song go unsung, so I wound up singing most of it, even though I would have rather listened to someone else kill "Eye of the Tiger". Oh well...
The next day, we met up for some late breakfast. I pushed pretty hard for Outback, but when we got there, there was a huge line so we wound up going to Starbucks and Burger King instead. That sucked, especially after an hour or so of Cheesy Fries fantasies.
It was a hot day, but after lunch I finally made it to a store for some new pants. You might be thinking "But Matthew, you must have flashed half of Gwangju!" Well, that had been my original plan, but one of the other vacationers, Phil, provided the brilliant idea of reversing my boxer shorts. Well, no more awkwardness, just showing off my undershorts. oh yeah! Sure, they didn't fit too comfortably, but these are the sacrifices we have to make in order to not wind up on the internet.
I picked up some new pants and shirts, which I now needed more than ever, because I had decided to stay another night with Jessie in Gwangju and travel back to Yeongam in the morning in time for my first Thursday class at nine. Ie, I needed some new work clothes. It was en expensive night.
We went to see "The DaVinci Code" at 11:30, which might have been a mistake, considering that I had to get up at 6 am. Oh well. It was not a great movie. Tom Hanks is not a good Robert Langdon, and much like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it seemed more like illustrations to the book than an actual story in itself. Too many significant things were left unexplained.
We got back around 1:30, and I got ready for bed right away. But, as usual, the nights where we both need to get to sleep are the nights where we seem to have the most to say, and we talked for a while.
Thursday, it was back to the grind of school. Not too much of a grind, I just played the same game that I had played on Monday and Tuesday with the girl's school with the boys, and it was great. It was preference bingo, and once again, it was great to hear the boys say "I like bitches more than I like forests." They just can't say beaches! It's hilarious!
On Saturday, we went back to Gwangju for the Nagan Folk village tour with the GIC. Well, the tour was less than exciting in itself. Most of the houses in the folk village were either gift shops or restaurants, and the only really interesting part of it was the wall. I mean, it was very pretty, because there were big lawns and gardens, but not really interesting. We tried to get pizza (one among us was just a little too tired of Korean food) but the pizza place was closed. By the time we found another restaurant, it was too late, and we had to cancel our order and leave for fear of missing the bus. We wound up having a delicious lunch of snickers bars and apple juice. Jessie was adventurous and bought one of the burgers on the counter. We see kids eating them all of them time, and they always seemed alright. I refuse to buy meat that sits for two days on the counter (we checked the expiry date and "made on" date) but Jessie was game. On the bus she opened it up for a closer look, and the lettuce was covered with black mold. Seriously, this stuff gets sold to kids. No wonder these kids never get sick! They've been exposed to every possible disease already!
The afternoon was a little better, we went on a bike ride along a river, and it was quite nice. We went wading a bit, and it was nice on such a hot day. Of course, the other option for the afternoon was paintball, but I was not quite feeling up to the welts.
Anyways, it was a good day, we met a bunch of really cool people. It's getting me even more excited now for next year in Gwangju. It seems like so many people that live there are cool, and I'm looking forward to the chance to finally get out with them!
Monday was another random holiday. This time it was "Sandwich Day", which got me more excited than it should have. It is called that because it is sandwiched between the weekend and Memorial Day, so why bother going to work? I mean, you'll barely be out of weekend mode, and they'll give you another holiday. So, four day weekend. Jessie, unfortunately, had to work. So I made myself useful wasting time on the internet and cooking. We were supposed to go visit Sarah and Rodrigo, and spend the night, but when it got really hot, we decided to invite them over instead, since we have an air conditioner. They said yes, but cancelled after a bit because Sarah was not feeling well. Kind of sucked, but more time doing nothing turned out to be just what I needed. Jessie too.
Yesterday was the actual holiday, and we were awoken at the crack of ten by air raid sirens. We got up, and literally killed a day. I cleaned my office-room and organized my teaching materials, but other than that, I didn't do too much. I tried to set the ball in motion on a few job applications for Gwangju, but unfortunately, most jobs are not advertised for until only a month or so before the start date. So most jobs I applied for start much too early, so I explained that I was unavailable, but should they be looking in the fall... I'll be around.
Well, this has gone horribly long, so I'll write more later. On a different topic.