The New Teacher Is Here

On Saturday night, the new teacher -- a Canadian girl named Jessica -- got into town. But let me tell you about the beginning of the weekend before I get to that.

On Thursday night, I was just sitting around my apartment when Vicky called around midnight to tell me that she was with Gemma and Kitty at InHa. So I got into a cab and went over to meet up with them.

We were drinking some alcohol that is made out of rice. It's called Makoli. It was kind of milky, but tasted pretty good, and it certainly did its job well. It was really fun to hang out with those three. It's something I haven't done much since I've been here, but worth the late night.

Friday was supposed to be my first day of private lessons with four college students at InHa University. Two of them couldn't come, however, so it ended up just being lunch with the guy, June, and one of the girls, Jess. I met Jess and Cassie before when they came out with Chris and me.

I will see them every Friday morning, when our studying basically will just consist of conversation. They all speak English well already, but they are trying to improve.

After that, I headed into work, where I was the life of the party because I package arrived from mom and dad that had some candy and other treats in it. Friday ended up being a pretty good day at work.

On Friday night, we were going to head into Guworldong, the location of The Square, to have a few drinks. Unfortunately, the guys in Yeonsudong were dragging their feet. It got to bed midnight and we hadn't left yet. Since I was supposed to meet Vicky early Saturday, I just headed home.

When Vicky found out I didn't do anything, she offered to go out with me. First I headed over to InHa, but neither of us wanted to order the anju with our drinks. Instead, we just got beer and went back to my place, where we drank and listened to music for a few hours.

Since we were up so late, we moved our meeting time to 2 p.m. on Saturday. I had never been to Insadong, a traditional Korean neighborhood in Seoul, so she offered to come along and show me around.

It was kind of a miserable day weather-wise, because it was raining. But Insadong was a cool place. It's clearly a tourist hotspot, because there are thousands of vendors selling little souvenir-type items.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera. Sorry everyone!

We were going to look for Halloween costumes in Seoul when Stacy called to tell me that Jessica made it in. She wanted me to go back and have dinner with them. So Vicky and I hopped on the Subway and went back in to meet them. They were just finishing dinner, but Stacy wanted to take Jessica out.

So the four of us, along with Stacy's boyfriend, went over to InHa to get a few drinks. It was a really good time. Of course, the Korean guy wanted to make drinking into a competition. But don't worry, America. Your faithful son prevailed again.

On Sunday, the westerners over in Yeonsudong wanted to play American football. It was a good chance to get Jessica on the bus and introduce her to the crew.

Dan, Tim and I were playing against Jeremy, Colin and Scott. It was another classic USA-Canada grudge match. You already know who the winner was. America stomped Canada by a score of 8-4. I had six of our touchdowns and threw for one as well.

I got pretty scraped up diving for balls, so I'm really sore today. But beating Canada is worth a few raspberries.

This week will be a lot of work at school. We have something called "Market Day" on Friday, where the kids use the Jungchul dollars they've earned to buy items or something. I'm not entirely sure about the concept, but I know there are no classes. That means my schedule is crunched and I'll have six classes every day.

It'll all be worth it come Friday night, because it's Halloween!!! I'll definitely remember my camera for wherever we go.

Take care!!!