Jenn has gone. Aside from the first week I was at this school and she was on vacation, I've taught with Jenn. It's odd that she's gone. Two more teachers leave next Friday - I must say, it sucks to be the last to go.
In honour of her leaving, we've slowly hit up all our favourite lunchtime and nighttime restaurants. We've done silly shopping. And we've done some drinking.
It started with the St. Paddy's-themed Fourth of July party. St. Patrick's Day is Jenn's favourite holiday and a friend sent her a package that was missent to the British Virgin Islands (I wish someone would missend me there!), so it just arrived. We went off to Costco to purchase some tequila, as part of the package was a margarita mix.
Jenn has been in charge of events planning in my life, alongside Brian. I can only move myself to plan week-long holidays, apparently, and even then it is all shockingly last minute. However, she didn't quite think last week's plans through - having a tequila party that lasts until 4 a.m. is unwise the night before you go flying for the first time.
The party was hysterical. First of all, the package had many exciting things. There were glowsticks, which Orin cut open, flinging the glowy liquid all over my apartment. We also had my glowing swords, purchased after the soccer game a few weeks ago. And we had my new camera, with the super cool night vision setting. There were a lot of experimental photos, some with fun Kung Fu Panda moves. The glowsticks also came in handy at the very end of the night, when Alicia and I used them to play ring toss with Brian's ear, after he had passed out on the couch. I figured I was ending up with a guest, to be honest, as he didn't look like he was going to be standing up again by the end of that night. My bottle of gin died in aid of his night.
I also did something very, very bad to my foot. Apparently drunken Highland Fling dancing to Great Big Sea at 3 a.m. might just be debilitating. Who knew? I seem to recall some patriotic song singing from the American contingent as well.
Jenn once again made my apartment crazy. After the Christmas party where she spilled most of her drinks and stickified my floor and hung my Christmas lights in such a way that I couldn't get into any of my closets or use my TV, she obviously decided I needed a repeat. This time it was green crepe paper, which at least is easier to rip off in a drunken haze when I need to get at my clothes.
The last two nights have been very social, I guess is the word. Wednesday night Jenn and I gossiped over a bottle of wine, or three. In fact, at 1.30 in the morning, we headed off to 7-11 to grab that third bottle and just generally spend won in pursuit of Hello Kitty magnets (poor Jenn left with only one of the 45 left to collect!) We got to watch shoplifting in progress: as we walked towards the store a man ran out doing a drunken little dance and then took off at speed. A minute later, the 7-11 man appeared outside, his Korean man-perm blowing in the breeze, as he looked around to find the drunk. I pointed and yelled, "Chogi" and the man hollered, "Wait a minute!" (in Korean, I have no idea how I'd spell that in English.) Thus, Jenn and I were put in charge of holding down the fort, albeit briefly, at 7-11. It is impressive that we didn't rob him of all the Hello Kitty, considering that we were only nominally less drunk than the shoplifter.
I can not pretend that Thursday was a fun day. I rolled out of bed at 8.55, powered myself over to work having simply brushed my teeth, combed my hair and thrown on some clothes. It was the lack of sleep more than anything that had me hurting, but after today I can say with authority that the lack of sleep isn't as bad when I am not as hungover as fuck. In fact, I am the only person not suffering today, and I had less sleep than most.
Thank god Thursday was the easiest teaching day I've had in awhile. Two classes of first grade phonics, a second grade science class... And I was basically done for the day. Ms. Smith taught my other science calss in order to throw a pizza party with the second graders combined, so I got to just sit around and eat some pizza - great hangover food. After that, I had two Help Classes - basically, I focus the kids while they complete their homework and answer any questions they have. They don't often have very many questions, so it's a chance for me to do marking, report cards, whatever needs doing.
7.25 rolled around and Facebook Event Freedom began - basically, we popped out some champagne to celebrate. Jenn finishing 2 years, 2 contracts, is a big deal at our school. She's seen something like 18 people go in her time here and only 3 of them completed contracts (I'm not sure I've got those numbers exactly right, but you get the picture.) We motored back to my place, did some exchanging of stuff - though Brian still has my toaster oven! - and got ready for the last dinner at our galbi place.
Dinner was on David - also rather uncommon at our school. We ate, everyone but me drank, and then we headed to norae bang. I did have a bit of the always lovely Lemon Remix soju, because I'm not much of a singer without being a little bit blurred around the edges. It was fun, as always. I don't know why we haven't gone every week. We even got the bubble machine to work, though it only sporadically emits bubbles and smoke. After about 2 hours of singing, we wandered out to Rodeo, to be distracted on our way home. First we rode some of those coin-operated kiddie rides and then we stopped to pet some adorable puppies. Now, who in their right mind sells, or buys, puppies on the street at 2 a.m. on a Friday morning, I don't know, but that's what was going on. We tried to talk Brian into buying one and had to talk Orin out of it.
There was the obligatory stop by the 7-11 and some hardcore Hello Kitty hopes were dashed. I have two left, Jenn has one. There are only two weeks remaining and I might not be in the country for one of them... Oh, the mental anguish! Orin wandered away from us then and ended up at the Casino. Oh, to return to the glorious days of a 1-9 teaching schedule! Turns out Ascius had already been sucked into the Casino abyss when he left the restaurant - apparently he's not as into out-out-tune drunken singing - actually there was an awful lot of drunken screaming involved, as I recollect.
I, however, went home and was all domestic - I had to do laundry. I need clean clothes for the weekend's trip to Mudfest and thus, they need to dry. Since wandering around Korea at this time of year feels like walking through mist the humidity is so high, that is taking a fair amount of time these days. And that's how I found myself uploading photos at 3 a.m. while waiting for the damn laundry to finish washing so I could hang it up and get some sleep.
Sleep is a precious commodity lately. I've stayed up far too late this week, watching the last couple of episodes of the most recent season of Desperate Housewives and starting the newest L Word episodes.
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