You Know It's Been A Good Weekend When...

... there is a straw cowboy hat in your apartment but you aren't entirely sure how it got there. I mean obviously either Martha or I brought it back from the bar, but I really don't understand how we ended up with it. I do remember seeing a guy selling them at one point early on in the evening, but we didn't buy it. Curious.

I stayed in on Friday, sort of to spend some quality time with my computer. Mock me all you like, but I've missed both the internet and being able to watch TV. I had a slightly stressful week (which I've now realised was undoubtably affected by some hardcore PMS - I don't get bitchy, I get weepy). When I went to have my physical in order to be granted an alien card, I failed one of the tests. Well, to be honest, I appear to have failed several - the hearing and eye test did not go well. I sort of suspected they'd figure out the anemia thing, but I didn't think it would be a big deal.

If you've read anything about my trip to Japan, I'm sure you can guess that I'd be really, really wrong to have thought this was going to go smoothly. Now that most of it is over and I know that some of the emotional reaction was PMS-inspired, I have realised that what likely happened was that the doctor basically looked up the list of side effects/serious problems that can come from my sort of pernicious anemia and ran through them with me. However, due to either a communication issue or simply a different style of medicine, this list was presented to me as things my blood test had indicated might be happening. Now, I should have realised that you can't be experiencing heart failure and feel just peachy, but it shook me up more than a bit to hear all of this and then I had to spend an entire week having follow up tests and hence was exhausted - nothing like a day that starts at 9 a.m. with medical tests and ends at 9 p.m. after hours of teaching children.

So, I sort of needed the escapism that comes from TV rather than reading Obama's latest book, which while good, isn't so light (what the fuck is a bicameral Senate? He says it in his book and I can't figure out what it might mean about the Senate, nor can anyone seem to tell me.) Martha finally got herself a proper, fully operational cell phone, so I joined her in Itaewon for coffee/beer at RMT to feel that something Canadian had been done to celebrate Thanksgiving (I WANT TURKEY, DAMMIT!), and then we ended up in Bungalow and Soho, with lots of random people along for various parts of the ride. One of my ex-coworkers even joined in, but she had some sort of whitening powder on her face and it glowed in Soho. More amusingly Martha told her we were going to a gay bar and asked if that was ok with her, but after we arrived and she had a look around, she leaned over to me and said, "Amanda, I don't think I know what gay means." Hahaha.

Today we met Jenn and her friend from New York in The Waffle Factory for breakfast and I though Martha was going to kill me long before we got there. At around 10.30, the excoworker had been calling me for about an hour straight and I had been refusing to get out of bed to find my phone and answer it, but we had given up all hope of sleeping. Martha started me on a countdown to waffles then, but I wasn't feeling at all well, which I attributed to a hangover until I realised that the problem was actually really bad cramps. However, I was overtired and slug-like, so with five minutes left until we were supposed to be at the place, I was still in bed, not at all ready and I decided I had to check my Facebook. I'm not sure how she managed to restrain herself from dismembering me at that point.

Then we got to the place and were told it would take 50 minutes to serve us. And that we couldn't skip the sausage and get extra bacon as we always do - not sure why this was today nor why the so-called sausage is really hotdogs. Some things in Korea are puzzling. Anyway, the food was indeed good and we bumped into Liz and Lizzie. Liz bought a scooter and I said I wanted a ride. Lizzie accussed her girlfriend playfully of giving rides to all the girls and is now refusing to let anyone use her cute pink helmet. Then Steven showed up and we ate with him too.

Since it was a beautiful, sunny fall day, Martha and I did the logical thing and decided to appreciate the great outdoors... from the inside. We went back to my place and had a nap, though the sun does stream in the room in a pleasant manner, which we undoubtably would have appreciated if we had been awake. Thankfully Alex called, or we would have napped right through Jenn's birthday dinner, which was all the way up in Hwajung. The galbi was great, though I had to tell my ex-boss that Orin pulled a runner this weekend and would not be into work tomorrow. I am always stuck doing this, as when Linda left it was me who finally broke and said to Brian at lunch that she was not sick or anything, she wasn't come back. I can't believe he didn't see it coming.

The galbi-lady bought Jenn a cake and a birthday hat, which I thought was incredibly sweet. We then went to our usual noraebang. When I bought water from the old dude there, he looked me straight in the eye and said, "Today, no soju?" Hahahaha. You generally aren't supposed to bring booze into noraebang, but he for sure doesn't care that we do because by the time I had my leaving party there, I was in the habit of walking around with my open soju bottle, drinking wherever and whenever. In fact, we watched the Olympics Opening Ceremony together while I drank my soju and fed him shots of it. However, it being Sunday, we sang sober and I think it is a sure sign that you've been in Korea awhile when you are just as happy to sing sober as you are drunk. Martha is a laugh to noraebang with.

The bus home was fairly convienient, as I only had a $3 cab fare from where it dropped us off. It was the second time I had ever taken a bus out of Hwajung and it occurs to me that perhaps it might have been helpful. Haha. My lack of knowledge or curiousity about the neighbourhood was legendary.

I suppose I should go to bed. Perhaps.