Laura's here!!!! Plus I got to see Glen Hansard!!!!

So the weekend rolled about again, after a rather boring week and Teacher's Day, which also incorporated 'Market Day!'. Market Day is a brilliant lesson in capitalism for any Korean child. Basically, we reward good behaviour with stamps, which are then turned into dollars and when Market Day comes around they are 'spent' on such things as sweets, stationary and Korean food, therefore stamps are brilliant bribery during lessons. All day I had about a million kids running round and tiring me out, playing games and generally being, well kids. But kids with cash. I loved it really, I'll admit, but I was so tired out that, like a good girl, Friday night was spent sitting in the house and doing my Korean homework. I'm such a party animal. Teacher's Day made for some nice things though, I got some soothing eye gel (what are you trying to say about my wrinkles?), socks, flowers, chocolates, models in plasticine, stickers and a load of cards from children telling me that they loved me and to 'thank you for you'. So sweet.


Saturday morning I headed off into Seoul to meet up with Woodhouse, who was pretty streetwise for a bird who'd only been in Korea three days. She put me to shame straight away by telling me she already knew how to count up to 500won. I'm so bad with numbers! We had a bit of a wander and went for some food and a catch up before meeting up with Faye and attempting to go to to the Seoul National Theatre, where Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (of Frames and Once fame) were playing. True to form, the plan didn't turn out as we'd hoped, seeing as we were in the wrong place and what I'd thought was the National Theatre was actually the National Engineering museum! Luckily enough Seoul Ben and his Korean ladyfriend were just a phone call away and after some trouble with taxis we were taken the, oooh 5 minutes down the road to the venue, which, is very posh indeed. Once there we had to leave Sharon, Veronica and Elaine's tickets outside, as they were late and settled into a brilliant warm up, who was most amusing, as well as talented. After that came the main attraction, music that was like a warm breeze floating over our souls. M and G are bloody amazing, their lyrics are beyond gorgeous and their voices the same. Glen even sang an entire song, to us all, without a mic. Now that's some power. Shame that Marketa has no stage presence at all. For someone so talented (and she is, amazingly so, we weren't expecting such a lady.) she turned up in a blue hoody and red trainers, shuffled on to the stage and barely spoke a word to the audience. Glen wasn't doing much better, I'll be honest. I understand that it must be intimidating to get up and sing, especially in front of a lot of foreigners that may not speak good English, but there was nothing there. Saying that though, they didn't really need so much personality, the singing betrayed a lot more than talking could, but it'd be nice to know what they were thinking.


After the gig we all caught a cab to the Wolfhound in Itaewon, where we were joined by Houley, Jamie - Sharon and Veronica's rather dashing friend, Frank, Ben (Seoul), Jon, Ben (Tambo), Mike, Amy, Patrick and Ruby and a few pints later we lost the Canadian contingent and went off to Hongdae and met with Anda and Rob, who was leaving on the Monday - boo! Come back Rob, we miss you!!!! Most of the remainder of the night is a blur, however, there was dancing, drinking, a cool live music place, with some awesome tunage, Go Go's and a beardy man. Fun times all round then! Most people lost something, generally a purse, a phone or their memories and I ended up sharing a taxi with Ben and Jon to stay at Ben's, in a far, far away place. On leaving the taxi Ben's glasses came off and the rather silly boy was far, far too drunk to realise this, so being thrown on to the 'people who lost something' pile Ben watched as his glasses were driven off by a Korean taxi man, making no effort to catch them at all. Rather silly, that. Luckily Ben and I share pretty much the same prescription, so I left him the next morning with my spare pair of specs and the efficient folk that are the Koreans enabled him to acquire a new pair by the Monday night. I ended up blind on the trip home, but oh well, it was an adventure!


Laura was shipped to mine on the Tuesday, leaving Ben (S) to catch his breath and prepare for the last leg of the girls trip. I met Laura at Suwon station and we headed for some lovely galbi and a few drinks in Lao bar (I had to show her what the best bar in SKwas like) before meeting with Ruby and heading to play some baseball at the arcade and hitting a sheesha bar, which was an awesome place to go.

The next day my lovely friend was able to join me at school for the day after having a wander round YoungTong whilst I had my Korean lesson. I managed to score 20/22 in my test by the way - ASSAH!!! I'll be a fluent Korean speaker yet! I had been talking to my kids about Laura for the past couple of weeks, such had my excitement been - so much so that John was continuously complaining that his ears hurt. From the minute the kids came in Laura was like a divine entity to them and they watched her every move and whispered questions to me whenever she left the classroom. One even asked Heidi teacher 'why has Penny teacher's face changed today?' Which was rather cute. Luckily, Laura didn't mind being stared at and told she was beautiful (even by John, who's ears seemed to have recovered) and it was with a heavy heart on all fronts that 8pm came around so quickly. I'm still being asked where 'Laura, Penny teacher's friend' is now, and it's a week later. Wednesday eve, we headed on over to the YoungTong shell restaurant, which is situated on the edge of town, in a tent. We ordered a massive pan of shells, which were bloody amazing and Laura is still maintains that that was the best meal she's ever had. Why thanks, Woodhouse! Afterwards we went off to Now bar (via Pavox and GartenBier), so that Laura could see the venue for our midweek carnage, so we had a few cocktails, met Mrs C and some others, but as Laura was getting ill and Amy was pretty tired we knocked it on the head quite early. Thursday was a quiet one, including a dvd bang and some wine and chatting, plus Laura kneeling on Henry (he was ok, luckily!), but that was fine by the both of us, as we had a weekend in Busan to look forward to!!!!!!! I shall do the whole Busan thing in the next post, as I don't want some people to pass out halfway through reading such an essay as both this and that combined, hey, Dean?