The Party's Over...

I know, I'm still on the slacking train. I gotta turn it up a notch. I've already lost half of my home country viewers (what's that, like 2 or 3?) and I'm pretty sure no one in Korea gives a crap about me anyway. Well, a terrible tragedy has befallen the peninsula this weekend and, to be quite frank, I'm having a tough time dealing with it. You see, both South Korea and the U.S. lost their respective World Cup matches and are now out of the tournament. World Cup Fever is over.

The positive to this is that I can withdraw from alcohol and catch up on sleep. I'm exaggerating, of course, but the World Cup games did seriously mess with my sleep schedule. Having a couple of 3:30 AM games do not bode well for the frail body of mine. It's gone from soccer fanatic season to summer camp planning season (going on simultaneously with Korea's wet season, apparently). In the U.S., summer camp implies that the kids and I will go out to the woods and stay in a cabin and learn arts and crafts and play ultimate frisbee and four square. I was hoping before I came here that summer camp would resemble something akin to "Salute Your Shorts." I would love to be Counselor "Ug" Lee, getting mixed up in all sorts of Korean kids' shenanigans and misadventures through the wilderness. That, unfortunately, is not what summer camp means in Korea. Here, it means an intensive and special class schedule. I teach three 2 hour classes a day for three days. Then next week I have five days of that and the following week another three days. But then, it's vacation time.

When I first learned of the general situation for the summer camp, it seemed like I had free reign over my portion of the classes. That would have been nice, however we had a meeting today wherein three co-teachers spoke in rapid Korean and I just sat there spacing out for an hour with an iced coffee. In the meeting, they decided that it would be the best option for me to play the guitar for the kids. That's cool with me. I have to come up with an 80 minute lesson built around a single song though. That's gonn be haarrrdd. Hmm, I suppose that's what the internet is for?
So, this weekend I went to Busan. Busan's a fun (but expensive) city full of all sorts of things to see and do...if it's not raining. Remember how I mentioned wet season about three eons ago? Well, it got off to a roaring start this weekend. That's ok. We spent most of our time indoors anyway (either watching two World Cup games or waiting for our food for a god awful long time on Sunday).

For the Korea vs. Uruguay game, we ended up at a bar. This bar was special for three reasons. First was a positive. It was situated on the 14th floor with a bitchin' overview of Haeundae Beach. Second was the least exciting. The place was expensive for food. Spending $14 on a plate that still leaves you hungry is not what I call quality. The third was the one that I will always remember this bar by. It had probably the worst DJ that I've ever encountered. I'm not even going to mention the choice of music. What I will mention is his insistence on hitting the reggaeton horn for everything. In the middle of songs, fine. I can live with that. But during the World Cup game, when everyone is silent and the game volume is up, suddenly in comes the blaring reggaeton horn. Whenever Korea had forward motion of any sort *reggaeton horn*! Just imagine if *reggaeton horn* that guy interrupted *reggaeton horn* everything anyone ever tried *reggaeton horn* to do. "Hey, honey, I'm going to the grocery store, *reggaeton horn* I'll be back in an hour! *Reggaeton horn reggaeton horn reggae-reggae-reggaeton hornnnnnnnnnnnnn*

Anyway, we made it halfway through the U.S. vs. Ghana game before we all konked out. Sunday, we decided on an all-Amurrican brunch. Oh, what a bad choice that was. If only they had gotten our order right, if only they had gotten it to us in under an hour and a half, if only they had been apologetic, if only they had been actually busy, and if only we had been the only ones' whose order they messed up. Well, after all was said and done, we still had enough time to take a taxi across town (geez, Busan is a big town) to the Jagalchi Fish Market (world famous Korea!) for a look-see around. All I can really say is that it's still there from last time I went. It kind of freaks you out when you see just how much they take from the sea on a daily basis. I saw a pretty large octopus escape from its bowl and slither across the pavement for a few feet until the lady caught it and put it back. It took us only a couple more hours until we deteriorated into pathetic vagrants and took the train back home.