Things as of late...

You know, when I first started this blog, everything was so new and finding new topics of things to write about was easy. I just wrote about the stuff that happened in my daily life, tried to throw a humorous spin on it, and there ya go. Instant blog update. I am now 5.5 months in to the adventure in the orient, and things are really starting to run together. I can only write so many blog posts about drinking too much with my friends on a Friday night. Mostly now it is a little sprig of an idea that works great as a status update, but isn’t strong enough to support its weight as a blog entry. So for those of you who have been reading my blogs and asking me to write a new one, I apologize for the delay, and sparseness of my blogs. As Ricky says to his father in American Beauty, “Thanks for not giving up on me”.
So I just got a flip hd camera a few weeks back off of ebay. I have been uploading the videos to youtube, and will be sharing them on facebook and on here. They should give you a bit of a view in to the day to day of my life, as well as a glimpse of the cast of characters that make up my daily life. So far I have about 10 videos or so up…so feel free to check em out at http://www.youtube.com/narconis

There has been a lot of drama lately in Jeonju. Even though we are all adults, and we try to get along as best we can…there are so few of us that it can’t help but feel like Jeonju is a small high school some times. We all drink way too much, stay out way too late, and gossip travels as fast as phone calls are made. Just an example of the drama/gossip, in the last two months we’ve had: 1 girl removde herself from the group because she was called out for lying, a few big fights, an unwanted pregnancy, and 1 professed unrequited love. I swear we could write a season of Degrassi based just on our lives out here.

I bought a rice cooker. There aren’t many restaurants near my apartment…okay, scratch that…there are tons, but I don’t feel like walking more than ¼ mile in this humidity. I love it. I spent 50,000won on it and it is supposed to have all these cool functions and settings on it, but since they instructions are in Korean, I can only do 1 function…make rice. This reminds me. In the USA, when you buy almost anything…the instructions come in like 6 different languages, and Korean is usually one of them. It would really be nice if in Korea they returned the favor. I think that until Korea corrects this injustice, we should no longer include Korean in any of our instruction manuals.

I tried making dakalbi the other night. I was starting to get a little cocky since I was starting to see myself as a bit of a cook because I can successfully pour water and rice into the cooker and press a button. I found a recipe for the sauce online and bought the ingredients at Emart. I was so proud of myself as I mixed the ingredients and stirred them over the stove as I added the cooked rice and mimicked what I saw at the restaurant. Unfortunately, it tasted NOTHING like what it does at the restaurant. I’d even go so far as to say it was almost inedible. It was terrible…and sadly I have a lot of unused sauce ingredients sitting in my cupboard that I expect will stay that way.

So today at precisely 2pm I heard a loud screeching noise outside my window at work that sounded oddly like an air raid siren. This went on for a solid 15 minutes. It was quite annoying (although not as annoying as those stupid horns at the World Cup matches). I later found out that this in fact WAS an air raid siren and that on the 15 of every month Korea has an air raid drill. This makes sense since the Korean War is technically not over, and with all the drama the last few months it is a reminder that these drills might be needed. As it turns out…technically everything is supposed to stop during these drills. Joseph explained to me that 12 years ago when he got here…even the cars pulled over and stopped…including taxis (that continued to charge you during the drill). This doesn’t happen now-a-days anymore. No one even flinches. What the hell is the point?!

So it’s World Cup time and Korea has the fever. Everyone is wearing red, they are yelling, cheering. It’s pandemonium. I was in my apartment the night of the first game, and I could hear all the screaming whenever Korea scored. I’m been rooting against Korea and letting people know it just to annoy them. They do love the soccer here. Then again, so does Priscilla. She has made it her duty to watch EVERY match of the world cup. EVERY MATCH. I’d like to point out the 3rd game of the day starts at 3:30am in Korea. I wanted to watch USA/England but no way am I STARTING a soccer match at 3:30am! On a side note, most of my Korean friends are supporting North Korea in the cup as well as Korea. That would be almost like the US supporting Iraq in the fact that we are in a military conflict against them. I understand Korea is Korea…but just 3 months ago they sunk a ship and killed several hundred of your countrymen. Personally, I hope NK gets trounced out of the World Cup without scoring a single goal.

For those of you worrying about me over here with the news of the North Korean aggression….know that I am safe and not even slightly worried. Hell, I kind of WANT something to happen. It would make things a little more interesting around here. To be honest, I am in one of the safest cities in Korea if the shit were to hit the fan. Jeonju has NO industry whatsoever. It is purely a cultural city. Furthermore, Kim Jong Il considers Jeonju sacred and would never bomb here because his grandparents are buried in this city. If the ish hits the fan, I am in no real danger…as upsetting as that might be to some of you out there.

My friend Allie got to go back to Wisconsin yesterday. I am jealous. Most of my friends over here are getting to visit the states, or having someone come from the states to visit them. Actually…now that I think about it…I am the ONLY one I know who isn’t doing at least 1 of those. So if any of you want a free place to crash in Korea, you are more than welcome.