A Long Overdue Update

I’ve neglected you internet.  I’ve been out and about with no word of where I’m going or when I’ll be home.  But, no matter how badly I treat you, I know you’ll always be there for me.  Just like my right hand.  (Editor’s Note: Particularly relevant because I punched through a piece of wood about half an inch thick in Tae Kwon Do two days ago and my knuckles are still swollen.)  So I come bearing the gift of text to help satisfy your insatiable appetite for data.  Just don’t tell SOPA.

I’ve done stuff and things since my last entry, so I suppose I’ll limit this post to the best stories I’ve got from the last 5 weeks or so since we last spoke (er, I last typed and you remained an unaware vacuum of information sucking up my data).  I’ve got two funny students to tell you about, two humorous tales of romantic failure, and one with a seemingly bright future.  Off we go.

So my favorite student at Yeonji elementary is undoubtedly a little girl I affectionately call “Monkey Face.”  Monkey Face is in third grade, and has the most fun personality in the entire school.  While most students lie to my face calling me “handsome,” Monkey Face tells it like it is.  One day, out of the blue, she walked up to me and said “Teacher Ugly Face!” with a mischievous grin on her face.  I responded by saying “No, Teacher Handsome Face!  Student Ugly Face!”  She proceeded to call me “Monkey Face,” so I called her “Lizard Face,” and on it went.  For whatever reason, Monkey Face was the moniker that stuck.  Whenever she sees me in school she yells “MONKEY FACE!” to which I always reply “No, YOU’RE Monkey Face!”  My schedule changes next semester, and I’ll be thoroughly bummed if I don’t get to teach her again.  She’s awesome.

My second favorite student is a kid in my after school class named Dong Ho.  Dong Ho is an excellent English student; his speaking skills, listening skills, and vocabulary all vastly exceed those of his peers.  He’s also fun because, unlike most of his peers, he is loud an uninhibited.  Most Korean students are pretty shy, but Dong Ho loves to yell and play and make weird faces.  He often calls himself a “crazy guy,” but when I say “Yes, Dong Ho, you are crazy,” he insightfully reminds me “We’re all crazy.”  Anyway, my favorite story with Dong Ho was one day, maybe a month ago, I was explaining a vocabulary word.  I forget why, but I chose to explain the word using an example between a father and son.  So I said to the class “Pretend Dong Ho is my son,” and I began walking toward him to carry out the example.  Dong Ho leapt out of his chair and yelled “Daddy!!” with his arms outstretched, seemingly asking for a hug.  So I said “Oh, son!” and went to hug him.  But when I got close he leapt at me, released a menacing “AAAHHHH!!” and pretended to punch me in the face.  It was hysterical.

But on to what you came here to read about: my quest to touch Korean women.  My first story of failure was perplexing to say the least.  I went on a date with a girl who is friends with other Max’s girlfriend.  I had never met her in person, but I was given her number and we’d been texting for about week.  Anyhow, we meet up for dinner and everything is going great.  When she goes to the bathroom, Max’s girlfriend tells me that her friend told her (in Korean, obviously) that she thought I was really handsome and liked talking to me.  After dinner, we went to another bar and this girl started planning future dates for us.  I mentioned an ice skating rink and she said “we should go there together!”  I mentioned a restaurant I like and she said “We should go there sometime!”  The sailing appeared to be smooth.

But after the bar we went to a club called Blue Monkey.  I don’t really like Blue Monkey.  The music is really terrible -- just club remixes (generally awful) of already awful American pop songs and the volume is oppressive; whenever I spend an evening there I go to bed with my ears ringing.  So at the Blue Monkey club, this girl just disappeared.  She saw some friend of hers and just took off.  We said maybe three things to each other during the two hours or so we were there, and then she ended up leaving without saying goodbye.  I sent her a facebook message the next day saying I was confused and wondered if she still wanted to go ice skating.  She got back to me with a vague response three days later, which I decided to just ignore.

My second story of failure is less confusing and more amusing.  One night, Nick, Doug, Max and I went to this new bar in Kyungsung called L-Zone.  L-Zone has this deal where you pay about $10 and get unlimited drinks.  They also have several sets of Jenga and a Wii, so it’s a pretty fun place.  This evening, we were playing Jenga with some Korean guys we met and I drank probably 5 glasses of beer.  At least I thought it was beer.  I later learned that it was beer mixed with soju, which is roughly twice as potent as regular beer.  As a result, the end of my night is a bit hazy.  Here’s what I did remember: over the course of the night I had prolonged conversations with two girls.  I ended up with one girl’s number.  Her name was Kahlin.  The problem?  I couldn’t remember which of the two girls was named Kahlin.

Flash forward to the next weekend (Christmas Eve).  I had sent Kahlin a few texts trying to ascertain her identity, but the attempts were futile.  I ended up at the Blue Monkey, and a girl started talking to me.  I knew she was familiar, but I couldn’t quite recall her name.  Why I was unable to put two-and-two together I have no idea, but I ended up just asking her “Sorry, could you remind me of your name again?”  She looked at me with an understandably pissed-off expression and said “Uh, I’m Kahlin.”  Being the suave gentleman that I am, I replied, “Well, I guess I blew that.”  Kahlin was none too pleased, and concluded her time would be better spent elsewhere.

Normally, I’d be upset with myself for blowing it with Kahlin, as she’s a pretty attractive woman.  But I wasn’t upset in the least.  Why, you ask?  Because moments earlier I was approached by an even more attractive woman.  Right as I walked in to Blue Monkey, this girl taps me on the shoulder and says “I saw you the other day at Thursday Party.”  In my head, I realize this means that this girl saw me, remembered me, and, for some inexplicable reason, liked what she saw so much that she approached me, which is very rare for Korean women.  Right on.

As I’ve said, Blue Monkey is oppressively loud so we were unable to do much talking.  But I’d drank enough beers to be willing to dance to awful music, particularly because I had an attractive women to do it with.  So we danced and danced, apparently for nearly three hours.  By the end we got into this cycle where I’d put my hands on her hips and she’d put her arms around my neck, and then she’d turn around and proceed to “freak dance” with me in the gentlest way possible for maybe three seconds, and then she’d get nervous and run away.  It was really cute.  Added bonus: the girl, Myung Su, came with a friend and Nick ended up chatting and dancing with her.  We both left with their numbers.  As I said to Nick at the end of the night, “Usually the Monkey just throws his shit at you but every so often he gives you a banana.”

Now I’d scheduled a date via text for Saturday (New Year’s Eve – figuring midnight may facilitate a first kiss), but on Friday night she texted me asking what I was up to.  I told her I’d just finished dinner and was at a bar with my friends, and she texted back “I see you!!”  Turns out she was at the same bar with her friend, so I went over to talk with them.  Her friend was vetting me pretty hard, but I’m confident I passed her tests.  I had them laughing a lot.  At one point Myung Su told me that I was making her laugh so much that I was giving her a headache.  The potential boyfriend in me was concerned for her well-being, but the comedian in me was brimming with pride.

Last night we had our first official date.  We went to this Italian place and shared a pizza and a steak and lobster surf and turf platter.  It was the first steak I’d had in Korea, and the first time I’d had lobster in a while.  Good stuff.  After dinner we went this bar called The Dugout, which has 400ml draft beef for $2.50, and the free bar snack is nachos.  We talked and had a few drinks, and then went to Blue Monkey for their New Year’s party.  The theme was stop-light, which means they give you glow bracelets to indicate your relationship status.  Green means “single,” yellow means “dating,” and red means “taken.”  I wanted no part of deciding our status, so I just followed Myung Su’s lead.  She asked for a yellow and green bracelet.

We got there around 10:30pm, so there wasn’t much dancing.  We just sat in the corner, got drinks and talked.  At some point I put my arm around her, which she responded to positively.  By midnight we’d gotten pretty touchy, so I tried to kiss her at the end of the New Year’s countdown.  She turned her head so I kissed her on the cheek.  But she then gave me a sly smile, which I took to mean that she was going to make me work for it.  It turned out that her final Long Island Iced Tea did all the work for me, because a half hour later she started kissing me in the middle of the dance floor.  She then led me to a staircase behind the DJ, sat down, pulled me next to her, and started kissing me again.  About a minute later, a guy taps me on the shoulder and says “Hey man, I don’t mean to ruin your game, but just a heads up some guy puked here a while ago.  I stand to reveal my pants absolutely covered in puke.  God.  Damnit.  But I did get to kiss a Korean woman (who is 29!), so overall I consider the evening a win.