Another weekend update

It's only Saturday night, but I don't expect anything of note to happen tomorrow so I may as well update now. It's nearly midnight, but I had a lot of coffee earlier in the evening and will likely be awake for a while. So, here goes

Earlier in the week my friend Kevin and I devised a brilliant scheme to prank our friend Keith, who has been out of the country for several weeks and foolishly gave me his apartment code. We realized that we had the perfect opportunity to totally mess with him. So last night we met up after work/taekwondo and headed over to Keith's apartment for a night of preparing his apartment for a nice little homecoming.

Armed with doritos and beer, we proceeded to:
Completely saran wrap the bathroom door
Inflate approximately 40 balloons and place them between the bedroom door and his bed
Strategically place 20 or so photos of the Rebel Crew throughout the apartment...some in obvious locations, others in places he won't find for weeks.
Leave clever little notes/jokes in other places around his apartment
Write ridiculous appointments on random dates throughout his calendar
Leave a love note written in candy on the floor

I think that's pretty much it. We had a blast doing it, talking and giggling the whole time.
Here are a few pics...

here is the 'before' pic, with Kevin looking uncannily like Bigfoot...
















We were there until about 4am, and expected him back on Wednesday.

But today while I was in Seoul, Kevin texted me saying that he was planning to have dinner with Keith, because Keith was pretty pissed off about our prank since he had bounced off the saranwrap into his bike and hurt himself. I thought...what, he's back?? and, damn i thought he had more of a sense of humor than that.
So I felt kind of bad, yet was really happy that the saran wrap had been so effective.

Later when I got home, I headed over to Keith's place to meet them for some cocktails. When I got there, I tried denying any involvement but i have no poker face. So Keith said, you know Tracy i'm actually pretty pissed off about it, blah blah blah. He as really convincing actually, so I believed him about 98%. So I said, 'oh Keith, I'm sorry!' then paused. I had another comment in my head but thought that if he really was angry, it would just make it worse. But i decided I would say it anyway. So I then said, "i'm sorry you don't have a sense of humor".
And then he laughed and admitted that actually he found it pretty damn awesome.

So then we enjoyed talking about the prank and about his trip. He brought everyone back a pair of Canada mittens and Canadian candy bars, and some maple sugar cookies. So we enjoyed some snacks and drinks and had a good time. Then we headed home about 11 since he had gotten in at about 5:30 this morning (not long after we left his place!) and obviously needed sleep. Oh, and we schemed to do something similar to Reed, who is also out of the country for a while...heh heh. I love those guys.

So anyway this morning I woke up and got ready to head in to Seoul to do some shopping. I decided to head to Namdaemun market.
Namdaemun is the name of one of the 4 original gates of the city (Mun=gate). And at this gate there is a huge market...street vendors, indoor and outdoor stores, and lots of twists and turns and alleyways and food and all kinds of things. I spent way too much money but enjoyed myself immensely. I bought some imported cheese, a pirated DVD, some cosmetics, K-pop souvenirs to send home, and the best of all...a Louis Vuitton wallet.

That's right. I carry designer accessories now.

Here's a photo of me with it as proof:


That is, I assume it's real. I smelled it and it smelled like real leather anyway, so for the bartered price of 50,000 won (down from 70,000) I figured was a good price for a leather wallet. Plus now I feel fancy. So i like it :)

Then I met up with a friend of mine for dinner at Bennigan's and I had some delicious Fajitas, and then we went for coffee and I headed back to Janggi.
Today to get to Seoul I took the express bus instead of the subway, which is a lot easier really. But on the way back I decided to take the subway>bus version. However I got on a bus i'd never used before, even though Nadia had told me about it.
So when I got on I spent some time looking at the route map but didn't really recognize anything so decided to just sit down and see what happens. I had on my ipod so didn't notice at first, but then realized the bus driver was standing up asking me where i wanted to go, so I said Janggi-Dong, and he asked where specfically so I said the first thing that came to mind, Hyundai apartments, which is kind of a strange answer because it's not the most helpful landmark. But anyway he explained i'd have to change buses, which i think wasn't really necessary but he was being so helpful I decided I'd just get off the bus where he told me and hope for the best.
I was in no hurry, so it didn't really matter to me. Even though it was a stop i'd never been to on the side of the highway. I figured worst case I'd just get the next 9100(which is what i had been on) that came along. But then only a few minutes later the 81, my usual bus, stopped and so it was no problem getting home.

So anyway, that was my day. Tomorrow I expect will just be Korean class, grocery shopping, and preparing for the work week.
Sorry I'm not putting anything in here about work. Quite frankly I find I don't like to talk about work on the weekends. It brings me down. But don't worry, overall i think things are going pretty well there.

Oh, and as for taekwondo that's going well too. Earlier in the week I learned the flying side kick. Which looks like this:


Yeah. I felt pretty, pardon my french, Bad Ass when i did this. We also worked on our spin kicks, backwards spin kicks, and jump kicks. In which I impressed everyone by my being the only one to successfully hit the absurdly high kick pad Sabomnim was holding. Seriously. Everyone said 'oooooh!'. (i kind of hurt myself doing it but it was worth it)

I really do love taekwondo.

And we all went out for Chukumi again Thursday night(that's the grilled octopus). I can't wait to take Mike there when he visits. Yes Mike, you WILL eat octopus. And you'll like it.