The weekend…

Well, Jeonju.

I didn’t go in to the office Thursday or Friday, because all my classes were canceled and I finished all my preparations for this week by Wednesday afternoon. So I just spent time getting my apartment sorted out. Friday night I met Myoung, John Tallman and his family for beer. It was a nice chat out on the veranda of the rather cheesy Hite Zone bar in our neighborhood. (Hite is a Korean beer company. Think of a bar called Miller Time! or This Bud’s For You and you’ll get the idea. Wait, there is a bar called Miller Time! here too. Eeek!) Anyway, we were given a lot of free beer after Myoung’s wife Mer joined us because Mer looks like Nicole Kidman. (As in, she’s a white woman in Korea… ha.)

Anyway, Saturday I spent hanging out with Young Ja… we picked up a couple of pieces of necessary furniture (a bookcase and a wardrobe for my tons of clothes) and she managed to get me a 3000 won discount (about $3.75 Canadian) which brought her much delight and me much amusement. Then we had coffee at an absolutely wonderful cafe called LavAzzo, on Jeonbukdaehakno (Jeonbuk University Street). She went to see her boyfriend and I went home to await the delivery of my furniture.

After that, I slowly wended my way to a murder-mystery role-play party that was happening at The Deep-In. The Deep-In is Jeonju’s foreigner bar, well-respected because the co-owners are cool people and one of them DJs rather good music all night long. And I do mean all night long. I arrived at 10:00 pm and began trying to make my way out at 1:00 am, but I was seduced by the music and all the free tequila that Min and Billy were serving up.

I paid for about half of what I drank (at the bartender’s insistence), learned about faking magical energy tricks with Min, practiced my Korean, and heard everything from my own scary voice and sax playing on Shivaji and the Ecstasy of Butter and Fire (get the MP3 here!), through Apples in Stereo all the way to Jaco Pastorius’ Come On, Come Over (and even a track from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, thanks to Thai and his bloody request shenanigans).

Sunday I met Mi Seok in Iksan and we went for a walk… actually, we climbed a small mountain named Baesan which is on the northeast side of town. Then we sat at the top and chatted for a while before climbing down. After that we had coffee on the terrace at the new and very elegant Coffee Beans in YoungDeungDong, and finally we had CheongGukJang (a usually stinky but also incredibly delicious bean-paste soup) at her mom’s restaurant at the bus terminal. Her mom’s food was really good, in that sticks-to-your-ribs Jeonbuk-cooking way. It’s good home food, with many side dishes, and she even treated us to a GoDeungEo chigae… a kind of kimchi-and-fish soup which I like even if it sounds so much like my name’s Korean pronunciation that sometimes kids call me by the name of that fish. Anyway, today consisted of lots of good talking and fun. I had a great day…

…but work starts tomorrow… so I guess I should get home and do some ironing and get some sleep

2 thoughts on “The weekend…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *