Up to Cheongju

This weekend was a busy one.

It kind of started on Thursday night when, feeling very sore from three consecutive days of intense gym I opted to take the night off and I went to Mike's place to watch the classic film 'The Room' (universally hailed as the worst film ever). Between Tommy Weseau's "oh Hai Mark" and playing football in tuxedo's it is a classic. We are trying to get the students to start talking like Wiseau, but so far it hasn't taken off ( picture 20 kids running around going "oh hai teacher").

On Friday I was out with a few coworkers for food and drinks. Mike and Kris were there, along with our co-teacher Remi, who is always a lot of fun and who's spoken English is simply amazing. We had solid bbq and planned for our random Wednesday off. I wasn't super late but I wasn't batting 1000 when I got up Saturday to head up to Cheongju to meet Ange and her new boyfriend Chris. Geoff and I hopped on the KTX to transfer at Daejeon and grab the slow train to Cheongju. It is actually much faster than the bus, which was surprising but nicely so, as I'll always take train travel over bus travel. We hung out in Ange's new place, which is huge and great for hosting (we have our own bedrooms). We chatted with Chris, a great guy from San Francisco, on a few topics and showed him Civilization 5.

After a while we opted to head to a friend of Ange's to hang out on her roof and enjoy the sun. Liz was a wonderful host and had the makings of a great garden on her rooftop patio. Chris had to go early as he was on his way up to Seoul to meet a friend who's flight was arriving that night (Seoul is only an hour or so from Cheongju) and the rest of us hung out for a few hours. Around dinner time we made our way out for Korean bbq and then went to a few places in downtown Cheongju for Makgeolli and patio beers (the best part of Korean summers is that it's 22 degrees at midnight, very nice to sit out in). Along the way we met two great girls from the U.K where we chatted about everything from sports to food to the Diamond jubilee and Canadian republicanism (for which I got more support from the Brits than from the Canadians..... apparently all parents want their kids to move out of the basement by the time they hit 160 years old). Geoff and I were taking it fairly easy at this point, with our water consumption outpacing our liquor. We had talking hiking in Cheongju on Sunday but clearly by 2am we were the only ones still thinking like that. A few of us wanted to head to a bar that catered to expats there, but five minutes in there had me thinking that I may be a bit hard on Daegu's expat bars and restaurants. It was brutal. Fortunately Ange and Geoff agreed to we hopped a cab back to Ange's place. She passed out and we played Civilization and found a solid collection of classic rock before sleeping.

The next morning we had a great breakfast that Ange made and ate to Bad Company and Journey. I was ready for a move to a mountain but apparently I was the only one so we opted for food and a roof instead before Geoff and I hopped the train back to Daegu. We had planned to head out to Sangin but Geoff opted to sleep so I went home, got cleaned up and met Mike and Kris for a drink in the park (yeah, we can do that here). I got home and slept well.

It was a great four days but after all that meat and beer I'm going to have to work extra hard at the gym this week. Wednesday is a holiday so I'll have a chance to relax properly then. Unfortunately Hyo Jung is working that day, so I'll have to wait until later in the week to meet her.

Overall a great weekend.