Hong Date

Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 was Hong Date. I had a date friends and neighbours. In Hong Dae, an area of Seoul where lots of young, hip people like to hang out. So what was I doing there? Visiting one of my young, hip friends. April.

Okay, so it wasn't really a date. April is just a friend. I am old enough to have been her babysitter at one time. But we sure had fun together! I enjoyed it because I can speak English to April just like a foreigner. She lived in Florida for a couple years. So she's pretty fluent. She likes the slang and bad words too. In fact she swears like a sailor. But in a cute way. Well look at the picture. It's hard for her to do anything that isn't cute. Imagine her dropping F bombs every sentence. I think it's adorable because she looks like the last person who would talk that way. That's April on the left talking on the phone and Yong Ah on the right.

She only said one thing during the night that I misunderstood. She was talking about how she put on weight when she was in the States. Yeah, like she ballooned to 50 kilos or something. But she told me she had a J-Lo butt. I thought she said, "Jailor butt." And I WAS a jailor for a while. So I go into this long explanation about how none of the jailors I worked with had big butts. In fact MY butt was a lot smaller when I worked at the jail. I probably had the biggest butt of all the jailors there. But(t) she said J-Lo butt again and THIS time I understood.

We went to Outback Steakhouse and had a really nice dinner. Her friend Young Ah came along after we had ordered. She just had a few tastes of what we were eating. She was very polite while me and April spoke in English. I don't know how much of it she understood but she laughed in the right places sometimes and reacted correctly sometimes. And April translated some things to her. But she didn't say much.

After a long chat at Outback we wandered around Hong Dae. It's very modern and has some really interesting stores, restaurants and bars. We went into one store that I was quite surprised to see. It was a condom store. In Korea! There were all kinds of condoms in there. Coloured condoms, condoms in nutshells, Pikachu condoms, measuring condoms with a ruler drawn onto them, condoms with lumps on them and the vibrating condom believe it or not. I actually bought one of those. Can't wait to try it out. I was gonna take a picture of the condom store but I forgot. Oh well. I WILL go back there again. Hee hee.

We went into a piercing store. Not a popular place here I imagine. We saw some really trendy boutiques and lots of neon lit bars. My favourite was the Luxury Ho Bar. In fact there are a few Ho Bars. I guess Hos are good business here.

We went into April's favourite bar called Tin Pan Alley. They played only dance and hip hop music. I didn't like most of it. But I DID like the selection of beer they had. I even found a Canadian beer I hadn't had for a while: Moosehead. And wouldn't you know it, I ripped the label clean off. Still a virgin!

April, Young Ah and their friend DK (or something like that) started dancing. So I went to I Tae Won. I knew I could go to the Old Stompers club and hear some REAL music being played by Lance, Dwayne, Dave and Meagan. They did NOT disappoint. So I drank all night and took the subway home at 7 am. It sucks having to do that but I have no choice unless I want to go home at 10 pm when the action is just starting. But I had been working like a slave tallying up the marks for my students. It takes me forever to do that but it's all done now. I just have to plug them into the computer. I started my summer course today. Should be a snap! But I can almost taste the Singha beer and smell the sea air of Pattaya beach. And the fresh cut grass of the golf courses there. I'm already on vacation. In my mind.