Weekend Activities

My late phonecall has been clared up now. It was indeed a genuine call, and not some prank from Matt.

To that in a minute. First, a quick summary of the rest of my weekend.

For months my weekend has been structured along the basis of me being a good person with Korean classes and orphanages and not getting wasted. However, for the next few weeks I've decided to revert back to being the useless non-constructuve member of society I once was. Because I need a break from all this good behaviour for a while.

On Friday night I went out with Matt on the explicit intention of bad behaviour. This we managed, although only in the sense that we were dreadful company to be around, had no decent chat, were sleazy, drunken and anti-social, and were the least charming we've been for a considerable time.

Needless to say, neither of us had any success with the ladies, although our pathetic failings did give us a source of amusement for all of Saturday.

I only woke up at 3pm on Saturday, which is ludicrously late, although I'd only got to be at 9.30 that morning. It was a mostly wasted day, except for the evening where I met up with Matt at Rebecca's flat, with Nicky and some other girl called Jenn (I think) also appearing. Jenn is new to Daegu and lives in Rebecca's block. She seemed perfectly pleasant but I couldn't get over her eyebrows. They completely obscured my view of her as a person because all I could do when looking at her was focus on the eyebrows and think "what is happening there?"

What is happening there? I really don't know, but it's not normal. I profess no expertise in eyebrow art, but to me it looks like she's shaved off her eyebrows and then got a thick brown crayon and painted these wonky lines above her eyes. If the wonky lines were in the right place I might be able to let it go, but they are at crazy angles. And they look so deliberately fake.

I'm very scared of ever getting drunk around this girl, because I will inevitably start telling her about my concerns.

On Saturday night, after much lounging, we ended up at the cinema and watching Van Helsing. This is a famous Hollywood summer smash, and featured Mr H Jackman as the title character, who goes about killing monsters. I don't know if there is a sequel planned because he killed most of the main monsters in this one. I suppose he could still kill Godzilla, and the Minotaur, and loads of aliens, but all these monsters are somewhat incongruous with the mythical world that Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein's monster inhabit.

I should mention that my previous home, Old Slains Castle in Scotland, provided the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Sunday was Gin Girl day. I met them at noon for a couple of hours for our usual English-Korean exchange, and then met Gin Girl A (Hyo-Ju) later in the evening with her friend "Eric" and his fiance Gun-Wa (or something).

Yes, it transpired that my mysterious late night phonecall was an authentic one, from a school director in the nearby town/city of Gumi. He'd heard about me through Hyo-Ju, hence how he knew about me being in Laos. Also likely is what I interpreted as "two daughters that I taught called soju" was more likely him simply mentioning the two Gin Girls, one of which is Hyo-Ju.

Anyway, he phoned on Friday and I was awake this time and we met on Sunday evening, together with his fiance and Hyo-Ju and we went for a meal. His English was very good and we chatted about all sorts of things, but the main point was a summer camp in two weeks. It's only for Friday night and Saturday day, and all I have to do his hang around. No teaching, just float about being white and knowing my native language. For this I get paid 100,000 Won, about £50. It sounds like rather easy money.

That's about it for now. I'm feeling unusually tired today, despite the fact I only got up at 9am. I've been out of my early morning schedule since returning from the holiday but I'm going to get back into it tomorrow morning.

It's also been adsurdly hot recently. It's always hot these days, but on Sunday just a simple walk to the shops was a near death experience. The sun was just burning, and the humidity makes it all the more intense. Somestimes, I do miss Scottish weather a little.