Crawling Towards Easter!

Oh man, last weekend was awesome. I realized last week that though we were planning to do my going away party in Cheonho, we didn't really have a firm grasp of what bars there could accommodate a huge spectacle of waygooks. (Yes, we have dubbed a group of waygooks a "spectacle," much like an unkindness of ravens or a murder of crows. Embrace it.) I figure probably 15-25 people will come out for the night of debauchery so we need a place that can hold us all. Why just take the boring way and visit a bar a night for a couple of weeks when you could do a bar crawl and compare options back to back?

The result was...magnificent. Over the course of about six and a half hours Carin, Julia, Stephanie, Shannon, Jamie, Erich, Chrissy and I visited over ten establishments, having drinks in seven of them. It was SO much fun. Rarely do I drink to excess like this, but it is a blast every once in a while! We drank lots of alcohol, played some games (card based and otherwise), ate lots of strange bar food including prawn chips, peanuts, seaweed chips, those puffed rice cylinders, sausages x2, nachos, and a "quesadilla" (which Chrome just rightfully tried to change to "questionable). Just an excellent time with some of my favorites. I headed home around 3:00am and crashed just about immediately, haha.

Wa Bar is a chain through out Seoul. This one is pretty nice but very small.

Their house beer was kind of terrible. Really watery (says the girl who drinks Bud Lite).  However, their prawn chips were DELICIOUS.

And so it begins! Our theme was "Earn Your Stripes!" but it is hard to see all the stripes in this photo. Look forward to more in the upcoming ones!

Aloha (really, Ah-Ro-Ha) was great! Cute decorations, much more space. This will probably be our winner for my going away day.

Celebrity poker showdown?

Striped out!

Bar 1950s was adorable. It really is a BAR bar, where you have to sit at the...bar. The bartenders, however, were very sweet, and were surprised when we left (after drinking our sizable shots) as quickly as we had arrived.

건배! (Cheers!)

Santana was EMPTY...and perhaps wished we hadn't broken up their quiet night, haha.

Peeps! This was the prize for the stripiest person...but they really just ended up being shared by all of us. If my eyes look weird it is because I had striped eyeshadow on.

Excitement!

Hahah, creepers. 

Genius bartender couldn't figure out that my camera was too zoomed in.  Aigh. Also, CHECK OUT THOSE CRUSHED VELVET COUCHES!

Surprisingly this was neither a coffee nor Battlestar Galactica themed bar. It was Japanese themed and really quite pretty, with lots of lanterns and wood lattices. I'd go back.

Chrissy got a KGB (hilariously named vodka mixed drink in a bottle) and it came with oil blotting sheets for your face. Oh Korea. 

 

Shannon demonstrating the blotting sheets.

Super cute group photo with Carin's big hair blocking people yet again!
Carin, Stephanie, Shannon, Jamie, Erich, Julia, Chrissy and I

"I just want to say...this is still wrapped."  Famous last words spoken by Carin as she picked up a "Pine Needle Candy" from the ground and ate it. 

I could have told you it was terrible just from the name. But apparently Carin needed to eat it.

Hunter's Bar was runner up for going-away party host. They had room and they took requests, but the mixed drinks weren't great and the requested songs always came out as TERRIBLE covers of the original, haha.

Looking shocked.

Singing during our request for "Don't Stop Believin'." The waiter took like 80 pictures of us because he thought we were hilarious.

Hahahahaha.

The Funky Dunky is a perennial favorite. I still don't know what a Flair Bar is, though. Nor have I ever seen an event held there.

The "dating couple."  Hahaha.

Nerds. Love them.

Final group photo of the night. Such an excellent time.

Sunday was Easter. Now those of you who are already here probably know this, and those of you on your way might suspect it, but holidays are almost always the hardest time to be away from your family. Especially if you know your loved ones are congregating somewhere and you're missing it. Know what makes it a lot easier? Having fantastic friends with which to share the holidays and recreate some of the traditions from home.  Chrissy volunteered to host an Easter Brinner (breakfast for dinner, for those uninitiated into the breakfast-at-all-times-of-the-day cult) were we consumed an absolutely absurd amount of delicious food, dyed eggs (sort of) and enjoyed each other's company. It was wonderful.

Carin and I stopped at the store on our way and spotted these precious melons all dolled up for Easter. Festive!

Hard at work...

Jul-ya gettin her French toast on!

Carin whipping up some sausage.

Erich on (non-French) toast duty.

Dave serving as bacon boy.

The spread...not including cheesy scrambled eggs, French toast, Pancakes, Waffles, potatoes, an apple galette and a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing.  And I'm probably forgetting stuff.

Jin decorating eggs before they're dyed.

The dye got really creepy. I don't know if it was our imprecise measurements of vinegar and water, the differences that come with brown eggs instead of white, or what. The dye formed a layer on the egg and when you first took it out it looked like it had boils all over it before it settled. The problem was that the layer didn't really stick to the egg well so it got all peely and strange. Oh well...it was still fun!

Egg dying materials (see aforementioned peelyness on the left).

Emulating the emotion egg. On one side there was a smiley face, and on the other there was this unenthusiastic one. We spent a few minutes rotating the egg face in response to popular Korean backhanded compliments, such as...

 "Oh, Meaghan, you got a haircut! (^-^) 

It looks much better now. (-_-)"

Zombie/Voldemort egg made by Josephine.

Jamie and Dave deep in conversation. I swear this wasn't posed.

Happy Easter from our Seoul Family to yours!

Erich, Jamie, Shannon, Carin, Jin, Julia, Me, Josephine, 

Derek (looking like a creepy uncle), David, Dave, and Chrissy.

Lately my life has been consumed with two things. The first is cleaning and packing my apartment. When I'm not physically doing it, I'm either fretting over it or going out of my way to avoid it. What a freaking headache. I finally bit the bullet yesterday and packed my first two boxes to mail home via the slow boat. There will be another post later with how you go about doing that, so that when the time comes everyone can be all over it. Extra baggage costs $200, and mailing these two boxes via airmail would cost $179, but the slow boat/surface mail should only cost $56 for two large boxes that weigh a combined 41 lbs.

Mostly winter clothes, these two boxes should take 60-90 days to get to my house.

The second time consumer has been planning events that are happening in the next month before I leave. I just got shitty news that we can't book one of the things I really wanted to do, a night tour of Changdeokgung Palace, because Korea is dumb and imprecise in their information.  Frustrating. However the thing I am probably most excited about is a scavenger hunt that Shannon, Carin and I have planned and are coordinating for next week. We are off May 5 for Children's Day and we have put together a list of 75 items, photos, and videos that must be collected from all over Seoul. Teams have 4-5 people on them and I think it is going to be a fantastic time. So far there are six teams formed and I wouldn't be surprised if we have more singing up in the next week. I am excited, but it is a LOT of work. Especially since we decided to (at least try and) order t-shirts. We are still waiting to hear back (and there have already been some problems, as is to be expected) but hopefully we'll have them by next Tuesday. Josephine made the front design based on an idea from Shannon and I, and on the back it will say "We're on a treasure hunt! Please help me!" in Korean. There isn't really a translation for scavenger hunt, and treasure hunt is the closest approximation. This will be helpful to teams without a Korean speaker when they are asking people to help them do weird things or take a photo of them.  Anyway, I am very much looking forward to it.

Again, look forward to a blog entry with the full list (so you can do it on your own time!) and what will definitely be hilarious photos. If you're in Seoul now and want to put together a team of 4-5 people, come on over to the Facebook Page and sign up!

Today I didn't have any class because my fifth graders are camping for this half of the week (they've had terrible weather and they're stuck with my vice principal...I pity them!) and my sixth graders needed to study for a big midterm tomorrow so my class got bumped. I looked at a calendar the other day and I can't believe how soon I'm leaving and, even more, how few teaching days I have left! I only have 3 Mondays, 3 Tuesdays, 4 Wednesdays (of course, my least favorite day!), 2 Thursdays, and 3 Fridays. How do I only have fifteen days with my kids left?! Insanity.

So...it is real now, huh?

Well, yesterday was a big day for me! As soon as I got out of summer school I headed over to Passport Health to get my final Japanese Encephalitis shot (woo!) and then sped down to Bowie to meet my dad who had offered to take me downtown for the second time in as many weeks. We zipped down to the embassy and I waited in line for just a few minutes before I got my passport, complete with a shiny new E-2 Visa! No really, it has a shiny seal. My name is spelled correctly, my birthday is accurate, and it is the right kind of visa, so I figure I am ALL SET.

While I was standing in line waiting to pick it up, I was listening to a large (and very loud) group of Americans sitting on the couches in the embassy discussing the process of getting things notarized and apostilled in order to meet the requirements for teaching abroad. I could certainly identify with everything that they said! It is a crazy process.

Last night my parents and I went out to a great Korean Restaurant (Goong Jeon)in Glen Burnie where we had a huge and filling meal. It was a good celebration to tie up the exciting day. Last night after coming home from dinner I took the last huge step as part of preparation: I booked my flight. EEE! Non-refundable, one-way tickets make everything a lot more real.

I fly out of BWI on Saturday, August 23 around 9:00am and head over to Chicago (about 2 hours on the plane). After a couple hour layover, I board a Korean Air flight into Seoul. I should arrive in Seoul at 4:00pm (their time, so 3:00am EST) on Sunday, August 23. In case you were wondering, that is just about a 14 hour flight. Which will be longer than my current longest flight, which was San Francisco to Shanghai in 13 hours. Should be fun...psych.

In other news, getting everything squared away with respect to bills, etc is a headache and a half! Here is what I learned about various businesses that I have accounts with:

1. USAA is, not surprisingly, wonderful. They are dropping my car insurance down to almost nothing while it is in storage and they have kick ass traveler's insurance for relatively cheap. I say it is not surprising that they were wonderful because I have never once had a bad experience with them, or found out that someone was getting a better rate from someone else. Since they primarily serve military families, they are used to people going abroad and are super supportive. Love them.
   
   
2. T-Mobile is awesome. They have a program where if you are being deployed by the military they will put your phone plan on hold for 18 months. If you are 6 months into your 2-year contract when you leave, you come back up to 18 months later and you are 6 months into your 2-year contract. The woman in the customer service department talked to her boss, and he approved it so I get the same deal as people abroad in the service! Sweet! You just play a $10/mo fee to keep your account active...which is no where near as steep as the $97/mo I thought I was going to have to pay!
   
   
3. Wachovia kind of sucks. Figuring out how to transfer money from my Korean bank account into my stateside accounts has been...nervous making, hahah. No, seriously, it is obnoxious. After lots of Internet research (for I am a master Googler) I have found that there are basically two ways to get money from there to here. You can take the sketcher option and buy American traveler's checks from your Korean bank and then send them home (which you are not allowed to do, technically), where someone has to forge your signature at your bank and then deposit them. This is basically free, but, clearly, a little sketch, and by sketch I mean borderline illegal. The second option is to wire money from Korea to your American bank account. This is the more popular, but more costly option. Western Union charges you up to TWENTY PERCENT of whatever you are wiring, which seems absurd. The Korean banks generally charge between 10,000 and 20,000 Won (around $7-14) to send whatever sum you need wired. That is totally doable. But, of course, then you get charged on the American end, also. So I called Wachovia, where I currently have an account to inquire about how much it costs to receive an international wire transfer. The answer: TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS EACH TIME. Whaaaaat? That is craaaaazy. That would run me around $300 for the year, just to get my money to the States.
   
   So I formulated a new plan. I found a bank that has branches both in South Korea and the United States (HSBC) and called them to see if I could open an account with them. I could just withdrawal the money from my Korean account and deposit into my international HSBC account. Perfect plan, right? Wrong. After speaking to the representatives at the HSBC in DC, I learned that the accounts in the US and abroad are unrelated and don't communicate. You would have to wire the money just like with any other unrelated accounts, and the American branch of HSBC charges THIRTY DOLLARS each time you send an international wire transfer. My hopes of an easy solution were dashed.
   
   Since I wasn't ready to fork over $300 over the course of a year, I started calling all the banks in my area. PNC and SunTrust charge $15 per international wire transfer, which sounded pretty good. Only $180 over the course of a year. Then I found a winner! Bank of America and Chevy Chase both only charge $10 per international wire transfer. Since Bank of America has national coverage in the US, I have decided to open an account with them. While switching banks is kind of a hassle, it is sooooo worth it since it will save me around $180 over the course of the next year.

Anyway, as you can see I have been uber busy. This week was the first time in the entire history of owning my phone that the battery got super low because I was talking on it so much!

It seems impossible that I leave for England/Ireland/Scotland/Wales two weeks from tomorrow and that I leave for Korea in just over a month. I have SO much to do. I am going to devote a lot of this weekend to packing so that I have some free time to hang out with people before I leave.