Making New Friends

Work on Friday was fine, except that in the morning class I was playing with my kids after lunch and I got them a bit too riled up, and long story short, the kid in my class who tends to get overly emotional (Junsung) got way too excited, stole my slippers and threw them across the room where they promptly landed in Thomas' lunch.  Awesome Junsung, thanks.  When he got in trouble, he cried.  Again.  He’s such a cool little dude.

Then in my second class I was super tired, and they can kind of get annoying, so by my third class (which I usually love) I was in a terrible mood.  It ended up being fine because those kids are so chill that it didn't even matter.  I even made their journal topic "If everyone around you was happy but you felt angry, what would you do?"  I opted for Allie and Sarah's path, and was nice to the kids, rather than taking on Cal, Ervin, and Susannah's advice and finding someone mean to punch and kick.

After work I calmed down considerably, sitting on my bed for about an hour and just relaxing.  At 7:30 we were all meeting at the local subway station (a short, convenient taxi ride away unless you want to walk for 30 minutes) to go to Songtan, where the military base is, for Mexican food again.  Erica and Kim were coming this time because neither of them have ever had Mexican food before.  Well, Kim has but it wasn't very good.  Chris, Holly's husband, invited a bunch of his friends from base, and all the teachers from my school except Tara came, and one of the TPs, Tween's TP Amy.  The food was good, the servers were nicer than last time (by a small margin) and a splendid time was had by all.  I was sitting by Kristen and Erica, and other than that the Air Force guys were all around me.  I had never really met any of them before, so it was kind of awkward, but they ended up being really nice and a few of them were really funny, too.

Afterwards, a bunch of people were going to go to Anyang, which is a few subway stops past our home station of Seryu.  There is a really cool bar there called Club Psycho, which has an open mic night where Holly and Chris were going to play.  I was the only teacher who went, so it was essentially me, Holly, Chris, and a bunch of people I had never met before.  I had started talking to a lot of them at dinner though, and the cab ride from the restaurant to the subway station was spent arguing about (of all things) Oregon Duck football with some of the guys.  They all turned out to be really nice, sweet, guys.  Interestingly, where at school and in my neighborhood there are no men, on base there are very few women.  Hence, I got a LOT of attention last night.  Which isn't a bad thing at all.  Like I said, they were all pretty nice guys, so it wasn't like any of them were being annoying or rude about it.  Holly and Chris are amazingly talented (which I already knew, having watched them sing at Anna's going away party).

The night ended up being really fun and I made friends with a few of the guys.  I have a feeling I’ll be seeing a lot of them over the next year or so.  So it’s a good thing they’re all pretty great!