If the bus had been on time, I would have gone to Mungyeong Saejae for the teacher walkathon, dinner thing. Really I would have. If the bus had been on time, I would have gotten on at one thirty on Saturday October 30th, made my way there, joined up with all my Korean teachers, and gone along with it. I would have nodded politely as everyone spoke Korean around me and I made up imagined conversations in my head. I would have walked where they told me and eaten what they gave me, even if it was dried, chewy, stinky fish. And it was going to be dried, chewy, stinky fish.
But the bus wasn't on time and as I stood there with all the middle school girls at the bus stop in their school uniforms, a little itch started. A little devil popped up on my right shoulder and whispered every so quietly, "You know, you could not go." Of course a little angel immediately poofed up on the left shoulder. "No, you have to go, you said you would. You're all ready to go. Just wait for the bus." I turned back to the little devil (who was wearing this really cute black dress I own) and back toward the direction of my apartment. "If you left right now, you could be on a bus before three, easy. You could be in Seoul by five." There were Halloween shenanigans going on in Seoul I really wanted to partake in, but I said I would do this teacher thing and I couldn't do both. "Just call and say...you fell off the curb and sprained your ankle." That's dumb, I told the little devil. I'm not faking a limp on Monday. The little angel agreed. "At least say you're sick. Your stomach hurts. That's perfectly ambiguous. If it's questioned allude to diarrhea, no one asks questions about the toliet!" Little angel, not helping! I saw the bus coming behind the little angel on my left shoulder. I turned around and ran the opposite direction. I fled back to my apartment, put on that little black dress, grabbed the angel wings, and headed out the door. I brought a small backpack with my contact stuff, toothbrush, a plastic orange pumpkin filled with candy, roll-on glitter, you know, the essentials.
Hopped on a bus, hopped on the subway, met up with Mark and Zach (two experienced and learn-ed Couch Surfers), liberally applied too much liquid eyeliner, and hopped back on the subway. All while either listening to or humming Michael Jackson's Thriller.
We were meeting up with Couch Surfers for dinner and then a Halloween party on the subway, but the exit six we were supposed to find at the station alluded us. Signs went like this: Exits 1, 2, 3, 4, , , 7, 8, 9, 10 This Way ----->. We eventually went out Exit 6-1 after walking through a subway station worse than a Las Vegas casino. Then we ended up in a basement and then a poorly lit parking garage. We were a Halloween horror movie waiting to happen.
We finally found the CS group and we headed off to dinner. Sam-gyp-sal, that foreigner favorite, and then on to the subway where we planned to hand out candy while riding the green loop the long way around to the Hongik University district to party in Hongdae.
I'll admit, I was timid at first. While Mark grabbed a handful of candy and immediately started making his rounds of the subway car, passing out candy and exclaiming Happy Halloween, I merely chatted with the foreigners in our group. It took me a couple stops until I was ready to approach strangers while wearing cat ears and angel wings to offer them candy. The doors opened and a couple of people came on and someone yelled, "New people, candy them!" I stepped up, held out my pumpkin and said, "Happy Halloween, candy?" The couple smiled and laughed, peering into my pumpkin to see if I had anything good. They both picked out a mini-Mentos and found seats. Then it was easy. I was a regular backwards trick-or-treater. And the flask of vodka in my wings didn't hurt either.
I was surprised at how willing people were to accept candy from strangers. Very few people turned us down and most seemed excited about the idea of Halloween. Some Koreans even gave us stuff in return. One man, all geared up in his Korean hiking finest, gave us pumpkin candies (very appropriate) and another guy gave us a cookie.
Fast Forward to outside the Q Club where I have lost everyone I was with, but gained a buddy from home. John, who I worked with three years ago on Paint Crew in Coeur d'Alene, moved to Seoul to teach two days before. I had gone to meet him at the subway exit while everyone left the club we were at. I am on the phone with one of the guys, I wasn't even sure who at the time, when another guy approaches me and asks if I was looking for a group of Couch Surfers. I'm talking to one right now, I tell him, surprised. I had not mentioned Couch Surfing at all on the phone, this guy had taken a random guess and had NAILED IT! I get directions (which were terrible) and then John and I wait with this stranger for some of his friends to get back from buying booze across the street.
John strikes up a conversation in Spanish with a guy from Spain and I chat with a boy in a dress, his long hair braided back in two French braids. Two guys cross the street and join up with us and we do the preliminary questions. Where are you from? How long have you been in Korea? etc. etc. Now I had just been lamenting the fact that I had not met anyone from Idaho here. John was my first Idahoan and he didn't count. So when a guy wearing a tight white tank top, tighter black bicycling pants, and a yellow helmet with fake blood dripping from a pretend gash on the side of his face gathered us up in a giant bear hug when John and I said we were from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, I was a little shocked. "What high school?" he yelled. "Lake City," John said and he got pushed out of the bear hug. "CHS," I said and got pulled in closer. "What year?" Before I could reply he yelled, "01," pointing franticly at himself. "05," I tell him. Then, pulling at his pants, he yelled, "Check this out!" My immediate response when a guy starts pulling down his pants is to look away and I did this, even before he said, "Don't look at my balls! Check this out!" I turned back to see the black outline of Lake Coeur d'Alene filled in with blue on his right thigh. "What does that look like, huh, huh, huh?" he said. There were no words. My mouth dropped open and I laughed. "Oh My God."
It's A Small World After All.
Back on the phone with who I would later find out was Richard, a guy from Virginia I had just met on the subway, John and I are hopelessly lost and wandering. These are my directions: neon sign that said "On Top." At one point in time I was asked if I had passed a building that reminded me of bubbles. What? "Did at any time did you think to yourself 'bubbles' on the way to where you are?" "No." "Then you didn't go the right way. You will see a building that will you make you think of bubbles." I never did see anything that made me think "bubbles," but I did eventually find a neon "On Top" and met back up with the group.
John and I stayed out until the subway opened at five, made it back to his apartment, and stayed up until almost nine catching up. The sleep deprivation made us loopy and we giggled like two twelve year old girls at a sleepover.
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