A Good Night Out.

A couple of my students took me out for Teacher's Day last night, and it turned out to be a very good time. I've gone out with a lot of students over the years, and there is usually a point in the evening (generally when the meal is wrapping up) where I'm looking at my watch and contemplating escape strategies, but last night was actually quite pleasent.

The students, Eun-sook and Young-koo, attend my early morning (7 am) class and are the only two who consistently show up. They are pleasent folks and chatty, so it makes the class itself enjoyable. Also, they are also close to my age, so I can relate to them a bit better than I can with college age students. Also, while their English is far from perfect, they both possess enough confidence in speaking that you can avoid the sometimes uncomfortable silences that invariably accompany any language barrier.

We met up at 8 pm after my last class and went to an absotlutely FABULOUS Korean restaurant here in Gongju. I don't remember the name of the place, but I definitely remember where it is and will go back again. The food was some of the best I've had in Korea, and that's saying a lot. Everything was really fresh and there were lots of great side dishes to go along with the mok-sal (pork neck). Se we ate a ton of food, drank a few bottles of soju and chatted away.

After dinner we headed over to a place called the J-in "Live" Bar where Young-koo, who is a musician in his spare time, likes to hang out. "Live" bars in Korea are places that have live music usually performed by some hack with a guitar and a drum machine singing cheesy Korean ballads, and J-in was no exception.

We ordered a couple of pitchers and sat back to chat and watch the show. The most entertaining part of the night was watching these two drunk-as-stink ajosshis trying to dance. When they weren't slow dancing with each other (!), they were doing this awkward, stiff, I-have-a-2x4-strapped-to-my-ass solo dance thing all the while clapping so completely off the beat that I had to wonder if they were listening to the same music I was.

The third performer of the night opened up the mic for people to do a little karaoke. Both Young-koo and Eun-sook got up and sang songs, so, keeping with the spirit of things, I got up and sang as well (my version of House of the Rising Sun brought the roof down, lol). After the last performer finished his set, we decided to wrap up the evening ourselves. Eun-sook and Young-koo headed for home, and I went off to meet some of my friends to complete what the soju and beer had started.

All in all, it was a very good night.