how to make a bad korea move

It's been far too long since I posted, and I have started getting hate mail, so it's time to placate my tormentors and write something.

The biggest thing that's happened recently is that ECC has finally come round to the concept of weekends. No more working Saturdays, and what's more, my ridiculous schedule dropped 24 teaching hours a month, so I no longer have to feel like I've been enslaved by a horde of Korean children. Naturally we've been making the best of the weekends, although I was mega-sick a couple of weeks ago. Last night I went to a Korean's house for the first time ever (my colleague Diane's housewarming). It was supposed to be a girls-only thing, but Diane couldn't bear to "break up the trio" of Marcy, Rachel and me - more of an axis of evil, truth be told - and invited me, much to the chagrin of the guys in the office. Talking of axes of evil, crazy Wendy decided to do her best to ruin the evening by telling the Koreans they should just kiss and make up with the North Koreans. Now, it's well known here that you don't talk politics at the dinner table, especially women, and even more particularly by telling people that they are being petty by not getting along with a people with whom they are still technically at war, and who have angaged in wholesale slaughter, torture, concentration camps and systematic rape, and have literally 10,000 cannons and possibly nuclear missiles pointed at Seoul. There was a horrible silence. I shrunk into a corner and hoped she would realise it was time for her to leave, which she did. However, the rest of the night was great, and we got very drunk, ate some delicious food and generally had a very pleasant time.

Tonight is Marcy's birthday party, and we are following up kalbi (Korean barbecue) with a night in Kangnam. Can't wait. I'll have my camera. Tomorrow, though, is a day I've been looking forward to for weeks: James, my best and oldest friend, arrives for a two-week stay. Just can't wait to see someone I've known forever introduced to a world where I've not known anyone for longer than five months and eighteen days. As a guy who doesn't travel much, he is in for some serious culture shock - it seems like forever since the first time a lamppost spoke to me, or somebody stopped and stared at me all the way down the street until I disappeared from view. In fact, here are ten things that are going to be weird for him:

1. Being body-checked by grannies on the subway.
2. Men decked out in golfwear everywhere.
3. The national obsession with poo.
4. Motorbikes on the pavements.
5. Girls in restaurants using their mobiles to take photos of their friends taking photos of them.
6. "Service" (suh-biss-uh) - being brought free stuff in bars because he's white.
7. Video screens everywhere.
8. The return of the eighties in all its fluorescent pink and green splendour.
9. The fact that I now instinctively say "carrr" and "tomaydo".
10. Seeing English everywhere, and just about all of it being utter nonsense.

Well, the party train has just pulled up, and I've got a first class ticket. More soon.