Ray Day - Monday June 30, 2008

So this is the beginning of my last week teaching in Wonju. It's pretty damned depressing to put it bluntly.

I am doing a normal class but with extra game time because again, not feeling the long drawn out goodbyes.

I found out after teaching my second class that Ray was going to come to Wonju to visit me! YAY! Incredibly late notice, but I didn't care. He was going to try to make it in time to go to the orphanage with me, but he missed his bus from Gumi and had to go to Daegu. He finally got on a bus around 2:40PM, and I get to the orphanage at 3:30PM. Gumi is much further from Wonju than that. It's about 2 1/2 hours, I believe.

I bought the kids ice cream and hoped that it wouldn't melt as I waited for the classroom to be handed over to me by the random Korean men installing a computer. They had the ice cream and of course it was everywhere by the time they were done. I tried to do another normal class but with more games. I think the woman that has been helping me since the beginning told the kids that it was my last time, but I think for the most part they forgot between last week and this week. I told them again at the end of class that it was my last day with them. I got a lot of hugs which was super cute. I wasn't as sad as I thought I would be, but I think it's because I haven't made an official personal decision to leave Wonju. So, in a way, I think I'm not really leaving them.

When I left, the director of the orphanage and the woman who has been amazing throughout my entire volunteer stint, drove me home. Well, I thought they were driving me home. Instead we stopped at a hanji shop; they wanted me to pick out a gift. I had no idea what to pick. I hadn't expected anything, and then I was put on the spot to choose my own gift. Luckily, the woman from the orphanage (I wish I knew her name) stepped up and pointed out a little girl and boy made from hanji. She pointed to the little girl and said Ah Ram and pointed to the little boy and said Min Hyeok; two of the children I have taught off and on for the past 9 months. I chose the little girl which is perfect; it will remind me of the orphanage every time I look at it.

From there they were going to take me home, but I asked to be dropped off at Shi Wae Bus Terminal to meet Ray. Pretty much perfect timing. I was super happy to see him. It's been a long time since we had time to just catch up. We haven't really just sat and talked since orientation at Chuncheon. We went downtown for a bit just to look around. We agreed that Wonju is much bigger than Gumi considering Wonju had multiple areas that are considered down town-esque. I bought two skirts because Korea has made me even more obsessed with skirts. Then we headed back to my apartment. My host mom said that Ray couldn't spend the night since her husband wasn't home which is fairly common in Korea. So we just hung out there for a bit so I could drop off my stuff and change.

We walked down near Lotte Cinema which is the closest down town area near me. We had Shabu Shabu for dinner; the same thing we had when I went to visit him. Ha! From there, we walked even further down toward a bar near my guitar hagwon. I had us stop in to say hi to my guitar teacher since I had canceled my lesson for tonight.

We finally made it to Pub; a bar that has Hoegaarden on tap! We only stayed for one drink and then we started walking away from that area when Ray decided we should go to the German bar that I mentioned earlier. We always ended up walking back and forth before Ray decided what he wanted to do and where he wanted to go. haha! So we went to Munchen. At this bar, you can buy a beer in a glass mug, so when you're done drinking, you can throw your glass mug at a target. If you hit the target, you get a chance of winning something. I won a free mug of beer! So we each had two beers there. Then we were going to head to a Makoli Bar but realized we didn't want to eat. At a lot of these bars you have to order anju (food with the alcohol). Instead we went to a Family Mart and bought a huge package of about 16 small bottles of yogurt drink and a huge thing of Makoli and sat outside to drink it. Ray has been telling me since almost day one that Yogurt Makoli is the best, so that's what we drank. At one point, two Korean men walked by and looked at us. One man went into the Family Mart specifically to buy us kimchi. You can't drink Makoli without kimchi is what he was telling us. Haha! SO we ate kimchi and drank Makoli. Then we got two more beers and headed to sit on some benches in front of an outlet mall that was still quite far from my apartment. We sat and talked while we drank.

There was a definite point where my tummy told me it was no longer accepting alcohol. So, Ray took my beer and I drank the rest of the yogurt. I can't even imagine how many of those little yogurt drinks I drank.

We took a taxi back to my apartment and then Ray was going to go find a jimjilbang, but I felt bad so I went with him. Good thing I did, because there was nothing around. We ended up walking all the way back over to the Lotte Cinema area to eat at a Kimbap Nara. I believe this was around 5AM. We then took a taxi back to my apartment. We finally went to sleep around 6 or 6:30AM.