Who Pooped on my Head???

Hello!

The last week has been quite busy for us. Since it is quite cold outside and we make a point to live on a fairly strict budget we don't always have the most exciting social lives. This past week has been action packed though!

It began last weekend when we decided to have Man Night and Girls Night. This is exactly what is sounds like, myself and 3 other teachers here in the city went out for the night and a bunch of the girls had a sleepover here at our apartment. Girls Night, from what I'm told, was a good time and consisted of such stereotypical activities as nail painting, hair doing, cookie dough eating, drinking, dancing, and talking until 7:30 in the morning. Literally. Man Night was a bit more exciting in my opinion. While it mainly consisted of bar hoping, drinking at a mountain temple in the freezing cold, and getting to the roof of a hotel, our first order of the night was to try the dreaded Korean delicacy of dog soup. First off, please don't judge me for trying this. I love animals, and dogs in particular, but it is a delicacy of the older generation (not at all fancied by the younger generations) and something that we wanted to include as part of our Korean experience.

Dog Soup

We had a few drinks to help ease the nerves and actually eating it was a mental hurdle we all had to tackle but, honestly, it wasn't to bad. Sort of like a beef stew. Certainly not running back to try it again soon but not to bad. Anyway, that is checked off the list. The rest of Man Night we walked around Old Mokpo and I saw that part of the city all lit up for the first time. We went up to the side of Yudalsan, the mountain park in the city, then headed back to the waterfront to go to the roof of one of the big hotels because the view of the city is quite amazing. All in all, everyone had a great night. Par for the course, we had rough mornings too.

Old Mokpo Downtown at Night

Tuesday morning we had lunch with our friend Chris Doctor. Chris, who is Korean, is a doctor stationed here in Mokpo for his military service, which is mandatory here in the ROK. Ironically, it is not mandatory north of the boarder, but if you don't join they won't feed you so that decision is pretty much made for you. Anyway, Chris has been kind enough to show us around a little bit and introduce us to interesting and good Korean food. This time around we enjoyed the very appetizing sounding Mudfish Soup. The soup is literally made by putting mudfish into a blender. There a couple other things in there but it mainly blended fish and it was pretty good. Mokpo is apparently well known for this meal and we wouldn't have known of it had it not been for Chris so we are appreciative that he introduces us to things we wouldn't find otherwise. 

Wednesday found us hosting our first Couchsurfer! For those of you unfamiliar with Couch Surfing (https://www.couchsurfing.org/), it is a global network of people who host travelers for free. Lindsey hosted people when she was studying in Brisbane and we surfed with a couple people in New Zealand so we wanted to return the favor and host some people here in Korea. Our first guest was Judith from France, who we didn't know was coming until a few days prior. She had messaged us both separately on Couchsurfing thinking we were different people (which we are but you know) and when we both said we could host her she told me she was already staying with someone else. Then about a week later Lindsey got a message saying, "See you in 2 days!" and we realized that "someone else" was Lindsey. Fortunately, it still worked fine. She was incredibly nice and great to talk too. She lived in Israel for 5 years and is now studying Chinese in Taiwan so she could speak 4 languages: French, English, Hebrew, and Chinese. We just had dinner in our apartment and chatted about our travels and such. Judith headed out to explore the next morning but she was very nice and great to host. 

Thursday brought us our second surfers Anna and Rob from Poland. We hadn't planned on having surfers back to back but after the confusion with Judith that was just how things went. After some bus confusion Anna and Rob arrived around 10pm at the bus station where we met them. They had been studying/traveling in Australia and were heading home to Poland. The cheapest flights back to Warsaw were through Seoul though so they made an extended layover out of it and did a quick 10-Day or so tour of Korea. They hadn't had dinner yet so we ventured to the downtown area but not much was open due to the late hour and the part of town were in can be expensive. It took a little bit of exploring but we found a Chinese restaurant and they finally got to eat some good food. It was quite late after, so we just called it a night. We planned to go to Old Downtown and Yudalsan with them the next morning but we slept in too long and didn't have the time to go since we had to work in the afternoon. They should be back in Warsaw now where they are starting their Masters studies. 

Friday was an ordinary day at work. I made a class sit in silence for over 5 minutes because they wouldn't stop talking. Generally, a problem with older students because they are well aware we don't speak or understand Korean. After work we went out for a couple with Kirsten and Keagan at Boomba down at the waterfront. Boomba is the best because they have the cheapest beer. This naturally turned into a longer night than planned. We meet up with a group of friends at Moe's (the foreigner bar {which we find awkward to be in due to the concentration of foreigners}) and ended up being out until 3a.m. On the plus side, we did discover the best fries in Mokpo at Miller Time. Ridiculously good. I want them now actually. 

This weekend we are just relaxing and enjoying some downtime. It was a busy week but very fun. We look forward to hosting more couch surfers and helping more people. We had a great with our friends are usual but we are also very happy to revert to just hanging out in our tiny, cold apartment reading and watching TV. 

Thanks for reading!

-Dave

OH I FORGOT! We bought 2 gold fish that we keep in a large plastic jar. It was an impulse buy yesterday because I, for some reason, felt it was a really good idea. One is named Wee-bey after the character from The Wire who loves fish. The other is named Wee-bey's friend at this point. We want to see his personality a bit before we rush into a name. Hopefully, they won't die too soon. 

I also forgot to explain why this post is titled, "Who Pooped on my Head?" Its because of this:

These posters are all over the city. This one is in our apartment, we stole it from a window. They had 2 so I presume they aren't missing it. We had no idea what it was but found them pretty hilarious due to his poop hat. Ends up it is a children's play titled Who Pooped on my Head? The play is about this understandably disgruntled mole walking around trying to figure out who preformed this hilarious crime. You can find the english book on Amazon if you care to read it.

Well, I think I am actually done writing now. Thanks for reading!!!

-Dave