Soju on a rock and Russian gypsies

Considering I didn't know how I was going to get home, because I have no idea where my neighborhood is, I'd say my first real night out in Changwon was spectacular. I took a cab to go meet Lindsay over in her neck of the woods -- the center of Changwon. We picked up Ryan before heading to this restaurant that serves good bibimbap.

At dinner, I learned about Korean's irrational fear of the number 4. Something to do with the Chinese word for death sounding similar to the number four in Korean. This finally explained why my elevator has an F in place of a four, for the fourth floor. Also, as luck would have it my apartment just happens to be on the fourth floor! I also found out about "Korean age". My co-teacher first told me about this, when she was like "my Korean age is 25 but my American age is 24". I was really confused, but turns out in Korea new borns are automatically a year old once they are born -- so on their first birthday they turn two. It's kind of weird and depends on what time of the year you were born and such, but it was certainly interesting.

After dinner and some shopping at E-mart we waited for a bus to head over to Masan. This was the small protest taking place right next to the bus stop. We couldn't figure out whether it was for the beef upheavel that's been taking this country by storm, or for the woman that was recently shot in North Korea. The longer we stood there the more we leaned towards a beef protest of some sort.

We ended up in a bar in Masan called All that Jazz. But to my disappointment, the bar did not serve any Soju. This was quickly fixed once Ryan called his Korean friend Kevin. The place we went to served up a lot of stuff along with our Soju. I think my favorite thing was the dukboki (ricecakes and fish soaked in this hot chilli sauce). I learned a lot of Korean drinking games that night. It was hard work, their games involve a lot of math -- not so great when you're intoxicated with Soju -- but definitely gets everyone laughing because you're bound to mess up and screw up the numbers. We walked around the streets of Masan after our late night snack. Kevin suggested that we go chill out at Kyungnam University. We bought some more soju and salty snacks and ended up sitting on this huge rock looking up at the few stars that were visible. I don't think the night could have ended more perfectly than that.

Sunday was spent walking through City 7, this huge maze of a mall looking for an adapter. I ended up seeing the most random thing. They were like Russian gypsies. There were magicians, acrobats, and an opera singer. It was all so completely out of place. The entire time I was like what are these Russians doing performing in a mall in South Korea?

I chatted with the manager of the troupe after the show. He was this big Russian man that looked like he belonged in the mafia. He was nice though, I asked him about what the heck they are doing in South Korea, and he told me they go from country to country to perform random shows. They've been to France, Germany, and a bunch of other countries in Europe. He said they were going to be in South Korea for another month. I definitely plan on going back and watching them again. I didn't get a chance to talk to the performers, but next time I'm going to try to chat with them after they finish doing their thing. My trip to the confusing Korean mall made me really happy. Especially when I met this Korean guy at the bookstore, who seemed to know a bit of English. He told me I could find my adapter for my computer at Lotte-Mart. This pretty much made my day. So now I'm hooked up to the rest of the world again, and boy does it feel good! I've been feeling so out of the loop since I wasn't getting any news, and had no idea what was going on in the world outside of Changwon -- well, really I have no idea what the heck is going on in Changwon either.