can you keep up?

Mari's amazing decision to send me the awesome book I'm Not the New Me has had perhaps the unintended effect of making me not want to blog anymore for three reasons. 1. I now spend a lot of time reading and re-reading it, because it's amazing. 2. I'm been re-inspired by said book to get serious about my weight loss mission, so I'm jogging more and therefore more tired by 10pm. 3. It's just so freaking funny and brilliant that it makes me think I should not even bother. But alas, I'm still going to. I'm now shooting for twice a week. My most important goals for the next few months are exercising and learning Korean, so writing will regretfully have to be sidelined.

Anyway, I haven't blogged since Friday afternoon, and it's now Tuesday morning. I had a nice three day weekend, complete with a visit from Amy and Tim, which was excellent. I can't remember what I did Friday night. Meghan's been gone for what seems like forever (but actually just since last Wednesday or something). Saturday I woke up early and headed to the Gwangju train station to meet Amy and Tim. I was unsuccessful at disembarking the bus at the correct stop, so I was a little late, but I got there. We had Dunkin Donuts, then saw The Bourne Ultimatum at a movie theater. It was my first real movie theater experience in Korea, so it's too bad it was to see such a horrible movie. But Amy really wanted to see it, and she was the guest, so I didn't really mind. It wasn't actually THAT bad--I can sometimes get in the mood to watch an action movie, but I just find it annoying that the movie consisted entirely of chase scenes interspersed infrequently with brief exposition in the confusing form of flashbacks. And the end was unsatisfying, probably because it's not actually the end. I am, however, wondering how many more four-syllable words there are that end in an 'ee' sound. What's next? Bourne discovers he actually he had a child with Julia Stiles in The Bourne Dependency? Whatever it is, I can be sure that it will be a poor rehashing of the previous three movies. Hey, there you go... The Bourne Redundancy.

Then we had drinks at a coffee shop, pizza at Pizza Gio (where else?), and headed to... where else? Noraebang. The pictures I posted last time that feature the alien are from that wonderful experience. It was in fact an Alien/Pirate Ship/Christmas-themed singing room, which was more remarkable than even you can imagine. I discovered a new favorite karaoke song, and a good time was had by all, I hope. After that we met up with Hyeong Min and set about the important business of the evening--getting d-run-k. We chose a hof, which proved to actually be a noraebang as well, and strikingly similar to the establishment featured in No Regrets, but unfortunately Tim at no point began gyrating on the table. After finally managing to extricate ourselves from Hyeong Min, we resumed drinking in Naju city at our favorite establishment, the Oak Tong. Perplexingly, the cute waiter wasn't there. Perhaps he quit after his run-in with obnoxious Ajay. (Just a thought.) We drank more, but then were accosted by a friendly and drunk ajeossi who subjected Tim to a lot of nonsensical Korean speech. Amy and I pretended to know no Korean and did our best to make a dent in the three huge bottles of beer that the guy bought us, but eventually the man left and so did we. Late night mandu, and then we dropped Tim off at a hotel and headed home.

My host mom had left a bedroll for Amy, which was really sweet, so we were both a little drunk and hunkered down fairly quickly. In the morning we enjoyed breakfast and then headed to DVD Bang, where we watched a movie I can't remember the Korean name of. The English name was How the Lack of Love Affects Two Men. I wasn't terribly enthusiastic, but it turned out to be okay. The beginning was really good and interesting, but I think it relied on its one shtick a little too long, and the end was, in my opinion, unnecessarily convoluted. But whatever. After that we made the trip to Gwangju, ate a quick lunch, and I parted ways with Amy and Tim. Apparently she got stuck in traffic and missed the train, but alas, made it home eventually.

I'm not sure what I did with the rest of my Sunday. The time gets away. I likely just hung out for awhile and studied, then met Meghan for mandu when she came back briefly before heading off again Monday morning for her school field trip. (I'm so jealous!) Monday I didn't have school, so I agreed to meet Meghan at our gym at 6:00 (when it opens) to check out the early morning workout situation. I did a lot of arms and I'm now paying for it, but it was a nice workout. I also went jogging, then had breakfast and took a three hour nap. I went to the bank and attempted an international money transfer. I'm not sure how successful I was, but we'll see if the money ever appears in my US account. I also did some shopping and lesson planning, and went jogging at night too.

Which brings us to today. I'm decided that in honor of my renewed vigor for life and working out, I will do two-a-days for the next two weeks until the Gyeongju conference, when I will be briefly reunited with all the other ETAs. I've decided that what was previously missing in my attitude towards exercise was the enthusiasm, motivation, and drive of a championship high school football team, which I'm going to attempt to simulate by working out twice a day. Morning and night. I'm still only going to the gym every other day, because I know muscles needs time to repair themselves and stuff. But I'm pretty sure I can't hurt myself with too much cardio. And I want to look good for Gyeongju, so I'm going for it. I'll be rewarding myself with a sexy and expensive new Adidas tracksuit from Beckham +10 if I am successful. It's getting chilly nowadays--it was at least 60 this mornign at 5:30 when I was jogging, so that's actually a necessity.

We'll see.