Day 84: Girls Girls Girls

So today was my first day of teaching the new textbook to my elementary kids, and it went over really well. The textbook has been designed so that lessons are both educational and entertaining. It's bright and colourful with fun characters, there's a tape with words, music, and sound effects to listen to, and it offers tons of suggested side-lessons and games. The kids seemed to enjoy it quite a bit, and it'll certainly make my job easier. Right on!

I had no plans for this Friday evening so I decided to head into Seoul for some dinner and some reading time at my favourite Starbucks. However, plans soon changed... I was walking to the bus stop when what do I see across the street from me...? Could it be a....*caucasian woman???* OH MY GOD! Is she really real? Is she a mirage? I *NEVER* see foreigners in my neighbourhood! I crossed the street and immediately went up to her and introduced myself.

Her name is Ann, she's from Quebec, is an English Teacher also, and lives just 10 minutes up the road from me! Wow! How could I have not run into her until now? (Although I do think she may have been the 'girl in the dark mist' that I saw one night on the street way back in my first few weeks here.) She was super-friendly, and we chatted up for like a good 10-15 minutes about life in Korea and our experiences so far. She was meeting another girl for some shopping and then dinner in a few minutes, who sure enough turned up a second later. The second girl's name is Ailish, she's from Ireland, is also an English Teacher, and lives *just up the street from me!!!* What the...??? Where have these girls been??? I was so excited to meet foreigners who not only live in my neighbourhood, but are nice, friendly, and *NORMAL!* ;-)

Anyways Ailish was hosting a little dinner birthday party at her place later on and invited me to join them. So cool! To hell with going to Seoul tonight, I'm gonna hang out with these girls instead! I was still absolutely starving so I needed to eat before the 9:30pm dinner party. The 3 of us rode the bus to Bucheon where Ann and Ailish went off to buy some groceries and I went and had some Mickey-D's for dinner. I did some running around, then went home and packed my bags for the weekend knowing that if I was going out with these girls I might not be getting home until late...

I went over to Ailish's place around 10pmish and was again pleasantly surprised to see that she lives just 5-10 minutes up the road from me. Not long after arriving at Ailish's, the rest of the girls showed up - Erin (from Ontario), Mindy (from Cape Breton Island), Bernie (from Ireland also) and the birthday girl Hannah (also from Cape Breton.) So it was me, six girls, and several bottles of wine - good times! All the girls were outgoing and lively and friendly, and I had such a great time hanging out with them. This is the most female company I've had since arriving and it was really cool to be 'in on the girl talk' with this boisterous crew. The wine and laughter were flowing, and I was even invited to a dinner party at Hannah's next weekend. God how cool would it be to have cool girl friends who live in the same part of town as me???

Around 1am or so the girls decided to head out to a bar in Incheon, but knowing that I had to get up super early the next morning, and already having 6-7+ glasses of wine, I decided it was best for me to head home. I bid adieu to my new friends and went home, to bed. What a wonderful totally un-planned surprise tonight was!