Day 218: The Six-Day Work Week

I had to get up at 7:30am today (and it's a bloody Saturday!) and I wish I could say it was for something cool, like to head off camping or a road trip with friends or something like that. I have to go to a POLY workshop today, and I'm so not in the mood.

We're required to go to two of these workshops a year and they're an all-day gig. Normally I wouldn't be so cranky and pessimistic about attending a work conference, but with how 'well' the last two days have been at work, the last thing I feel like right now is diving back into another full day of POLYisms and POLYination. I feel irritable and just want to do my own thing. It's a cloudy and rainy day so it's not like I'm missing out on great weather, but I just don't feel like going to this work thing. Spending a whole precious Saturday at a work function just makes it feel like another work day. Ugh.

It turned out to be an alright day, but kinda heavy on the useless side. We had two workshops to attend today, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and each were about teaching different kinds of students. Only half of it was actually useful or applicable to me as two of those four hours were spent talking about teaching students grammar, something I don't do at all. The other half was about reading, which I do teach, but it wasn't all that particularly informative or interesting. The whole workshop felt more like POLY Window Dressing as opposed to actually education, but ahhh well I'm obliged to be here by contract so may as well just go with it.

At least we got a free massive lunch buffet which was awesome. I couldn't eat most of the food as it was meat/gross seafood oriented, but the spread was impressive nonetheless. There are 15 POLY schools and all the staff of all 15 were present. It was pretty cool, actually, to be able to check out all the other staff from the other schools. Our day ended at around 4:30pm (and oh yeah, we were all given free kettles) and I felt pretty tired.

I wanted to go out that night and knew there was going to be some stuff going on in the city tonight with friends, so I opted to be dropped off at a subway station instead of being driven back all the way to Ilsan. Coming down to Itaewon early without consulting my friends for specific plans turned out to be not the wisest move. I had three options for friends so I figured that I had all my bases covered. I thought I could hang out with Michael & Gary, and if not then maybe dinner with Nick & Angele, and if not that then I also knew that Luke was going to be somewhere in the city in the evening time. Between those three groups I should be able to find *someone* to come out and play with me...?

Well I phoned Michael & Gary, but they were way out at Everland and weren't going to back in town for another few hours... And I phoned Nick & Angele but they were both split up doing their own things and weren't going to be doing dinner in Sincheon (not Itaewon) for quite a while... And then I actually ran into Luke, but he had just finished a tour of the DMZ and was tired so was on his way home to Chungju. I struck out! That's 0 for 3! I ended up spending five hours in Itaewon on my own in order to pass the time...LOL. I had some dinner at BurgerKing, spent over two hours reading at Starbucks, walked around the full Itaewon Loop twice, and then hung out in the hallway in Michael's apartment for a while waiting for him to get back. Serves me right for not making concrete plans! (now you know why I do need a professional secretary!) ;-)

The rest of the evening fortunately more than made up for having to kill all that time. Michael, Gary and I headed over to Sinchon to The Bar (yes, it's a bar actually called The Bar) and met up with Pauline, Jake & Shannon, Ben, Paul, Lorraine, as well as Nick, Angele, and Darryl. The whole gang was there! It turned out to be the best night I've had out in a while. The music was AWESOME (all 80's stuff and lots of classic rock) and there was a really friendly vibe in that bar. It was mostly foreigners and everyone was having tons of fun belting out all the English songs. And plus at this bar you can order PITCHERS OF GIN AND TONIC!!!! Now how amazing is that??? The three of us ended up staying til just after 3am and then cabbed on home. What a fun night!!