BKLOG

Ever since a couple days ago, I’ve remained dangerously low on stimulants… which - after a few weeks of surviving on coffee, second hand smoke, and soju - is intoxicating in and of itself.  Insomnia or fatigue strike at the most inopportune times and I spend my days close to angrily snapping at some poor Korean that forgot to put an ‘s’ on the end of ‘loves.’  Oh yes, I’m unstable and sweaty… but I’ve finally managed to accept my fate for the next year or so.  As of this morning, my long shot ticket off of this peninsula withered and died.  I promptly went out and bought, ‘Korean Made Easy… for beginners’ as I’m sure there is nothing left to do but eat Kimchi by the fistful and finally figure out how to say my cell phone number in 한국어.

It’s funny… I haven’t been this content with things for a long time; my job is indescribably amazing.  Was that a cop out?  Shall I do my damnedest to describe it?  Ok:

I hooked up with this place called LZone.  It is a bar/cafe, catering to the college aged, that offers in-house group study sessions in a variety of languages including Spanish, Korean, English, Chinese, French, and Japanese.  The people I work with are bright and cheerful; the clientele are positive, creative, full of energy.  My job is to lead a 40 minute discussion on a daily given topic.  Today, we talked about… ghosts!  I cannot think of a better way to spend my day than telling scary stories to a foreign audience rapt by my charm and (apparently) fresh perspective on urban legends.

Friday nights, LZone holds a party.  At 8pm, the lights go down and the music goes up.  For ₩10,000, any poor bastard that wanders in must spend the next 4 hours chugging Korean piss by the ‘ONE SHOT!’  Koreans don’t mess around with drinking games… When the all-you-can-drink supply is limited to a couple hundred liters, the evening  becomes a desperate game of ‘open your throat.’  Of course, during this Roman display of excess, I’m wandering around like ‘Bluto’ Blutarsky, all the while feeling sheepish when my boss keeps insisting I’m doing a ‘great job.’

Indeed… fraternizing with the customer is encouraged.  Which means I now have a vast network of locals willing to help me with just about anything.  I’ve been working for a week and already I’ve secured - for my future - a dirt cheap gym membership, a free trip to the coast for a seafood dinner, hiking, Korean lessons, amazing home-cooked meals, car-rides outside the city, my very own laundry-adjumma, and a tinfoil-gilt key to the city of Luckyfuck-dong.

I know I bitched when I first landed on this rock.  When your only friend is a stone bowl of rice and seaweed, you would feel a bit turned off by the whole gig too.  But, in true BK-fashion, I’ve managed to hit my stride and things couldn’t be peachier.  In fact, to celebrate, I’m going to convert my entire ₩2 million paycheck into ₩10 coins and roll around with them in the bathtub for 10 minutes.  Then I’m going to brush up on my Korean… because I know I will be needing to talk my way out of jail at some point in the future.