Poodle hunting

Things that I have done to prepare for the Round the World trip this week include borrowing Lonely Planet guides from friends, putting them all on the bookcase, sitting back and admiring them all on the bookcase, taking photos of them on the bookcase and finally removing one of the books and looking at the photos. I feel much better prepared now! I have also realised that I have gone from saying that I will probably be back in six months to I will definitely be back in six months- back in Korea that is.

So I went to school armed with the camera to get a shot of the kid with the perm and he didn't come in with his brother this week. Disappointed I took a photo of his sister instead. Maybe next week.

On Friday I had a class with two middle school girls from eight until ten pm. They interest me a lot as I try to decide how much like them I was at their age. Quite a lot, I think. They spent two hours talking about all the handsome boys at their school and how ugly all the girlfriends of the famous boys are. This also included quite a long and detailed plan on how they were going to bump into the high school boys on their way home from class- which route they should take, which shop they should stop at, how slow they should walk, whether it was OK to hang around at the bus stop even if they weren't catching a bus. I smiled the knowing, patronizing smile of the old while putting my make up on and phoning my friend to discuss which was the best bar to go to in order to look at men. Guess we are not that different at all!

Actually we went to the Warehouse bar to meet up with a couple of mates for dinner. The dinner was good and only mildly put off by a drunk Korean guy telling us that he was the father of one of Tania's students, we tucked right in. After dinner we went to Absolut and then back to Rory's house. Now I am not saying that things got messy but I was surprised to find that I had taken some photos when I looked at my camera the next day.

Saturday morning it was bright and sunny, all the better to nurse a hangover. Undaunted by the throbbing in my head I went to Ojukhon with Tania. It was the home of a famous Korean scholar and features on the five thousand won note. I had also helped correct the English on the pamphlet for the place. It was quite a buzz to see some of my words and also quite upsetting to see that they hadn't listened to all that I had said. Ah well.

We pottered around and did our usual camera assault on the building. Then it was off to Chodang-dong, famous for its tofu. We looked around another historical building before settling down for a tofu feast. After that I was pretty much wiped out so went home for a nap.

Four hours later and it was time to leave the house once more. We went to see 'Million Dollar Baby', which I am sure would have been a better movie had I been able to hear it over the rumbling of my stomach. Yes, yes, all the hospital scenes are probably very moving if you are able to concentrate on them rather than fantasizing about food. I had left my house a little too late to have something to eat before watching the movie and had to pay the price really. We went for pork barbecue after.

Sitting on the floor in the restaurant next to a stack of cushions it was no mean feat to drag ourselves out. In fact, we were both so undecided about whether to just go home that we had to have a quick game of rock, scissors, paper. I lost and we went to the bar. Which was blissfully empty, as we knew it would be, bearing in mind that another bar was offering free beer that night. I settled down with a nice slow Baileys and we cracked out the Jenga.

Tania and me have an ongoing Jenga competition in Bumpin. We take it so seriously that we keep the scores updated in a small photo frame we found behind the bar one night. To date, Tania is winning but not by that much considering that she has never even sniffed an alcoholic drink before playing. We also made a new record high of 35 blocks before the tower came tumbling down, into my drink mostly. On a Jenga high we decided to quit while ahead. I was home by 2am.