Discovering something new everyday: The goodbye party I've been dreading.....

I’m sad to report that this was Ben and Lisa’s last weekend in Chuncheon. Friday night after I finished work, we decided to share our secret chicken place with the new teachers that have arrived at our school. This one chicken place has always been one of our favorite places to go after a bad day of work. Since Friday was my first official day without Ben and Lisa at my school, it seemed fitting to go there and supress my sadness with a beer and chicken.

It was suposed to be an early night because we wanted to be well rested for Saturday’s big going away party. Well.. like most nights, our good intentions of going to bed early were sabatoged. Lisa came to my house to raid my closet for the party and we decided to have a glass of wine. Ben came to pick her up and five minutes later my apartment was full of drunk people. Jason called; he and his girlfriend Erin were back in town for the party and his old boss had taken out all of the Wonderland teachers for a meal. She bought them a case of Beckseju (Ginseng wine) so they were all pretty happy and intoxicated. Before I knew it, everyone was in my apartment and we were heading out to go have a few drinks. We decided to visit my boyfriend’s restaurant and cause some rowdiness there. It’s great because it’s just across the street from where I live. We went there, ate some bo sam ( steamed pork), drank some beer and talked a lot. We haven’t all been together for a couple of weeks. After an hour Ben decided to bring out Chan Woong’’s hoola hoop and give us a show. It was quite the site; wish I had my camera. Ben wasn’t so great but Chan Woong showed him a few tricks and then Lisa came up and put Ben’s skills to shame. i even got dragged up to try it too. At one o’clock, we decided to head home, which was quite an early night for Korea.

I got up early Saturday morning to cook sauces for the going away party. The plan was to have a potluck party at Rachel’s house where we could divulge in oven baked goodies, but unfortunately Rachel had to have emergency surgery on Tuesday evening and the potluck party got somewhat canceled. Rachel’s surgery went well and she is recovering. The party got moved to Bod and Andrea’s house, which in the long run was probably better, because their place is much larger than Rachel’s.

Brandi and I were the chefs for the evening. We still wanted to have some food even with no oven to use. So I cooked meat sauce and chicken sauce and bought spagetti to cook at the party. Brandi slaved away all Saturday, while I was at work and made 45 crepes for dessert. She was supposed to make apple pie, run to Rachel’s and bake it,but she ran out of time. Everyone brought a little something, and we had plenty of food to eat. Even though, some people were dissapointed there was none of Brandi’s apple pie, the crepes were a pretty good replacement.

After we filled up on food and alcohol, we headed to Lava to dance. The night was a blast and at about 5 a.m. we decided it was time to get some food. We went to a restaurant and ate some samgybsal( pork) and eel. Ben and Lorne somehow managed to find a Noraebang (Kareoke room) still open and they started singing. All of us eventually made our way over there. I passed out for awhile and when I woke up, I noticed Lisa was gone. I went outside of our room to find her crying in the hallway. She had just said good bye to Lorne and I think it finally started to sink in that she was actually leaving. Of course I began to cry and we nearly drowned the rest of the people. When we finally emerged from Noraebang, it was daylight and we were all ready for our beds.

The three Asian beauties.