Mud and Muck

So, I've taken the train, the fast one, and a slow one, and a couple of busses and taxis--even the subway. None of this I did alone, however. I met up with a few friends, american ones. We ventured out to the west coast of Korea to the Boryeong Mud Festival. Here we got ourselves covered in mud, which is supposedly really great for your skin(I feel much softer now), and we proceeded to run into two classmates from university, none of whom we even knew were in Korea--ridiculous!! I had a Newsies type of hat on, one that cost around $30, and while eating grilled things from the sea, which I threw up the next morning because I was sure they were trying to escape up my windpipe, a drunken Canadian demanded I sell it to him. At first this sounded ludicrous, considering I really loved this hat and I had taken much time searching for it, so I told him, "There's no amount of money you could pay me."
He said, "Oh, everything is for sale."
"I dunno; I spent a lot of time searching for this hat--its kinda sentimental."
"Ah, c'mon!! How much do you want?"
"Dude! You can go online and buy it for like 30 bucks!!"
"How much?? C'mon!!"
"Okay. Fine. How about 200,000 won?" (The equivalent of $200 US)
So the guy puts 40,000 won on the table and says he'll be back. He takes a long time. Finally, after all of us have agreed this guy is a real deutschbag and that there is no way he is really going to get the rest of the money, he comes back, saying, "Alright...How much do you want for this hat?? This sentimental hat."
I say, "200,000 won."
He says, "I'll give you 100,000 won."
"Fine. 100,000 won, plus the 40,000 on the table."
"Alright, then you got yourself a deal!"
And I walk away 140 dollars richer, but hatless.
Granted, I miss my hat...but not that much. HaHa.

Teaching has been easy and frustrating. I really have no curriculum, so I have to come up with everything on my own, which could be awesome. Koreans, however, really do not have opinions on anything of worth, so that makes things very hard. So far, most of my students really only want to talk about luxury goods or love motels(hotels that couples go to for an hour at a time, mostly because everyone here lives at home until they're, like, 30) or K-Pop (think Britney Spears, N'Sync, and T-Pain with a Korean flair).
So, as much as I like it here, it definitely has its downsides. Like, no turkey. How many Koreans does a guy have to kill for a Turkey sandwich?? Apparently, a lot. No, but seriously, the food is not all bad--just different.

Oh, and by the way, the crazy Canadian guy, who was smoking like a chimney and drinking Hite(equivalent of Budweiser) like a Nascar fan at Daytona, told me this, "Dude. Money is just paper. I'm a Buddhist. I just taught you a great lesson on material possesions. They mean nothing. I own a piece of you now, a piece of your soul. Whaddaya think about that?"
I replied, "No worries. I already sold my soul at Bible College."
HaHa.