I really can't believe I've only been here a week. I only know like five Korean words but I still find myself mumbling them in place of things like "Oh man" or "Ahhh". It's kind of weird, but after hearing a million people speaking the same language everyday, it gets planted in your mind pretty quickly.

So I made it through a week of work and really for the first time in my life, I got to experience that after work beer on a Friday night that tastes like heaven. My boss handed me a giant envelope of cash (the biggest bill here is about $10) on Friday paying back my airfare, which was solid. My apartment is still in pretty poor shape, with the sink leaking and some type of insect digesting my body, but I'm moving in a month so I'm not worried.

Went out Friday night to a new part of town and you know, it really doesn't matter what we did early in the night. All of it was rendered immediately meaningless and boring the second Bender and I wandered into a norebang, a Korean karoake bar, around 3:30am. We were really just looking for a beer or two to kill some time before the subway reopened at 5am, but somehow it became so much more. As we walked downstairs, you could already drunken Korean belting out songs. We grabbed a few beers from the mini fridge near the register, plunked down 15,000 won ($15) on the counter and headed to our own private room. Basically this place can only be described as the best place on earth. Huge red couch, 5 tv screens, 2 microphones, a thousand songs, oh, and two tambourines, can't forget about them. Man, we must have sang at least 20 songs. We're both terrible singers, but there was something about those microphones that make everyone sound like Billy Joel. Yeah, we did sign Piano Man. Koreans kept peering into our room. We must have been really loud. When we left, my throat felt like it had just been run over by a truck. What a great concept, Bender and I are already planning a sequel.

Yesterday we checked out one of the biggest shopping districts in town. Never seen anything like it. So many Koreans, so many stores. If I were a chick, I would have been totally turned on. Last night a Korean bartender blew in my ear. That's all I'll say about last night.

Today Bender I and two of my coworkers went to Lotte World, which is Seoul's version of Disneyworld. It was pretty ridiculous. While on line at one ride, a park worker pointed to Bender in the line, motioned with her hand over her head and lead him off the line. He was too tall to ride. It was hilarious. And also kind of sad since he missed one of the better rides in the park. We also got banned from one ride, one of those giant, get strapped in, go up 500 feet and plunge back down jobs. We tried to bring our beer cups onto the ride. Beer was $7 all you can drink. The guy checking tickets stopped us. Apparently some kid got drunk, forgot to buckle in on a ride and got shot off, ending in, well, his death. I also got my first look at the Korean wave today. They don't just move their hand back and forth in a horizontal motion, they do some sort of sick twisting thing, something I had only seen demonstrated before by really special kids. Literally they had park workers whose only job was to stand at the exit of a ride and do this wave, it looked like it would get painful after about 2 minutes. At the end of the night, a fat sweaty Korean kid made Bender and I take photos with him.

I've been pleasantly surprised by how nice the weather has been here. Hasn't been a drop of rain since I arrived and the temperature stills hits 80 during the day. Of course that will change and I think winter will be even more brutal than in NY, but that's something to cry about later.

I hoping to be better able to post more once I get a reliable source of internet. Right now I'm just picking up a crappy wireless signal. I have to sit with my computer hanging out of the window, which may explain a lot behind all the bugs sleeping with me. Week 2 at Topia English Zone begins tomorrow. Stay strong, America.

(Photos: Top- Lotte World Castle, Middle- Barbie, Erika and Bender, Bottom- Myeong-dong Market)