I've been to the Dragon Bar three times now and every time I've left with a phone number of an American guy. Two of the times, I actually left the bar with an American guy. Usually when I talk to other white people, I'm OK with them, but then by the next morning, I don't have much of a desire to ever see them again. The white guy this past weekend was pretty decent. He was wearing a pink shirt. He was insane, though. He kept going on about how there is no such thing as evil, how the U.S. should never have attacked Afghanistan and how North Korea is the best place in the world. I know I'm the most liberal guy on campus, but I was actually spewing Republican talking points to this guy. He was kind of funny, though. Maybe I'll call him sometime when I'm drunk and need a "white guy quickie."

I did blow my shot at a Korean girlfriend Saturday night. This girl was totally digging me and by that, I mean she probably had 12 drinks that night and was acting out some sort of dare to talk to the dorky looking white guy. But anyway, things were going great and Bender was all jealous, but then the bartender joked with me and said she was crazy. I, in turn, joked with the girl about the bartender saying she was crazy. And then she snapped. Calling people crazy here usually works fine in class and the kids love it, but apparently if you attempt to joke about crazy with a drunk Korean girl, your dreams of moving into a Korean home, playing rock paper scissors all day and eating kimchi for every meal, will be shattered. At least I got the white guy's phone number.

I do have to call Bender out on one thing and it involves his new pink scarf. In one of his recent blogs, he wrote that he wasn't the type of person to wear a scarf. Look this is just not true. He wore it all weekend, made me take pictures of him posing with it on and then violated my camera by taking pictures of himself wearing it. While he likes to point out that only a small part of the scarf is actually pink, it is by far the dominant color. Now it's OK for him to wear the scarf here. In fact, it may not be gay enough to wear here, but if he keeps this kind of behavior up he will never be able to return to America. He did give me jacket, though, and that wasn't gay at all.

It's been getting tougher to write blogs lately, I think because most things seem pretty normal to me now. I expect the ridiculous. I expect someone to give me a pair of socks at a restaurant. I expect the doorman at my apartment complex to chase me up the stairs at 7am on Saturday morning trying to explain to me in Korean that I need to give him money for some sort of utility bill. Now there's something I can't understand. It doesn't happen often, but some people insist on trying to explain things to me in Korean over and over even though I've made it clear in some way that I have no idea what they're saying. I don't think these people appreciate the value of the hand gesture. It's amazing how many things you can explain by pointing to things. I'll probably still point to everything when I get home and that will just be weird.

I was explaining to one class what a continent is today and I think they understood it, but their pronunciation was a bit off. They inconveniently replaced the "o" with a "u" and then insisted on yelling it about ten times. For second, I almost thought they were doing it on purpose.

One of my favorite things to do in class is tease the kids, especially if they are annoying me or if they didn't do their homework. The line that hits them the hardest is when I point to my head and go "Your head empty?" All of the classes understand what this means so they all laugh at the bad kid and that's the point. Don't mess with the teacher because I have no problem stooping to your level.

Bender and I both went to the Chinese consulate today to get our visas processed for the Shanghai trip next week. We did not, however, go to the same place. We apparently went to different consulates within a half mile of each other. Since it seems pretty unlikely that there are two Chinese consulates that close to each other in the same city, the logical outcome is either me or him aren't going to China. I think it's him though, cause they took his passport and 75,000 won today. My place took my passport, but I pay on Friday. He's so screwed.

While Bender hinted at the gayfest that was Friday night, let me just come clean here as something incredibly embarrassing occurred that I have sworn with never again be repeated. Yeah, we went to a karoake room together. That will happen again. It's what happened at the cashier of the karaoke place that makes me severely question my intelligence. Since we were going to be singing together and beer is required for that, I grabbed a couple beers out of the mini fridge next to the cashier. Paid three bucks for each one. I had finished about three quarters of mine probably while we were belting out our tenth Oasis song when Bender pointed to the can. Non-alcoholic malt beverage. Yeah, we were pounding non-alcoholic beer. I have two real problems with this, first, I could not tell IMMEDIATELY that it was non-alcoholic. And second, it brought up a troubling memory. The first weekend I really went out here is the weekend we sang karoake for the first time. At that place, we had more than one beer. Probably more like four each. And since I now believe, what I first dismissed as bs, that karoake bars aren't allowed to serve alcohol, it comes down to this: If I drank four non-alcoholic beers while singing It's Gonna Be Me while shaking a tambourine over my head while sitting on a giant red couch with Mike Bender, can I officially proclaim that night as the low point of my life, from now until the day I die? You make the call.

(Photos- top- tall guy and black girl and a couple students)