I’m glad I missed the bus.
This is where you live when you achieve mini-baller status.
As usual, whatever group I'm with either has no sense of time or poor decision making ability. This isn't a shot at my local friends. This is more of a statement of empirical fact. Almost every time we decide to catch a train or a bus, we decide to leave about five minutes later than we should've and we end up hustling just to try and make it. Usually the gamble pays off. Unfortunately, when it doesn't you lose big.
This past weekend it was as if all the small victories I've acquired decided to get paid back with negative karma in an effort to quickly balance out the natural order. We tried to go to Jindo, we really did but we missed bus after bus and in the end were just not in the mood to watch the tide go out so we can get our feet wet.That's right. In "the-edge-of-nowhere-Korea" called Jindo. The sea likes to get it's Bible renactments on and part away leaving a walkable path for slaves people to walk. Having been raised on such stories I thought it was an excellent reason to travel across the country and spend lots of unwarranted money.
Unfortunately (but not really), I live in a tiny city (which shouldn't really be called one) and consequently have to travel to a real one in order to catch a train/bus to pretty much everywhere. So after school, the team gathered our things...blah blah blah...I'm going to skip the boring details that I know you don't care about.
Basically, we messed up by deciding to leave the bus terminal with less than an hour until departure and head in to downtown for dinner at a place known for taking a stupid long time. The place is called 'Lazy Diner.' How on earth did we expect timely service? For the record, I thought it was a bad idea and wanted to eat somewhere else but, you know--sheep mentality, so I can't say I'm not at fault. Point is, we got delicious food but missed the bus. That's how awesome begins.
We ended up here, a somewhat belated St. Patrick's Day celebration. I got to see what living in an awesome building is like. The party synopsis is as follows.
- Scare the crap out of a concierge
- Attempt to get rufied, and fail.
- Run in to someone I thought I'd never see again [Positive]
- Meet and lose cute girls (due to rampant idiocy -- see getting rufied)
- Get the party shutdown after the police both called and visited three times
- Make my way to a bar at 3AM only to have fun meeting failure once again.
There's a little bit of story to each bullet point but the truth is I'm not going in to the details on my blog. Chances are once you know the actual details you'd be unimpressed so just let your imagination go wild with it and assume I'm some crazy partying maniac that's here for the sole purpose of corrupting mankind.
After the party, we woke up (after pretty much two hours of sleep) and took the bus to Gwangju in a last ditch attempt to make it to Jindo. That was probably the worst bus ride ever. My leg acted up and I couldn't rest due to worrying about falling on this college kid studying next to me.
Once we made it to Gwangju, we looked at the bus times and realized we didn't even want to be there that badly. We found the next bus would take an hour longer than we expected and decided not to go. Instead, we ran downtown and found a place to sleep. Of course, that rest was short-lived as we had to party it up with our friends in the area. St. Patrick's Day weekend was in full effect and I enjoyed some Guinness and bad 80's music. That night wasn't as exciting but it was still enjoyable.
The combined shenanigans left me with a very tired mental state for Sunday that spilled over in to Monday. It's easily the second best trip I've taken while in Korea. Which isn't that impressive as it's only the third real trip I've taken. I doubt anything will beat camping on the islands of the western coast.
I leave you with this gem: Once intoxicated, do not leave the bar to search for food. It will end poorly.
NOTE: Mom, I assure you, I'm behaving myself...maybe. I will probably not return home a drunken wreck of a man.