Jinju weekend: maintaining edition

(I started this post on Sunday night, but needed to add video and pictures. I got this email from my mother today: Please update your blog because when I asked Jeff what you did this weekend, all he would say is "maintained".) I also offered Jeff the priviledge of doing a "guest" post, but he was not interested.

I wasn't really doing anything this weekend and neither was Jeff so he decided to come visit me as he's never seen my apartment. I knew it would be an interesting weekend when I got the following call Friday early afternoon:
Jeff - Rain. I'm packing now.
Me- Ok
Jeff - How many suits will I need?
Me - I'm going with none.
Jeff - Ok, I just needed to know what the plans were.
He got here Friday night after I got off work and we met some people for dinner at Pizza Hut (which is totally different than American hut b/c you have to share salad plates and the salad bar doesn't really have salad. It does however have yogurt and cereal) and then went to see The Green Lantern, which was ok (only worth it to see Ryan Reynolds in spandex). The movie ended around midnight, so we ended up just going home and watching part of the Hangover before falling asleep.

On Saturday morning we got up kind of late and went for "brunch" (but actually lunch) at an Italian place across the street called the View. I had been there once before with mom. We each had pasta (him: gross seafood (although he liked it except that he had to peel shrimp); me: carbonara with mushrooms). After lunch we went to Tom N Toms coffee and shared a pretzel and had some coffee and played scrabble on his ipod touch for about an hour. We were killing time waiting for the bullfight later that afternoon. The fight started at 1:30, and we got to the arena during the first fight. I knew the price should only be like 1000 won, but when I tried to pay the ticket lady just gave us tickets and waved away my hand.

We went in and it was fairly empty, with mainly older guys all standing up in one area of the arena. We watched the bulls push each other around for a bit, then decided to start betting with each other. Apparently you can place actual bets on the matches, but the score sheets and rules are all in Korean. It was more interesting than I thought it would be, which Jeff couldn't believe, as it was kind of boring. After 4 matches, an oldish lady started singing and then the announcer gave her a big bag of rice and she walked away. Then another younger lady in leather leggings and a sparkle top sang 3 or 4 songs. Here's a short clip of the half time singer (sorry it's sideways). At one point the announcer walked around the crowd and looked at me and Jeff and spoke some Korean and then everyone started laughing, so we were pretty sure that everyone was making fun of us. Oh well - we got in free suckers.
Here's a sample of one of the bull fights.

The bulls were tattooed or spray painted so you could tell them apart. This is "Boss". He won me by first $2 bet with Jeff. I won 2 out of 3 (although this is disputed because I say I won 3 out of 4 but Jeff says the 2nd match didn't count because the bulls didn't engage - I call bull - ha like that?)

The bulls lock horns then push on each other. The loser gives us and runs away.

We stayed for about an hour and a half then decided to go. Jeff was kind of tired so we decided to go home instead of going to the lake. On our way out, I wanted to take a picture of the statue of a bull in a karate uniform that was in the parking lot. On our walk over there, we noticed the bulls that had just been fighting were just walked out into the parking lot. The trainer, or whatever he is, shoots water from a hose into the bull's mouth because they didn't really have a trough. While we were looking at some bulls in pens alongside of the parking lot, we noticed that one bull had somehow crawled underneath his stall into his neighbor's stall, but had gotten his head stuck in his stall. He couldn't really move and it looked like he was going to break his neck. So Jeff tried to get the man watering the bull to come over and see the stuck one. I waited and Jeff came back and said the guy just shooed him away. So we walked back over together and got him and apparently with both of us making gestures, the man decided to come with us. He also brought his bull. He walked in around like a dog on a leash and he was so close to me that I could have reached out and touched him. Needless to say, it freaked me out a bit. When the man saw the stuck bull he thanked us and we left.
This is one bull mooing (or whatever you called it from a bull) from the pens in the parking lot.

Next to a bull resting in the parking lot

Bull who had just fought drinking hose water. His head is a bit bloody because they rub heads for so long sometimes that they get something similar to a friction burn. This bull would later be arms length from me.

Statue outside the arena. Tell me that's not awesome. There are paintings of this guy all around Jinju in random places.

We got home and rested for a bit and charged Jeff's Ipod touch for bar scrabble. Then we tried to go to Terrace bar, but it was closed, so we went to Miller time. We played a half game of Scrabble and Liezle met us and we chatted and started playing drinking games. Then we met up with a handful of other people at the dak galbi (chicken place that mom didn't like) and had dinner and kept drinking. We left and went to Jijimi's and met up with some other people. We played lots of drinking games and at one point I was triple fisting with plum wine, soju and pomegranite, and either beer or slushie sojus. Jeff and I both got pretty snockered and he kept fish hooking me. At one point, I bit him on the finger pretty hard (as of Monday it was infected) and he scratched my cheek by accident (almost healed, but I look slightly like the Joker, just on one side).

Jeff and Andy (a friend from Daegu in for the weekend). Y'all know how Jeff gets handsy when he's been drinking? Well now so does Andy.

Group at Jijimi's

Up the river - those 4 glasses? They're all mine.

After Jijimis, we split up into random groups for some reason. Jeff ended up going to McDonald's with 3 of my friends, but his phone died, so I couldn't reach him. I went to another bar and then we all ended up at a dance club called Victoria's. We didn't stay there too long because it was loud and crowded and I was tired. But it was fun while we were there. The DJ put on a bit of a strip show and Jeff kept picking up this girl named Janice who is like 4 feet tall (I guess she's closer to 5' but still tiny). My favorited video of the night is this one where Jeff, Liezle and Janice thought I was taking a picture of them, when I was actually trying to take a video of the DJ dancing in the background. This is what happened.

Jeff trying to dance like it's the 50s in a techno-pop club.

Sunday was a slow start. We went to Tom n Toms and Jeff and a pretzel and I had "bread" which is bigger than a piece of Texas toast and had apple chutney on it - good - and we played more Scrabble. Then I went to church and he went home. It was a good weekend.