More stuff to remember years down the road...

We had a couple of days off recently, so Jordan also took some leave. The first day, Thursday, he came down here and we did our usual routine of playing video games all the time, but in a nice hotel room this time; I don't want anyone except me to be poisoned by my apartment. I got to go on base here instead of Yongsan for a change. They have a Chili's here, which was a new experience for me... a new experience that required 20 units of insulin to cope with. (For reference, 10 units is a big meal).

On Friday Jordan visited my school and did a little talk with a slideshow. This was a HUGE hit. He started with some pictures of his wife and three-year-old daughter, Amy, who was enthusiastically voted "kwiowaaaa!!!" ("cuuuuuute!!!"). At the end of the presentation I asked the kids some comprehension questions, including "Who is in his family?" and in all five classes, the immediate, loud response was, "AMY!"

He also had pictures from his time in Afghanistan, including some soldiers with guns. This, of course, went over exceedingly well with the boys, who were able to name pretty much every kind of gun there with at least some accuracy - AK47, "sniper" or "dragon" (Dragunov) for a sniper rifle, "bajooka" for something that resembled a bazooka, etc.

He finished up with some pictures he'd drawn. He is extremely good at drawing. The kids were initially unimpressed as it was all nothing they hadn't seen before, but when they understood that the artist was standing right there in front of them, they applauded enthusiastically. One of the pictures was a vampire, and in my last class, our worst class, the only student who happened to be able to name it was a boy who's pretty terrible in English and never listens. I heard him say "vampire" and called on him to say it out loud, and he was so happy to be right that for every question after that he kept on shouting out "vampire" as an answer. "What's his name?" "Vampire!" "Where is he from?" "Vampire!" "What's his job?" "Vampire!" etc. I guess he was just waiting for it to be the right answer again. Sadly, it never was.

After that we went back to Jordan's place for the next four days. We were trying to take care of all the things he wanted to do in Korea before leaving, which, after we thought about it, we determined were seeing a live Starcraft match and getting his picture taken at something Korean-looking. For the latter, I chose Gyeongbokgung, the biggest palace in Seoul.

We did the Starcraft match on Saturday. It was rather sparsely attended, but both teams had their cheering sections with banners and so forth, and Jordan and I were briefly featured on the cameras, so there you have it, my TV debut... on the Starcraft channel. I'm told the matches were good; I wouldn't know. The announcers' Korean was far too quick for me to follow much and I don't play the game myself, so although Jordan explained things to me, I was pretty lost. I'm okay with that. It was interesting to experience the atmosphere, anyway; sort of like a pro sports match, but featuring nerds.

The palace was okay too although I can't think of anything really memorable that happened there. Jordan took a photo for a couple of other tourists, was praised, and glowed for the rest of the afternoon. He considered tagging along with them to take photos (and receive ego boosts) all afternoon, but we didn't, but we joked about it:

Jordan: "I want to go over there and help them take more pictures..."
Me: "Don't worry, Ma'am. I'm from the government. I'm here to help..."
Jordan: "And then she'll be like, 'Which government?' And I'll be like, 'The US government... and you know how we like to butt into things.'"

Wednesday I was back to work in the morning and off to a job interview in the afternoon. The job is rather less well-paid than most, but it requires a mere four hours of work per day, thus making it just about my dream job. With that I could easily pick up extra work in the mornings or evenings... I mean, hypothetically, if I were the sort of person to engage myself in such illegal activities... or take Korean classes, or even Korean AND Japanese classes. I have yet to hear back about that, though, but I do have at least four other potential jobs that would be quite acceptable, so we shall see.