FIRE!

I'm back at the PC bang, but this time in the morning, there are far fewer people shooting and killing at ten in the morning than ten in the evening. It is so quiet and empty it is almost eerie. I was actually worried that the PC bang wouldn't be open this early in the morning. You might think that 10:00 am is not early, except in Korea. Not much is open at this time in the morning.
I was headed here last night, I had just said good night to Sally and I was planning to continue the epic update, but a moment after saying good night someone yells, "Hey foreigner!" assuming I am being the foreigner summoned, I turn around. Korean Young Jin and Nina from Nebraska want to be my friends. Young Jin made it sound as though Nina had only been in Korean for a month and needed friends. After talking to Nina for a moment, I discovered that she has been in Korea for three years and has lots of friends. She has only been in Ssangmun for month and Young Jin is apparently the one who needs friends. They invited me for a drink at Rockin, I thought a moment, feeling compelled to actually go the PC bang, I had a choice, I could write about adventures or I could have adventures. I chose to have adventures. At Rockin, where the bar tenders know my name (I swear I have only there three times including last night) we played a round of darts that I lost horribly and then Nina made Young Jin go home and grab his Go Stop cards and he taught us how to play Go Stop, much to his embarrassment, apparently that is just something you don't do at a bar. I thought it was fun. Go Stop is my kind game, matching patterns, I love patterns! I even won a round. We left shortly before midnight, Nina paid for the drinks and I forgot to thank her and I feel really bad about it. This is the type of thing that can only happen in Korea. I already miss Korea and I haven't even left yet.
After making new friends, I still intended to go to the PC bang (most are 24 hour establishments) but first I had to pee, then I had to wash my hands which was a reminder that my sink was still clogged. So, I grabbed a plastic bag and began to disassemble my bathroom sink. It only took a a few minutes to figure out how to access the hair trap in the sink. Ingeniously designed to be relatively easy to clean, it wasn't that difficult, but it was sick. Really sick. I'm pretty much awesome though, my sink drains again.
My birthday was last week, I keep getting older, it sucks. However, birthday parties do no suck, especially when I have the kind of friends that I have. My birthday was epic and expect the for year my mom and sister prepared a s scavenger hung and the year the Katie H and Nikki planned an impromptu surprise party due to a misunderstand, I have never been so celebrated in my life. (Maybe my sixteenth, but I'm pretty sure that most people weren't aware that it was a birthday party.) I attended the Korea wedding that I wrote about in my last blog, when I got home later that afternoon, I found a bright pink note on my door from Sally, telling me to meet Tina (a friend whose birthday was September 27) in Hongdae at exit 5 at 8:00. At first I was actually a little bummed, I hate travelling on the subway to Hongdae alone, it's depressing, but then I figured I needed to get Tina gift and therefore needed to go to every body's favourite bookstore Bandi & Luni's. Also, I needed to buy my plane book, I figured Muirkami would be interesting enough to block out the fact that I'm uncomfortable on an airplane. And, I wanted to look for a clutch that I had seen there once when I was with Bryan and therefore pretending that I wasn't interesting in such things, fearing his judgement. However, now I sincerely regret caring about his opinion of me because the canvas clutch with the picture of leopard print clutch on it as no where to be found. I wondered around the gift and stationary section like shoplifter trying to find it. It was a good thing I also needed a card, I was being watched pretty closely at this point. From Bandi & Luni's, I headed to Hongdae with time to spare so that I could wrap Tina's gift. I had to buy tape at a Buy the Way and a journal at Artbox, from which I could rip out and tape together sheets to use at wrapping paper. I sat in a coffee shop and drew a lot of attention with my makeshift wrapping job. Worried about being late, I sucked back my iced latte and hurriedly put the fit together and wrote out the card for Tina. At exactly 8:00, I went back to the subway station and discovered Sally in a neon green shirt and purple tights, not really her usual style. I was a little confused, where was everybody else? This was supposed to be party! As soon as Tina showed up, Sally handed me a card and took off. So the epic adventure began. The card was to inform Tina and I that we would forced to follow clues on a scavenger hunt throughout Hongdae. The first clue was "bean" and "credit card" it took me a while to figure this one out, Starbucks, I have a Starbucks Visa card, because it's free and easy. Tina lead us to Starbucks where found Amber dressed exclusively in neon colors and had her hair done like Sandra Park from 2NE1. It was awesome. She gave the second clue which lead us to Club Drug, where Sally had repositioned herself with the third clue which brought us to FF and found Lisa looking like a babe in neons and short skirts, the bar tenders and door guy from FF were all there and Lisa made them take pictures with her camera. We promised them we would come back for dancing later. Lisa's clue involved math and this took me a while, but eventually we found Dave in drag (almost) at seven eleven. He was in girl pants and tight t-shirt and awesome and T.O.P. sunglasses. His clue had us all parade down to the Luxury Noraebang to find Sarah as CL from 2NE1. There we paraded back past FF to the garlic chicken place that Bryan and I discovered accidentally.
Highlights from here on in include dalk Samgyupsal, the Big Bang gift back that Tina gave me, the choose-your-own-adventure that Sarah made for me, which included a situation in which I go to to a noraebang with Big Bang and we make the baby sing Super Junior songs, free cover and a free drink at FF because it was my birthday party, dancing all night long, street dukkpokki, and my favourite people in Korea. It was awesome. They dressed up like 2NE1 for me! That's love.