Weekend Wrap-Up - (Korea) Days 222-223

A view of Seoul from Walker Hill Resort Casino

Saturday: I slept in until about 0930 and then video chatted with my wife and son for a while. I then did a SkillPort. I'm trying to do at least one a day, and many more if I get the chance. I then headed off to the Dragon Hill Lodge here on post. I was going to reserve a hotel room for a ROK buddy of mine, but all the rooms were full. My ROK buddy works in our ROK sister office and is currently serving his two years of mandatory service. His fiancé came up to visit and we had lunch…a very nice and cute couple.

I headed back to my room and took a nap. I don't know what it is lately, but I've been needing naps on a daily basis! After waking up I met up with PFC Pickle and we went to the theatre on post to watch Transformers 3. Even though I had already seen it, he didn't want to go alone and I thought it was good enough to see twice. We then went to the food court to eat dinner and have desert. I ate so much ice cream I thought my stomach was about to burst. I waddled back to my room and did some schoolwork before ending the night with some TV shows.

Sunday: I video chatted with my wife and did my laundry. I then worked on schoolwork before heading to lunch with the young hawaiian. We ate at the food court and then met up with an officer he works with. We all headed off to Walker Hill Casino to play in the free poker tournament. My first bet was "all in", I was either going to double my money or be taken out…I was taken out unfortunately. I had an Ace/King, but a guy with a pair of tens beat me. The young hawaiian and his officer fared better placing 9th and 10th, but you have to be in the top five to win the $100 each. Oh well, we had fun and it didn't cost anything.

We then headed to a nearby mall to have some dinner. Because everything is in Korean we are used to seeing a picture and pointing at it to order. This particular restaurant didn't have pictures on the menu, the only pictures they had were outside of the restaurant (which is what drew us in). Our waitress followed us outside and we each pointed to a dish we wanted…lol. The food was great! I love the fact that there are so many places to eat in Korea that don't cost more than $10. This dinner was only $5.50 and it was both filling and tasted great. Another perk is that you do not "tip" in Korea. So when something costs $5.50, that is all you pay. I'm going to miss that.

We then headed back to post via the subway. Another great benefit of living in Seoul Korea, the subway can get you pretty much anywhere and it's very cheap! When I got back to my room I kicked back, relaxed and I'm sure you can guess…..watched some TV shows.

The young hawaiian playing in the poker tournament long after I was knocked out

This is a street vendor selling pirated DVDs. They sell 'em really cheap and have all

the current hits playing in the theatre. The quality isn't very great, but still watchable.

It's crazy how this is just normal here.

Weekend Wrap-Up - (Korea) Days 109 & 110

A view of the packed subway car we were in...people everywhere!

Saturday: I love weekends…I love sleeping in! After waking up, I did my normal Saturday routine of laundry and cleaning my room. I then video chatted with my wife for a while before doing some schoolwork. I met up with the young hawaiian for lunch at The Pizza School. I love that place, the pizza is pretty good and it's very cheap.

I heard that yellow sand was higher than normal today. SPC Roy had called me and told me that I may not want to hang outside too long today because of it. We were told about yellow sand during our in-processing. It looks just like smog around the city. The USFK website shows the current levels each day. It's basically a big dust storm that starts in China and blows down to South Korea. There are fine dry soil particles as well as pollutants from China in it, so it can be a little unhealthy to hang outside when it's high. It's also not a good idea to do any sort of physical activity if possible. I don't know if it was the power of suggestion or what, but I was finding it a little harder to breathe. I feel like I have a chest cold or something. SPC Roy mentioned that sometimes if there is yellow sand around (but not enough for a warning to go out) and we do a PT test, it makes it pretty tough to run the two mile. He said it feels like you're trying to breathe with someone sitting on your chest. Sounds like fun.

The young hawaiian and I decided to try something new and adventurous. We took the subway again and made our way to the COEX mall. This time we headed the right direction and made the switch to the correct subway line when needed in order to get there. The mall is huge. We had a good time just walking around and checking everything out. People watching is interesting as well. There is also a casino attached to the mall and we checked that out too. The young hawaiian showed me his favorite game of chance…baccarat. We played it a little while with $20 each. I just gave him my money and we agreed to split the winnings. I just wanted to see how the heck the game was played. After reaching around $250 with dreams of steak dinner in my eyes, we ended up giving it all back to the casino and instead we had $6 dinners that night. Luckily the mall had a lot of great places to eat and they didn't cost too much. Even though we lost, it was fun playing and learning the game somewhat.

SPC Roy called and decided to meet us at the mall on his way home from his in-laws. We had a few drinks and then we all went home.

Sunday: After sleeping in, I brewed my coffee and had breakfast. I then video chatted with my wife for a while. Just the easy going mornings with my coffee while video chatting with my wife is one of my favorite times during the week. I went over to the other barracks to watch the UFC fight which because of daylight savings now comes on at 1100, which still isn't bad. I was amazed at Jon Jones. I hadn't really watched too much of him before, but this guy has such a reach advantage nobody can get close to him. He just destroyed Shogun and took the championship belt from him with ease it seemed. Very impressing!

I then did a little schoolwork, video chatted with my wife some more and then went out with PFC Pickle. We had dinner at the food court and then went to the theatre to watch The Dilemma. A romantic comedy that was pretty decent. It's about a guy who finds his best friend's wife is cheating on him. He has to decide if he should tell his friend or wait until they finish a big deal first.

On the walk back SPC Roy called me and asked me to stop by the office to see when the first meeting is, that will decide when our work call is. I did and found out that there is a meeting at 0700…bummer, that means work call is at 0600. It seems no matter how early we go in, we always still get off at the same time or later.

Weekend Wrap-Up - (Korea) Days 74 & 75

A photo from the back seat of the taxi I was riding in. Most cars have a big
screen GPS unit that can also be switched to watch TV here in Korea, but this
guy had two units. One on the right had the GPS and the one on the left had
a TV show playing the entire time. Not sure if that is very safe!

Saturday: I have been looking forward to this day all week, why…cause I got to sleep in and it felt so right! I did my normal Saturday ritual of laundry and cleaning up the room a bit. I then proceeded to download and watch a bunch of TV Shows. I then watched a documentary my wife told me about. It's called Restrepo. A very sobering documentary that shows what life is really like at OP Restrepo, an outpost in Afghanistan. I really feel for those guys that are out there doing what their doing. I joined as a 25B to serve and support the troops, so I shouldn't be anywhere near that kind of situation. Watching the entire film I just felt sad for all the guys there. Personally I don't care for even doing an FTX. I'm not all Hooah Hooah and I don't care to gear up and play soldier. I would rather do the job I'm trained for and fix computers for the army. Maybe if I was a bit younger I may think differently, but I have no desire to be out there in the field. It just sucks big time all around. During the time of the filming the folks out there were deployed for a 15 month tour. I can't imagine being away from my family for longer than I already am. At least now I get to video chat, these guys in the film are very limited in how they can contact their loved ones. They suffer losses and you can see the raw emotion that comes out. It just really sucks. The documentary was awesome, a lot of it was just raw footage of everything going on over there. Just seeing real life of these soldiers doing their jobs. I couldn't stop watching it and I would recommend anyone who is curious what life is like for soldiers serving on the front lines of Afghanistan.

SPC Roy called and asked if I wanted to do a little recon. It's his birthday today and after spending the day with his family, he wanted to check out the casino. He'd never been to one here in Korea and wanted to check them out for a future time when we can go out and gamble. The first one was not our style. Many tables had a 50,000 Won minimum bet (around $50) which is just too much for me. There were also basically only blackjack, roulette, & baccarat. We ended up heading south for a bit to another casino which turned out to be a lot better. It had more tables and some with much lower limits. These casinos are for foreigners only which I thought was a little strange, but no worries…I'm a foreigner!

On the way to the casino we ran into a DUI checkpoint. I've heard about these in the past, but never actually seen them in progress. They just setup a cop car on the street and start checking cars at random. They didn't stop us most likely because we were riding in a taxi. After the casino we headed to Itaewon so I could buy SPC Roy a drink for his birthday before heading back for the night.

My roommate took me out for some Korean BBQ.

This is him cooking our food and getting it ready for us to eat at our table.

Sunday: The morning was pretty slow, just slept in and then cleaned the room a bit more. I did some school work, then headed over to the other barracks to watch the Strikeforce fights. It was a pretty good card and surprisingly Fedor "The Last Emperor" got the crap beat out of him. After that it was video chatting with my wife and then some more shows and school.

My roommate came back and offered to take me out to a Korean barbecue restaurant. It was right outside of the post and was absolutely delicious. They serve some side dishes and then some raw meat which you cook yourself in the middle of the table. There were small dishes with seasoning that you could dip it into and then eat it. One other thing I've noticed about Koreans and eating out is that they eat "family style". I've gone out a few times with SPC Roy and such and he said it's normal here, but it freaks out some Americans at times. When I say family style I mean a lot of times there are dishes that are in the middle of the table and multiple people will use their spoon or chopsticks to grab the food. They will then eat with those chopsticks or spoon and repeat the process. (kind of like double dipping your chip in the dipping sauce). It doesn't bother me, but I can imagine some folks getting grossed out with that.