Weekend Wrap-Up - (Korea) Days 152 & 153

A photo I snapped during the Cirque Dreams show. This kind of shows you the
stage setup as well as about where we were sitting. There are two chicks up on the
stage with their legs wrapped up over their heads. My spine hurt just watching them!

Saturday: Finally the weekend is here once again and I get to sleep in. After waking up I video chatted with my wife and kids. Surprisingly they received the box I sent on Monday, so I got to watch them open it and try some of the Korean snacks I sent. I then did my laundry and cleaned my room. The laundry took forever because I had two loads for the wash, but when it was time to dry I had to fit it all in one dryer. We have 4 dryers in my barracks and only one actually works well. There are two others that kind of work, then there is one that is completely broken. I had to stick mine in the one that kind of works, so it took about 2 hours for everything to dry. Since I knew it was going to take a long time, I was able to go work out while the clothes were in the dryer.

I then watched a show I had downloaded. PFC Pickle gave me a call and said he was bored. I asked if he wanted to join me and do a little shopping. We received our annual clothing allowance in this paycheck, so I wanted to get a new uniform as well as some other miscellaneous items at the clothing store and the PX. I then planned to head out to Itaewon and get something for my wife's birthday that is coming up. We met up and after we went to the clothing store it started pouring down rain. We hung out in the PX for a while and then just decided to get a movie and take a taxi back to PFC Pickle's room. PFC Pickle purchased "The Pacific" and I bought some beer. We headed off and ended up watching the first 4 hours of the mini-series. It's actually quite good so far. It's kind of like "Band of Brothers" but dealing with marines in the pacific islands battling the Japanese.

By the time I left it had finally stopped raining. When I got home I wasn't able to get to sleep right away because of some sort of drama with the chick in the next room to me. I kind of wish we could have separate barracks for the girls and guys like we did in AIT. There would be a lot less drama.

Sunday: I picked up breakfast and headed to PFC Pickle's room. The young hawaiian was supposed to meet us there as well to watch UFC 129, but he didn't answer his phone. He has a long history of staying out on the weekends until 0700 or 0800 in the morning and sleeping most of the day. So it was just me and PFC Pickle watching the fights. It was a pretty good UFC, but I was hoping for a bit of a better title fight between Jake Shields and GSP. It seemed like GSP was fighting very conservatively.

After the fights I headed back to my room and video chatted with my wife for a bit. The young hawaiian finally called and I let him know we were meeting up to go watch "Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy". It's a free show that is here on post today. We all headed to the show when PFC Pickle says he's gonna wait by one of the gates for a friend he met online. He invited her to come as well. Me and the young hawaiian went on ahead and saved them a couple of seats. That was the last we saw of PFC Pickle today.

The show was held in the Collier Fitness Center which has a big gymnasium. It was like a very small version of Cirque de Soleil. It had some crazy acrobatic stuff going on. There were chicks that could bend in ways that seemed impossible. A dude that could do some impossible balancing acts as well as a number of hoop, juggling, and high flying rope acts. For a free show here on post, it was pretty impressive.

After the show me and the young hawaiian headed to The Dragon Hill Lodge which also has a few restaurants in it. We wanted to have a nice dinner since it doesn't happen to often. We ended up having an all you can eat steak buffet. OMG…I gorged myself until I could barely move. The kicker was that they of course had ice cream, but instead of soft serve that had some great scoop ice cream that was delicious. I had two servings over apple pie. We decided to take a taxi back since neither of us could walk very well after a meal like that.

I let the young hawaiian borrow a the bootleg dvd of Battle: Los Angeles as well as a bunch of TV shows I loaded up for him. He has a 24 hour CQ shift coming up tomorrow and is going to need a little entertainment. As for me I watched the latest episode of The Ultimate Fighter and then called it a night.

Today is May 1st. Another month down and another month closer to seeing my family. This means I’ve been here 5 months now, almost half way done.

Overheard Quote: "He always turns the shower on when he's taking a shit" (PFC Pickle explaining why his KATUSA roommate went in the bathroom and the shower turned on…I hadn't heard of anyone doing that before)

A photo from the Yongsan Flickr website. (they were able to
take much better pictures) This guy is doing a crazy balancing
act and after this he added some more layers to make it even higher!