Fare Thee Well - (Korea) Day 211

During the farewell gathering a couple of ROKs along with Seaman on the left and
the air force master sergeant and major on the right.

Work call this morning was at 0800, we had to setup for a meeting in our conference room. This meeting had a DVD that they wanted to play. We've watched DVDs in the past in the conference room as a group for fun, but we always had to turn off one of the projectors because there was a constant flicker. Maybe a better word would be scrolling. The screen would scroll constantly making it useless to try and watch a show. I never really thought too much about it, it was just standard operating procedure for us to turn that particular projector off when we watched a DVD. CPT Hooah! saw it and told us to fix it right away. I fiddled with it a little without success, so I went back to my computer and downloaded the manual to take a look. Another officer from the command group came in and told CPT Hooah! that we should have a tech guy take a look at it. CPT Hooah! said I was his tech guy…lol. The officer from the command group then asked me what my MOS was. When I told him I was a 25B he said I better get that fixed! I had it fixed within a few minutes…just needed to check out the manual.

The rest of the day was pretty standard as of late, a lot of working on SkillPorts and not much else. I was asked yesterday if I wanted to attend a farewell party for our air force master sergeant that our ROK sister office was throwing him. I said sure, I think he's a pretty swell guy and it sounded better than sitting in my room all night. After work at 1700 I was told to meet back at the office in civilian clothes at 1800. I wasn't even sure where we were going, I just knew it was a farewell party.

So I headed to my room and changed, then headed back to the office before too long. We all gathered up and walked off post a few blocks until we came upon a restaurant. I was happy to see they had normal tables and chairs. We were guided to the back where I saw we had a special room reserved for us. Unfortunately this special room was traditional style where we sit on the floor…ugh my legs! I quickly chose the side next to a wall so at least I could rest my back.

There was a lot of Korean beer and soju brought in and the drinks started flowing long before the food even started cooking on the tables. There were a number of toasts given and everyone was having a good time. I was well aware of the fact that this was indeed still a weekday and I had to go to work tomorrow. I had planned on staying away from the soju all together and just sip some beer. That all changed as we were about to toast and the head ROK officer saw my beer as everyone else was holding up their soju shot glasses. In accented English I hear "What the fuck is that?". I soon ended up taking a few shots of soju. We cooked some meat at the tables, but before it was done I tried raw cow liver. It was set out as one of the appetizers and I was told it was very good. It actually wasn't too bad except like the raw fish I tried before, the texture was kind of gross.

Everyone had quite a bit to drink. The air force master sergeant made several trips to the bathroom, and he wasn't going in there to go pee or poop. The ROK camera guy could barely stand straight as he was attempting to take photos. Our air force major who is usually pretty conservative at one point was in the bathroom going pee without shoes on. Everyone was feeling pretty good.

As we were all leaving my NCOIC told us about a really cool bar next to her house and asked if anyone wanted to see it. Always looking to see something new, I volunteered as did the head ROK officer. The three of us took a short subway ride to this bar, and as advertised it was pretty amazing. Like in the movie Cocktail with Tom Cruise, the bar tenders had a lot of flair throwing bottles around and making drinks. If that wasn't enough, at midnight they put on a bit of a show complete with spitting fire out of their mouth which lit up some fireworks…all inside this little bar. At one point a Korean dude next to me asked me if I could come over to his house on the weekends so his kids could meet an American. I told him I was pretty busy on the weekends…lol.

When we left there my NCOIC was pretty drunk. The head ROK officer headed home and my NCOIC insisted that I stay at her place. I'm kind of glad because I had no idea how to get back to my room. She took me to her place which was only a block away. I slept in the spare room and was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. At one point in the middle of the night I had to go pee really bad. The bathroom was right across the hall so I had no problem getting there. I did run into a problem when I tried figuring out how to flush her toilet. I looked everywhere and there was no handle or anything that remotely looked like it would do the job. I eventually gave up and went back to bed. When my NCOIC woke me up in the morning I had to go again. Thinking things may be different in the morning I went, but could not find the stinking handle…oh well.

One of the many toasts that went on during the dinner.

A couple of the younger ROK soldiers from our sister office.

A ROK cutting the meat into smaller bit size pieces to cook. We would then use
chopsticks to grab it from the grill and wrap it up in some lettuce before eating.

Me and one of the ROK soldiers...he was feeling pretty good at this point.

Some of the entertainment at the bar we headed to after the farewell party.

More of the entertainment at the bar we headed to after the farewell party