Noreabong!

Hi all,

So, last night (Friday) was my first big night out with the teachers. We had meetings all day on Friday, so everyone was ready to blow off a little steam. A group of us visited the Noreabong (karaoke) place not once, but twice! It's a lot more fun than karaoke places I've been in the US because you get your own little room and so it's just you and people you know...I actually sang without having had anything to drink! We belted out a little Bohemian Raphosody (sp?), Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Twist and Shout, and Beyonce's Crazy in Love (which is a very hard song to sing, actually!), among others.

Today I went with some returning teachers to the old neighborhood (they all call it the old dong...I'm not sure what dong means) where they all lived before the new apartments were built. I had heard horror stories about those apartments and from the outside, they looked pretty gross. But the neighborhood they lived in is older than the one we live in now, so it had all these stores and restaurants...I mean, my neighborhood has lots of those as well, but this had more. The best part was finding a place that sells the mattress pads. The mattresses we were given are so hard, it's almost unbelievable. In fact, for a while I thought that perhaps they had accidently put the box spring on top, but nope, that's the mattress. But a lot of Koreans sleep on the floor, especially in the winter when it's warmer down there, so they have these great sleeping pads. I bought one for 50,000 won, or about $50, and I literally can't wait to go to sleep tonight!