Thanksgiving on Jeju

It’s been almost a week since my last post.

First things first, I made a promise: Congratulations to Dave and Ailbhe on their sixth-year anniversary. If I can give some advice on romance: you know things are going well when you don’t have to say anything to the person you’re with, you can have a nice time just being around them and reading in bed. Me and my Mike Piazza have enjoyed such a relationship for over 13 years.

Speaking of which, the last time I didn’t spend Thanksgiving with my family in Connecticut was BEFORE I had my Mike Piazza doll. So things on Thursday were…actually not that different.

There was a big buffet lunch, the Dorman contingent came later than expected, the host got very protective of the kitchen area, at around 2 o’clock I really wanted to take a nap, and at night we played Apples to Apples for 3 hours. There’s even a fun pretentious New Englandy feel to having a “Yale Family Thanksgiving.”

I even had to wear a sweater. I discovered, in what amounts to a sad surprise, that I only brought one sweater to this island, and Thanksgiving day was the first time since I’ve been here that I had to wear it. Girls, who wants to go shopping??

I don’t want to mislead anyone; there were some new elements to Thanksgiving Day. I had to work for six hours in the middle of the day, so that’s new. There was no turkey. Or even tofurkey. But there WAS pumpkin. In fact, not only was there pumpkin pie, but there were pumpkin PANCAKES (there was also vegan pumpkin pie later on in the week). There was also no football, but this was actually good because unlike in years past, last week I didn’t have to pretend to enjoy watching it.

So for posterity: Thanksgiving with the ladies (and Daniel, thanks for the potatoes buddy they were delicious) was fantastic. How nice was it? It made me want to clean my apartment so I can have people over. If that doesn’t sound like a big deal…it probably shouldn’t, but I just spent over 100,000 won before I typed this to buy cleaning materials to beautify my home. I hope my turtles will appreciate the effort, at least.

The weekend was very exhausting: I played soccer for five hours on Saturday (thats a LOT of soccer), went out to a Thanksgiving dinner, and discovered there that Paris Baguette doesn’t know the difference between cherries and cherry tomatoes: I’m sorry, but you can’t put cherry tomatoes on a birthday cake. It wasn’t even as delicious as it sounds.

Then I stayed out all night; this included a trip to the karaoke bar (note: Music Bank’s version of “Locomotion” is TERRIBLE) and I had to escort some persons (no names) back to the Seogwipo bus terminal at 7 am.

Some people have accused me of drinking too much. So let it be known that I very soberly took people to the bus, one of whom was literally falling asleep  on a bench, or just the sidewalk, every block of the way, and another was convinced that we had passed the rotary ages ago and I was leading them the wrong way. Some good advice for life: don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and DEFINITELY don’t bite the hand that is leading your drunk ass back to the bus that’s going to take you to a bed you can sleep on all Sunday.

Nobody bit my hand. But there was definitely some nibbling going on there. Just don’t do it.

Last week was also very eventful at school. I had an entire class rename themselves. The NEW class roster:

Juliet = Henrietta

Lisa = Bobo

Olivia = Girl Girl

Priscilla = Mrs. Pratchett

Leo = David

Julie = …still Julie

It was requested (by the artist formerly known as Juliet) that they all be redubbed. Someone wrote a list of thirty new names on the board. I think you can tell looking above, whose fingerprints were all over this. Guilty!

Also, I need more pants.

I have no pictures of my motorcycle. But a friend DID post a picture of me rapping. Straight from the mean streets of Seogwipo, I give you INNER CITY HELLO KITTY (again):