Zac's vacation here has come and gone and as I write, he's on a plane heading for home - heading to work tomorrow. A few of us went to Seoul for his last weekend and for some reason, Seoul was not our sister, our friend, or even a general acquaintance....Okay, I'm exaggerating a little bit. We had a great time, but there were a few bumps over the weekend that added to it's awesomeness.
* CRAZY STUPID TAXI DRIVER: After arriving in Seoul, we dropped our bags at Kim's Guest House in Hapjeong and quickly hailed a cab to meet up with Brett (from Calvin) and some of his friends. We told the taxi driver "hongik Dae Hakyo" (Hongik University) and he repeated it showing us he knew where we were going. Hong Dae (shortened version) is literally one subway stop from Hapjeong, maybe a 15-20 minute walk and only a $3 cab ride. Since we were in a hurry we got in the cab on the wrong side of the street, but as most Korean drivers disregard most traffic laws, I expected him to whip a u-ee (how does one spell that??) and bring us safely to our destination. Well this stupid idiot hopped on the highway and started off in the wrong direction. Being somewhat oriented with the area, but not confident enough, I thought he knew a short cut. Unfortunately, he didn't. We called Brett to have his Korean friend speak with the driver and found out he was taking us for a ride...all the way to Kyungblah blah blah University. Do Hongik and Kyungblah blah blah sound even close to similar? No. I don't think so. When he finally "understood" he was going in the wrong direction he didn't exit off an off ramp to turn around like normal people do. Instead, this crazy fool jumped on one of the bridges that crosses the Han river only to catch another bridge (and these aren't particularly small bridges) back. $21 later we finally arrived at Hongdae where we threw him $10 and a few choice words. STUPID STUPID STUPID. I was sweating I was so pissed.
* LOCKED OUT: That night we arrived back at the guesthouse quite late and were trying to be quiet as to not wake the other guests. None of our "room" keys worked in our door and were afraid we'd have to crash in shared living room area. We weren't very happy. We heard someone upstairs and thankfully Sunny, one of the owners was still awake and was able to let us in. He told us we weren't allowed to have a room key b/c it's a dorm room and that our "room keys" were in fact locker keys. We thought this to be very silly since Zac's suitcases don't actually fit into the tiny little lockers and b/c we were the only people staying in the room. Whatever, we were able to get in and sleep.
*DRIVE BY SHOOTING: Saturday night we (Aaron, Zac & I) went to meet Wes, Bill and Bill's friend from home. We were having a hayday trying to find where they were. While I was talking to Bill I suddenly felt a horrible pain and heard something drop. I screamed into the phone "arrgghhh, OMG!!! Bill, I think I just got shot!!!" After I said this I heard Bill's voice become very serious as he said, "OMG Kim, are you alright? What's going on??" I then realized I was okay, there was no blood or bullets in my body but something was definitely shot at me and it really freaking hurt. Well, it turns out some really funny people thought they'd drive around and shoot people with air soft guns or soft air guns (whatever they're called) and I was one of their lucky targets. I had big ole' welt to prove it and there's still a tiny mark but it no longer hurts. Needless to say, I had a lot of fun talking about how I got shot in Seoul.
* LOCKED OUT OF THE LOCKER: Wes or Bill lost their locker key and of all the key copies at Kim's Guest House, they didn't have one for their locker. So we waited while they tried numerous other keys before a locksmith was finally called.
Well, there were other things but these were some of the highlights. We were able to meet with kimberbop, Brett, Gracie and her fiance, plus we randomly ran into some other Gimhae/Busan people. We walked around Itaewon, Insadong, the Palace, Meong Dong, Gangnam and hung out in Hong Dae & Sinchon...We were all really tired when we separated ways and for some reason my feet looked like I had walked through piles of coal. Anyway, here's our family picture and it's time for me to get ready for work. Vacation over. (sigh).
Brett, Aaron, Zac, my shadow, & Kim Hall 
For the record, talking to someone on the phone who suddenly starts gasping in pain and crying, "oh my god, I've been shot!" is extremely unnerving.
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