So Greg and I haven’t yet recovered from jet lag and according to some of the other teachers, it will take a few weeks to completely shake off the effects of crossing the dateline. But this is our first weekend in Suji and we plan on taking full advantage of it to get our bearings.  

The weekend started with a bang—nori bang, that is. After work, we went with some of the other teachers to a restaurant called Wa Wa for a galbi dinner, which was delicious. Then we headed to an ex-pat bar to play pool and finally we went searching for some thing called a nori bang (literal translation: “sing room”), which we found on the third floor of a seemingly unmarked building, though we are functionally illiterate here so, who knows? Inside we walked into what looked like a lovely hotel lobby and a long hallway with 5 or 6 doors on either side. A woman at the front desk lead us down the hallway and through one of the doors into our own private room (sounds sketchy right?). This room was outfitted with a large table and booth, flat screen tv, two microphones, two tambourines, laser lights and a disco ball. Confused yet?

Because I cannot fully capture in words the sublimely weird experience that is nori bang, I’ve linked to a few videos from Youtube (one, two, three). Unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately for you), none of these videos are of us and we took no pictures because a) we didn’t bring our camera, and b) apparently (*cringe*), what happens in nori bang stays there.  Anyway, all I can say is that nori bang-ing(?) is extremely popular here and it was, despite our best efforts, terribly fun (emphasis on terrible). 

Saturday proved to be much calmer than Friday. We decided to spend the day trying to furnish our apartment and get ready for the week ahead. Some of the other teachers have given us furniture they weren’t using (2 bookshelves and a Korean table), but Greg and I wanted to see what else we could get for free, so we headed out bright and early to scavenge for discarded furniture before the garbage trucks came around.

Let me say that our neighborhood must be heaven for dumpster divers. I’ve never seen so much furniture thrown away and we did manage to uncover a few nice things left carelessly on the curb. In addition to our donated Korean table, we have another small Korean table and a larger “western” table. So we have a lot of tables. We’ve decided, however, to keep only the Korean tables. When in Rome, right?