I'm Back/Kelsey's Here/An Iron Kimchi Show

So ahhhh....yeah. That was quite a break from the blogging, huh? I hope everybody is happy now that I'm back. I swear I got really busy for a while with packing up and leaving for the U.S. and Kelsey coming and then being in the U.S. and everything, so I appologize for that. Anyway, I should be back now on a regular schedule, so please stop hassling me.

I'm pretty sure that most people who read this will know that my little sister came out to Korea to work at my school. Pretty exciting stuff. In order for this to work out, she had to come out and take over my classes for a few weeks while I was on vacation, then I came back when the other teacher left, and Kelsey took over the other teacher's classes. If that confused you, I won't be too surprised. A less confusing situation was our apartments. Kelsey lived in my apartment until the other teacher left and she could take hers. So this meant that Kelsey and I were living together for a while....for 5 days....in a tiny, tiny apartment.

It really wasn't bad, anyway. When Kelsey got here she needed money, so I took her to the bank and she traded in some US dollars for the Korean Won. It turned out she brought in just enought to get a bundle worth a cool million Korean Won. It made for a nice photo:

So it was a nice weekend, anyway, with another exciting fact being that Kelsey's birthday was on Sunday, so Saturday was time for celebration of number 24. That started with a BBQ at our friend Collin's rooftop, where Kelsey was able to meet a lot of other foreign English teachers living in Seosan. There was some great food and some drinks, and then we moved on to the next location, a convenience store. Yep, in Korea you can drink pretty much anywhere, and outside of a convenience store is a very convenient place to do it. From there, we moved to a bar called RnB, also know as the place that my band plays from time to time.

I'll go back to some photos, then. Here is Kelsey with her new friend, Megan:

And some general mischief:

And of course no birthday party is complete without some fire, so here was the setup:

And finally lit up:

It looked a lot cooler in person because the flash from the camera lights the background too much. Here's another shot where some liquor got spilled all over the bar and lit up. It was crazy.

From there it was a pretty huge dance party:

And really, a birthday is not complete without some karaoke (noraebong in Korean), so we headed across the street. We met a few ridiculous looking people along the way:

So noraebong went well, mostly for Kelsey. Everybody sang a few songs, but Kelsey ended up singing for about an hour and a half pretty much by herself. That was also pretty ridiculous, but I think it ended up being some happy birthday memories for her.

To cap off the weekend, and the rest of my time until I left for home, we had the final Iron Kimchi show featuring the original lineup. Adrian (on the left) was heading out of the country so it was the last time we could all play together. We did have a new bass player, though, named Lucas (pictured with bass).

The show was a lot of fun, but a little bit ridiculous. We kept having equipment malfunctions, like initially the second microphone did not work, so that limited the songs we could play. Later a string on my guitar broke and we went down to one guitar and a bass. Here's a nice shot of the band playing together, though:

We gave them a decent show anyway, at least everyone had fun, I'm sure. Here is a photo of our band together for the last time, a really good group of guys:

So for me it was off to bed, then on a bus at 6:30, And then about 15 or so hours of flying time. Plenty more to come on what happened at home. Later.