It was worth all the fun!

I thought I was done staying out with friends until sunrise after high school. Not once did I ever stay up until that time in college, even for school work! This weekend brought me back to the good 'ol days when I stayed up until the day was bright. I didn't just stay out that late once, but both nights this weekend. YIKES! On Friday night, we started at a delicious galbi dinner with some of our co-workers, but decided we weren't ambitious enough to join the rest in Seoul even though we weren't ready to go home. I'm sure you can guess where we ended up...NORAEBONG. Britney, Shauna, and I got together at my house for a bit of Soju to get us feeling 'loose' before we sang the night away. Well, we ended up getting a little giggly talking about work and students. Before we knew it, my neighbor was ringing my doorbell non-stop (at least 8 times) with an entire 20 second jingle playing each time. I wish you could have seen us. Shauna crawled under my desk while Britney and I bolted to my bathroom to hide. We chose not to answer the door, even though the walls are so paper thin that the neighbor most certainly heard our obnoxious nervous giggles hoping that he wouldn't jiggle my unlocked door open. Good thing for the language barrier that he couldn't yell, "I know you're in there!" (Don't forget to let me mention that this is the second time this neighbor (who I assume it was) has knocked on my door to tone me down. So they know I don't speak Korean. HA) Anyway, at that point we decided to wrap up the pre-party and head to Noraebong...at 1:30am-time had gotten away! While we only paid for one hour in the room, the owners often tack on free time if they know you're having a blast, which we clearly were. So we ended up getting an extra two hours! The three of us girls literally sang the night away. We were out late enough to make McDonald's breakfast! We must have all landed in our beds around 5am that morning. I slept until 2:45pm the next day, ran some errands (talk about karma: I ran into my neighbors in the check-out line and ducked out of there faster than I could fathom to get in my door no more than two minutes before they walked in theirs!), got a short run in outside, and got ready for night #2.

The three of us headed into Seoul around 9:45pm on Saturday evening. A late start to the night already tells you it's going to be an early morning! We started at our favorite bar, Rocky Mountain Tavern (world's best nachos in my opinion) in Itaewon, before heading to our second favorite place...the LOFT. I have to admit that it's probably one of the least classy places you'll ever find, but completely worth it for the free drinks provided to women only AND the ridiculous people watching you get to absorb. You meet a variety of entertaining characters each time that make the night a total holler. For example, the night isn't complete without some sort of street food before we head home. As we were getting ours to go, a Korean girl with three dogs on no leashes just walked right up to me saying, "I like your pointy noise!" I probably should have been offended or even violated, but I could not stop laughing when she started LICKING my nose! Thank goodness for Shauna's shutter skills as she got some pretty entertaining shots. We eventually met up with two of our new co-workers and headed home for an arrival time somewhere around 5am again. After a few Skype conversations, I crashed around 6:30am and woke up around 2:45pm again the next afternoon. Dad told me I wasn't honoring the Sabbath day. I said, "Are you kidding dad? I slept until 2:45 in the afternoon...that's an entire day of rest!" He reminded me "You forgot to keep it holy." He might have been right. ;) Anyway, you would think I had enough running for the weekend, which I usually do by Sunday afternoon, but we headed right back into Seoul to enjoy the beautiful spring day and dinner at our favorite chicken galbi restaurant! I came home and had a perfect end to the evening by talking to my parents and headed to bed. Like I said, those late nights...or early mornings were worth all the fun!