Snow, Cookies, Seoul

This morning I woke up wishing it was an hour earlier as I peeled myself out of bed. Thursday mornings are always a little rougher than the rest because it's the morning after Humpday Beers, as dubbed by Tyler. The Sinchon crew and some Jongno coworkers went to HotSun, the chicken and beer place and had our usual beers and midweek catch-up.
I learned some interesting things last night, besides Kathy and myself, it sounded like everyone had been to their fair share of stripclubs and the comparisons between American and Canadian stipclubs were pretty ridiculous. Apparently Canadian strippers are mean, like, whip-you-with-a-belt mean. My friends recounted their experiences at Canadian stripclubs where they were either humiliated or beaten, that doesn't sound too appealing to me, but I guess whatever floats your boat. One of their friends was tied to a chair and then a stipper poured ice cold water down his shorts, and one of my friends said that at his going away party he specifically didn't wear a belt as a precautionary measure but he still got hit with a belt a couple times regardless.
Since today is Thursday I've been asking a lot of my students what their plans for the long weekend are. This weekend, February 14th is Valentine's Day AND lunar new year. Lunar new year is a very important holiday in Korea and people are expected to spend it with their families. One of my students told me that families make a big feast and spend time together kind of like Christmas for me.
i'm really looking forward to Valentine's Day this year, some of my friends and I are going to Olympic Park and then to Platinum Brewery. The Korean Herald is doing a two week piece on microbreweries in Seoul and needless to say, I'm pretty excited. It'll be nice to drink decent beer again, I miss it so! On Valentine's Day women are expected to give chocolate to men, and since I'm single I'm going to give chocolate to my friends, who all conveniently are guys. A student gave me some homemade chocolate hearts in a cute gold wrapped box yesterday and it was so sweet I took a picture, my first present! (** A lot of students give presents to their teachers here, it's not weird)
Since it's snowing today I opted to go to the grocery store and buy some milk and cookies to go with my coffee and then curl up in my warm apartment and listen to Christmas music (it's really hard to not think of Christmas songs in the snow)