New Years Eve

January 1, 2009

New Years Eve was pretty great this year. It was so exciting to know that I was spending the change over in years in a foreign country. We decided to take a bus out to Gwangju and stay the night in The Windmill (as usual) and spend the night partying with some friends. It was pretty fun. We ate some Burger King, which was cool because we don’t have a Burger King anywhere in Mokpo. We then spent a couple hours partying with some Soju and Orange Juice in one of the Hotel Suites we were staying in for the night. About an hour before midnight, we decided to head out to some clubs to experience Gwangju at midnight. Some of us headed out to the Germany Bar, but after one pitcher, and about 20 minutes before midnight, we decided to join a large group of our friends at Vanilla Club, just a little bit down the street.

I had a moment of annoyance because the club was charging a 15,000 cover charge, but I soon got over it when I learned they were providing everyone with unlimited free beer (which was the really cheap kind, cut still, it was free). The countdown to midnight was really anti-climatic because the bar didn’t do one and a lot of our friends didn’t notice the time, but Cody and I had our own private countdown and kissed at midnight. We stayed another two hours, but left around 2 am because we had been drinking awhile and decided we wanted to make our way back to the hotel. I would like to say we made our way back easily and went to bed and woke up hangover free, but unfortunately I would be lying.

It had been snowing that night, and while walking down the steps of Vanilla Club, I slipped down the last four steps because unfortunately Koreans make their steps out of granite, and the steps were covered in a film of water. As soon as I fell, a very well-intentioned, but drunk guy behind me, decided to try yanking on my arm that I had just fallen on, to help me up of course. Luckily Cody convinced him to let go, because he was really making my arm hurt worse. Cody then helped guide me home because I had been drinking, and now I was crying because I was hurt and now dreadfully afraid of falling down on the very packed snow.

I made it another few blocks, almost back to the hotel, but unfortunately I slipped again, this time on the down slope of a sidewalk, and this time bringing Cody down with me. Of course I also fell on the side I had just bashed on the stairs. By this point I was very sore, but luckily for me, we made it back to the hotel without any further events happening to me, and I slept very well and woke up hangover-free, but very sore.

It was a very fun night, but also a very bad one for my poor body.