Embracing the Stanky Legg

      When I signed my contract with GEPIK to teach English in South Korea, my intention was to come back home a year later with a vast knowledge of Korean...not Hip Hop and American military ranks. I didn't take M*A*S*H TV show being located in Uijeongbu and Spam soup (budae jjigae) being the city's specialty dish as fair warnings that my Korean experience would be infused with American military. I must admit, I was initially not happy with this little detail of my stay here...but embrace I ultimately did.
      Before my flight to the ROK, I joined Uijeongbu Crew, a Facebook group, to meet people in my area. This is how I came to know the amazing people in my Uijeongbu life. Some gave me a little tour of their main after-school activities in the "Bu" (Uijeongbu) including eating at the delicious Durga Indian restaurant, shopping at the fantastic and cheap underground mall, sipping on great and well-priced coffee at Black Bean café, and fulfilling their weekend nights with bars and clubs which consisted mostly of Toms Vill (without the e), Vito, Ice Bar, and Bar Mia. Each bar is a minute walk from the other, and for the most part has similar music in each and military patrons galore. These bars stay open till the wee hours of the morning, so we just pop around each one in a massive group throughout the night. Sure, it's fun. But truthfully? Would you like to know my true feelings about these bars that I have spent good hours and good money and good laughter on? Well! Dr. Seuss would probably describe it, as he did with the Grinch, as an "appalling dump-heap, overflowing with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable, mangled up in tangled-up knots!" Or as I would describe it: ghetto, distasteful, mind draining, soul weakening, an aftertaste of pure dissatisfaction similar to that of never ever reaching an orgasm, and an embarrassing example of America worse than Palin, Snookie, and Paris Hilton combined. So, what? What? WHAT has kept me going there week after week, month after month, learning and memorizing every step, stomp, and turn of the Stanky Legg and Cupid Shuffle and Cha Cha Slide? What has kept me staying that extra hour, buying that extra beer when the entire dance floor is a drunken fight club, and the women want to beat me up with a single wrong look while waiting to pee in a puke-filled overflowing toilet? Why, when I have a thousand bar choices in the Bu alone, do I go to these bars?! Three simple answers:

Free tequilla shots

Popcorn

Amazing friends

      And that is truthfully all. I sat at the bar at Toms Vill one night during my first month in, and stared off while sipping on a beer, pondering my life here in Uijeongbu. I like to drink, I like to dance, and I like to have fun with friends. I thought...I can either hate this weekend night scene and never come back, or I can hate this weekend night scene and embrace it simultaneously. I can smile and make it my own personal, positive memory. I can dance the Cupid Shuffle while weaving in my own personal steps. I can turn away from the fight and say hello to the cute soldier boy behind me. All while having tequilla, popcorn, and friends galore. I can embrace and enjoy. And that is exactly what I have done for 8 months! Embrace it all!
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R*E*N*E*E*I*N*S*K