Confusing Man but nice break

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So I am totally not sure what's up with Chris. The man is what I would call extremely strange. We decided to spend the day today with his Vietnamese friend who is a private named Tairen. So first the two of us go and meet him and the three of us go out to find a place to eat. We end up eating at the Outback Steakhouse mainly because it's Chinese New Year and everything else is closed. When the waitress walks up to us she starts asking about our order in English. Before Tairen can even look at her he says "I can't speak Korean" in English. However, once she looks at him she starts speaking Korean. Tairen repeats "I can't speak Korean" a couple more times until she finally gets it.

This is an extremely common thing that happens all around the world. If someone looks like they're from that country than everyone assumes they are and that they can speak the language. So, for example, everyone assumes Cat can speak Chinese fluently because her parents are Chinese. When I went to India everyone assumed Rajesh could speak Hindi because his parents were Indians. When I was in Costa Rica there were a couple girls I knew who were born in America but whose parents were Hispanic and therefore could speak about as much Spanish as my sister can (not very much). I told Tairen that one of the smartest things someone ever did to me was how I met Rajesh (from Holland with Indian ancestors). He walked up to me and the first thing out of his mouth was "Can you speak English?" I thought it was a bit strange at the time because the answer for me was obviously yes. But later I thought about it and it was very smart. How was he to know - having not heard me speak - what language I could speak. As Tairen said "Assumption is the cause for many mistakes". I think this is extremely true.

Chris. Oh, Chris. The number of inexplainable things that boy did today was unbelievable. First he made an extremely racist joke about Chinese and Japanese to Tairen and I (Tairen's comment was "okay, maybe it was funny but you told it to the wrong crowd"). Then later on tonight he did the craziest thing ever. Tairen and I had been hanging out for a little while and we kind of hit it off. The three of us went to play Jenga and cards at a Canadian bar after lunch. They were showing the Edmonton - Los Angeles ice hockey game while we played and playing some cool music that everyone at the bar was singing to. Then we went to dinner at a nice place that is a dance club at night. We had some pizzas and then went over to play darts at a small bar called Friends. At Friends there were two really hot Mongolian girls who asked Chris to teach them to play darts. Now two things - there were many other people playing darts in the place, and the girls had obviously played before. So clearly the girls were hitting on him. Tairen and I left him alone so he could "teach" her. But he practically did nothing and was in no way responding to her hitting on him (no matter what Tairen or I said). It was really sad and in the end we were a bit confused about why he did it. I asked if he was into the girls and he said "not really". But when we got back to his place later the boys sure did pick on him a lot for it.

Anyways, I'm not too sure that we did all that much today but we played a lot of cards and relaxed a lot. It's exactly what I've been needing after all of this time working in China. I definitely think this week will act as a cure for all of my Chinese ailments (which is great). I'm looking forward to seeing some things around Seoul but I'm not sure how many I will get to see and that's okay with me.

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Photos

Tairen and Chris
Tairen and Chris standing on one of the bridges on base.