Maria In Korea: Sweeps and Sweats

Yeah, I always wanna be a gangsta...
Still working on the ghetto-factor, not quite there yet.
Anyways, so Oct has been good so far. That pic was from my first night outa at Zizzicks, a bar in Gunsan City, of course very Americanized, and very Juvat friendly. My squadron has lots of people who love to dance, so I'm feeling right at home here. :)
We had a nice 4 day weekend d/t Columbus day, off on Monday, and what the heck, why not take Tuesday off as well? Gotta love govenment jobs... So, Monday night was my first sweeps night, or "green bean" sweeps. Started off as a nice BBQ outside of the dorms, and then we loaded the bus at 19:30 to A-town (America town, about 3 miles outside the gates of the base, pretty much just a lot of stores, bars, clubs and restaurants, all run by Koreans, and infestated my us americaners. the sweeps consiste of various activities, including drinking, at usually about 3 clubs. They do some crowd surfing exercises, some table surfing acrobatics for warm up. Then usually is the naming ceremony, where the pilots get their call sign, lots of creative stories involved. (I'll get mine probably at the next sweeps). There are various contests (yes... involving drinking for the most part, but I was saved by the clause "drink it or wear it.") We were actually done fairly early, all on the bus back by 11:15ish, and then back to the dorms for traditional breakfast.
Wednesday at work, was a mini-exercise, kinda an exercise to get ready for the week long "lets pretend we're at war" exercises they love to do here. Our involved a simulated mass casualty exercise, of which I got to be quite involved in. I'm happy to say that because of my performance, I was able to highlight the number weakness we, esp as new staff members, had, and that we have some work to do. :)
This Saturday was "Pantoberfest" for some and "Rocktoberfest" for some others. The 35th fighter squadron, the Pantons, throw Pantoberfest ever year, complete with german beer and music, brats, saurkraut, leiderhosen, and a huge fire. The Rockertoberfest was put on by the base, and had a couple local bands play, and then Rock Kills Kid from stateside played the headliner show. They even made their way back to Delta (the panton's hooch, where Pantoberfest is held) for some extra songs. )
To round out a good couple weeks, today, Sunday, we decided to go explore the countryside a bit, and go on down to one of the National Parks for a hike. A 45 min drive turned into... maybe a 3.5 hours drive, maybe there was some faulty navigation there, or maybe we shouldn't get direction from Koreasn when we can't speak Korean.... but we finally got to the start of our hike. It was quite a jaunt up LOTS of nature stairs, rocks, etc, and finally, finally, to the waterfall, that really was a lot bigger in the pictures, but it was worth the hike anyways. And now as i sit here waiting for my motrin to kick in for my feet will stop throbbing, I am awaiting passing out in my bed, and waking up to a whole new week.