We Made A Friend!!!

Yesterday Latanya was walking home and she ran into another foreign teacher that lives in our area. She was so excited and did not know whether to approach him or not. Well she did and they started to talk. I met up with them shortly afterwards, because they were talking on my route home. His name is A.J. and we all hit it off immediately. He is from San Antonio, Texas and had just moved to our area on Monday. He told us that he has been in South Korea for a year now. He previously worked at a school further outside of Seoul. He was just as happy to meet us as we were to meet him. He is 25 years old, the same as me, whop whop, it's all about 1983. What a Year!!! We talked for about a half hour on the street corner exchanging e-mails and just plain getting to know one another.
We then walked towards our home and realized he lived just a two minute walk away from our apartment. He wanted to know if we had any plans for dinner. Seriously, I felt like we were being asked out on a date. Funny I know. We were all excited and didn't want to seem too eager. I am sure most of you girls know the feeling of being asked out by someone you really want to date, well this was the same felling. So we said yes, Lt and I wanted to dine out so bad, but we hadn't built up the courage yet. This was a perfect way to try something new. So then he said that the fried chicken in Korea was delicious, which, it totally looks. So we decided to get some chicken and beer.
After walking around for ten minutes or so we decided on a place. It was a restaurant just next door to our apartment. It had opened recently. We walked in and were welcomed and sat down and attempted to read the menu, which was obviously all in Korean (with hardly any pictures, boo). The waitress understood some English and we all ordered beer and fried chicken. We waited for about thirty minutes for the food, but we didn't even notice because we were having such good conversation. We literally talked for hours. We talked about why we were in Korea and what we thought about the U.S. economy. We updated him on the still horrible reality of finding jobs back home. He said that was the main reason he left home, because he recently had graduated from college and could not find a job. Well we made sure to let him know the situation has not changed. I think that's why he was staying in Korea for another year. We talked about all sorts of topics like, politics, Korean culture versus American culture and so forth.
So after three hours of dinner talk the night was getting late and we decided to get going. But before we parted ways with our new friend we made plans for Saturday. He invited us to a birthday bash in Seoul for another foreign teacher. We accepted and he was happy because everyone going was bringing another friend and he was able to bring two now, instead of none. It felt as if we clinched a second date. We said our good byes and went home, which took only thirty seconds to walk.
Also on another note: I had talked to a friend of mine that I studied abroad with just a couple of weeks ago. He told me that another buddy we had known from our time in Berlin was in Korea now as well. His name is Jared and I contacted him. We are trying to get together hopefully this weekend, or at least for St. Patrick's Day. We are excited to meet some new people and party it up Seoul style. We will definitely have some updates from the weekend, for it's going to be a long one. Also one last comment: Latanya is having her welcome dinner with her school tonight. I know it's going to end with her singing some karaoke. I told her she should sing Don't Stop Believing by Journey (a classic). Or maybe some old school N'Sync. I know she knows all the words. Lol. Well wish her luck because I just know it's going to take a lot of Soju and beer to get her up on stage.