One Long Weekend

Man, I can tell you several things that this past weekend has made me grateful for. First, I have access to military establishments here in Korea and can go do some shopping there. This is important because those establishments carry things that I cannot buy here in Korea, but need here in Korea. For example, good deodorant. Which with the coming summer I have a feeling will become increasingly more essential.

Secondly, I still love spending time with people in the military. I have often found throughout the years of my life that you generally find two types of military personnel. Those that are ass holes and you want nothing to do with. See Navy Seals and Jarheads. Well, I must say I have known some great people who were Marines. I have also know some complete jerks. The second type, are people who you want to develop friendships with. They are people who have certain values and morals that you want to associate with. I find this group to be some of the finest people I have ever met. This probably also has something to do with the fact that I was brought up in an Air Force family. Yet, still these are people who would give you the shirt off their back without a second thought.

Thirdly, I am glad there is no U.S. military presence in Seosan. Unfortunately the nightlife changes significantly when there are U.S. military personnel nearby. Enter the Juicy Girls. For those of you who don't know what a Juicy Girl is, I'll explain it in brief. These are girls whose soul occupation is to sit at a bar and get guys to buy her drinks. Now what makes this even more annoying is that they have to ask you constantly to buy them a drink. CONSTANTLY. They ask one person, then another, then another. All for a exceptionally watered down and overpriced drink. This changes the culture at a bar so much to where if you are white, you feel like you constantly have a target on your back. Juicy Girls are also women who are stuck in a no win situation. They are practically owned by the bar, and most of them hate their job. In fact I view this as a form of indentured servitude. Thankfully this doesn't exist in Seosan.

Fourth, poker is still a great way to spend a night. Actually poker was the reason for my trip down to Waegwan. Why Waegwan you may ask, well because that is where Camp Carrol is. David's brother invited us to join a small poker tournament and to go down and spend some time with him. The poker tourney was not for beginning poker players, and I wish I could report that I had played better, but I didn't. I had cold cards all night. I didn't place in the tourney, but given the chance to go back down there and play again, I can place. Yet, still for about the cost of a meal and drinks, I can go and play cards for 7-8 hours and have a great time.

This weekend was a good weekend. It takes about 6 hours to get to Waegwan from Seosan. Waegwan is a small town about 30 minutes North of Daegu. We arrived in Waegwan around 10 on Friday night and proceeded to obtain our billet for the two evenings we would be staying in Waegwan. After a quick shower and a bite to eat we headed out to a couple of bars to have a good time. The evening ended at about 4 in the morning when we finally realized that we had to be up at 8 the next morning to head into Daegu. The morning arrived all to soon and the only thing that made the morning worth while was the absolutely horrible, yet wonderful, Burger King breakfast. Ohh yes, Burger King breakfast. This is the first Burger King I have had since I came to Korea. I've only eaten at McDonalds twice in Korea.

We sauntered into Daegu a little past 10 and proceed to take a cab to Woobang Land. Woobang Land is a small amusement park that is designed for kids. The reason we were headed there was for Woobang Tower. Every major city in Korea has a tower associated with it. There is one in Seoul, Busan, and Daegu for sure. The tower in Daegu however has something called the Sky Jump on it. This is a platform 78 floors from the base of the tower where you are allowed to walk out and fall to the ground. It is a controlled descent of course, but still tis rather terrifying to think about. Did I do it, no. There was a weight limit on this and I sadly was under the weight limit. However, the scale at the place was heavy by 7 Kilograms. I weighed myself last week in Seosan and I weighed 113 KG. I weighed myself in Daegu and I was 120 KG. You don't gain 15 pounds in one week. Sadly I had to watch both David and Mark take the plunge, all the while thankful that I couldn't go, and sad that I couldn't participate.

When Mark and David had finished their brushes with death, we proceeded to eat an exceptional lunch. I'm ashamed to admit it, but all three of us had Surf and Turf. Yeah, we had Steak and Lobster in Korea. It was expensive but ohh so worth it. After lunch we wandered around the tower and then Woobang Land. We stopped to ride one of the rides, and after lunch that was a stupid idea. Luckily the ride stopped before my stomach decided that the frantic back and forth motion really wasn't helping digestion and that my stomach should expedite the process of evacuating lunch through the quickest means possible. Luckily that didn't happen. We headed back to Waegwan around 4 in the afternoon. After a quick nap and another quick shower, it was off to play poker for the rest of the evening.

I didn't do great during the Tourney, but I proved to myself in the cash game that I could play with these people when my cards finally turned. I would have walked away almost doubling my buy in for the cash game, except for the fact that I played one hand that took a good chunk of my money. It was late, I was tired, and David just outplayed me on the hand. Ohh well. Alas our hero walked out of the poker hall with a smile on his face. On our way back to the Motel, David and I stopped at the Country Kitchen to pick up some food. Fried Chicken, BBQ Ribs, French Fries, and Orange Soda. Talk about some comfort food. The ribs were actually some of the best ribs I've had in a long time. The meat was tender and falling off the bone. The sauce was ok, but the job this place did cooking the ribs was off the charts. The food was so good that the following morning David and I went back there for breakfast.

The most important part of this weekend was not the shopping, nor the poker, nor staring death in the face. It was having a good time with good people, and also the fact that I picked up a football down there to play with here in Seosan. Ohh yeah, It's time to get some football going here in the middle of nowhere Korea.

David's Birthday and another beach to boot.

Well, here we are. Tax Day. Luckily I'm not going to bore you with the facts about my 1040EZ or anything like that. What we're here to talk about today was David's birthday. For those of you that don't know, David is a good friend of mine here in Korea. I like to joke that David is the whitest guy in Seosan. I say this in total jest, not because it incorrect, but because it's entirely possible. David is a 교포 (gyopo) or a Korean who lives abroad. He was born in Korea, but raised in Bloomington, Illinois. This just happens to be about 40 minutes from where my parents currently live, and needless to say is still a little weird. Well, it was the old man's birthday. We like to kid around and call him an old man because he just turned 35. I call him 할아버지 (haraboji) which means grandfather. I know I'm soon to be less then a decade away from that age, but still that's what he gets for hanging out with a bunch of 25 year olds.

Alas, David's birthday was an absolute success. We met over at our friend Seung Hee's apartment and cooked up a Mexican storm. We had some delicious Mexican food and polished off a bottle of Jager, Patron, and Tanqueray. We also had about 36 jello shots made with soju. Before too many of you freak out this was consumed by 12 people between 7 and 11:30 PM. After this epic feast and drink, we headed off to David's true Korean love, the 노래방 (norae bang). A norae bang roughly translated means singing room. That's right, David loves him some karaoke. When we arrived at the norae bang we were quickly ushered into a room that included Seung Hee's mother and friends. Now these older ladies, well, they were rather drunk. Several of them were very insistent about pouring alcohol, even when there was no cup to pour it into. Drew had to tell one of them at least seven times that she couldn't pour him alcohol because he didn't have a cup. This did not deter her from attempting to pour the Whiskey into his lap.

After the wonderful cougar maulings that repeatedly happened during the norae bang, of which somehow I escaped unscathed, we headed off to CC Bar. CC Bar is one of our favorite bars here in Seosan due to the fact that the staff are pretty awesome and they are our friends. Nevertheless, after spending a few hours there playing pool, darts, and generally just being obnoxious towards each other it was time to move onto RnB. RnB is probably our second favorite bar in Seosan, for more or less the same exact reasons. We arrived at RnB at 2:30 in the morning and quickly got back down to the business of playing darts and drinking. During this time I started watching David's older brother Mark try and work his game on some of the female companionship we had with us. What I hate to say was so funny about this whole thing was that it was like watching a carbon copy of David. David, I love the guy, but once he's had a few drinks in him, he tends to loose some of the subtleties that are required when wooing the opposite sex. I almost wanted to grab David and have him sit down and watch his brother work, just so he would know the type of things that he did.

We meandered out of RnB at about 4 in the morning and then walked across the street to get some late night 갈비탕 (Kalbi Tang) or awesome beef soup. This stuff includes huge chunks of beef on the bone in a spicy broth. It's epic, I mean absolutely epic soup. Most people I know who have been to Korea and went back home are dying for this stuff. I know that when I return home I will either have to learn to make this, or find a place I can buy it. It's that good. Finally, around 5 in the morning we disbanded our little party and went home to get some much needed sleep. The next day would involve a trip to go walk along a beach.

After waking at noon I started organizing the second half of our weekend. This involved going to one of the local beaches which I cannot remember the name of. Honestly, the beach was not that impressive or at least not till I walked out to the point. The thing that I've found I love about the beaches here is that they are more like very large coves. If you walk to one end of the beach you can go climb out on some rocks and actually place yourself in a pretty serene environment. It's something I look forward to doing more of in the coming months. We returned from the beach and all went our separate ways. The only plan was to meet later in the evening for a few drinks at RnB and then have an early night.

Well, that was the plan. Needless to say it didn't happen that way. Andrew, Myonghwa (Andrew's GF), and I met for dinner at 9:40. After eating some good Korean BBQ we strolled our way down to RnB. 30 minutes after arriving there, all hell broke loose. A swarm of 외국인 (waygookin) or foreigners descended upon RnB. We're talking around 40 people here. It was nuts, they completely took over the place and we partied hard. We had people dancing on tables and just English everywhere. I can say with quite a lot of certainty that never before had something been seen like this in Seosan. There have been foreigner gatherings before, but this involved almost the entire foreign community of not only Seosan, but the surrounding towns. We danced and talked and drank our way into the morning. After terrifying my friends behind the bar, the swarm moved on to Roma. Roma is the local nightclub, and if you've ever been to a nightclub then you know what this is like. Loud music, warm temperature, and bad dancing.

Roma is quite surreal. Add the standard nightclub vibe back home, but add in bad Korean pop music, stage shows that are ok, a DJ who stops the music every 30 seconds to shout something in Korean, and ohh yeah, synchronized dance moves on the floor. It reminds me so much of high school when you had the boys who thought it would be cool to memorize the dance to BYE BYE BYE. Then, when the song comes on, bust it out and think they'll get girls that way. Yeah, this has happened several times I've been at Roma. I turn around and there are three or four Korean women (sometimes men, but normally women) doing the exact same dance, regardless if they are on beat or not. This time, I turned around and saw two women, practically River Dancing. I laughed, audibly, and noticeably and then walked off the floor. Once again 5 AM rolled in, and I took off. Home to the wonderful feel of my bed, and the knowledge that I could sleep as long as I wanted.

That was till construction started on my building at 8 AM. That however is another story, for another time.

Foreigner Therapy.

Expat therapy. The question comes about so often when I am talking to people back home about life in Korea, "How do you cope with being a foreigner?" Well honestly, it takes some time, some good friends, and alcohol to learn how to cope effectively. The most important thing is having good friends. Without good friends, and as much as I hate to say this, but good native English speaking friends your time draws out like a knife. You need to be able to interact, tell jokes, speak in slang, and generally just speak at full speed. So often you are worried about the words you are using in English because if you do not use the basic adjective or verb Koreans might not know what you're using.

It is a tough line to walk between making your language to simple, and speaking normally. On one hand you feel like your talking to a mentally handicapped adult, on the other hand you get blank stares followed by thirty minutes of explanation. You just need time to be amongst people where you can say "man I totally bombed my lessons today." To quote Drew "It's important." Yet, I've found quite possibly the true reason for foreigner gatherings here in Korea. It is a form of group therapy. Yes, it normally involves alcohol, not always, but normally. The other thing it involves is tons of humor about your current situation in life. As bad as it makes us we constantly make fun of our students. Anyone who has spent any time as a teacher, knows that when teachers are in the lunch room, they are talking about the stupid things their students have done that day.

Well, we do much the same here in Korea. We are constantly speaking in "Konglish." For those of you who don't know what that is, it is the same thing as "Spanglish." Basically it's a mixture of bad English pronunciation and Korean. These words often have the long vowel sound E at the end of them. Take for example finish. The Konglish equivalent of finish is "Finishee." Another example would be the word which. Which if you haven't guessed by now is turned into the ever present "whichee." Now before you think that this only happens with words that end in H let me give you some other examples: Out becomes "Oush", Hello becomes "herrow", Fish becomes "Pish", Mart becomes "martu", Cheese becomes "cheesuh", Pizza becomes "pisuh", etc. etc. etc. Needless to say, it becomes very easy for foreigners when in a gathering to start saying this words out of jest for the bastardization of their language. Ohh well. Needless to say, this therapy also happens to take form in the making of videos, blogs, and cartoons. Here are a few of the best examples.

It's Time For Weekend Update.

Well folks, I've been busy writing my butt off recently, but sadly I have not included any info as to what I've been up to in quite some time. Honestly, when life proceeds as normal I tend not to write about it. I mean it's really hard to make teaching school seem interesting. However, this past weekend something happened that I feel compelled to type about. Spring is trying fitfully to wigle its way into Seosan. It comes on like the tide, only to fade away with another day. However, this past weekend we had the best weather I've seen in Korea since October. It was absolutely beautiful. The temperature was in the mid 60's. I nearly died it was so awesome.

Anyways, an opportunity came about that I could not pass up. Originally I was supposed to go to Cheonan with Drew, but once this opportunity came about I had to take it. My friends and I decided that we would head off to a local beach for the day. We figured we could spend the night at one of the motel's on the beach for pretty cheap and just have a blast. In truth we did. We went to a small beach side town called Sindu-ri. Once we arrived at the beach we booked a hotel and got busy enjoying life. Beaches one the West Coast of Korea are notoriously long. The tidal change on the West Coast of Korea is the worst in the world. The water at low tide recedes at least 500 meters. The beaches are very flat and wide. What that means is there are no waves. The beaches however are huge and flat.

After wandering about the beach and playing around we, David, Ahna, Seung Hee, and myself got down to making dinner. Seung Hee's father provided us with some excellent quality beef to BBQ. I set myself to making some vegetable to go with our food, and we cooked potatoes in the grill. All in all the meal was awesome. Add to this copious amounts of alcohol and friendship. The night was young and we were having a great time. Now, came the only thing that could possibly dampen our night. That's right it started to rain, and it rained all night. However, not to be deterred we entered our motel room and continued the party. The night was great. Lots of drinking, talking, and walks in the rain. Well at least I went walking in the rain.

I guess I should mention that there was also some pyromania involved. You see fireworks are not only legal here in Korea, but they are cheap and easy to buy. Needless to say the night culminated not with David being drunk and passed out on the floor, but with me standing on a wet balcony shooting off Roman Candles. ASAH!!!!

We woke the next morning at 7:15 AM. Thanks AHNA! Ahna needed to be back in town at 9:30 to meet someone. Ohh well. Breakfast was steak and eggs and potatoes. All I needed was a tortilla and some of the Louisiana habenero sauce I found here and it would have been an excellent breakfast burrito. As is it was still a great breakfast.

We hoped back into Seung Hee's car at 8:30 AM and headed back the 25 minutes to Seosan. It was a far less white knuckle ride back then it was there. I'm not making fun of your driving Seung Hee, but sometimes you forget when hauling four people in a car you shouldn't take turns so fast. The car is a lot heavier and tends not to respond as well. Specially since it's rocking a 1.5 liter engine. We arrived back in Seosan nice and early, and I spent the rest of the day relaxing and cleaning my apartment.

It was a good weekend. I rested my soul, and I rested my body. It still amazes me how much the beach means to me. I guess it's there where I go to quell the storms that plague my mind. It's there where I find my answers, where I renergize my soul, and it is there that I can get back to the core matters in my life. I'm glad I went, and there are even pictures of the fun.

The art of matching in Korea.

I remember when matching with your significant other was cool. I think it was junior high school. I remember matching my vest on my tux to the color of the dress that my date was wearing for prom. After that, well matching more or less went out the window. Well, here in Korea, matching with your significant other is a fine art, in fact its a requirement. You have multiple stages of matching, each one more emasculating then the next.

It starts off so simple. Matching hats. Now, not everyone in Korea will do this, but it normally starts with a simple baseball cap for both of them. However, from here it goes down hill, and quickly. It may move from baseball caps, to beanies, or in a lot of cases matching animal hoods. These hoods are wickedly popular in Korea, and people from children to adults love them. Now imagine seeing two people walking together both wearing bright pink bunny hoods. Sadly, no imagine one of them being a man. Nobody wins.

Often times, they move from hats to sweaters or hoodies. Now these you think can't be that bad. In fact it's almost cute that a couple would wear the same hoodie. It's how they show off how in love they are with each other right? Well actually its more about marking territory then anything else, but that's another story. The simple truth is that most of the times these hoodies were chosen by the woman. What that means is these guys are wearing very bright, and what would qualify back home as very gay hoodies.

After the hoodie hurdle has been effectively jumped things go from bad to worse. Now comes the matching bags. No we all know that some men like to run around with man-bags or murses. No I'm not referring to the phenomenon known as male nurses either. Well, here in Korea, you guessed it. If you really want to show off you love your significant other you walk around with matching purses. Ohh the horror, ohh the shame, ohh the comedy.

Matching bags are then followed by something that is actually quite standard in the United States, Matching Rings. Here in Korea they are referred to as couple rings, and are not something that is to be taken lightly. You see until you have given your gf a couple ring you are not truly, seriously dating. These rings have the same significance as a promise ring, and are not that cheap either. However, if you have reached the stage where you are exchanging couple rings, you know for a fact that you and your gf are seriously dating.

Finally, while we have gone over all the outer wear ways to let people know who you are dating. I haven't even hit upon the underwear matching. That's right folks, UNDERWEAR. We're not even talking like same color here, we're talking matching lingerie. Oh it's so sad, but extremely popular in Korea. Every single underwear, sleeping wear, and lingerie store that we pass by has on prominent display in the window, his and hers lingerie. Ohh yeah, the mannequins are rocking the most emasculating thing possible. Pink floral print boy shorts, on a man. *shivers* A wise man once said "I would do anything for love, oh I would do anything for love, I would do anything for love, but I won't do that, no oh oh I won't do that." I believe we finally found out what Meatloaf was singing about. Now just for funzies here is that wonderful epic ballad and video.

Weird, but Delicious Korean Food

The following is a list of weird food stuffs that I have eaten since I arrived here in Korea. All of these things have actual names in Korean but I'll be damned if I know them. This list is in no particular order. I'm just writing as I remember eating these things.

1. Dog soup. This stuff was epic. I mean besides that random yelping you heard at the restaurant as a new batch of soup was being prepared. Kidding, it wasn't yelping, it was more of a whine. No, in all seriousness the dog soup was great. It tasted a lot like dark turkey meat and was just delicious. However, the off hand comments about eating Old Yeller, were perhaps not in the best of taste. They did however make the meal that much more fun.

2. Live Baby Octopus. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. How could you eat live octopus? Well it's quite simple really, and actually doesn't taste that bad. Now there are two styles of live octopus. I am a fan of the live legs that are still wriggling on your plate. There is another method which involves eating the whole thing raw, ink, brains, eyes and all. That I have not tried, and I am honestly a little terrified of it. For your culinary pleasure I have included videos of each of these. YUMMY!!!!!!








3. Pigs Blood and Beef Stomach Lining and Intestine Soup. What can I say, this stuff is pretty good. Basically they take pigs blood and make into a gelatinous type mass. They then cook it in a soup with the other fun bits. It's quite yummy and spicy. What I find so interesting about this soup, is that it gives you all the benefits of eating liver. High in iron and all those fun things, but you don't have the texture and density of Liver.

4. Snails. Well, this is not the excellent French version which includes loads of butter and garlic. This was Korean style served cold. In fact I'm not entire sure I know how they made this stuff. What I do know however is that it was mixed in your standard Korean sweet and spicy sauce, green onions, leeks, and cilantro. The snails are surprisingly sweet and tasty.

5. Mountain Banana. AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!!!!!! This is some freakish hybrid of a Kiwi and an Banana. Now I know what you're thinking, hey that could be delish. Ohh, it's not. This thing basically tastes as if you took all the flavor of a Kiwi and threw it away. You then replace that with bitter seeds and a white tasteless mush inside. The other important thing is, that you don't want to eat the seeds apparently. I was told this after the fact. Needless to say the banana decided it didn't like me and wanted to leave my body as soon as possible. I was happy to oblige, and to this day it remains the only thing in Korea that has made me throw up.

6. Abalone. Yeah, it's pretty easy to get here, and there is none of those Abalone hunting problems here like we had in California.

7. Blood Sausage. Hey this stuff is great street food. You walk up to a vendor at 4 AM with the drunk munchies and this stuff just is what you want. Sadly most Americans think of these things as horrible. Then you talk to anyone from the Scandinavian countries and even the Northern Europeans and they're all about it. Turns out blood sausage is a delicacy there. Whuda thunk it?

8. Acorn Jelly. Hey, it was good enough for many Native American tribes to exist on. This stuff is not my favorite because it is a bland gelatinous mass. I don't like bland gelatinous masses. What makes this even worse is the fact that acorns are excellent sources of nutrition. They just are too hard to harvest and use. I feel very wasteful knowing that this jelly has some excellent stuff in it, but it tastes like nothing, and that's not cool.

9. Dried Squid. I don't really know what to say about this stuff. It basically looks like you took Dr. Zoidberg's face (picture included for those who don't watch Futurama) and dried it in the sun for weeks upon weeks. I actually like this stuff. I know it seems weird but this stuff when you dip it in the red pepper paste is pretty good and makes an excellent drinking companion food.

10. Dried Small Fishes. I don't quite know what to make of these things. Were they delicious, not really. Were they bad, not really. They were just kinda dried fish. What makes these worth noting however, is the fact that the heads were still attached to this things. It makes for a pretty gruesome sight when you're table has eaten ten of these poor small fishies. Why, you ask. Well cause you don't eat the head. You just rip it off and leave it on the table. Or if you're like me you mount them upon straws and place those straws in an empty glass. Nothing says fun like a bunch of impaled fish heads.

11. Silkworm Larva. Ohh yeah, these things are sold all over Korea. Honestly they weren't that bad. They use these to flavor noodles and dumplings. They also use them as a handy portable snack. Luckily these things are not alive, they have actually been cooked. Would I recommend them to everyone, no. I blame this weird food streak upon my parents. They were the ones who always said you have to try everything at least once before you say you don't like it. Well now that training is backfiring on me. Thanks Mom and Dad.

12. Octopus Ink Soup/Pasta. This is a combo because of the concept of octopus ink. You can combine these two. The soup I have to say is far more interesting then the pasta. The way the tend to do this is first they cook the octopus whole. Besides octopus this soup has shrimp, mussels, and clams. It's delicious. Well after cooking this soup, a nice Korean lady walks by with scissors and proceeds to cut apart the octopus. Does she stop when she hits the legs? No. Upward she cuts, and then she cuts open the ink sacs. Into the soup all the ink goes, and what was a delightfully light soup turns into a dark black murky soup. The pasta was delicious. They basically used the ink and a cream base sauce on top of Pasta.

13. Lastly for this edition, Chicken Feet. Yes, that delightful dim sum food. Yet, when the Koreans get their hands on it, they give it a good Korean twist. Imagine those chickens feet being spicy as hell and cooked with a few other things. Ohh it's some good good eating.