1.5 liter Gatorade ~ 1,500 won
1 large ramen noodle ~ 800 won
1 large pepperoni pizza ~ 6,000 won
1.5 liter Coca-Cola ~ 1,200 won
1 Duk-bok-e ~ 500 won
Duk-bok-e is a type of spicy rice dish, except it looks nothing like rice. Let me explain. The rice is mashed up and rolled into a cylinder then boiled in water. It is seamlessly held together so it looks as if it was grown as an extremely large rice kernel. Here is an example of what one piece looks like:
Honestly, I was hungry for pizza yesterday, which means that if I wanted to really stretch the 10,000 I could have opted for something cheaper, larger and still more filling. To tell you the truth, I have no idea how some restaurants make their money.
So Steven finally decided to come and visit me in my smaller and more country city. In fact, I just returned from dropping him off at the bus terminal and I believe his final words were, “Dude, I had a great time. Sangju kicked my ass.” So long, until next time Steven. Indeed, it was wicked fun. But the beginning is normally a better place to start recounting the weekend antics, rather the end.
*Cue wavy outro signaling dream-like sequence*
Friday – In preparation for the arrival of Steve, I first needed to arrange his sleeping quarters aka on the floor next to my bed. So, I took a solo trip to E-Mart to find a floor cushion, blanket and pillow. Mission Complete. Preparation Complete. I got Steve off the bus at around 10pm after he took a 3.5 hour bus ride from Incheon and he looked pretty tired. Our first order of business was to drop some stuff off in my apartment and then immediately hit the town. We met up with Rick, Simon and a few Korean people at a popular Western style restaurant, named Suyouki (pronounced: So-yoo-gi). Literally, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Afterwards things started to get a little interesting.
We decided that we were going to try and summon our inner Justin Timberlake, Eminem, Billy Joel (thanks Johnny) and Lady Gaga (if you’re Steve) at a Karaoke bar, literally on the opposite corner from Suyouki. In the three minutes it should take to wait for the crosswalks and lights, we somehow managed to coerce a group of girls to come sing with us. Under normal circumstances, this sounds fantastic; however, we soon learned that they were not of legal drinking ages. Therefore, due to the gossipy nature of our small city and the fact that we are foreigners, we had to try and get them to leave. This was no easy task. I am pretty sure, if my memory serves me well, that Steve actually picked a girl up and pushed her out of the door.
Our next location in attempt to achieve Nirvana was at a restaurant/bar known as Fish and Grill. It was at this point that we all ‘cut the film’. ‘Cut the film’ is a Konglish (similar to Spanglish) phrase that is slang for blacked out. If you think of your memory as a movie projector and you cut it…I shouldn’t have to spell it out for you. What I was told is that Steve was legless and sleeping. In a comedic attempt to find out how serious Steve’s condition was, on the way out of the bar, Rick gave Steve a swift kick in the bum. Steve’s reaction: wake up and chase Rick down a side street. I guess his hypothesis was thusly proved shortly after the 100 meter dash.
Saturday – Waking up literally at 1pm can sometimes make you feel as though the day had been slightly wasted, however, in our case it was equivalent to morning time. Slowly we got up and prepared for a day of excitement. I showed Steve a few of the more popular locations around the city. We went to a pizza joint, arcade and a coffee shop. Soon the night rolled in and we were already looking for a place to eat dinner.
We called Rick and proceeded to meet up at a restaurant named Olkeume. I had attempted to eat there once before, but it was closed, so we were back for round 2. We ordered a certain type of chicken called ‘Bul Dak’. ‘Bul’ means ‘fire’ and ‘Dak’ means ‘chicken’. Put them both together and you get the hottest thing I’ve ever attempted to eat. I use the word attempt, because I could only stomach a couple pieces. It was hot enough to instantly put chest hair on a woman. The only way I can properly explain exactly how hot the food was, is, pardon me, fucking hot. Rick and Steve persevered a bit longer than I could handle and, all the while, sweating uncontrollably. I was actually impressed that they could handle such intense pain for so long, but the jokes on them. On Sunday it’s going to be just as spicy in the other direction.
After dinner, we decided to pretty much have a repeat of Friday night. We bar hopped and hopped some more to a bunch of different places. This time, we stayed away from the soju as long as possible. Unfortunately, it’s probably not possible to drink and at the same time avoid soju consumption. It’s the equivalent of trying to play baseball without a glove. The only thing that was different was that our group was only the 4 Westerners. Surprisingly, for probably the first time ever, there were no Korean’s present. The abridged version of Saturday night was that it was a good time and nobody cut the film.
Sunday – If you open an English phrase book and turn to the definition of ‘Lazy Sunday’ you may find a picture of Steve and I. Aside from leaving my apartment to go and grab some Chinese noodles in the morning for breakfast, we did nothing more than relax. T’was a good day. I helped Steve find his bus to Incheon at 7:10pm, which means his ETA is about 10:30pm. Not bad at all.
All in all, the weekend was awesome. I was able to prove to Steve that my city exists and is quite ‘country style’. It absolutely kicked his ass (and mine as well), but in a way that I am sure Steve will want to come visit again. I’ll leave everybody with a funny observation I made about Koreans on Saturday night. We were at VIPS drinking and eating a fruit platter that had grapes the size of golf balls on it. I noticed that the owner was eating the grapes in such a way that she was spitting out the skin. I turned to Steve and said, “They eat live octopus, any fish, squid, cows, pigs, chickens, silkworms and they draw the line at grape skin. Something seems amiss.”
It seems as though winter is already coming to a close, because as I walk outside the temperature is averaging a temperate 50°F. Although I have nothing to compare this with, because I’ve never experienced a Korean winter before, it could just be unseasonably warm for this time of year. Regardless, it’s still nice to have a shortened winter. I am still looking forward to experiencing the spring and summer. They say that those months are the best times of year around here.
Smug [smuhg]
-Adjective, smug-ger, smug-gest
1. Contentedly confident of one’s ability, superiority or correctness.
2. Exhibiting or feeling great offensive satisfaction.
I first noticed this particular characteristic while working out at the gym Rick and I have been frequenting for the past few weeks. In fact, the gym, in general, brings out the smug in most people. Everybody knows exactly the best way to either lose weight or ‘get big’. I too am guilty of feeling a sense of superiority over the others training, however, I try hard not to exhibit such behavior on the surface.
I began noticing the exhibition of such concentrated smugness, when I began to watch the other people train. The older gentlemen will offer advice regarding the best possible chest workout, in their opinion, and the younger guys do it without question. I will give you an example: Remember those ‘shaking machines’ that people would use in the 1940’s to lose weight. Yeah, they still use those here. And not just the women, but the men will too.
It is also very important to remember that the men giving the advice on producing a larger chest seem to always be the smallest guy at the gym, without fail. For some reason the people procuring such blasphemy, seem to not even follow their own advice. It’s like going to the dentist and him telling you this great new way to get whiter teeth, while his are full of coffee stains. Nobody would listen to him. He’s a quack. Well, so are the smug older gentlemen with small muscles who are more willing to give advice than put in the work themselves.
You know, it’s strange, I’ve been so unbelievably busy lately, and yet, I’ve done almost nothing ‘blog worthy’. I’ve fallen into a daily routine, save the weekends, where nothing extraordinary seems to happen. I wake up early in the morning and walk 20 minutes to Taekwondo class. Afterwards, I hustle back to my apartment to get ready to go directly to work. I have about 45 minutes from the end of Taekwondo until I need to be in class and half of it is the walk back to my place. After school, I normally have an hour or so before I meet up with Rick (my Ausie mate) to go to the gym. From there, is dinner and then back to my house to unwind before I do it again the following day.
Having adapted in the past two weeks to this seemingly grueling schedule, my weekdays are too rigid to attempt something a little more interesting. The weekends, however, can be a little bit more unpredictable. With the addition of a Brit to our crowd of two, things are starting to fall into the ‘boys will be boys’ category. His name is Simon. He’s about 6 foot 3, a big 230 lbs (at least), blonde hair, blue eyes and about as thick of an accent as England could produce. Although, Rick and I hang out together literally every day, Simon fits into our wolf pack quite nicely. His work schedule doesn’t exactly allow the same freedoms that Rick and I have been granted as far as spare time goes, but he definitely makes the most of the weekends.
Moving onto a more relevant topic:
During the week, my Taekwondo classes are going very well. In fact, the only way Taekwondo could be made better, would be to shift the classes to not so early in the morning. I would much rather sleep until 10 than 8. The extra couple hours would go a long way.
Regardless, I am a lowly white belt and yet I could beat up all the black belted children in my class. Thus, proving that a belt color only represents having completed form training and not that you can beat up someone at least twice your size. Rick on the other hand is a fully fledged black belt, who also is my size. I don’t think I could beat him up. Consequently disproving people who think belt color only represents Taekwondo form training, and no fighting experience.
Any who, sorry for neglecting my blog for the past couple weeks. Believe it or not it was actually unintentional. I began a separate post about a week ago, titled: 5 things [I miss most from home]. I couldn’t exactly think of five things as fast as I thought I would be able to, but the list is coming along. Hopefully within the next few days I’ll bring myself to finish it.
Have a good weekend!
So my winter break is over and I am getting back into the swing of things. Fortunately, we are on a winter schedule for the month of January and part of February, which means that I work about 3 hours a day. This leaves me with plenty of time to begin private Taekwondo lessons with Rick at a friend’s Dojang (a Korean Dojo) free of charge. So the next time any of you see me, watch your step!
But to just rewind for a moment, my winter break was quite eventful. It began when I was introduced to a Korean named Owen, a 21 year old in the ROK Air Force home for the holidays, who had previously been an English teacher at Rick’s hogwan. His English is nearly flawless, not to mention that he’s about 6 foot 4. That’s pretty tall for a Westerner and mammoth for a Korean. Overall, he’s a really cool guy.
Every day over the break mimicked what I am about to describe. That’s right, we pretty much did the same thing every day and it was still a ton of fun. After sleeping in, Rick and I would find a cheap place to eat. Now we are talking about all you can eat for between 4 and 7 bucks a person. We would get noodles, wontons, sausage, soup, kimchi (of course) and fried pork loin. And I am not saying 4 or 5 wontons, but 15 of them. Same goes with everything else. I actually don’t recall us every finished all of the food we got.
Our next stop was a famous coffee house in Sangju. The barista imports his own beans from all over the world and blends his own flavors. It’s much better than anything Dunkin’ Donuts could offer, however, the prices, although not crazy, were a bit more expensive (4 bucks for a coffee, all one size). At this point we would normally meet up with Owen and go to either a pool hall or arcade. Both are insanely cheap activities. At the pool hall, it costs 1,000 won (80 cents) for 10 minutes. Meaning that for 2 hours at a table, with 3 people, it would cost 4 bucks a person. Similarly, the arcade is 1 play for a 100 won (8 cents). 3,000 won lasted me nearly 2 hours at the arcade.
We are getting to the part of the night were I must censor most, if not all of the material. Bar hopping and drinking at local hotspots until the wee hours of the morning is about all I care to say. Just understand that we had a very, good time.
I am actually quite sad that the short holiday is over already. I could probably have gone another week without work. But, alas, it’s back to the ‘grind’ for me. Hope everyone else had as much fun as I did on their vacation. Happy New Year!
