Alcoholism in Korea

After being here for a while and witnessing the daily stumblings of many Koreans, I realized why alcoholism runs rampant here. It's all about the food they eat.

All food here seems to be paired up with an alcohol. The most eaten is some form of Korean BBQ, there are a few varieties. What goes best with BBQ is soju, which is basically a weaker form of vodka. The thing is, that you don't mix or chace anything after taking the shot. And Koreans are famous for cheersing and telling you to take "one-shot", which means down it! So it's usual to go through many bottles of soju while eating dinner. By then you're well on your way and tend to just keep going.

The second famous pairing is beer and chicken. Koreans love their chicken! There are so many restaurants that sell just different varieties of chicken and nothing else. This is also the popular food at baseball games.

So, in addition to the food pairings is the fact that the bars don't have a closing time. So, while you're drinking and making merry the time flies by without you knowing. And by the time you look at your watch is 5am or you see the sun coming up. Then you stand up and realize how drunk you are and still have to get some sleep before going to work the next day.

I mean, I wouldn't know this through experience or anything (wink, wink). I'm also used to stepping over many piles of vomit in the morning on the way to school. It's funny but at the same time it's a little sad. But, I don't really know how different it is from back home besides the bars closing at 2am.

Daily Routine

I just thought I'd let ya'll know what my dialy life consits of now. First, I wake up in the morning somewhere between 11 and 12. I don't leave my bed yet and just play on the computer. I then get up, take a shower, make some food, get dressed and ready. I leave my house around 1:50 to walk to school. I show up at school and play on the computer for a 1/2 hour (technically that's my prep time). I start teaching at 2:30 and go until 8:30, except on Wednesdays when I teach until 9pm. On Mondays I teach 6 classes, Tuesdays it's 5, Wednesdays I have 7 classes, Thursdays I have 5, and Fridays I only have 4. When I finish class I walk back home to drop my computer off and to change. I then walk the one block to my gym where my trainer kicks my butt daily! Well, one of them is really nice and the other one we call Nazi! He actually laughs when we're shaking with pain and fall over from muscle cramps! After that it's home time to play on the computer again!

I know, my life is sooooo difficult! Working my butt off 6.5 hours a day! ;-) I do get a wrench thrown into the works every once in a while. Like I head to Ice Bar on Wednesday nights over in Chundam, which is actually in Gwangju but it's about a 30 minute drive there. You drink beer out of ice mugs and when you finish you throw them at a target for a chance for prizes. Then I stay at Mandy's so I don't have to pay the $10 taxi fee and can take a $1 bus in the morning. Also, Thursday nights are when Kristina and I head out to the local bars in our area and have a pitcher of beer and talk. It's really nice to get out once in a while and relax, because there is no relaxing on the weekends.

Weekends are packed full of fun! Usually I end up going out on Friday nights to forget my students and have a few drinks. I'm used to getting home at like 5-6 in the morning. However, I have gotten home at 11:30 before. Then I get a few hours of sleep before I have to head to Chonnan University area where I meet up for Korean Club. Where we drink coffee and actually have intellectual conversations. I know, you're supprised. Me too! Then afterwards we head out for dinner, noraebang, and the bar. Sundays are reserved for recovery time. So, as you can see, there is no relaxing time in my weekends even though it's free time.

However, things will slightly change once Korean class begins again Saturday mornings. I won't be heading out Friday nights anymore because I don't make it up in the morning. So, my life will be moving at a slightly slower pace.

Life here moves at such a fast pace compared to back in Wisconsin. Here, there is always something going on and it's always fun. I'm having a hard time saying no and picking things. Right now I'm excited and doing everything. I'm living life burning both ends of the candle. Might as well do it while I'm young, American standards because we all know I'm over the hill by Korean standards being 26/27 years old here!

Booking Clubs

So, this is actually from a while ago but I've been too busy to type anything into my computer. Sorry about that.

Anyways.................................

In Korea what they call their nightclubs are actually booking clubs. So, you pay your basic fees for the table that includes a fruit platter and the amount of alcohol you want. I went with my Korean friend Gail and we went to a wiskey table and that's very expensive. It's the first level down from the VIP private rooms. So, for the bottle fo wiskey, 3 beers, 3 cans of tee, and the giant fruit platter it was $260. But, it was totally worth it. Since we were at an expensive table, we were brought to the rich boys' tables. Oh, I should probably explain a little better.

So, once you get your alcohol and have a drink all of a sudden a waiter comes up and grabs you by the arm and leads you to another table full of guys. You are then poured a drink by the guys and talk to them. If you like them you can stay, if you don't you can leave. So, it's kinda like speed dating.

Even though this club supposedly doesn't allow foreigners, which it said right on the door, I was immediately grabbed by the waiter guys so I quickly grabbed Gails arm as we were drug up past the hour long waiting line. I totally felt like a celebrity. Then we were brought to the awesome table. After that, because I was a white, light-skinned foreign girl I was really popular. I was brought to table after table, even though I can't speak Korean and they can barely speak any English. I still had the time of my life. We danced, drank, talked, watched the shows they had playing, and made merry!

At like 3:30am, which is very early for leaving the club we decided to make like a baby and head out. When we got to my area, we both got phone calls from two of the guys. So, they came to my area and we then went to another bar that was still open at 4am. We drank more soju, ate food, and ate some bugs. Actually, it's a deep fried silk worm called bundeggi. It just tasted like wet cardboard.

After we got kicked out of there at like 7am we went to my apartment and kept drinking. These Koreans are freaking champions!! I totally fit in with this crowd. So, it was a sleepover of 4 in my one room apartment. I was on the floor with one Korean and Gail stole the bed with the other Korean.

The funniest thing was that I was supposed to go to my coworkers wedding the next day at 11 but I totally missed it. I lied and said I was sick. Because I was actually full on drunk until 3pm the next day. Good thing that I only do this once every 4 months or so. It's a totaly marathon. You drink before you go to the club, where you start at like 8pm with dinner, then you go to a few bars, hit the club at 12am, and then drink until about 8am! That's 12 hours of drinking soju! Between Gail and I, we went through 6 bottles of soju and a bottle of whiskey in one night, well a half a day ;-)!

But, the point of the story is that it's a fun new experience and I'm meeting great people.

Korean Super Germs!

So, I am once again sick here in Korea. However, this time around it was super bad so I took a trip to the doctor, which was a super hassle. I went to a big hospital around 12:30 and couldn't figure out which counter to go to out of the 5 that were there. Everyone glanced at me but no one would help me. So, I got on the phone to my school and asked for help. I was then informed that all the doctors were on lunch break from 12:30 to about 2pm, when I start work! How can all of the doctors go on such a long lunch break and all go at once? So, one of my coworkers took me to another tiny hospital. It was on the second floor of my bank. We still had to wait an hour though for lunch break. When we finally got in to see the doctor we explained my symptoms, she looked down my throat, and then listened to my lungs. That was it. Then she wrote me a prescription for 5 pills and liquid cough suppressant. She didn't even take my temperature! This lack of basic medical care has me worried. What exactly are the pills I'm taking? They didn't give me any directions with the medicine except to take them twice a day. I didn't get any warnings with the drugs either. What if I was taking other medication and they clashed?! So, when I spoke with my mother on skype we deduced that one of them was an antibiotic, which will render my birth control useless, one is a pain pill, one if for fever, and the two other ones are a mystery. Oh yes, the best thing is that the pills make me extremely tired! I took them while at school and within ten minutes I fell asleep while talking and sitting up. I slept a total of 2 hours during school that day! So now, I'm at school armed with a liter of cola! I will overcome this!

Theory Relating Pregnancy and Teaching....

So, I have come to the conclusion that while teaching I release oxytocin, the same hormone released during childbirth. This hormone does a number of things during childbirth but one of its primary functions is to give the orgasmic feel that makes you forget how painful it is pushing something the size of a melon out of something so small. So, my theory is that while I'm going through the painful process of teaching these kids, I'm releasing a large amount of oxytocin making me forget how much I hate them some times. This theory stems from the fact that while I'm teaching the little devils I tell myself how much I want to kill myself but by the time I get home I'm all happy and love the kids again. What is this freakish weirdness taking over my body?! Is this the mythical maternal instincts that was thought to not exist in this child hating, woman's body? I don't understand! Why, even though I'm continuously pushed to the brink of self destruction, do I still love these midget Satans?

Korean Dating Advice

For all you ladies thinking it'll be great to date a hot Korean I have some advice for you. I know Asian fever isn't limited to the male population because I seem to have been infected with a touch of it as well. I made the mistake of taking things too lightly when it came to men.

This isn't like America where you can go hang out with guys just to have fun and be friends. Once you accept an invitation and say yes to anything you're done for. Once you've said yes they won't take no for an answer for anything. They become very aggressive in pursuit of you. They will stalk you on the phone and try to come by your house. Just to let you know, they're not actually stalkers. This is just their culture. If they're not semi-stalking you then they're not interested in you. I went on two dates with a Korean guy and the next time we went out as a group, he was introducing me as his girlfriend. I was very taken aback because I was thinking we were just hanging out and having fun, nothing serious. Well, I guess everything is serious here. There's no light, fun dating. So, the next time he called me I had to tell him no at least ten times. He couldn't understand that I was busy on the weekend and couldn't hang out. Then he said he would come by my house on Wednesday, today. I told him no repeatedly but he just said see you and hung up. So, after work today I snuck home early so I wouldn't run into him. I sat in my apartment without the lights on, phone on silent, and trying not to make noise. He called me 20 times in an hour, messaged me like 10 times, and rang my doorbell for nearly an hour! I knew that if I actually talked to him face to face it would be over. They just don't take no for an answer. Plus you have the added language barrier.

So, my advice to all you ladies with "yellow fever" is to be very choosy. You don't want to end up being stalked by someone you have no interest in, like me. I say take your time. The guys won't give up like back at home. These guys are used to working hard for it! ;-)

7 Random Koreans and a Date

It all happened in the wee hours of the morning, also known as after bar. I spent the night out with Nikiel and friends prowling the streets of downtown. We hit up German Bar, Speakeasy, Bubble Bar, and then proceeded to rock out at the norabong. It was a night filled with soju and mekju! We shared a lot of gambaes, one-shots, and a lot of drunk-tone-def singing. As the night drew to a close, I got some octapus from a streetvendor and hailed a taxi. Once out of the taxi I had to stumble a block home down a dark alleyway but I felt completely safe. While swerving my way home I happend to bump into 7 Korean men. I properly greeted them with a drunk annyeonghaseyo and a slight bow. They immediately took a shine to the drunk foreign girl who didn't speak any Korean and invited me to their apartment to drink some more mekju! Being the smart girl that I am I graciously accepted the invitation and went across the street from my house to party with some real Koreans. The rest of the night was filled with sticky notes stuck to our heads with our names written on them and our cellphone dictionary getting fully used. We sadly parted ways at 6am and I went and got 2 hours of sleep before I was woken up by my new friend Jungkil. We decided to go to lunch and watch the movie Avatar, which was GREAT! We had an ejoyable dinner of Burger King before the movie started. I was actually pretty happy because there's nothing like greasy food to help with a hangover. We spent all of lunch typing on our cellphone dictionaries to talk because I don't speak Korean and he doesn't speak English. But, it was still fun. So, over the next week we shared a few phone calls and text messages and then we decided to meet again last night. He picked me up at my apartment and we walked down the street to a nice chicken restaurant. We had some delicious spicy chicken and beer. Afterwards, we went back to my place where he did my dishes, cooked kimchi jjigae for me, and drank a lot of soju. After a few sojus we were feeling pretty loose so we put on some kpop and jammed out. I managed to get a little sleep last night! All I can say is that Korean sure can drink and they are very kind and patient. Jungkil is even studying English so that he can speak to me. I can tell that every time he calls me on the phone he's already practiced what he is going to say to me. I've never had someone that dedicated. I hope all Korean men are like this. If this keeps happening I'll never go home!