Back for more, are ye?

That’s right, everybody, here comes another one. And less than a week after the last one! Don’t get used to this kind of treatment.

So as of last night, I’ve been in Daegu for over a week. Things are still going very well. One of the funny and awesome things about being in here is that there is a whole lot of Guelph, Ontario in Daegu, South Korea. I work next to a fellow Guelphite, I live two doors down from another one, and I got a delightful visit this weekend from another, not to mention several others who work for the same company as me. It’s a huge relief coming into a new place but having familiar faces around, especially because opting for an office job means that if it weren’t for all these folks I would have had a way smaller network of people to hang out with.

So since you heard from me last, I finished up my first week on the job and enjoyed my first weekend of Daeguification. Friday involved going out to dinner at a very nice but rather cold Canadian-run spot with Melinda and some other cool folks. Turns out foreigners can’t own businesses in SK, which I didn’t know. The place is owned a Korean woman with a Canadian husband. The food was good; I had a very delicious hamburger with bacon on it. After dinner (during which several teachers, who don’t get off work ‘til late, joined us), we headed off and I was introduced to a couple of the very foreigner frequented clubs of Daegu. Those of you who are not very familiar with SK may not be aware that it is a society that really loves alcohol. A lot. It’s also a society that is pretty lax about public drunkenness. When we visited Adom last year, I was introduced to the phenomenon of drunken businessmen roaming the streets at all hours. Which is why it wasn’t quite so surprising when I found out about “bag drinks” which are plastic ziplock-esque bags filled with mix drinks that people can walk around the street sipping from with impunity. I’m sure SK has a drinking age, but I can’t imagine it is enforced very intensely. But back to the nightlife. Daegu is surrounded by several US military bases which really affects the nightlife because American GIs are, well, young people who enlisted in the army who are stationed in a place where they have relatively little to do other than cause trouble. I’m not all that into the military in general, and I don’t foresee this closer proximity reforming that opinion; I’ve already seen a fight amongst drunken military boys and girls outside of the club that they most often frequent, which was across the street from where we were. That isn’t to say that all military folk are annoying and/or douche-y. I met two perfectly nice Mexican-American military dudes at salsa. But I don’t expect that I’ll be going out of my way to meet military folks, is all. Of course it would be unfair to say that all of the foreigners who I am likely to avoid are military folk; there are lots of people who come as teachers who I probably also won’t be very interested in meeting. I really don’t approve of treating other people’s country as if it is your own private playground and there are definitely some foreigners here with that attitude. I also know that Korean isn’t a very easy language to learn, but I do think it’s ridiculous that there are people who stay here for long periods of time but never learn how to read Hangul (which you can literally learn within a day) even if you can’t always understand what you are reading , and who don’t learn the really basic, get you around town and keep you from being hopelessly rude to people vocab. Anyway, I don’t mean to be ranting right now. It is quite judgey of me to already be hating on people for the way they do living here, but this is my blog and I shall be judgey if I so desire. But back to the fun stuff!

After an enjoyable night on Friday, I spent Saturday morning taking it very, very easy. In the late afternoon I headed over to Melinda’s so that she could take me along to her salsa class, which she kindly coerced me into attending. I. am. terrible. at. salsa. Hardcore. I’m bad at dances that involve doing specific steps, and I am even worse at dances that require you to follow someone. So while salsa was enjoyable, I don’t know how frequently I’ll be doing it because my incredible lack of skill and coordination (not to mention lack of stamina from months of being lazypants to the extreme) make the experience a little embarrassing. After salsa there was galbi (delicious!) with some very cool folks from the class (cool people do make it hard to not do something that puts you in their path). After galbi there was more dancing, which was even more fun than the night before because there were more people out (apparently Saturdays are way more dancey than Fridays ‘round these parts). I’d found out earlier in the evening that the glorious Maanda (who lives in another city) would be joining us for the evening and she did indeed arrive with Brian, fellow Guelphite and my now neighbour, in tow. And thusly did we dance ‘til the wee hours. And after dancing ‘til the wee hours, M and B had some chamchi kimbap while I reflected on how long it is going to take me to get used to eating places that don’t serve tea. Korean restaurants are very specific. You can’t just get anything at any place.
Sunday was even lazier than the day before because it involved waking up at 2 in the afternoon (delicious!). The rest day was spent cavorting with M and B. We went out in search of food and ended up wandering the streets for quite a while until we ended up picking a place basically at random. Then, after a complicated ordering process that ended with us still not actually knowing what we ordered, we finally got to eat. Of course, M and B are both non-meat eaters so the fact that our first of three courses ended up being pig intestines meant that I had a lot of solo eating to do (luckily for them, every Korean meal comes with tons of side dishes that they were able to munch on while waiting for the next course). Pig intestines, I found, taste fine but are really all chew and no swallow (though the table beside us would definitely disagree; those two girls and one guy were packing those pig intestines in like they were about to hibernate). The next course was, luckily, seafood so my table mates were able to partake. Cooking that was fun because you cook them in the shells and then mix them into a soup. Very tasty. The last course was a cold apple and squid salad-like thing that I didn’t have any of because I don’t like cold food. On the way out of the restaurant they have a little coffee machine where you can get a Dixie cup of surprisingly tasty cappuccino for 100 won (which is like 10 cents Canadian). After our eating adventure, we went back to B’s place and played Boggle, game of champions. We also watched the new Jennifer Lopez video, which is so breathtakingly wack you have to see it for yourself. The lyrics almost certainly lower the IQ of anyone who hears them. As an antidote, enjoy this great Drunken Tiger track about his adorable baby:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M2v6O9S_S8

And then it was back to work on Monday. And again, this is a probably unnecessarily long blog entry. Ah well. The point is I had a great weekend. I was well fed, I danced, I hung out with glorious people, I slept obscene amounts. Tomorrow I will try to remember to /figure out how to upload pictures on this here blog and on facebook. In the meantime, I hope all of you are starting Tuesday have a good one.
Bam,
AAA