Drinking Culture

So in the last week, I went out to drink twice; once with the lab people, professor included, and once more when everyone from Pittsburgh came down to visit me. Drinking is a large part of Korean culture. Every time I walk past this bar-like place on my way home, it’s usually full of people who are hitting it hard, regardless of the night it is. I think the reason for this is that we start at dinner time, around 6 ish, and by the time it’s midnight, we’re all pretty much drunk enough to call it a night, allowing for a full night sleep in preparation for lab, school or work the next day.

The drink of choice is soju, which apparently is the most consumed liquor in the world, if that gives you an idea about how many/often Koreans drink. It tastes like a little sweeten vodka and is consumed as shots, not mixed with anything else. It’s aight, at best.

Unlike USA drinking, drinking in Korea is more ritualized/proper. Younger’s pour for the elders first, always using two hands on the bottle or one hand on the bottle and one hand under your elbow, mimicking getting your clothes out of the way back in the day of lengthy clothing. To receive a drink, you must have 2 hands on the glass or your right hand on the glass and the other hand on your stomach. Once everyone has been poured, you clink glasses and say “Gombe!” or “One shot-ah!” Drinks are always served with food.

The other drink I had, this time with the people from Pittsburgh, was makgeolli (pronounced like broccoli but with an “m” instead of a “br”). It’s kinda like sake, though not as good (bias much?) and is much more drinkable than soju. It is sweeter and has a slightly fizziness to it, more like wine. The place we went served the makgeolli in a metal tea kettle sort of thing, and each cup was a small metal bowl:

Same pouring rules apply, though less stringent since we were all ignorant Americans. To get more, you bang a separate empty kettle to get the waiters attention and they bring another one for you. Sound rude? Yeah, that’s pretty much how I felt when I did it.

So far, the beer here is awful, like Naty Ice or IC Lite awful. Any imports have 100% import tax on them, so there are like $15 bucks for a bottle. Only cool thing so far about the beer is that one of the places I went to had cup holders which were sunk into the table and kept at about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so it kept your beer cold for longer. The pitchers themselves had a metal rod through the center of the pitcher and extended into the cup holders so the beer in the pitcher would be kept colder. I think that was a special thing to that place though since I have yet to see it anywhere else.

I’m pretty home sick or suffering from severe Xbox withdrawal (or both). Just wish I knew my MCAT score....

Officially the Minority

Hey everyone who cares to read this, I have made it to Jeonju, South Korea in one piece. It was a little sketchy since I basically got off a plane and then was put on a bus 3 and half hours south with a phone number and hopes that there was someone there to meet me. Luckily there was, and everyone in my lab so far has been incredibly nice to me. Lots of different and cultural things have been happening to me in just to days, so I'm just going to ramble for awhile until I get tired and go to bed (I'm 13 hours in the future). I have to say though, I am definitely not used to be completely dependent on others, even for the basics like food and whatnot. I guess I just have to get used to it or start learning a whole lot of Korean really really quickly. It's like being in a continual state of confusion since everywhere I look, there's more things that I don't know about.

Here's a quick tour of my apartment, which I share with two other people, though I have my own room. The entrance and kitchen:

Yeah, that's a refrigerator crammed into the corner there, with a clothes drying rack in front of it since there's no dryer. Now, for the part which I am struggling with the most; the bathroom/toilet/everything combo:

Notice the lack of separation between anything. So whenever I have taken a shower, everything gets wet and I'm not really sure if that is normal or not yet. Sometimes I just want to go to the bathroom, and I have to put on slippers to protect against the wet floor. And now a close up on the sink part:

You may notice that the shower head is directly attached to the sink. There's a little button there to switch between the sink and the shower head, which I tend to forget about when I just want to wash my hands... And I'm fully clothed. Guess I just have to start remembering to check for that.

Another thing I have to get used to is that during meals, it seems that drinking liquid is just not the status quo. They give you a shot glass size thing of water, and everyone seems to save it for the end of the meal. I've experienced this before in Japan, but it's different here since the food is pretty damn spicy and I need some water to wash it down and cool my tongue. Not sure how to handle this yet. I guess I'll just hope my body gets used to the lack of liquid during meal times. Also, Korean use steel chopsticks that are thinner than normal chopsticks, so it's kinda like eating with 2 coffee stirrers that are metal.

Also something that I thought was really interesting is that in the lab where all the computers are and everyone is just typing, the "dry lab" if I may, there's a sink there with bowls and a whole lot of tooth brushes. After every meal we eat, most people, if not everyone, brushes their teeth in the lab. I just thought that was interesting and pretty different from the labs in America. Definitely more of a "family" feel to lab rather than a place of work, though we do still work late.

My professor isn't in until Monday, so I still have no idea what I am actually doing for these 9 weeks until then. I think my plan this weekend is to walk all around the campus and try to get better bearings as to where I am instead of wandering around and hoping that something looks familiar.