One of the hardest parts of learning Korean is remembering the unfamiliar terminology, the friendly terminology, and the regular terminology. There are changes that happen to the words to elevate the status to honorific, but we typically do not cover that. Usually it just involves adding an extra syllable at some point.
In class, we usually learn the honorific terminology. Typically, it is pretty easy to go from one form to another, but it can be confusing for understanding when I hear a verb conjugated and I am left confused until somebody mentions the imperative form. For example, to say thank you to a store owner is 감사합니다 (Kam-Sah-Ham-Ni-Da, but the Ham is rarely pronounced -- lazy kids these days). When I thank my friend for pouring me water, I say 고모와요 (Ko-Mo-Wha-Yo. I had to spell that phonetically because I am not 100% sure and I feel too lazy to look it up). I've been told it is rude to use the second form when I don't know the person, but mostly people understand because I am foreign. But, when I use the unfamiliar terminology with friends, they sometimes take it as an insult. Linguistically, it is as if I don't know them. I am usually forgiven for that as well, but I can't shake that uncertainty -- so I always need to listen to the verbs that other people use before I can really say much just to make sure I don't accidentally insult a friend.
At first, the different forms were very frustrating for me. To a certain degree, they still are. The captain of the tennis team didn't use the friendly form until very recently -- always making me feel like she didn't think of me as a friend. There is also a more honorific way to say Rice, which drives me crazy. Seriously, why does Rice need two forms? It is one of the rare nouns I know of that possesses this ambivalence.
I have started to warm up to the different forms. It feels really good when someone goes to the friendly form only minutes after meeting me. The woman that works at the Bubble Tea store switched to friendly form and her greeting is warmer now.
Another thing that was hard to adjust at first was polite gestures. When dealing with money or pouring alcohol, the hand not being used should rest underneath the arm in use, near the armpit, or be used to help support the hand in use. Additionally, when older people arrive or depart, everyone needs to stand up and bow. On a quick tangent, I hate standing up when I am eating because somebody two months older than me needs to leave. But, I am starting to like it when I get that attention. It is pretty cool to arrive at tennis and all the woman stand up and bow to me. It is pretty cool to hand someone money and see both hands extended as a sign of respect.
A woman last week handed me some change back with both hands and bowed her head. I felt like a mob boss receiving protection money.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Temple Stay
The PEACE buddies recently put together an opportunity for us to stay in a Buddhist temple for roughly 24 hours. I got back today.
Saturday afternoon: We were meeting around 1PM at the Ewha main gate. I am not exactly sure where we went, but it took 20 minutes by bus. That means that it is essentially in the heart ofSeoul
The first thing we did was change out of our street clothes. One of the monks spoke broken English, which was helpful and detrimental at the same time. More on that later. The clothes were extremely comfortable and stylish too. I joked with one of the Americans about trying to steal the shirt and he agreed, although neither of us did. After we were changed, we met in the Meditation room to listen to a short lecture on Buddhism. The room had a golden statue of a Buddha in the middle that each monk would bow to as he or she passed by. The reason that I say a Buddha is because one who is a Buddha is like a Saint in Christianity -- deserving of worship, but not God or something similar. I also say a Buddha because although I was told which one it was, I can't recall.
The monk that spoke with us the most was a woman between 30 and 40 years old. She was very friendly, charismatic and very much enjoyed talking about Buddhism and the temple. Her English, although very confident and we could understand her most the time, was littered with barriers that left most of us confused. She would want us to respond by loudly saying "yes" despite 90% not understanding the question. Most the time it was simple -- "are you hunger?"..."YES!" But other times it was "_______, yes? Do you agree? Shout yes!" and a couple people did, but she pressed us to say it louder.
She taught us a little about Buddhism -- the simple, introductory things -- and then outlined the general schedule for the weekend. For some reason, she then put on a cartoon movie about Buddhism. When she told us about it, I believed she said it was "40 minutes long. So it is short" but I think she meant to say "an hour and 40 minutes long" because it was LONG. Also, the movie didn't seem to have any direction until the last 10 minutes as this kid dies and the Goddess of Mercy explains how the kid was the perfect Buddhist. I thought it was a little ironic that the kid was praying to the Goddess of Mercy and then he dies of hunger...if I were starving and on the brink of death, I would pray for a gift from the Goddess of Fertility.
The movie ended and then we went to participate in a bell ringing ceremony. I didn't fully understand the significance, but I did get to ring the bell. I felt pretty important. After we rang the bell 7 times, we went to a room that was used for worship. This beautiful, dark room had a statue of a Buddha in the middle, flanked by 4 other golden statues. The room was brightly colored, which I feel very much reflected a chief difference in Korean Buddhism compared with other Asian cultures. We did 3 prostrations, which is where a person folds his or her hands, falls to their knees and then lowers their forehead to the ground. The point is to lower oneself to the lowest point in the world in hopes of Enlightenment, according to my understanding of the monk's explanation.
After that, we chanted the Heart Sutra -- spelled phonetically in English. The Westerners, myself included, struggled to keep pace with everybody else because we didn't understand the pace. I think most of us spent the time silent. After we were done, it was probably 6:30PM. We were ALL hungry and looking forward to dinner...how quickly we were crushed.
We ate our food in the traditional Korean monk fashion. What that means is that they don't just serve food, they have rituals that we observed. One of my American friends told me at 3PM that he was hungry and wished he ate lunch...I couldn't contain my laughter as the food sat in front of us, his head buried in his hands, and the monk wouldn't stop talking. So this is how we ate:
1) They had these lunch-box like dishes inside a cloth knapsack. Contained inside were four bowls, a set of chopsticks, a spoon, a white napkin, a brown cloth and then the cloth used for the knapsack. The first step was to unwrap everything and put it in the right order, with the biggest bowl (called the Buddha Bowl because that was the one to use for offerings) on the bottom left and a descending order from bottom left to top left (smallest in the top left). Also, there was supposed to be no sound during the whole meal -- including no clinking of silverware. The monk loudly asked a few times, "what is the problem? Why is there sound?" It wasn't a mean tone, but meant to be a reminder to be careful.
2) We were served cold water used to wash the dishes. We all served each other with a different job, so mine was to pour cold water into the Buddha bowl. From here, we were to shake the water around in the first bowl and then pour it into the second bowl, wash it around and proceed from there. We ended by putting the cold water in the fourth bowl, where it rested for the rest of the meal.
3) The first food dish to be served was rice. It was put into the Buddha bowl.
4) Soup was next. It was served into the second bowl.
5) Next were side dishes. They included kimchi, bean sprouts, some green leaves and mushrooms. We were able to take whatever we wanted.
Once all the food was in front of us (growing cold because we weren't allowed to eat yet), we were to chant regarding trying to clear our minds. One important thing about the meal is that we had to eat everything we took, in order to teach us about being mindful of how greedy we are. Here is why this was so important:
The first thing that we had to do was take a piece of kimchi and wash it in our soup. The goal was remove all the red sauce and to have a clear piece of kimchi that would be used for washing our dishes. I didn't understand, at this point, why it was so important to eat every morsel of food. Don't be mistaken, when I was done there was no eatable food in any of my bowls, but the following tradition was absolutely awful.
When we were finished eating, they served us hot water in the Buddha bowl. At the time, I thought this was our drink during the meal because we were not supposed to drink the cold water. Using the clean piece of kimchi and the hot water, we needed to clean the Buddha bowl. That's fine and I am feel pretty economical at this point. The second step was to pour all the water from the Buddha bowl into the second bowl, which had the soup, and do the same. This was a little harder because the teeny tiny pieces of tofu at the very bottom were too small to get with chopsticks and impossible to drink, notwithstanding, I got my bowl pretty clean. Next was to pour the water to the third bowl, the one that had the side dishes, and repeat. This one was harder because there was kimchi sauce on the sides.
The final step was to drink the hot water.
Now remember, although this was all food I was eating before, it didn't sound tasty to mix little pieces of rice, remnants of soup, and kimchi-flavored water into a drink. Wow -- it was disgusting. I drank it and it tasted awful, but I didn't cough like some others in the room. We also had to eat the piece of kimchi that was used to clean.
Finally done! But I would have killed for a mint or anything that had taste.
...But Erik, what about the cold water in the fourth bowl? Ohhhh, that's right, that water was also going to clean the bowls. "What about the kimchi Erik, didn't you eat it?" Yes, we were supposed to. So this time, we used our fingers to clean the bowl. Not that bad -- we repeated all the steps except we used our fingers to clean.
Monks are able to go through the first step and have absolutely no food in the bowls. Some of us leave just a tiny bit of food from when we poured the water and the smallest piece of carrot didn't quite make it out. Anybody in the room that had "particles" of food left had to drink that concoction too. Anybody that only had oil was able to pour the water into a community bowl that would be inspected by the monk. I had a couple particles, so had to drink my second bowl of disgusting oil-and-kimchi flavored water. The monk inspected the bowl and said we didn't do good enough, but she caught the hint from our groans that whatever punishment she had planned was too severe for us.
We cleaned up by taking the food back to the kitchen, rewrapping our knapsacks and changing our seats to face the front. On a small tangent, I didn't sit in a chair the whole time there -- small pillows on the floor are uncomfortable after five minutes and even worse after six hours...
The final event for the day was practice meditation. We were supposed to try it for five minutes and then we were done with our day. This temple had us meditate with our eyes open, focusing on a point about a meter ahead, which I think led some people to laugh. And when I say laugh, I mean laugh during the meditation -- which was very distracting.
The coolest thing that happened to me during the five minutes is that my pupils contracted a couple times, making the room appear as if lights were dimming and coming back on. It was a little colorful and interesting at the same time. After meditation, we were sent to sleep -- it was about 9:30PM. We went to bed so early because the monks would wake us up at 3:30AM to start the day.
I slept awful. Everything was comfortable except that the light on the outside of our room was equipped with a motion sensor. Some of the men didn't want to sleep at 9:30PM so they went to smoke at various times, turning the light on and waking me up. I also coughed a lot for some reason.
When we woke up at 3:36AM, nobody was in a good mood. Notwithstanding, we had to be at the same room where we did prostrations the day before by about 4AM. According to our monk, Buddha said doing 108 prostrations would clear a person's mind enough to remove all negative thoughts. There is significance to 108, but I can't exactly remember what it was.
Doing 3 prostrations was very easy. Because we needed to keep our hands together, we couldn't use them to help us up and we also had to keep our feet together. I did like 5 on Saturday and felt okay. When we did 108, I was tired. Only about half the group did all 108. I was very sweaty at the end and a little embarrassed because there weren't many people sweating. During the process, I remember I wasn't thinking of much outside the immediate moment. I didn't really care how tired I was, or about how much I was sweating, or about it ending -- only about getting my forehead down.
Afterwards, it was time for our meditation. My understanding from the day before was we were supposed to meditate and then do the prostrations. I thought this made sense because part of the meditation was to make sure we keep our eyes open and our hands in the correct position -- something harder when fatigued. After the prostrations, staying awake and alert with the extra adrenaline was quite easy.
One thing that monks inKorea
Our next task was to go climb a mountain close to the temple. Let me clarify -- we were going to go climb aKorean Mountain
We walked back down to the temple to make lotus flowers. We had thin pieces of paper and paper cups modified to include a small wire to hold our flowers. Here is a picture of me with my lotus flower, contemplating existence:
Here is a picture of my lotus flower, next to what lotus flowers were supposed to look like:
The monk told us that the way we twisted the petals reflected on our lives. If we twisted them tightly, small and they didn't come undone, then we will prosper in life. If they come undone and are bad, well, consider the opposite...If you click the picture and observe the details closely, you will notice that I am not very precise or talented in this area.
The monk came and lectured me on how to make a good lotus flower. The day before she mentioned how dirty and clean were only in our minds (she told us as we were preparing to drink the cleaning water) -- I told her that good and bad lotus flowers are only in our minds and that mine was just good and bad as everyone else's. She laughed at that.
They interrupted us halfway through the lotus flower to go eat. We all did not want to follow the ritual from the previous day, opting instead for a chance to quietly eat with a lunch tray and no cleaning water -- and also no waiting. It was like 8AM and we had all been up four and a half hours, we just wanted food.
We finished our lotus flowers and went to the meditation room to partake in a tea ceremony. I was so tired that I can't remember too much of it other than they didn't give us much tea. The first sip was supposed to be bitter, the second was to quench our thirst and the last to leave us with a sweet taste. I say sip because it was all the same tea...it all tasted bitter to me.
Here was a common scene during the tea ceremony:
This is my name written on a lantern. They wrote everybody's name on these lanterns before we arrived, saying a prayer for happiness and success in our lives. I will get neither due to my failure at lotus-construction.
Saturday afternoon: We were meeting around 1PM at the Ewha main gate. I am not exactly sure where we went, but it took 20 minutes by bus. That means that it is essentially in the heart of
The first thing we did was change out of our street clothes. One of the monks spoke broken English, which was helpful and detrimental at the same time. More on that later. The clothes were extremely comfortable and stylish too. I joked with one of the Americans about trying to steal the shirt and he agreed, although neither of us did. After we were changed, we met in the Meditation room to listen to a short lecture on Buddhism. The room had a golden statue of a Buddha in the middle that each monk would bow to as he or she passed by. The reason that I say a Buddha is because one who is a Buddha is like a Saint in Christianity -- deserving of worship, but not God or something similar. I also say a Buddha because although I was told which one it was, I can't recall.
The monk that spoke with us the most was a woman between 30 and 40 years old. She was very friendly, charismatic and very much enjoyed talking about Buddhism and the temple. Her English, although very confident and we could understand her most the time, was littered with barriers that left most of us confused. She would want us to respond by loudly saying "yes" despite 90% not understanding the question. Most the time it was simple -- "are you hunger?"..."YES!" But other times it was "_______, yes? Do you agree? Shout yes!" and a couple people did, but she pressed us to say it louder.
She taught us a little about Buddhism -- the simple, introductory things -- and then outlined the general schedule for the weekend. For some reason, she then put on a cartoon movie about Buddhism. When she told us about it, I believed she said it was "40 minutes long. So it is short" but I think she meant to say "an hour and 40 minutes long" because it was LONG. Also, the movie didn't seem to have any direction until the last 10 minutes as this kid dies and the Goddess of Mercy explains how the kid was the perfect Buddhist. I thought it was a little ironic that the kid was praying to the Goddess of Mercy and then he dies of hunger...if I were starving and on the brink of death, I would pray for a gift from the Goddess of Fertility.
The movie ended and then we went to participate in a bell ringing ceremony. I didn't fully understand the significance, but I did get to ring the bell. I felt pretty important. After we rang the bell 7 times, we went to a room that was used for worship. This beautiful, dark room had a statue of a Buddha in the middle, flanked by 4 other golden statues. The room was brightly colored, which I feel very much reflected a chief difference in Korean Buddhism compared with other Asian cultures. We did 3 prostrations, which is where a person folds his or her hands, falls to their knees and then lowers their forehead to the ground. The point is to lower oneself to the lowest point in the world in hopes of Enlightenment, according to my understanding of the monk's explanation.
After that, we chanted the Heart Sutra -- spelled phonetically in English. The Westerners, myself included, struggled to keep pace with everybody else because we didn't understand the pace. I think most of us spent the time silent. After we were done, it was probably 6:30PM. We were ALL hungry and looking forward to dinner...how quickly we were crushed.
We ate our food in the traditional Korean monk fashion. What that means is that they don't just serve food, they have rituals that we observed. One of my American friends told me at 3PM that he was hungry and wished he ate lunch...I couldn't contain my laughter as the food sat in front of us, his head buried in his hands, and the monk wouldn't stop talking. So this is how we ate:
1) They had these lunch-box like dishes inside a cloth knapsack. Contained inside were four bowls, a set of chopsticks, a spoon, a white napkin, a brown cloth and then the cloth used for the knapsack. The first step was to unwrap everything and put it in the right order, with the biggest bowl (called the Buddha Bowl because that was the one to use for offerings) on the bottom left and a descending order from bottom left to top left (smallest in the top left). Also, there was supposed to be no sound during the whole meal -- including no clinking of silverware. The monk loudly asked a few times, "what is the problem? Why is there sound?" It wasn't a mean tone, but meant to be a reminder to be careful.
2) We were served cold water used to wash the dishes. We all served each other with a different job, so mine was to pour cold water into the Buddha bowl. From here, we were to shake the water around in the first bowl and then pour it into the second bowl, wash it around and proceed from there. We ended by putting the cold water in the fourth bowl, where it rested for the rest of the meal.
3) The first food dish to be served was rice. It was put into the Buddha bowl.
4) Soup was next. It was served into the second bowl.
5) Next were side dishes. They included kimchi, bean sprouts, some green leaves and mushrooms. We were able to take whatever we wanted.
Once all the food was in front of us (growing cold because we weren't allowed to eat yet), we were to chant regarding trying to clear our minds. One important thing about the meal is that we had to eat everything we took, in order to teach us about being mindful of how greedy we are. Here is why this was so important:
The first thing that we had to do was take a piece of kimchi and wash it in our soup. The goal was remove all the red sauce and to have a clear piece of kimchi that would be used for washing our dishes. I didn't understand, at this point, why it was so important to eat every morsel of food. Don't be mistaken, when I was done there was no eatable food in any of my bowls, but the following tradition was absolutely awful.
When we were finished eating, they served us hot water in the Buddha bowl. At the time, I thought this was our drink during the meal because we were not supposed to drink the cold water. Using the clean piece of kimchi and the hot water, we needed to clean the Buddha bowl. That's fine and I am feel pretty economical at this point. The second step was to pour all the water from the Buddha bowl into the second bowl, which had the soup, and do the same. This was a little harder because the teeny tiny pieces of tofu at the very bottom were too small to get with chopsticks and impossible to drink, notwithstanding, I got my bowl pretty clean. Next was to pour the water to the third bowl, the one that had the side dishes, and repeat. This one was harder because there was kimchi sauce on the sides.
The final step was to drink the hot water.
Now remember, although this was all food I was eating before, it didn't sound tasty to mix little pieces of rice, remnants of soup, and kimchi-flavored water into a drink. Wow -- it was disgusting. I drank it and it tasted awful, but I didn't cough like some others in the room. We also had to eat the piece of kimchi that was used to clean.
Finally done! But I would have killed for a mint or anything that had taste.
...But Erik, what about the cold water in the fourth bowl? Ohhhh, that's right, that water was also going to clean the bowls. "What about the kimchi Erik, didn't you eat it?" Yes, we were supposed to. So this time, we used our fingers to clean the bowl. Not that bad -- we repeated all the steps except we used our fingers to clean.
Monks are able to go through the first step and have absolutely no food in the bowls. Some of us leave just a tiny bit of food from when we poured the water and the smallest piece of carrot didn't quite make it out. Anybody in the room that had "particles" of food left had to drink that concoction too. Anybody that only had oil was able to pour the water into a community bowl that would be inspected by the monk. I had a couple particles, so had to drink my second bowl of disgusting oil-and-kimchi flavored water. The monk inspected the bowl and said we didn't do good enough, but she caught the hint from our groans that whatever punishment she had planned was too severe for us.
We cleaned up by taking the food back to the kitchen, rewrapping our knapsacks and changing our seats to face the front. On a small tangent, I didn't sit in a chair the whole time there -- small pillows on the floor are uncomfortable after five minutes and even worse after six hours...
The final event for the day was practice meditation. We were supposed to try it for five minutes and then we were done with our day. This temple had us meditate with our eyes open, focusing on a point about a meter ahead, which I think led some people to laugh. And when I say laugh, I mean laugh during the meditation -- which was very distracting.
The coolest thing that happened to me during the five minutes is that my pupils contracted a couple times, making the room appear as if lights were dimming and coming back on. It was a little colorful and interesting at the same time. After meditation, we were sent to sleep -- it was about 9:30PM. We went to bed so early because the monks would wake us up at 3:30AM to start the day.
I slept awful. Everything was comfortable except that the light on the outside of our room was equipped with a motion sensor. Some of the men didn't want to sleep at 9:30PM so they went to smoke at various times, turning the light on and waking me up. I also coughed a lot for some reason.
When we woke up at 3:36AM, nobody was in a good mood. Notwithstanding, we had to be at the same room where we did prostrations the day before by about 4AM. According to our monk, Buddha said doing 108 prostrations would clear a person's mind enough to remove all negative thoughts. There is significance to 108, but I can't exactly remember what it was.
Doing 3 prostrations was very easy. Because we needed to keep our hands together, we couldn't use them to help us up and we also had to keep our feet together. I did like 5 on Saturday and felt okay. When we did 108, I was tired. Only about half the group did all 108. I was very sweaty at the end and a little embarrassed because there weren't many people sweating. During the process, I remember I wasn't thinking of much outside the immediate moment. I didn't really care how tired I was, or about how much I was sweating, or about it ending -- only about getting my forehead down.
Afterwards, it was time for our meditation. My understanding from the day before was we were supposed to meditate and then do the prostrations. I thought this made sense because part of the meditation was to make sure we keep our eyes open and our hands in the correct position -- something harder when fatigued. After the prostrations, staying awake and alert with the extra adrenaline was quite easy.
One thing that monks in
Our next task was to go climb a mountain close to the temple. Let me clarify -- we were going to go climb a
We walked back down to the temple to make lotus flowers. We had thin pieces of paper and paper cups modified to include a small wire to hold our flowers. Here is a picture of me with my lotus flower, contemplating existence:
Here is a picture of my lotus flower, next to what lotus flowers were supposed to look like:
The monk told us that the way we twisted the petals reflected on our lives. If we twisted them tightly, small and they didn't come undone, then we will prosper in life. If they come undone and are bad, well, consider the opposite...If you click the picture and observe the details closely, you will notice that I am not very precise or talented in this area.
The monk came and lectured me on how to make a good lotus flower. The day before she mentioned how dirty and clean were only in our minds (she told us as we were preparing to drink the cleaning water) -- I told her that good and bad lotus flowers are only in our minds and that mine was just good and bad as everyone else's. She laughed at that.
They interrupted us halfway through the lotus flower to go eat. We all did not want to follow the ritual from the previous day, opting instead for a chance to quietly eat with a lunch tray and no cleaning water -- and also no waiting. It was like 8AM and we had all been up four and a half hours, we just wanted food.
We finished our lotus flowers and went to the meditation room to partake in a tea ceremony. I was so tired that I can't remember too much of it other than they didn't give us much tea. The first sip was supposed to be bitter, the second was to quench our thirst and the last to leave us with a sweet taste. I say sip because it was all the same tea...it all tasted bitter to me.
Here was a common scene during the tea ceremony:
This is my name written on a lantern. They wrote everybody's name on these lanterns before we arrived, saying a prayer for happiness and success in our lives. I will get neither due to my failure at lotus-construction.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Random bits of information
1) Seoul has it's own dance. At first, I thought that was the coolest thing ever. I even learned how to do the chorus part! And just when you thought nothing bad could come from a city possessing a dance, Seoul decided to play the song everywhere. Before movies start, there is a 3 minute clip with the song and people dancing. On TV, there are 30 second commercials with the song and dance. At EVERY big event in Seoul, the song plays and people dance to it. I was at a festival on Friday on the steps of City Hall. During each change of acts, they had the Seoul dancers come out and play the whole song. The two people I was with, one American and one Italian, decided to leave and the song escorted us out...
2) Contrary to American women, Korean women in big groups are indecisive. I played tennis today and it took us 20 minutes to figure out where to eat. I understand and appreciate that they were trying to think of a place that had a vegetarian alternative, but it is quite hard to find one that doesn't. In general, only about three kinds of restaurants don't have vegetarian alternatives:
A) ShabuShabu (phonetically spelled). ShabuShabu is actually really good and unique when there is a vegetarian option. Essentially, ShabuShabu is a giant pot filled with broth (it usually isn't meat broth, but I have seen it before) that boils in front of you. The options for food involve ordering a plate of something to put inside the stew -- ranging from lettuce and mushrooms to pork to beef and so forth. The meat juices are too prevalent for me to continue eating after it has been added. Oh, also it is communal eating -- one pot on one stove for 4-6 people.
B) Although I don't know what this place is called, I could totally lead someone there. This place only had chicken...they didn't even have rice. I ate the small vegetables with my group and then stopped and bought some sandwiches.
C) Again, I don't know what this place is called, but I could lead someone there. It is like a buffet where there is a pan for 4-6 people that cooks whatever you put on it. In the back are various options of things to bring to cook. Although they have some vegetarian alternatives that I can eat, Kimchi for instance, the taste of the meat on the pan is too strong for me to truly enjoy my meal.
3) The toothpaste I have been using for the last couple weeks is Green Tea flavored.
4) A couple of the places that I visit regularly remember me.
A) The sandwich shop with a difficult name: I found this little place about three weeks after I arrived at Ewha. They had a sign advertising Egg Sandwiches so I thought I should try one, given I hadn't had bread for a month or so. I absolutely loved it! I went back at least once a week since. After my third trip, they knew what I wanted. The other day, I went to buy two sandwiches and said "two please" in Korean. The girl started to make two hamburgers and I stopped her, a little surprised. One of the other girls in the back came out and corrected the first one on what I wanted. It can be hard to learn Korean when I can be lazy and instead of saying "two egg sandwiches" I have started saying "two please." Just to clarify, they actually have a full menu and not just egg sandwiches.
B) The Bubble Tea place is humorously called bbbobbba. The card also says "funny beverage, uplus Beverage." You might get a headache trying to figure out how the beverage is funny or what uplus means. Anyways, I figured that bubble tea would be a common thing in Korea given that my Korean friends had told me American bubble tea isn't as good as Korean bubble tea...but alas, I had trouble finding my favorite drink. The first 10 times I went, the girl working there and I didn't really talk much -- she didn't speak English and I didn't know enough Korean. Probably the 11th time I was there, I asked the Korean friend I was with if the employee was the owner because she looked so young. As the conversation continued, I found out that this 23 year old woman was the owner and only employee of this particular bbbobbba tea store.
I started off slow, only going about three times a week. That was a one time thing because after that, it was 5 times a week. Now, I go everyday. Last week, Angie (her English name, closest name to her Korean name) asked me if I wanted to meet a friend of hers. I did and we had a fun time. On Saturday night, I met her friend again coupled with another friend. We drank bubble tea for a while and then went out -- and then Angie joined us later. I realized this the other day, but Angie is probably the only person that I see every single day. When I went to Japan, the first thing she said to me when I walked in was "You went to Japan?" (she said it in Korean.) I said yes and then wondered how she knew that...
C) The Pizza lady. There is this one pizza place that has a medium pizza for around $6.50. Given the normal prices for pizza in Korea (a medium between $15-$20), $6.50 is good enough to take me there every two weeks. Because there is only one pizza without meat, she also knows my order.
D) Cocktail guy. There is this guy outside the front gate that has a little kiosk selling cocktails for about $4.00. We always say hi to each other when I walk by. He usually gives me free drinks each night that I wasn't going to drink -- like weekdays. The nights that I am going out, he doesn't offer me one free. I can't turn down anything free, so I've started walking on the other side of the street and yelling hello to him. Maybe I could have myself sound a little better if I just said it was culturally rude to refuse a drink...
5) Naturally, there are some people that often test their limits of drinking. I am proud that I have only crossed my limit once and realized I never wanted to do it again. Notwithstanding, because I have successfully stopped before needing help home, I occasionally have volunteered to help somebody else get home.
Scenario A: One guy was having some problems with a girl and felt the best way was to drink his weight in alcohol. When I met up with him around 10PM, he told me roughly 8 or 9 times that he was glad to see me. The girl he liked was also with me, so he decided to leave his party and join us. We went to another bar and we stayed for about two hours. He drank a tiny bit more before we had to hide the alcohol so he would stop drinking -- which didn't stop him from quieting us all down at least a half-dozen times and thank us for coming to Korea. I was waking up early the next day and was about to leave -- and the group felt that he should probably come with me. The girl was going to stay, which meant that we had to find a way to get him to leave (he told us at least 20 times he was going where she was going). My plan was to tell him I was too drunk, didn't speak Korean and couldn't get home on my own. After much coercion, we convinced him to take me home -- but he vowed to make it back to the girl that night, despite her constant assurance she was going to be fine on her own. We walked home together, including one instance where he pulled me into traffic by saying that pedestrians have the right of way even if we aren't at a crosswalk and the traffic light is green...Notwithstanding, we made it to the dorm and I got him to his room. Actually, I convinced him to come inside his room where he promptly told me to leave and he was going back for the girl. Nobody saw him the rest of the night.
Successes on leading drunk people home when I had something to drink: 0/1
Scenario B: An American guy was having problems with a girl he liked and decided to drink his frustration away. He was pretty drunk on Thursday night and this was Friday night, where he was again drunk. I was going home somewhat early because I didn't want to sleep until the afternoon so I volunteered to take him home. I used the same story about how I had been drinking too much, how I didn't know the way home and how I didn't speak Korean (the first guy was Korean, the second was not. The speaking Korean part was added in because I was a little intoxicated, but he didn't notice at all). He vowed to make it back to the group at another bar and even ignored them when they said goodnight because he was absolutely sure he would make it back. We walked home and I got him to his room. I was with him as he laid down and tried to sleep. As an idea of how drunk he was, he asked me twice if he could brush his teeth -- I said no -- and he laid back down and called me mean. I listened to him snoring for five minutes and left the room. I showered, pretty proud of myself for successfully taking care of someone. As I walked out of the shower, two guys were running downstairs saying they saw the American sitting outside. I was a little confused how the hell he got there because I locked the window and the door, thinking that he probably had no idea how to work either at the time. Details are still a little fuzzy, but apparently, he either fell off the second floor balcony or he jumped off the second floor balcony. Nobody, including him, knows why. He broke one of his arms, sprained the other, had a couple cuts and...hmm...how to write this artistically...ok...think of sitting on a bamboo pole...now imagine jumping off a second floor balcony and landing in that position on the pole. He was in the hospital for 6 days, spending the majority unable to use the bathroom on his own. After the initial surprise, everybody thinks it is hilarious (including the American who was injured).
Successes on leading drunk people home when I had been drinking: 0/2. At this point, because of how quickly it went from missing to near death, I felt that if I led another person home it would be the last night that person was alive. I told my friends to never let me in a position of responsibility over a drunk person if I had a drop of alcohol in my system. Given that information...
Scenario C: Another guy had been drinking over girl problems. I was on my way home for the night when I saw him with three other people. He stopped me and started going on about how we didn't hang out anymore and if I didn't come with him for just one beer he would be very sad. I thought it would be the five of us going, making sure that I didn't have sole responsibility over him. After I said yes, the girls said they were going home. We had one beer and walked home. I saw him today -- he is still alive!!!! I nearly died from laughter as he walked head-first into a clear door two nights ago.
Successes on leading drunk people home when I had been drinking: 1/3.
6) Movie theaters are really cool in Korea. They have stadium seating and less seats, meaning there are pretty much no bad spots. When you buy your ticket, you also pick your seat -- so there aren't any cases of a a group of five people trying to find five open seats on opening night after previews have started. Their snacks are much cheaper and better. I have fallen in love with garlic popcorn!
7) I don't want to hurt my roommates reputation in writing or online, but I have many many many stories to tell you all about him. Okay, I have one story. Something like two weeks ago, on a weekday, I was naturally sleeping at 4AM when he loudly comes back drunk. I am able to get back asleep as he moves around the room. As he is about to sleep some twenty minutes later, he yells (literally) "goodnight Erik!" I shoot awake and sit up. Realizing what happened, I just say "goodnight."
"Oh, you're awake. I have something I want to ask you."
"Ask me...afternoon...sleep."
"No, this is really important."
I mumbled with a rising tone, trying to get our "what?"
"Erik, are you gay?"
"It isn't important. Night."
"Errrriiiik! I want to know" (he actually whined that to me).
He kept pressing me for some five minutes. I didn't ask a single question, but responded to him. He decided to change topics...
"Erik, who is the hottest girl in the dorms."
I threw out the name of the last female I talked to before I went to sleep.
"Really? Why?"
"She is really cool...like...seeing her..."
And so this continued until around 4:45. Important things we talked about that couldn't wait until the afternoon: my sexuality, hottest girl, hottest guy, my sexuality, who do I want to sleep with, why I don't bring guys back to the room, why I don't bring girls home, my sexuality, is the person I said really the hottest girl, what makes the hottest guy I picked the hottest guy, why I won't tell him my sexual orientation and finally concluding with...
"Errrrrrriiiiiiikk, are you gay? You can tell me, I am your roommate."
I heard snoring within two minutes and despite my best efforts to get to sleep as quick as he did, it took me another half-hour.
7) Sunburns hurt more in Korea than back home -- I don't know why. Koreans also get sunburned quicker and complain MUCH more than I ever expected. If you didn't catch it, I am currently sunburned.
8) Tell me what is wrong with the following text messages:
A) "hi eric~ i'm Jiyeon, jin' friend~~~do u have time in Monday~?"
B) "eric~~(^_^) what are you doing now? ;
C) "good morning eric~?^^; were we supposed to meet 11AM to 1PM?"
I don't understand why Koreans spell my name with a C. In Korean, my name is 에릭. That final character, ㄱ makes a G sound if it is the start of a syllable or a K sound at the end. I am thinking very quickly, but I don't think there is even a transliterated C character. Man, there are many many problems in the world...
2) Contrary to American women, Korean women in big groups are indecisive. I played tennis today and it took us 20 minutes to figure out where to eat. I understand and appreciate that they were trying to think of a place that had a vegetarian alternative, but it is quite hard to find one that doesn't. In general, only about three kinds of restaurants don't have vegetarian alternatives:
A) ShabuShabu (phonetically spelled). ShabuShabu is actually really good and unique when there is a vegetarian option. Essentially, ShabuShabu is a giant pot filled with broth (it usually isn't meat broth, but I have seen it before) that boils in front of you. The options for food involve ordering a plate of something to put inside the stew -- ranging from lettuce and mushrooms to pork to beef and so forth. The meat juices are too prevalent for me to continue eating after it has been added. Oh, also it is communal eating -- one pot on one stove for 4-6 people.
B) Although I don't know what this place is called, I could totally lead someone there. This place only had chicken...they didn't even have rice. I ate the small vegetables with my group and then stopped and bought some sandwiches.
C) Again, I don't know what this place is called, but I could lead someone there. It is like a buffet where there is a pan for 4-6 people that cooks whatever you put on it. In the back are various options of things to bring to cook. Although they have some vegetarian alternatives that I can eat, Kimchi for instance, the taste of the meat on the pan is too strong for me to truly enjoy my meal.
3) The toothpaste I have been using for the last couple weeks is Green Tea flavored.
4) A couple of the places that I visit regularly remember me.
A) The sandwich shop with a difficult name: I found this little place about three weeks after I arrived at Ewha. They had a sign advertising Egg Sandwiches so I thought I should try one, given I hadn't had bread for a month or so. I absolutely loved it! I went back at least once a week since. After my third trip, they knew what I wanted. The other day, I went to buy two sandwiches and said "two please" in Korean. The girl started to make two hamburgers and I stopped her, a little surprised. One of the other girls in the back came out and corrected the first one on what I wanted. It can be hard to learn Korean when I can be lazy and instead of saying "two egg sandwiches" I have started saying "two please." Just to clarify, they actually have a full menu and not just egg sandwiches.
B) The Bubble Tea place is humorously called bbbobbba. The card also says "funny beverage, uplus Beverage." You might get a headache trying to figure out how the beverage is funny or what uplus means. Anyways, I figured that bubble tea would be a common thing in Korea given that my Korean friends had told me American bubble tea isn't as good as Korean bubble tea...but alas, I had trouble finding my favorite drink. The first 10 times I went, the girl working there and I didn't really talk much -- she didn't speak English and I didn't know enough Korean. Probably the 11th time I was there, I asked the Korean friend I was with if the employee was the owner because she looked so young. As the conversation continued, I found out that this 23 year old woman was the owner and only employee of this particular bbbobbba tea store.
I started off slow, only going about three times a week. That was a one time thing because after that, it was 5 times a week. Now, I go everyday. Last week, Angie (her English name, closest name to her Korean name) asked me if I wanted to meet a friend of hers. I did and we had a fun time. On Saturday night, I met her friend again coupled with another friend. We drank bubble tea for a while and then went out -- and then Angie joined us later. I realized this the other day, but Angie is probably the only person that I see every single day. When I went to Japan, the first thing she said to me when I walked in was "You went to Japan?" (she said it in Korean.) I said yes and then wondered how she knew that...
C) The Pizza lady. There is this one pizza place that has a medium pizza for around $6.50. Given the normal prices for pizza in Korea (a medium between $15-$20), $6.50 is good enough to take me there every two weeks. Because there is only one pizza without meat, she also knows my order.
D) Cocktail guy. There is this guy outside the front gate that has a little kiosk selling cocktails for about $4.00. We always say hi to each other when I walk by. He usually gives me free drinks each night that I wasn't going to drink -- like weekdays. The nights that I am going out, he doesn't offer me one free. I can't turn down anything free, so I've started walking on the other side of the street and yelling hello to him. Maybe I could have myself sound a little better if I just said it was culturally rude to refuse a drink...
5) Naturally, there are some people that often test their limits of drinking. I am proud that I have only crossed my limit once and realized I never wanted to do it again. Notwithstanding, because I have successfully stopped before needing help home, I occasionally have volunteered to help somebody else get home.
Scenario A: One guy was having some problems with a girl and felt the best way was to drink his weight in alcohol. When I met up with him around 10PM, he told me roughly 8 or 9 times that he was glad to see me. The girl he liked was also with me, so he decided to leave his party and join us. We went to another bar and we stayed for about two hours. He drank a tiny bit more before we had to hide the alcohol so he would stop drinking -- which didn't stop him from quieting us all down at least a half-dozen times and thank us for coming to Korea. I was waking up early the next day and was about to leave -- and the group felt that he should probably come with me. The girl was going to stay, which meant that we had to find a way to get him to leave (he told us at least 20 times he was going where she was going). My plan was to tell him I was too drunk, didn't speak Korean and couldn't get home on my own. After much coercion, we convinced him to take me home -- but he vowed to make it back to the girl that night, despite her constant assurance she was going to be fine on her own. We walked home together, including one instance where he pulled me into traffic by saying that pedestrians have the right of way even if we aren't at a crosswalk and the traffic light is green...Notwithstanding, we made it to the dorm and I got him to his room. Actually, I convinced him to come inside his room where he promptly told me to leave and he was going back for the girl. Nobody saw him the rest of the night.
Successes on leading drunk people home when I had something to drink: 0/1
Scenario B: An American guy was having problems with a girl he liked and decided to drink his frustration away. He was pretty drunk on Thursday night and this was Friday night, where he was again drunk. I was going home somewhat early because I didn't want to sleep until the afternoon so I volunteered to take him home. I used the same story about how I had been drinking too much, how I didn't know the way home and how I didn't speak Korean (the first guy was Korean, the second was not. The speaking Korean part was added in because I was a little intoxicated, but he didn't notice at all). He vowed to make it back to the group at another bar and even ignored them when they said goodnight because he was absolutely sure he would make it back. We walked home and I got him to his room. I was with him as he laid down and tried to sleep. As an idea of how drunk he was, he asked me twice if he could brush his teeth -- I said no -- and he laid back down and called me mean. I listened to him snoring for five minutes and left the room. I showered, pretty proud of myself for successfully taking care of someone. As I walked out of the shower, two guys were running downstairs saying they saw the American sitting outside. I was a little confused how the hell he got there because I locked the window and the door, thinking that he probably had no idea how to work either at the time. Details are still a little fuzzy, but apparently, he either fell off the second floor balcony or he jumped off the second floor balcony. Nobody, including him, knows why. He broke one of his arms, sprained the other, had a couple cuts and...hmm...how to write this artistically...ok...think of sitting on a bamboo pole...now imagine jumping off a second floor balcony and landing in that position on the pole. He was in the hospital for 6 days, spending the majority unable to use the bathroom on his own. After the initial surprise, everybody thinks it is hilarious (including the American who was injured).
Successes on leading drunk people home when I had been drinking: 0/2. At this point, because of how quickly it went from missing to near death, I felt that if I led another person home it would be the last night that person was alive. I told my friends to never let me in a position of responsibility over a drunk person if I had a drop of alcohol in my system. Given that information...
Scenario C: Another guy had been drinking over girl problems. I was on my way home for the night when I saw him with three other people. He stopped me and started going on about how we didn't hang out anymore and if I didn't come with him for just one beer he would be very sad. I thought it would be the five of us going, making sure that I didn't have sole responsibility over him. After I said yes, the girls said they were going home. We had one beer and walked home. I saw him today -- he is still alive!!!! I nearly died from laughter as he walked head-first into a clear door two nights ago.
Successes on leading drunk people home when I had been drinking: 1/3.
6) Movie theaters are really cool in Korea. They have stadium seating and less seats, meaning there are pretty much no bad spots. When you buy your ticket, you also pick your seat -- so there aren't any cases of a a group of five people trying to find five open seats on opening night after previews have started. Their snacks are much cheaper and better. I have fallen in love with garlic popcorn!
7) I don't want to hurt my roommates reputation in writing or online, but I have many many many stories to tell you all about him. Okay, I have one story. Something like two weeks ago, on a weekday, I was naturally sleeping at 4AM when he loudly comes back drunk. I am able to get back asleep as he moves around the room. As he is about to sleep some twenty minutes later, he yells (literally) "goodnight Erik!" I shoot awake and sit up. Realizing what happened, I just say "goodnight."
"Oh, you're awake. I have something I want to ask you."
"Ask me...afternoon...sleep."
"No, this is really important."
I mumbled with a rising tone, trying to get our "what?"
"Erik, are you gay?"
"It isn't important. Night."
"Errrriiiik! I want to know" (he actually whined that to me).
He kept pressing me for some five minutes. I didn't ask a single question, but responded to him. He decided to change topics...
"Erik, who is the hottest girl in the dorms."
I threw out the name of the last female I talked to before I went to sleep.
"Really? Why?"
"She is really cool...like...seeing her..."
And so this continued until around 4:45. Important things we talked about that couldn't wait until the afternoon: my sexuality, hottest girl, hottest guy, my sexuality, who do I want to sleep with, why I don't bring guys back to the room, why I don't bring girls home, my sexuality, is the person I said really the hottest girl, what makes the hottest guy I picked the hottest guy, why I won't tell him my sexual orientation and finally concluding with...
"Errrrrrriiiiiiikk, are you gay? You can tell me, I am your roommate."
I heard snoring within two minutes and despite my best efforts to get to sleep as quick as he did, it took me another half-hour.
7) Sunburns hurt more in Korea than back home -- I don't know why. Koreans also get sunburned quicker and complain MUCH more than I ever expected. If you didn't catch it, I am currently sunburned.
8) Tell me what is wrong with the following text messages:
A) "hi eric~ i'm Jiyeon, jin' friend~~~do u have time in Monday~?"
B) "eric~~(^_^) what are you doing now? ;
C) "good morning eric~?^^; were we supposed to meet 11AM to 1PM?"
I don't understand why Koreans spell my name with a C. In Korean, my name is 에릭. That final character, ㄱ makes a G sound if it is the start of a syllable or a K sound at the end. I am thinking very quickly, but I don't think there is even a transliterated C character. Man, there are many many problems in the world...
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Nothing new
I don't have too much new to report...
I have today off from school. When I was young, I would ask my parents why there was a Mother's Day and Father's day, but no Children's day. They told me "everyday is children's day."
Well that isn't true in Korea. In 2008, Children's Day is May 5th. There are also special events going on from last night until next Monday, which if I understand the time line correctly, is Buddha's Birthday. Hopefully I can find an event to write about between now and then.
I have today off from school. When I was young, I would ask my parents why there was a Mother's Day and Father's day, but no Children's day. They told me "everyday is children's day."
Well that isn't true in Korea. In 2008, Children's Day is May 5th. There are also special events going on from last night until next Monday, which if I understand the time line correctly, is Buddha's Birthday. Hopefully I can find an event to write about between now and then.
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