Hanging Out With Korean Friends of Friends of Friends

So Pam's got the hookup. Long story but her "mentor" at Brown has a graduate student who is from Seoul. He emailed Pam and told her to give some of his friends a call if we wanted to go out one night and they would show us around a.k.a. we would go drinking. That afternoon, while we were scheduling our night out, some rogue kiwi must have infiltrated its way into my frozen yogurt. While most of you must be like, "Well Dorothy, that would be a fantastic treat to be treasured", I must disagree. Shortly after, I began vomming, per usual when I consume and type of kiwi...not fun. Of course I told Pam I was fine and we weren't going to cancel on Richard and Eugene, but I did feel like the DMZ entered my gastrointestinal system and Kim Jong Il was pissed (like always). But I'm a champ, went out, and had an absolute blast.

FYI, Korean fashion and style are very different from American. First, all girls wear highheels, everywhere, all the time. I don't. Secondly, while showing leg is fine, cleavage is not really an accessory here, so most of my "going-out clothes"...well, let's just say I wear a lot of scarves on the subway. Don't worry, Mom, my dresses are classy, usually, but you know.

Eugene picked us up in his car and we met up with one of his friends at a Japanese restaurant. They had both gone to UMich, so of course, as the child of a Buckeye, I had to say something. And then, we began drinking. They were helping us understand the Korean culture, spitting is acceptable (gross) as is being immediately asked your age, to determine if you are in need of respect or you need to respect someone else. Richard soon stopped by, after his "business meeting", which basically consisted of getting waste-face with his boss a co-workers, a common activity in Korea. It build a community or family sense in the workplace. After we had our fill of sake, soju, and beer, we decided to move to a more Korean-style bar.

Fun fact - the legal BAC in Korea is 0.05, therefore, anything over 0.05 is a DUI. So the Koreans, being the brilliant people they are, developed a system where you drive you car to a bar, get drunk, call a special number, and basically you hire a chauffeur for the night for like 10 bucks, amazing. Obvi, we implemented this system and drove to the next bar. We started to discuss what the extent of being drunk is socially acceptable in Korea. I attempted to explain how "blackout" is not acceptable...well ladies and gents, it IS acceptable in Korea. It is acceptable to get blackout regularly, with your boss, just like Richard did before he joined us.

Eating and drinking go hand in hand here in Korea. Actually, you have to be eating something in order to be legitimately drinking. Otherwise, people just think you are major alcoholics...not what you want. At the Korean-style bar we apparently saw a very famous soccer player who was on the national team here. Of course, he was dancing on a table. After Pam and I saw what time it was we realized we had two options, try to stay out for another 3 hours or somehow convince the guard to let us in past curfew. We were too exhausted to try and stay up, so we woke up a very hostile Korean who yelled at us for 5 minutes, knowing full well we had no idea what he was saying.