Crazy Cows

I am very upset with Bryan right now. He gave me a book for Christmas, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and it made me cry, I cried for like 10 minuets after I was finished. This was not how I expected to start my day, weeping over a novel. Thanks Bryan, thanks a lot. I also finished reading War and Peace yesterday. It only took me a month. I actually really enjoyed reading it. Although, I’ll admit, I skimmed some the this philosophical and theoretically parts so get on with the story parts. The main characters in The Elegance of the Hedgehog talk a great deal about Tolstoy, mostly Anna Karenina but a bit about War and Peace. I love when I am reading one book and it references another that I have recently read or am currently reading, as in this case. I also enjoy rereading books and finding references that I didn’t catch the first time because I hadn’t yet read the book referenced.

I am fully intending on going for a walk before my Skype date with Bryan, at which time I will scold him for choosing such sad book for me to read. (The sadness was so totally unexpected too, I had no idea that it would take such a melancholy turn. Damn it.) It is cold outside though, and I am procrastinating by updating my blog. I am aware that I still have many Christmas adventures, cute boys, and fruit platters to relate to my faithful readers but it is all so long ago.

I’ll start with something recent. On Friday evening, Sally and I decided to go out for supper. Because we had to work on Saturday morning, I expected that we would go some place near, as in walking distance, and not stay out too late. However, she invited Park and he took us to a BBq joint near the Konkik Universtiry subway stop, not even a little bit close...

We met Park at the subway station at about 8:20. Neither Sally nor I had been to this part of the city before. It was awesome. Being a university area, there were tones of young people, streets were crowed, and the signs for all the restaurants, bars, hofs, pool halls, DVD bangs, PC bangs, noraebangs, and stores lit up the streets for as far as the eye could see. In Seoul, you don’t need to have a lot of imagination to come up with things to do. Really it is easy to keep oneself entertained if you have friends.

We went to a little BBQ that apparently Park goes to quite a bit with his friends. At the restaurant, they gave us a huge plastic bag in which to put our coats so that they wouldn’t smell like BBQ. Cleaver people, these Koreans. Park had invited a friend but failed to mention to his friend that Sally and I would be there. When he arrived at the restaurant a little while later, he was rather shocked and he was little bit drunk because he had just been at a business supper. He is a buyer of some sort for Samsung (he works for Samsung surprise surprise, everybody works for Samsung or LG). He didn’t speak English very well, but he was funny and cute in a geeky way. He said his dream was to own his own restaurant someday.

After BBQ and some soju, we walked around for bit in search of a bar. We finally found one that was quiet and nice. We were there for long time, sipping gin and snacking on those delicious little corn things they always have at bars. They also gave us corn chips and salsa. The salsa was little strange, but not too bad. I mentioned that server was kind of cute (he was) and Park scolded me because I’m taken (don’t worry Bryan, Park’s got your back). At the bar we just sat and talked for long time. Well, Sally and Park talked, I laughed at them, and Park’s friend had already given up.

Because there is always a “next” we left the bar and walked around a bit more until Park and his friend decided on all-you-can-eat tuna sushi place. Because we needed to eat more, apparently. It was one of those cool joints where the chefs are working in the middle of the room and the tables are all attached to the middle area and the chefs just throw more tuna on your table as you eat it. It was all raw fish, just pieces of raw tuna. It was so delicious. We were giving seaweed paper and some garnishes. We dipped the tuna in soy sauce, put it on the seaweed paper then added wasabi, and some sprouts and then try to wrap the seaweed paper around the tuna and shove it into your mouth, all of this using chopsticks. Nearly impossible to do it politely and with Park and his friend judging me and watching, always watching, just waiting for me to do something silly or “wrong”. This meal was good, really good, it seems that on a tuna fish there are many different kinds of cuts. So on the plate there were all these different pieces and at first I though they were different fish, but then it was explained. I definitely want to eat that again sometime. I am so going to miss the food here.

After the tuna, we did grab a taxi to go home. Fortunately, Park lives in the same direction so he was able to direct he taxi driver, although his friend is in Gangnam; that is south of the river. We didn’t get home until about 2:30. So much for a low key, early evening. I only have to teach three classes on Saturday, but one class is very demanding and takes a lot of energy. I think it did ok though.

Speaking of this class, it wasn’t yesterday, but a couple of days ago, this group of kids tried to tell me that the president of Korea was crazy because he bought crazy cows. I was super confused at first and was trying to get them to explain. Then one of the kids said that he bought the cows from the US. They were all shouting at me trying to explain. When the kid mentioned the US, I held up my hands and got them to all be quiet. Do you mean mad cow disease? I asked. YES! They all screamed unison. Then I laughed, I laughed so hard I almost cried. The kids thought I was crazy. I don’t know the political situation or what actually happened, but apparently the president of Korea is crazy and it is because of all those crazy cows he likes to eat.

Dee

January 11, 2009