First Night

2/21/09

Korean treadmills are temperamental…Running doesn’t work out that well. For some reason the two I tried kept shutting off? I had my medicals today, boring except peeing into a Dixie cup with hello kitty on it while squatting over a squatter toilet!!

Lunch was different. The guy that was sitting next to me was one of the lecturers for our classes that we have the next week. I was talking to him and asking him about the food they had in the cafeteria. There was a stick with some meet looking stuff on it. I asked him if it was tofu and he said, “No it’s kind of like fish.” I said, “It’s kind of like fish or it is fist?” He told me, “Well it’s kind of like the fish equivalence of a hotdog.” Surprising enough I still tried it, I didn’t eat more than that one bight but I did try it. Meetings were in the afternoon and were pretty boring but had some really good information in them.

We went to town tonight, the first time I actually got to see Korea. Being on campus felt like any other campus, not like Korea. We were going to take a cab, then a bus, and then ended up walking. It took us maybe an hour to get to the mall and down town. Seeing down town in even a smaller town like Cheonon was like a Vegas in a different language. There were so many lights, so many street vendors. I truly realized for the first time that I was in a different country. Absolutely amazing!!

A couple of us hadn’t eaten, so we stopped at a place called Warawara. We walked in and got to the seating area, took our shoes off, walked to a table and it looked like a traditional Korean table setting on a short table but there was actually a place for legs other than Indian style. This was our first run in as a group with the language barrier. We pointed at some stuff (food and beer) on the menu that looked good (thank God for pictures). He nodded and then took off with the menus. At this point in time Charlie says, “I’m ready for them to bring out the live testicles!!!” I said, “You mean the live tentacles?” “Yeah, you know what I mean.” A short time later he brought out a huge pitcher of Hite beer and cups for the table and not long after that brought out 2 entrees (we thought we ordered 3, oh well Nicole and I shared it).

When we left there we wondered around looking for a bar. The first one we walked into was a bar but I guess it’s rude to drink and not to eat at Korean bars. They told us we had to order a meal to drink, so we left. We stopped in a place and asked where a “Western” style bar was; he pointed us in the direction of a Western bar with a cowboy theme. We still had to order but they allowed us to order some nachos and then we could have some drinks. A little bit later we moved from the bar to a table with some other EPIK teachers who had been there long before us and had gone through many pitchers; they were non-American foreigners. That was pretty funny listening to everyone and having some drinks.

We left the Western Boy and were heading home when we ran into some other EPIK teachers. They were going to run by this club real quick so we decided to go also even though our curfew was in an hour. It was dark and this guy took us to a table next to a huge stage and started asking for money. Everyone took off except Steven and I so we dealt out 10,000 won per person I think as a cover charge. We guess that that comes with a beer each and two plates of appetizers because that is what we got. We had some laughs, did some dancing, and just watched the culture around us. Being the responsible one I am, I had to drag all those guys off the dance floor to make sure we didn’t get locked out.

We left and got in a cab pointing to an address written in Korean to get back to the dorms. The first cab said no. The next 3 also said no even after we offered one of them 2,000 won…lol, I think we meant to offer 20,000 won, who knows? We stayed away from the black ones because they are more expensive. Finally we hailed one from the other sided of the street that took us home. It was a 2,800 won fare and we made it back at 12:50. Had a blast and wouldn’t have changed anything about my first night out in Korea.