Sunday, February 7, 2010

Concerning mokkoli, tarot, and horror, oh my!

The beginning of the week was boring. I'll spare you. Thursday night some of my Korean friends took me out to dinner which was so so much fun. They know I love jajang myeong and despite making a complete fool of myself with the chopstics (chopstick status upate: I can reliably get pretty much anything to my mouth but it's. not. pretty.), I enjoyed myself. The chopstick incident was serious though, I ended up with so much of my dinner adorning my shirt that one of the guys said I was riiight on par with his 6 year old. Thanks. (Although I actually do consider that as kind of a compliment- I was guessing I was right around the 3 year mark with my chopstick skill). Then, they took me to this fantastic old old bar. It looked historic- there was a pot-bellied stove in the middle and all of these wooden tables and benches vying for space in the middle like a mosh pit. We were shown to a private room at the side of the building, enclosed by rice paper with these old Korean hangol characters on it. Obviously, we took off our shoes (any traditional place has you do this) and settled down on the floor around a little table to talk about colleges and education and celebrities. I also tried some new food- some spicy pork type thing and what I thought was spring onion pancakes but was more seafoody than expected. I was also introduced to makkoli. Makkoli is traditional Korean rice wine and it is delicious. You drink it in shallow bowls (which totally made me think of the ancient Mayans in Chocolat- interesting how memory links all things foreign in your mind) and it tastes milky, sweet, tangy and fantastic. It was an entirely new taste for me but I quite enjoyed it.

Friday I was kind of feeling antisocial so in lieu of Level Eks I went to the gym, got a veritable army of takeout Chinese food and watched Sex and the City. Perfect. The next day I met Ella (unni) for a really nice afternoon of shopping and superstition. We got some fruit juice while perusing the different shops in an underground mall very near Daejeon's old downtown. I ended up getting a big gym bag that is a chanel knock off...and then a Louis Vuitton knock off that I thought looked real but my coworker kindly informed me otherwise. Whatever, I still like it haha. She treated me to lunch at this cafeteria style place where we had meat spaggeti (kind of like the kid's version that you'd get at a Mexican restaunt) and an omelet which here meant sort of sculpted scrambled eggs with sausage and hot sauce on top of rice. Not bad. Then, we went to get a tarot reading because I've never done it and why not? It was pretty interesting. My prognosis was that I protect myself too much from getting hurt and as a result, I judge people and push away romance. The first card was this scary lightning struck tower and apparently that's me haha. I need to focus on the positive and open myself up to possibility. Hmmm. Gave me a thought or two to chew on and for 3 dollars, I consider it money well spent. It was interesting though, the guy told Ella (who was translating it all for me) that he had to sort of recalibrate the cards to tell western fortune and that because he was Korean, he could look into another Korean's eyes and know more about them so I was a little more of a challenge. I thought that was kind of funny- he had this essentialist bond with someone because they look the same.

Aaaaaanyway, sunday I watched a scary movie with my friend from Whitman and only jumped about 4 times. We watched "The Descent" about these women who go caving and get beset by Gollum-like creatures, as you do. I hate it when that happens. He's slated "Paranormal Activity" as the next movie on our list...we'll see.

That's what's going on in ye olde Koreae. Love you all! And by the way, Uncle CJ gets the award of the week for sending me an email as "payment" for the blog, haha. Let him be an example to you all! Love to hear from you!

Ahn yung keseyo!

Becks

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