Adventures in Korea: 노래방

I've managed to come down with a nasty little cold, so sorry for the posts becoming less frequent.

So, on Wednesday I tried Korean Chinese food for the first time, specifically 짜장면 (Jjajangmyeon), a really popular dish in Korea (they even have a day, Black Day, where everyone eats it), consisting of noodles in a black bean paste sauce. It was tasty, but a little too heavy for my tastes I think. It was definitely interesting to try though. I can now say I've eaten American-Chinese, German-Chinese, Italian-Chinese, and Korean-Chinese food, and they're all very different. Afterwards, we decided to go off in search of some sort of dessert. While wandering aimlessly around the back streets (we didn't want to go to a chain, and we figured our best option was to stay of the main street if we wanted some good hidden place) we saw a little hole in the wall selling waffles. And I mean hole in the wall literally; it was a wooden wall with a small square window that said "Order" over it, you walked up, told the man inside what you wanted, he gave you a number, you waited by a little door until your number appeared on the screen, the door opens just long enough for a hand to jut out, take your number, hand you your waffle, and then it closes again. I got a waffle with coffee and yogurt ice cream, Anna got one with green tea ice cream, and Lily got one with apple jam. They were delicious, and great on the hot summer day. That night, I went with a group of about ten to dinner. I'm not entirely sure what we ate, since I wasn't paying attention when we walked into the restaurant and when we ordered, but it was good. Some sort of vaguely spicy stew with meats and noodles in it. We all chatted for a bit, including some pretty heavy discussion about the EU (which I feel like I learned way more about than I previously knew, thanks to the Europeans at the table).

The next day, the last day of classes for weekend, my cold was in full swing, so I opted to skip lunch (and accidentally one of my classes, whoops) to take a nap. I felt better afterwards, so I joined our group at 6:30, who were planning to go to dinner, a bar, and then 노래방, Noraebang (Karaoke). I figured I'd just get dinner and then go back to the dorm, but walking around in the fresh (well, as fresh as a city can get) air was already helping me feel better, so I decided to wait and see how I felt. We ate at a restaurant specializing in chicken soup, where half of our (16 person) group sat at chairs and the rest (including myself) at a table on the floor with our shoes off. It was a cool experience, but my feet started falling asleep about halfway through, so I don't know if I could get used to that. The food was really delicious, and tasted like something one should eat when they have a cold. Afterwards, I felt mostly normal and decided to stay for the rest of the night's festivities. We went to a place called the "Barket", a beer bar where you grab your own beer from the refrigerators and then bring your empty bottles up at the end to pay. I drank a bottle of some Swedish apple-flavored beer, then grabbed a bottle of a Chinese beer when it was suggested that we play a drinking game. I jokingly suggested "Never Have I Ever", but it took off and that's what we ended up playing. I feel that we all learned more about each other than we expected we would on this trip. And my American-ness came in hand when I was able to pull such cards as "I've never been bilingual". I'm pretty sure I was the only one at the table not drinking for that one. Afterwards, we went to find a place for Noraebang, which we did pretty much immediately after leaving the bar. The way karaoke works in Korea is you rent a room by the hour, and then your party is the only one in the room and you can all sing together and have fun without the pressure of judgment from strangers. It's much nicer than karaoke-bars in the states. Our group was so large that they made us buy two rooms, and after arguing for a few minutes over how we were going to be divided, we decided to all just cram into one of the small (very, very, small) rooms, which management didn't mind since we'd already paid. It was a lot of fun, I normally don't sing during those kinds of things (especially not when I have a cold that makes my voice all nasally and scratchy like last night) but I did, including a duet with Anna in Korean (내가 제일 잘 나가 by 2NE1, not a slow song either!). We left at around midnight, and I immediately crashed upon returning to my room.

Today, I've just been lounging around and studying. For dinner, I walked around and found a little hole-in-the-wall (not literally this time) Kimbap restaurant, where I think I surprised the wait-staff. It was completely empty sans one Korean woman sitting in the corner eating soup and reading a newspaper. Nobody knew any English and there was no English whatsoever on the menu on the wall, which was awesome. I told a woman my order, tuna kimbap, and she sat me at a table and brought it to me with some soup. It definitely hit the spot. I think when I come back to the US, I'll start packing myself kimbap instead of sandwiches for lunch.

Tomorrow, I'm taking the subway by myself for the first time to go to my US Korean teacher's wedding, about 40minutes away. I'm nervous, but excited!