Ummm, whoa!! Cultural lessons

Last night I met the daughter of the man I met on the bus on the way to Daegu. Her name’s Yong and she’s in her late 20’s, early 30’s. A flute instructor and very nice. She came about 30-40 minutes out of her way to pick me up at a landmark in my area and we met up with some of her friends. A head-Korean-teacher at another hagwon, an American teacher, a Japanese teacher, and two Korean men Yong went to school with (who only spoke a VERY little bit of English). It was an interesting group and a night full of cultural lessons – mostly given by the American teacher, Lori. She was really friendly and took it upon herself to educate me as much as she could throughout the evening – which I REALLY appreciated. One of the first lessons – I must never pour my own drink. It is the responsibility of people at the table to pour my drink for me and to notice when my cup is low. For water, which wasn’t in a clear cup this was kinda difficult and I wanted a lot of water, but Lori was beside me so I just asked her for it. The way things are set up (as I think I mentioned before) is that the food comes and everyone shares, we have our individual saucers that we can transfer food to but a lot of the time it’s just very communal eating. People will even just put food on your saucer or hold it up to you to eat if they think you’re not having enough or are ready for more. It also comes in courses. This one started with a number of sides – corn, bean sprout soup, we peanuts, carrots, cucumbers, horseradish, onions and HOT green peppers (I found that out the hard way, I picked it up with my chopsticks – which I handled very well that night! – and the people around me were just like ‘ohhh!’ I tried it anyone and it was fine . . . until about 30 seconds passed – then whoo! Not the hottest thing I’ve ever had but definitely up there!), boiled eggs (little bird eggs, looked kind of like robin eggs but tasted very similar to chicken eggs) and silk worm larvae – which I didn’t try. Then shellfish noodle soup was ordered for Lori and me and Crab legs followed by this really good rice dish stuffed into crab bodies, then vegetables, sauce and squid for all. There’s water, but then beer and soju was also ordered (soju is this high percentage drink (about 25%) that Koreans put back like crazy. Like two or three mmm, maybe 600ml bottles a night. Alcohol and drinking is VERY cultural – they don’t even have a word for alcoholic in Korean but Lori said she thinks probably about 40% of Koreans are what we would deem alcoholics in North America.

The drinks also just keep coming as everyone shares the bottles. I had the soju because I heard the beer was gross (and I don’t even really like it in Canada) – I did taste it later, it is awful- but by drinking really small sips during the toasts and trying not to let my glass get more than half empty I managed to only have about 2 and a half (the glass are the size of shot glasses) whereas I think most of the others probably had 8-9 and then beer as well. How the method of pouring works is very much related to status. I was the youngest there so I had the lowest status. That means that if someone is pouring for me I need to hold my glass with both hands and if I’m pouring for someone else I hold the bottle with two hands and they hold their glass with one. Also, if someone goes to pour for me and I’m not done my drink I’m expected to gulp it down because they wouldn’t pour into my glass until it was empty. The ‘top me up’ concept doesn’t really exist here (all things I learned through Lori as the night progressed). I really enjoy the unity of communal meals, but not the fact that, as mentioned in the last blog, it means I’ll be paying for other peoples drinking habits! The bill is just divided up evenly. Ah well.

Eating the crab was kind of funny, the Koreans all just got in there, sucking it clean, getting all the meat – very much like we do in the Maritimes so I knew how to join in for that. Lori though, found it very difficult to do, she would just take the easily accessible meat and the men kept picking her legs up and showing her the meat left inside, wanting her to eat it properly. I showed them mine, haha, and got some foreigner brownie points I guess for doing a good job of sucking ‘em clean. I got the thumbs up and a “good girl, very good girl”.

I guess I got a lot of attention from the men, though I didn’t really realize it. Lori and I both got called beautiful a few times but Lori also explained to me that Korean women are very small, (as I’ve certainly noticed, and been told that bra sizes aren’t even sold beyond a B cup) and . . . I’m not, so I have to get used to the fact that I’m going to get stared at a lot. She said the men were flirting with me as they were helping me with what to eat when and stuff ( I saw it as just friendliness) and asking me questions and I heard her mention to her head teacher that they kept staring at my chest . . . at least they were good at hiding it. They only looked at me in the face while talking to me.

Besides this, some major drama did occur in the evening. Yoko, the Japanese teacher left to meet up with some other friends and said she may meet up with us later. . .I’m not really sure if all the Korean people there picked up on this because she was speaking to Lori and in English. Apparently this is VERY rude though. When people make plans with each other they’re expected to follow the plans and stay with the people they went out with. The head teacher was very upset with Yoko and commented on it throughout the night, she also let herself get extremely drunk and though she was very friendly and loving in her drunkenness, you could see her angry and offense whenever mentioning Yoko. Lori tried to explain it as a cultural difference and I think that pretty much cleared it up for the others. I do see their point though, I mean I would think it was kind of rude too if I had plans with someone and they left to hang out with someone else, especially if the circumstance wasn’t explained to me.

I hope to get together with Lori again, she suggested that we did and spent some time doing some more normal things, without the drama – like hiking, or going to a soccer game, movie, etc. All in all though, I considered the evening a pretty good time. I like hanging out with locals (as it seems most of the foreigners I’ve met thus far pretty much just hang out with foreigners) and I learned a lot. Yong was even nice enough to contribute about $10 to my taxi ride home.