The Lunar New Year

source: http://read.iloveconor.com/2007/02/20/the-lunar-new-year/

This weekend was a three day holiday for celebrating the Lunar New Year (Seol-nal). It’s typical for Korean families to spend time together at home and visit relatives tombs to pay their respects. This usually means that Seoul is dead and traveling outside of the city is wall to wall traffic. I had a 3 day weekend planned with lots of sport watching, beer drinking, and male bonding since Jeong-in was busy with her family. Well, that would all change when Jeong-in called me on Saturday and asked me if I wanted to meet her whole family for dinner. Apparently, they were asking about why I didn’t come with her and her Grandmother was hoping to meet me. This was all very flattering, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to do something like that. Fortunately, I had other plans for that night and decided that lunch the next day was a better idea. When the time arrived, I was a little nervous because all of her family who could come, did, which was around 12 people in a cozy apartment. Everything started with greetings and a hug for Grandma because Jeong-in said she liked to give hugs, but I think when she saw me in person she was a little shy since I was 2 feet taller than her. After that, we sat down for lunch and her parents made me feel extra special since they had already had Christmas dinner with me before. The food was great, even though we were eating while sitting on the floor, a typical Korean style of eating. Also, I partook in drinking with the men. It was a little bit early to take 5 shots of Korean rice wine (So-ju) at 2pm, but it made things a lot more interesting. One thing I really need to work on are my Korean manners. There’s so many rules on how to be respectful to someone older than you. Especially, your girlfriend’s parents. Just pouring Soju has strick rules. Never, let someone pour their own drink. Pour with your right arm and support it with your left, so you don’t shake. I shook. If your sitting on the floor, always pour while sitting on your knees, never while sitting on your bottom. That’s always a fun one when your 6′4″. But with only a couple shakes, I did a pretty good job and had some good laughs. After lunch, I tried my best to learn a popular game Go-Stop with Jeong-in’s Grandma and cousins. Go-Stop is played with small thick cards with flower designs. There’s a bunch of rules about matching cards, even though all the cards look different to me. I tried, but I would of lost all my money if I played with the men. After I lost a couple games, all the cousins and I went to another room and played a traditional Korean board game called Yutnoli. I’ve seen it played before at my old school, but never got to play it. First, we played a couple of games for fun. Then we started to wager some money until the last pot was 20,000W (~$21). I didn’t want to take her cousins’ money, but that’s nothing new to gamble a little. So after an hour or two of playing it was time to go, but one tradition on New Year’s is to bow to the elders. So all the nieces and nephews, including me, lined up and bowed to Halmeoni (Grandmother) and the 3 uncles. In return, the elders give some kind of gift, usually money. They were so nice to treat me like family and gave me the same gifts. Each uncle gave a 10,000W bill and Jeong-in’s Dad also gave a Lotto ticket. Her cute Grandma gave everybody socks. That was the best gift of all. So after saying goodbye to everybody, Jeong-in and I left along with some cousins. It was a day to remember no matter what happens in the future.

The Borat Experience

source: http://read.iloveconor.com/2007/02/02/the-borat-experience/

The film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan opened in theaters January 25th in Korea for some odd reason. I wasn’t going to question it, because it’s a movie I’ve wanted to see ever since it was in production. Plus, everybody I know had seen it except me. So after a busy weekend of flag football and dinner dates, I tried to catch it last night with my friend Kevin. Though it was only a week since it last opened, theaters were pulling it left and right, so it was now or never. I told my co-worker at work that there was only one time left I could see it and where it was. He didn’t believe that it was the only time, so he did a quick search and checked the theater he saw it at just a couple days ago. “Borat, 9:10pm at Artreon”, he said. So I sighed in relief and told my friend to meet me there instead of the other show at 11:45pm which was 30 minutes away. That night after work I met Kevin at the theater with excitement, but he said in disbelieve that there was no showing of Borat that day and only Blood Diamond which is written similar to Borat in Korean writing. Apparently, my co-worker had read the show times in Korean incorrectly and mistaken Blood Diamond for Borat. So after the disappointing news, we had to go to plan B, which was to see the 11:45pm showing in Gangbyeon 30 minutes away by subway. Since we had a couple hours to kill, we decided to eat something and check out the local arcades. After a couple hours of Pop-A-Shot, we let time slip and it was already 11pm. We then headed for the subway, but had to wait 10+ minutes because it was the last train. So the total ride took more then the average 30 minute ride. We finally made it to Gangbyeon Station and ran to the theater next door. Since it was almost midnight all the surrounding stores were closes and locked off. It was like a maze trying to find which door would let us in. We finally got a door open and headed for the elevator even though we no idea which floor the theaters were on. 9th Floor, it was a lucky guess. Out of breath, we went to the ticket counter and asked for 2 tickets to Borat. The manager, I’m guessing since she wasn’t in high school, told us in Korean that we could not buy tickets. We demanded for an answer. Her reason was because they weren’t allowed to sell tickets after a certain period and the computers wouldn’t print the tickets either. It was like midnight which was 15 minutes after it started! After standing in shock for about a minute, I huddled with Kevin and drew up a new plan because I now knew that this would be the last showing of it in the Seoul area, so we could not give up. The new plan was to buy tickets to another movie, Blood Diamond ironically enough, and sneak into Borat. It’s the old switch-a-roo, we all did it as kids. After buying the tickets we went to the ticketman to try to work our magic. He stopped us from entering and told us we had to wait 15 minutes because the movie wasn’t cleaned yet. Denied again! After contemplating bribing him or making a break for it, we decided not to mess with the ticketman who was using his walkie talkie. We thought he might be a snitch. So we waited out the 15 minutes and I made a fool of myself trying to order a Fanta in Korean. Ordering something is nothing difficult for me, it’s just saying the Korean version (Konglish) of Fanta is hard. Quick Korean lesson: the Korean language doesn’t have a “f” sound, so when English words are spoke in Korean, the “f” sound becomes a “p” sound. For example, the English word “fan” (as in fans of a music group) is pronounced in Korean as “paen”. Pretty easy, but from some reason I have yet to find, the soft drink in Konglish is pronounced “hwan-ta”. Back to the story. After the time has passed, we got our tickets torn and preceded to the theaters. Another thing that is hard to explain in Korean is that the theaters don’t have the movie titles on top of the doors. Maybe it’s because every Korean I know likes to movie hop and I guess that’s what we were doing too. After looking back a couple times at ticketman to make sure the coast was clear, we made our move and snuck into another theater. Thankfully, it was the 11:45pm showing of Borat. We had a couple laughs and didn’t get kicked out, but we only saw the last 30 minutes of it. That was end of the adventure. Was it worth it? Probably not, because I can download it now, but it makes for a good story.

Seoul Bowl

source: http://read.iloveconor.com/2007/01/28/seoul-bowl/

Yesterday, I got the athletic juices flowing again when I was asked to play in a flag football game by my co-worker Darren. It was basically two expat hockey teams in Seoul who wanted to compete in another sport while drinking beer. I brought my friend Elliot, from Yonsei University, because I only knew Darren and they needed a couple people. Open areas are a premium in Korea and especially when they have grass, but one of the players was an US Military lieutenant who got us into Yongsan Garrison US Army Base which is a restricted area. After getting inside the base, it was like we were in another world. Well, more like a bunch of military facilities with grass and people who look like me. We had to walk for about 10 minutes to the field. I kept my eyes open for Taco Bell which is only available on US Military bases in Korea. Oh, what I would do for just one Grilled Stuft Burrito… But Elliot and I were unsuccessful in our search, plus we had to stay with the group. The game was coined as the Seoul Bowl and it worked out really well. Good weather, enough players, fair teams, and plenty of beer. I played for the Seoul Chiefs and had quite a game. I threw and caught for 1 touchdown and was fierce on defense with 2 batted down balls. I’d be in the mix for MVP if they awarded one. Most importantly, the Chiefs won the game by getting ahead early and playing Bears-like defense in the second half. The only bad part about it was that I’m sore today.

My Saturday Nights

source: http://read.iloveconor.com/2007/01/20/my-saturday-nights/

These days I’ve became accustom to getting a 1600ml bottle of Korean Beer and some snacks on Saturday night for the weekly Premiership games. Lo and behold, it’s Saturday night and I’m enjoying a good night of footy on my computer. Liverpool is hosting Chelsea in a very important match. Even though Chelsea won the Premiership last year, they look like they need to be relegated to the Championship division. Liverpool is up 2-0… Tomorrow night though is the big game. Manchester United (My Park Ji-sung bandwagon team) v. Arsenal (Mike’s Team) will decide who gets to talk trash the most in Korea. I’m hoping The U. will not let me down.

Chefs Versus Horsies

source: http://read.iloveconor.com/2007/01/07/chefs-versus-horsies/

Even though it was the most painful NFL game to watch, I wrote a running diary while watching the Chiefs 2007 AFC Wildcard game. Read it, if you want a couple laughs.

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