Korea 1

originally posted on 10/1/06

I don't even really know where to start. I don't have the Internets at home yet, so I'm at an internet cafe. Maybe I'll start there. Internet cafes here, they aren't like the type you run into in the U.S.. or Europe. The chairs are comfortable, the lights are dim, it's loud, and you can smoke. And they are cheap, like a dollar an hour.

When I landed here Thursday night (Wednesday night so far as I was concerned, because the sun was out for the entire flight), I was picked up by driver holding a sign that said "Tobb xxxxx." I got in his van, and headed off from the airport, without a clue as to where I was going. At some point on the aimless drive from Incheon to Seoul, he got a call on his cell phone, and it was for me. Somehow, this made sense.

Anyway, I ended up at a motel that the school had put me in for the first couple of nights. It was clean and tasteful, but I'm pretty sure it was a hooker motel. The massage oils and condom (wrapped) on the dresser table was a pretty good giveaway there. Plus, the TV got free porn. Two different channels of free porn, in fact.

I haven't started work yet, I start tomorrow. It sounds like it won't be too bad after the first few days, plus this is only a 3 day week, Thursday and Friday are holidays.

I am already 85% sure that this country will kill me. The bars don't close. Ever. Any of them. Neither do the liquor/convenience stores. I've already had a night where i was out until 7 a.m. It's like a Vegas or a New Orleans, only there's 11 million people. Plus, you can smoke everywhere, and cigs are 2.50. I am also learning the evils of soju. It's this rice wine, it's 20% alcohol or something but feels like more. It's fairly bad straight, but I mixed it with juice, and discovered that the ratio of the drink can be like 90 percent soju and 10 percent juice, and it just tastes like juice. Oh yeah, and the bottles of it cost like 90 cents. And apparently, the Koreans don't drink like say, the french. It's not a bottle of wine with dinner. Everyone is out to get completely shitfaced. You see guys in business suits passed out at the bar, and nobody cares. From what I've heard, the entire city's policy on kicking someone out of a bar makes the Replay look draconian.

Lots of other cultural things I can talk about here, but I'll save it for later. Like, environmental stuff, I guess, is taken a lot more seriously than in the U.S. Like, you don't get bags at the grocery store, you bring your own, like Aldi. Which is a weird way to end a blog, but is the way this one ends.