1. EVERYWHERE delivers! For FREE!
Most restaurants will deliver food at no extra cost. Even McDonald's delivers here in Korea. You can see scooters on their way to a delivery with food attached to the back of them all the time. It's funny because most of the restaurants are very close (even across the street sometime) but they will still deliver to your door. And just about every restaurant will give you real dishes - not disposable ones - for you to eat on. The restaurant gives you a plastic bag to put the used dishes in, so when you are finished you put the food/dishes into the restaurant's bag and leave the bag by the elevator or in the stairwell so that they can pick it up later in the day. It's so cool!
2. 회식!
A 회식 (pronounced kind of like "hwee-sheik") is when co-workers go out on the town together. I love that Koreans have a word for partying with the people you work with. I am not sure if the boss always pays for his employees to go out, but my boss always foots the bill when we have a 회식. Since it includes dinner, drinks and then some sort of post-dinner activity, it can get very expensive. They are always really fun. My boss, Mr. Lee, loves to try and get all of the teachers really drunk and he has devised a game that we just call "Attack" because if he hands you a drink (and he will hand everyone a drink), you HAVE to drink it and then "attack" someone else with a drink.
*Here is more about the game of "Attack" if you are interested. If not, then skip ahead. You dont care about me anyway.*
The drink is a glass of beer with a shot of soju dropped inside of it (JagerBomb style). Once you are "attacked", you have to cover the drink with a napkin and then twirl the glass around until a mini-tornado is sloshing around inside the glass. By then the napkin should be pretty wet. You then take the napkin off the glass and shape it into a large "spit ball", if you will. Next you throw the spit ball at the wall, a window or anything hanging from the ceiling and you chug your drink. If you finish your drink before the "spit ball" falls off the surface it was stuck to, you are free to attack the next person. However, if you do not finish your drink before the "spit ball" slips off the wall/window/whatever, then you have to do it all over again until you can. Mr. Lee is baller so we can do this at restaurants with him and get away with, but I wouldn't recommend playing this game in most establishments. The spit balls are mother to clean up.
Tom, a co-worker (and my current Korean tutor), standing next to some of the aforementioned "spit balls" that result from an attack.
The video below is a warning to all those who think they can handle "Attack". Watch with discretion, you might be disturbed. (PS This is Dong Oo, who also works with me. He is so fun!)
And now I lost my list, so I will have to think of more to add later, haha.
But I am teaching myself Korean until the new term for Korean classes start at the universities in Seoul (I am planning on taking classes at Ewha Woman's University. Hillary Clinton was just there to deliver a speech - http://secretaryclinton.blogspot.com/2009/02/ewha-womans-university-in-seoul-south.html). I found a really good site in case anyone is interested in browsing through the material I am learning at the moment.
This is what I am practicing: http://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/korean/kkl101/lesson01/index.html (and I actually understood most of it!)
This is where you can click on your own level and start to learn Korean (and then you can practice with me on Skype!): http://korean.sogang.ac.kr/
Love and miss you all!
