Days 8-9: Very Amoozing!

Saturday, March 19, 2011

"Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh!" What felt like the longest week ever also went by in a blur. We slept in pretty hard on Saturday and then spent the afternoon giving the apartment a good, solid cleaning. We then went downtown with a couple of the other teachers for some Vietnamese food. Our window booth looked out onto a busy intersection, and I was reminded once again that we were actually in Korea. The chicken fried rice was delicious, and the plum iced tea was something to write home about (or mention in a blog).

After dinner, we went to Amusing World (pronounced "Amoozing World" by Koreans, which is quite amusing in itself). Essentially, it's a huge floor in a high-rise building with a bunch of different rooms equipped with various amoozing things to do: video games, movie rooms (DVD-bong), PC-bong, arcade games, pool tables, darts, comic books, a food court, etc. The four of us played some Mariokart Wii (it was a lot of fun, but I think I still prefer Super Mariokart for the SNES...it's a classic!) and then we played some pool. Now, there is no alcohol allowed on the premises of Amoozing World and while this makes it seem somewhat less amoozing, it's quite understandable because children and teenagers make up the place's core demographic. Normally when we play pool, it's always at a pub/bar, we're maybe catching a hockey game, and we've most certainly had a couple of drinks. After playing for a few minutes stone-cold sober, it became clear that mine and Mike's long-standing theory about our pool-playing skills still holds here in Korea. They can best be described graphically, as seen below: 

Of course, at some point during the course of a regular evening, you come to realize that you're very close to plummeting down the negative part of the slope, and should probably stop playing before you embarrass yourself (obviously, that doesn't always happen).But it's not very often that we start off playing like a bunch of newbs. Suffice to say, we only played two games before we succumbed to the fact that the upward slope was just taking waaaay too long to climb sans beer. Instead, we opted for some coffee and some freshly popped caramel popcorn that had been assaulting our nasal receptors since we first walked into Amoozing World. It was super delicious, and of course, scrawled across the bag it came in was some Konglish (for a complete list of the Konglish I've stumbled upon, click here):

"Popped Corn. Watch the Movie into Your Happy Dreams."

Once you spend any amount of time in Korea, as long as you stop to read things every now and then, you become aware of an underlying theme in their Konglish: they are very into happy dreaming and loving. Which, I suppose, isn't a terrible message to be sharing with the world, but still...hi-freakin'-larious.

Day 9: Happiness Always

Sunday, March 20, 2011

We ventured downtown by ourselves today. The walk along the river is quite nice, and I know it will get even nicer once Spring gets underway. We visited another PC-bong and had some lunch at "The Burger". I'm not a big fan of fast-food places, unless their mascot is a fiery little red-head with braids (combo #6 and hold the mayo please!), but Mike and I were both craving something with a little back-home flavour. The meal was actually pretty good, and afterwards, it didn't feel like my stomach was rotting, so that was a plus! Our apartment came equipped with most of what we needed, but what we didn't already have, we picked up at Daiso, a dollar store chain that is probably kept in business thanks to foreign teachers (seriously, you can buy anything and everything there!). Once we were back in the Dong-Makgol, we had some bibimbap for dinner (one of my favorite entrees of rice and various sautéed vegetables...the wikipedia photo doesn't do it justice) and spent the rest of the night taking it easy because we were both feeling pretty sick, thanks to whatever Korean bug was currently leading the assault against our foreign immune systems.

Konglish of the day:

"Your life is filled with love and happiness. Happiness always."

This was printed on the packaging that our new can-opener was zip-tied to. Yep. My life is now complete, filled with both love and happiness, because I can now open the can of peaches we bought at Lotte-Mart.