New Year's Eve

Rather than spend our New Year’s Eve with the majority of Seoul, I heard from my LSU pal , Jacob, that it really isn’t worth freezing and fighting the crowd over to watch a few guys give speeches in Korean and then bang a big gong, so we skipped out on that event and found our own elsewhere. Amy found out about an expat club near her neighborhood and we decided to venture there to see what they had to offer. We walked around for just a few minutes before we located Dragon Bar, complete with graffiti (to make it feel more American?) as we came off the elevator at the third floor. It wasn’t the whitey place I expected, but what’s a New Year’s Eve without some locals? We watched the countdown and banging of the gong on a big screen at one end of the bar—it looked like we didn’t miss much. There were a few people talking on the stage at Jonggak—near the city’s center. They banged the big gong, everyone cheered, and that seemed to be about it. Our little bar had more entertainment! There wasn’t much kissing going on at the stroke of midnight because any form of PDA here is considered rude, especially by the older generation. Kisses are considered sexual, so there were many hugs, and I was busy taking pictures, but everyone lit sparklers and the room lit up! It really looked cool. The bartenders then proceeded to entertain us for at least 30 minutes with a synchronized show of bottle throwing, tumbler tossing and then individual performances of flipping bottles in the air, mixing drinks, and pouring all the liquors into a pyramid of glasses they had put together on the bar, which they later lit on fire. The vibration from all the music made a bottle of alcohol fall on our table, knocking Amy’s drink to the floor and causing us to choose to move to another table. Our new neighbors were probably Russian, but the guy wearing the gray wife-beater, snug tapered jeans, sneaks and ponytail had serious body odor—even through the cigarette smoke! He had huge arms and a small lower body—I never have understood people who forget about their legs when they work out. There’s more to life than a bench press, but maybe that’s just this girl’s opinion. Anyway, he made some snotty remark about Americans more than once, and he said it toward the guy sitting next to me. They were both bigger than me, so I decided not to throw the first punch. (Ha!) Regardless, it was overall a fun experience to ring in 2006.

You probably remember the trip Amy and I took down to Daegu to see Sam and that part of the country. Well, Sam just spent 2 weeks in his hometown of Berkeley, California. He’s been in Korea for 10 months and decided in August to put in leave for the holidays. I was supposed to meet him at the airport, but got royally screwed by the airport limousine! The first two passed me up (they have a certain number of rounds they’re required to make each day, so if that means not stopping at a few designated stops, so be it), the third told me that he didn’t go to the airport I needed, and when the fourth tried to tell me the same thing, I pointed to the advertisement with a very insistent, and apparently persuasive facial expression, so he decided to take me on. And then dump me! He stopped me when I went to pay, and I figured out why when just a few minutes later I was required to step off of his bus and wait for the next one to arrive at 11pm. I thought it was a deal that I didn’t have to pay, but now I realized why. Here I was, the only person at the bus station, and there was a big field behind me. I can read Korean, but that doesn’t do a ton of good if you don’t know what the heck the signs mean. So I don’t even know where I was! And Sam was going to be finished with customs and baggage claim and halfway to my part of the city by then, so I was forced to hop in a cab and return whence I came. What a bummer! So much for the romantic airport greetings that are always something to both look forward to and back on. Anyway, he finally got here, we went to my house where I’d cooked salmon and mashed potatoes (even though he had Western food for the last 2 weeks), and caught up on all we missed for half a month. Wednesday was spent doing absolutely nothing! We finally had to get motivated and head to Seoul Station to get him back to Daegu. He would take the same high speed train we rode when heading to visit his part of the “countryside.” It goes about 180mph stopping every few cities, but only for about 30 seconds so anyone getting off of the train has to be at the door and at the ready to hop out! This train can cross the country (from Seoul to Pusan) in just over 2 hours—a drive that typically takes 6. I am trying to visit Hiroshima, Japan in the next 2 months, so I may take this bullet train down to the ferry to cross the “Yellow Sea” (Koreans don’t like Japanese people, so their maps will never acknowledge this as the Sea of Japan) from the Land of the Morning Calm.

This coming weekend will probably be spent at Olympic Park and maybe TV shopping. Korea hosted the Olympics in 1988 and the World Cup in 2002. These events are why so many of the signs are (loosely) translated into English— and thank God for 'em!!!

Copyright 2005 Olivia R. Reed