Hello Online Roommates,
Yes, it’s that time again. Time to dunk your head into the wonderful and weird apple-bobbing bucket that is Korea. With less than a month under my belt living in the megacity of Seoul, adventures have found their way in my direction at a disturbing rate. Let’s not waste a second strapping ourselves into this wacky ride.
Like many of my fellow students at Sogang University, I’ve been living in a 하숙집 (ha-suk-jib). This is basically a dorm/home-stay/boarding house fusion-thing that fulfills my three greatest necessities: it’s warm, it has food, and best of all, it’s dirt cheap. And with good reason. That’s not to complain, because truly, I’d be happy to live anywhere. To anyone who ever bore witness to the ramshackle beauty that was my Foster Street apartment, it’s clear I don’t need anything fancy or even clean. Still, the ha-suk-jib is a bit of an…adjustment.
For starters, this is my first time living with people who aren’t my parents in the last two years. I share a floor with six Korean college guys of varying degrees of sanity and health. Because of my poor Korean language abilities and inability to remember anyone’s name, I thought I could just duck my head down and avoid contact. But, as you’ll soon see, when you live in such close proximity to people, resistance is futile.
The place is run by an “ajuma,” the Korean word for a middle-aged married woman. She lives on the first floor with her son and husband. Our only real interactions with her are at breakfast and dinner, which she cooks for us every day. Even weekends. It’s kinda like having a mom that doesn’t speak the same language as you and who always seems kinda pissed off when you come home for dinner. Still, she makes a mean chicken stew, and anyone whose favorite expression in Korean is: “Eat a lot!” can’t be all bad.
My fondest memory of this woman was on crisp Sunday morning in the start of March. I was on my way back to the ha-suk-jib, ass-backwards drunk in a taxi after an all night bender in Seoul. There, as I watched the sun peak out over the skyscrapers and cascade the Han River in a gorgeous, hazy light, I was suddenly overcome with a powerful inebriated hunger. Luckily, the ajuma’s timing was uncanny. A hero in her own right, she was grilling up a hearty breakfast just as I stumbled in the door at the break of dawn. Something about kim-chi and eggs on a sloppy Sunday morning is nothing short of wonderful.
But it’s not all lovely drunken memories. There are some things in my ha-suk-jib that I could do without. For instance, the architecture. This place is old, and some of the features of it are dated. For instance, there are two entrances to the ha-suk-jib. The ajuma’s family comes in through the main gate, guarded by a dog that resembles Chewbacca. Our entryway is in a side alleyway which leads to a lime green outdoor staircase. Whoever designed this staircase subscribed to the “there are no second chances in life” philosophy. These concrete stairs are far too narrow and the slightest bit of water gives them the texture of a skating rink covered in butter. Both of those are bad enough, but it’s the price of falling is truly dire.
That’s right, you get impaled.
And to this sadistic architect’s credit, he made the second floor walkway equally as lethal. Just as slippery, but with an added challenge – an ultra low railing on the second floor that even a midget would deem unsafe. For your average person it’s probably fine, but for your gangly, tall, accident-prone white boys, it’s a different story.
Aside from the life-threatening areas, there are a couple other issues with my living arrangements that I still don’t fully understand. Like, for instance, my room has the router that supplies the entire floor with internet. And sometimes that shit goes out at weird hours, which always results in a knock on my door by one of my floor mates. What did he need the internet for at five in the morning? Let’s hope we never know.
That, and my bedroom doesn’t have a bed. That’s right, boys and girls, I am living in a bedless bedroom. And this is pretty standard by ha-suk-jib standards. What’s that? Do Korean university students ever sleep? Of course they do! They sleep on the floor. Wooden floors. That’s how we roll in the ha-suk-jib. The funny thing is, they say it’s good for your back, but I find that hard to believe when I wake up feeling like a scoliosis patient.
But while sleeping on backbreaking surfaces is great to do by yourself, it’s way better with a friend! I learned this in my second day in the ha-suk-jib. One of my Korean floor mates, an English Major, struck up a conversation with me earlier that day. He showed me around the Sogang campus and seemed like an overall good dude. But it was a bit weird when he knocked on my door at three that morning. Especially when the first words out of his mouth were: “Can I sleep with you?”
My response was: “Huh?”
Then him: “My friend, he is very loud.”
Me: “What?”
Him: “He sleeps loudly.”
Me: “Does he have a girl over?”
Him: “What?”
Me: “Your friend?”
Him: “Huh?”
Me: “Yeah, never mind dude. You can come sleep with me.”
So he brought in his blanket and pillow and passed out next to me. Turned out, his buddy was sleeping over his room and had a real nasty snore. I didn’t blame him for coming in. It really wasn’t that weird at the time. In retrospect, the only weird thing about it was that he chose to sleep in my room, over, you know, the other five dudes he has lived with for years. Just saying.
But it’s not all ha-suk-jib fun and games. I’m a student again, attending Sogang University to learn the wonderful language of this country. What no one told me going in was that Korean is one of the world’s five hardest languages to learn, alongside Arabic, Hebrew, Vietnamese, and the deadly language of the Russians. What makes Korean oh-so-difficult is how precise your pronunciation and writing must be as compared to English. Here’s an example: Let’s say we’re chilling at a restaurant In an English-speaking country. If I said to the waiter “I want Hambuger,” there’s a pretty good chance he thought I was going for “Hamburger.” It’s not the same way here. At a restaurant here, if I’m speaking Korean and I made the same mistake, there’s a good chance I will not only get the wrong food, but the waiter might assault me for insulting his mother. That’s why I’m happy for these classes.
At Sogang, they break down the classes by level. Level 1 is the lowest, 7 is the highest. I had myself pegged at a 3, with hopes of tricking them to putting me in a level 4 class. The put my ass in level 2. While at first my ego would not allow me to accept such things, ultimately, it was for the best. They move blisteringly fast, and my classmates are right on par with me.
And speaking of my classmates, they’re killer. We’re like the United Nations of low-level Korean ability. We’ve got Russians and Taiwanese and Swiss and Americans and French and for some reason, a slew of Japanese girls without a single Japanese guy. Not that I’m complaining. The best part about it, though, is that English is not the common denominator. In fact, when I speak in English, the majority of my class doesn’t know what the hell I’m saying. So when we do class lunches and class drinking nights, our only shared language is Korean. Sure it’s sometimes a pain in the ass, but the practice is killer.
Outside of Sogang, I’ve had a chance to venture into the depths of Seoul. Lurking within this megacity are all sorts of cultural gems, amazing eateries, hopping clubs, and fabulous art shows. But seriously, forget all that grown-up nonsense and do what I did. Put on your Batman shirt, strap on a pair of light up sneakers, and treat yourself to Lotteworld, the second-happiest-place-on-Earth.
Lotteworld is an amusement park located dead smack in the middle of the city, at one the juncture of three subway lines. Now you’re probably thinking, “Dan, how the heck could they fit an amusement park in the middle of a megacity? That’s impossible! You’re lying to us.” I understand your concern, but I promise you, such a place exists. The trick is, it’s buffered off from the rest of the city by a lake that surrounds the entire park. This gives Magic Island, as it’s called, a certain mystique. The joy you feel as you blast around in roller coasters with a wall of skyscrapers off in the distance in unequaled in this mortal world.
The lovely Alice showed me this magnificent place the day after I had survived a gnarly bout with food poisoning. Now I know, subjecting your body to zero G’s and gouging yourself on greasy food is not the traditional way to recover from such an illness, but I mean come on. It’s freakin’ Lotteworld. It was totally worth it.
From the Gyro Drop, which puts you twenty-five stories up before dropping your ass to the ground in three seconds flat, to the Comet Express, an underground mind-melting roller coaster reminiscent of Space Mountain, the fun could not be stopped. There was one thing though, which made the trip truly awesome. We went on a spring day during the school week. Why does that matter? No lines because all the kids were in school. Oh yeah, baby. The longest coaster wait couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes, and most rides we got on right away.
And yes, it’s a complete Disney World rip-off, complete with a gargantuan castle, unnervingly cheerful music, and a loveable cast of mascots that…aren’t so much loveable as deranged and creepy. Seriously, I don’t trust that damn raccoon.
The Seoul night life is prolific and, much like New York City, depending on where you go, you get vastly different scenes of people. My first weekend I ventured out to two locations, Hongdae and Apgujeong.
Hongdae is an area surrounded on all sides by universities. A fifteen minute walk will get you to at least four major universities, with others a stone’s throw away. This translates into Hongdae being a cesspool of college shenanigans, where fresh faced boys and girls get a crash-course in drunken scuzziness. My first night out in Hongdae also happened to be the first Friday night of the semester. And, because in Korea, the drinking age is eighteen, I bore witness to things that, in America, are reserved for the hallways of freshmen dorms.
By 11:56PM, we were already seeing instances of freshmen girls who clearly couldn’t hold their soju. I’d spare you the details, but what would be the fun in that? One girl in particular was worth noting. We found her passed out in a pile of puke in the middle of a four lane street while her three girlfriends tried to slap her awake. She finally did get up, thank God, but oh, if only she was the only one.
Then there was the club. Upon arrival, I was thoroughly convinced I had stumbled upon some jacked up high school dance. The girls all looked sixteen and the guys looked even younger and all of it scared the hell out of me. Or maybe I’m just getting old.
Apgujeong was the opposite end of the spectrum. A chill, upscale area with some genuinely interesting bars. The true highlight for me, though, was the street food. In a lone tented off booth, in the midst of a dark and barren alleyway, lay the crown jewel of drunk munchies: a Korean dude who made Mexican chicken tacos and hot dogs. I don’t know how much of it comes from my abstinence of Mexican food in Korea, but these chicken tacos brought tears to my eyes. It was just a proper taco, flawlessly made, with all the right flavors in all the right places. And as for the hot dog? He made that beast with bacon, coleslaw, mustard, and barbeque sauce on it. Very groovy. My real applause goes out to the Korean liquor laws, though, which allowed us to pound back beers while we consumed this street side feast.
But, fair readers, I must give a shout out to you. This blog is dedicated to you, my friends, for you have done me a great service. A truly righteous gift has recently been given to me, and I have all of you to thank for it. Allow me to explain:
My buddy recently offered me a job in Seoul. This was not something I was expecting, rather, it was a complete surprise. I had only planned to attend Sogang and then land a teaching job somewhere. This, however, is far more awesome. My buddy’s company is launching a travel website, dedicated to showing the world that which is cool and cultured in Korea. This will cover everything: upscale dining, underground music, hotspot beaches, cutting-edge fashion, ancient temples, and modern night clubs. And they need someone to experience these things and write about it for the website.
That someone is me. And I have all of you to thank for it.
To quote Stephen King: “I write for only two reasons: to please myself and to please others.” The fact that so many of you have followed me on my adventures is the reason I keep writing this blog. Hell, it’s part of the reason I keep having these zany adventures in the first place. And because of the success of the blog, I was given this job. So again, I thank you.
Does this mean I’m going to stop writing this blog? Of course not. But it does mean I will have a whole ‘nother website for you all to check out. It’s going to be E-zine style with kick ass photography, professional layouts, and of course, more adventures written by yours truly. The website won’t be launching for at least another couple of months, but when it does, I invite you all to follow me there too.
Is it any surprise I miss and love you crazy cats as much as I do? Of course not. You’re awesome. You all kick ass. Thank you all for all that you do. Until next time, I’m going to keep on adventuring. See you soon.
-Thankful Dude
