makoli and escorts

One interesting difference between teaching in the US and Korea is the attitude towards discussion of teacher recreation with your students. It is perfectly permissible to discuss boozing in front of and/or with your middle school students (within reason, of course (i.e. it's okay to say "I drink soju", but I tend to shy away from mentioning things like "So I suddenly I found myself in a taxi with some Irish dude at 7:30 in the morning.")). So it wasn't a problem that Brian (the crazy guy depicted in the last blog) was telling the entire school we were going out for makoli on Friday night. (Makoli is fermented rice milk, about 6% alcohol, and costs about $1 a liter.) We thought it was a little different when Brian was boozing a tall boy in the hallway on our way out when a bunch of kids from the hagwon next door came rushing out. Our fellow teachers and boss assured us that it was totally chill.

Soon enough, we were neck deep in makoli and questionable side dishes. Makoli is always served from a purposefully dented copper kettle, and you drink it by the bowl-full. The taste is not nearly as objectionable as you might guess. The side dishes were a truly new experience (even after almost 5 months in Korea), and included raw cow liver and stomach, and what was described as chicken "pieces" (very cartilageneous). We were all soon ripped to the gills, and moved on to the next spot.

"The next spot" was a No-Rae-Bang (for new readers, karaoke room) next door. Now, I'd always heard about hiring "girls" when you go to the no-rae-bang, but had only had a moderate encounter with this. We walked straight into a room full of eight women in short skirts. This encounter didn't last long, however, as my boss barked several phrases in Korean, and soon we were back on the street. Once outside, he declared that those girls were too "homely". I couldn't really argue with him.

We dipped into a billards hall to play a game. Korean people love to booze, but the one place you would think would be a booze house (the pool hall) is actually alcohol free. It was about 10:30, we were all shredded, and everyone else in the hall was a serious and sober pool fiend. I don't think our presence was appreciated. I was on a team against our boss, and soon he was talking shit about $100 being taken out of our pay check if we lost; a bit of a wager. After I sunk the 8 ball, the obvious question was "when will I get my hundred bucks?" The answer was that it would come out of my fellow employees' (his teammates) paychecks. As we were walking out, a strange song began playing in my head:

The Story of Donn-i the Daegu Dude

forty bucks
forty bucks
too much to pay
for a love hotel
in this town

gyeongju
two thousand years old
a city but sooo cold
and the round hills rolled
over the old dead kings

fourteen kilos of raw oyster
and seasnail
good for health
washed down in soju

no-rae-bang
whiskey splash beer
the girl so awkward
next to taylor
at the end of the table like
snoop dogg

forty bucks
forty bucks
too much to pay
for a love hotel
in this town

The song faded away as we snuck into another no-rae-bang. We went into a room that was girl-less, and started singing. A pack full of girls was sent in after not too long, but of course Donn-i sent them away, demanding a less "homely" bunch. I was halfway through "Dancing in the Dark" when the second group showed up. I had imagined that the girls just kind of came in and hung out with the group of dudes. Not quite how it works. Everybody gets their own girl, who sits with you, talks to you (awkward when this just involves her talking at you in Korean), hands you your drink, and dances with you when you sing. Extremely odd and interesting.

There was much Korean singing, wasting, and I even tried my hand at a Skid Row tune I hadn't heard in ten years. All of a sudden, our time was up, all the girls darted out of the room, and it was time for us to go. We were all about ready to go by this point, and one of our party had even slipped out to nap on a bench in the hallway.

Brian and I headed downtown in a cab with the deskman. We were ecstatic about the fact that he might join us at the western bars. No such luck, he cut us loose and headed home. I ended up at SugarWatermelon, packed in against the Koreans. At least I made it home before 7:30 in the morning.