Feeling Chicken?

It would appear my crazy lifestyle has finally caught up with me; i am miserably sick. Good news for you guys though because maybe I will actually post now. And if I had to get sick I guess now would be a good time. My Korean class starts April 1st and is everyday from 9-1. Up until now I haven't had to get out of bed until 12 30 at the earliest, which has translated into staying up all hours. But alas, this will certainly not fly when I have early class everyday and perhaps being sick will slow me down enough to actually go to bed and have a routine to some extent. And I think it is enough time that I won't be sickly my first full week. Even right now my roomate is sick and we are just sitting here taking turns coughing, sniffling, blowing our noses, and chugging water. Quite the sight.

But anyway classes are going well. I am in a perpetual state of soreness and have been taking an ungodly amount of naps. My body is just getting used to this crazy physical schedule I have...5 scheduled works outs in 3 days! ay ay ay! Not to mention the lifting I am theoretically doing on my own but we don't even have our book for body building so I'm gonna ease into it.

In swimming class the other day a Korean girl turned to me and noticed my necklace and said oh is it arabic? and my face just lit up!! i was stunned! as if i couldnt be surprised anymore she then proceeds so sound it out and then figures out it is my name! I was amazed! Turns out she lived in egypt for 18 years so she knows a tiny bit of arabic. I am so excited I have a class with her.

Also a funny thing in swimming class happened that reminded me of where I am. We had all gathered at one end of the pool and our professor was going to explain something to us. There was a bench and one guy sat on it but all of the other guys were hitting him and the professor yelled at him! I instantly knew he was the idiot who didn't give the only seats to the three girls in the class. I think it was more of a gender thing than a foreigner thing, but you never know. But everyone was just so appalled that he hadn't given it to us, and even though there was more room on the bench we were the only ones who sat on it. In my bodybuilding class too we often have pair exercises/stretches, like crunches, and the TAs won't let males and females be partenered with each other. I was surprised because it was the young college students who were enforcing this. But at the same time in my taekwondo class we do the same thing and the TAs don't say anything about male/female partners, and we do much more "racy" exercises than in body building. I guess it really depends on the person, his/her upbringing, how deep the Confucian values penetrate for their family and their life. Although I can confidently say every Korean operates on Confucian values.

My dad has been asking me a lot of questions about food since I am no longer in a homestay and fending for myself. There is a restaurant called Ddalgi (딸기, means strawberry) right next to our dorm that we frequent. It is super cheap and super good. I always get bulgogi (불고기), which is marinated beef, over rice with a raw egg. The egg gets cooked because it is served in a stone pot (dolsot, 돌솥) that is ssuuuppper hot. It doesn't taste eggy at all, more of just makes the rice and meat not dry. Its my favorite. There is also a really cheap restaurant in the Korean Language Institute, which is connected to our dorm underground. They have soups, sweet and sour chicken, pork cutlet, curry, whatever. So we go there a lot as well.

Sometimes we make our own food. In the basement of our dorm is a conveinence store that is open 24/7!! Its the greatest. I have precooked rice and huge thing of soy sauce in my room that i can just throw in the microwave whenever. Also in the basement is a hgue room that is equivalent to eight kitchens so we have resources to cook. All too often we eat ramyeon (라면), Korean ramen. Its instant noodles but more flavor and some of them are real spicy. A tub of ramyeon is only 1,000 won ($.88), so a pretty sound economic choice. Some people put eggs in there ramyeon too but not my favorite. Another favorite for cooking is mandu (만두), aka dumplings. Some you can even just nuke, pretty nice.

However NOTHING beats the meat buffet. You pay one flat rate (6500 ~ 8000 won, $5.77~$7.11) and sit at a table with the grill in front of you and just goooo to town. There is an area with all of the different kind of meats, an area with all of the banchan (반찬, side dishes) like lettuce, bean sprouts, sauces, kim chi, noodles, rice, rice cakes, everything you can imagine. You just take whatever you want and bring it back to your table. The catch is you have to pay for what you don't eat, pretty good system. Jonathan and I go there after boxing and eat pounds of meat. I have no idea how they make a profit but it is actually heaven for me.

I will leave you all with a less pleasant culinary thought. At one bar we go to there is "the hammer game." Each person gets a nail but the hammer has a really skinny thin head, more just like a line. The nail goes into this wood table and you go around attempting to hit your nail. The last person to get his/her nail all the way in loses. On St. Patrick's Day we were playing and we made the penalty for losing was a shot titled Mexican Chicken. I lost. Unfamiliar with Mexican Chicken?

tequila.
raw egg.
tobasco.