Whoa, Korea is cutty...

To the 3, or dare I say 4 readers of this blog, let me take this opportunity to apologize for my terribly infrequent blog post. These last few weeks have been some of the most jarringly transitional of my life. They have seen me spend more time with my family than I have in the last 6 years (for those curious, it was both frustrating and awesome and made me realize that I miss my family more than I used to think), spend more time working than living my leisurely lifestyle (it's been like 5 months since I've worked full time), and of course the real zinger, seen me travel half way around the world to a country where I can barely say hello and thank you in the native language, Korean, which happens to be pretty fucking hard for me to wrap my head around.

Anyway, I am going to try to start blogging at least twice a week, I swear there will be pictures soon, as this is really my only link to my life in the west. With that said, feel free to leave comments, I would like to hear some of your response to my misadventures here in Korea. Being that I am dead beat tired (not to be confused with being a tired dead beat) I am going to keep this brief, but just to keep you posted some highlights from my last week in Korea include:

1. Eating the "gold tuna platter" at this this amazing raw tuna restaurant. The shit is on non-stop, come until you can't chew anymore status and as it's name suggest, is actually adorned with real GOLD flakes! Pretty fucking wild. The dish probably cost at least $40-50 US a person PLUS at least 4 bottles of soju (the most popular indigenous booze, it is made from distilled potatoes as is cheaper that fucking water. Despite the fact that is pretty kind on the old lips, it is devastating to the mind and body once all the fog clears. To give you an idea, it taste like cold, watered down vodka, with a certain unidentifiable charm. Stay tuned for more), and a bottle of nice sake. This truly wonderful dinner was quickly followed by karoake (sp) with my boss, the two teachers that Rachel and I are replacing, and of course Rachel and myself. A bottle of Johnny Walker Black later, we spilled out of the K room and were directed to a cab by my ABSOLUTELY wasted boss. He paid the cabby and sent us on our way. When I saw my boss two days later I found out that he had barely crawled home to his apartment and spent the subsequent hour puking before laying his head to rest. Needless to say, he spent the entire following day in bed and awkwardly asked, "did I make mistake on Friday?" It was a nice change to not be the one hazarding that question. "Of course not, you were great and I had a wonderful time."

Some fun facts about drinking in Korea:

Koreans like to drink. A lot. They are actually very macho about it. My first experience with this was when I was riding in the car with my boss and he asked me if I liked to drink. I told him, well I lied to him, and told him that on OCCASION I like to drink and that I had recently tried my hand at soju in a Korean bar in Oakland. He was immediately impressed and quickly responded by asking me how much I could drink. I had no idea how to answer that and more or less glided out of the conversation with some non offensive response like, "uh, a fair amount I suppose." Later I found out he was trying to ask me how many bottles of soju I could drink. Apparently 6 is pretty fucking burley (a bottle is 360 ml, just below 12 ounces and the booze weighs in at a respectable 40 proof). Now I'm not sure if I am to understand that one person drinking 6 is a lot or drinking 6 with a group is a lot, but man, given how I was pulling in 3 alarm hangover off my kareoke night, god knows what 6 to the dome would do to me. Korean are also found of bombing their soju. This is achieved by placing a shot of soju in a glass of beer that is what I estimate to be about 8 ounces. These are usually drank in quick succession. As I learn more, I will be quick to post. Stay tuned.

2. Back to my little vignettes; I live less than a block away from an awesome outdoor skatepark/rock climbing wall. It is free and very well maintained. It is also always unexplainably empty. Pictures soon.

3. I have set up an I chat video account. For those of you with AIM or ichat, I would LOVE to video conference (I feel like a douchebag saying this, but whatever, it's cheaper than talking to someone on a phone) or just type old fashioned style. For those of you with SKYPE I also set one of those guys up. The screen name for the aim/ichat account is PortDanny503 and for the SKYPE account it is simply PortDanny. Hope to hear from someone soon. The Email remains.