'Course Here They Just Call It Thanksgiving...

(Written 10/4)

Hey guys?

What's crackin, you crusty ol' consarnits? The Westerners, myself included, have begun speaking in ridiculous, outdated, or polysyllabic words:

1. so that we can say whatever we want around Koreans, who may or may not know English, but definitely do not know prestidigitate or defenestrate

2. so that we don't return home speaking like gibbering idiots and gesticulating like we have to over here.

"HELLO.... MOM.... IT... IS... VVVVERY... NICE... TO... SEE... YOU... AGAIN...."

Honestly I've used the word "excoriate" so many times that I've been threatened with a beating by the Crazy Scottish Guy.

I'm not sure if every group of mixed Westerners has one, or if all Scots are like that, but it seems everywhere we go, every group of westerners has a rowdy Scot, a few Frattish Canadians, a wierd, off-putting older guy from America, and one haggard Englishman who's been bobbing around the far East like so much human jetsam for the last 20 years, drinking and doing God knows what and God knows whom, respectively, and looks it. First time we met our British guy, we spent the rest of the day thinking of things that he's probably said after a night of drinking. One of the best was "I don't remember vomiting in a puddle of my own pass-out..." We thought we might have misjudged him when we didn't see him at the bars the first two weekends, but that was because he rolled into town with around 40 bucks to last him one month. He has a Thai girlfriend who he sends most of his money to. No comment. He eventually got the boss to give him an advance. The first thing he bought was a set of speakers, the same ones I got on my first day here, and the second thing was a TON of hooch for the 5 day weekend we had for Korean Thanksgiving. Needless to say, we've become fast friends, although I don't know if I can hang with his level of debauchery. I think I slept about 6 hours out of 72 at one point. You hit a wierd stride on the third day. You don't feel tired or hungover anymore, but you clearly are not banging on all 8 cylinders. Both me and my one friend started hallucinating that the all Koreans we overheard were speaking English with a British accent. Very wierd. I almost approached two random girls on the subway because it's so rare to meet a westerner, and hey, there are Asian Brits too, until I realized that everyone was speaking English, and yet somehow I couldn't understand a word. And then I freaked the eff out.

So for Korean Thanksgiving we went to Pusan, which is like Korean Miami. Cool thing about Korea is that Koreans are terrified of the cold. We went to Haeundae, Korea's Waikiki, which I'm aware is not in Miami, but you have to mix your metaphors sometimes to convey any information. Since it was after August, the only Koreans on the beach were gawking at the weird Westerners swimming in water that "everyone knows" will give you hypothermia this late in the year. It was about 70 degrees. I got a sunburn in late September for God's sake! And it's not just because it's usually very warm here that they're sensitive to cold, there were a bunch of drunken Southeast Asians weaving through the swimmers on Jetskis (not cool), it's just the culture. Anyway, a beach that usually looks like this
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/45/182475456_3a91c21548.jpg
was all ours (pretty cool) and there's no open container laws here. (very cool) But yea, travel is cheap if you know where and when to go, motels don't take ID, so you can steal whatever you want and ransack the minibar and there is always a Westerner bar in every town. I think I understand Gaydar, because we haven't missed yet. The places always try for a "Cowboy" feel, there's graffiti all over the walls, and LCD Soundsystem blaring from the speakers because that's the only music Americans, Canadians, and the Eurotrash can agree on. We get two weeks off in the wintertime, and we're thinking southern hemisphere... Jakarta, Hanoi, or Goa. And we're takin' votes

Speaking of booze, one alarming thing that I've learned is that apparently the Korean sake, Soju, is now catching on in trendy bars in America. This needs to stop. Immediately. This crap will rend our fair Republic unto tatters. Apparently it used to be ok, and the topshelf stuff is, but after the war, there was a rice shortage so a lot of manufacturers switched to pouring water on straight ethanol, and then adding sugar so it didn't taste like weak moonshine. It smells, and tastes, and affects you, like you poured rubbing alcohol into Zima. Each bottle is 30% alcohol, and costs you the equivalent of $1.20, and your motor skills for the next two days. Somehow or other Koreans think it tastes good, and pound the stuff all night, every night. These guys drink like they expect to wake up in a bathtub full of ice with their liver gone in the morning.

While I'm on the subject of horror stories, I thought I'd drop this knowledge on you. When we first got here, there was apparently a lot of care taken to handle us and keep us in a western bubble, but eventually we broke out, and the bathrooms, Almighty Christ on his Throne, the bathrooms! I thought I was scarred when I had to use a bidet at school a week or two ago, but one hungover morn, I found myself in an internet cafe in an older building and walked in on this:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.planetesl.com/img/toilets_1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.planetesl.com/information/toilets.html&h=244&w=200&sz=56&hl=en&start=7&um=1&tbnid=W4LNCFAPikxPyM:&tbnh=110&tbnw=90&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkorean%2Btoilet%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den
To those of you asking what that is, and how you use it, you know damn well, so quit playing dainty. It's a freaking hole in the ground, and for the record that picture is wayyyy cleaner than you're likely to find around here. Brightside, I should have exquisitely muscled thighs by the time I leave.

Bidets are horrible though. I still have to wait for my parents to die to say for sure whether using one is the worst thing that will ever happen to me, but it's definitely in the running. Too bad hating French people is passe by now.

Also, never tell a scottish person to shut his Scot-hole. They will take umbrage. A whole heapin' helpin' of umbrage.

Annyonghi kaseyo!