Tuesday, July 18th
5:05 p.m.

Well, I've officially given up on the vegetarian thing. I was starving on Friday and sick of hunting endlessly for vegetarian food and trying to communicate, so I went into a KFC and had a chicken sandwich. It wasn't exactly liberating because I never felt like I was depriving myself, and it didn't even taste very good. Later that night I tried a taste of someone else's meat dish - the Korean version of potstickers - on Saturday there was ground beef in my bibimbap, and last night I tasted a little pork. It's difficult because there are really only three vegetarian dishes in Korea: naeng myun (cold noodles which I think taste slimy), ja jang myun (hot noodles with black bean sauce - too bland after all this spicy food that I'm actually learning to like), and bibimbap (a delicious combination of rice and vegetables - but it's not on every menu, and you can't eat the same thing for every meal anyway). At least now I'm going to be able to try a lot more Korean foods. I still refuse to eat squid, though. I've been eating a lot of seafood all along, but I haven't eaten that. [Seafood - especially squid - is another staple here - like meat and kimchi (spicy cabbage).]

They have some interesting desserts here, though. Most memorable are these ice cream bars that are flavored like honeydew and "Paht-ping-su," another frozen dessert made of crushed ice and chopped up fruit and sweet beans or ice cream. [Available in cafes and every fast food restaurant.] Then there are the flat round rice cakes - sweet, light, and CHEAP at about 20 for under $1 - and the hollow crunchy peanut-shell shaped rice confections with crushed nuts on the outside. Yesterday my roommate introduced me to this tasty flatbread with jelly on the inside that looks a lot like a pita. [You can buy one on the street corner outside the front gate of Yonsei for less than fifty cents.] I really miss veggie hot dogs and apple cider and Bill Knapp's chocolate cake, though. Here if you order "cider" you get imitation 7-UP.

Last night I got totally wasted. I went drinking with three guys, and they made me go shot-for-shot with them. We were drinking this stuff called "soju," which tastes like cheap vodka - although the weaker flavored versions (lemon, grape) go down easier. Drinking is a big thing here. Some people go out every night. It's taken very seriously, too, and fraught with rules and customs. The drinking age is 20, which is the equivalent of 18 or 19 in the States, so it's definitely legal for me to drink here - not that anyone's ever checked.

[They don't really have bars here - just darkened cafe-style environments that serve alcohol. They have dance clubs, too, but even at the cool smoky underground ones nobody does drugs. Interesting.]

Women are only supposed to smoke in clubs or cafes - certainly not while walking down the street like back home. I've heard that some Korean guys actually encourage their women to become smokers, though, because it "looks cool." Same reason they take them to the multitude of inexpensive plastic surgeons here too. And of course the women are expected to obey. . . .

Anyway, last night definitely goes down as one of the most under-the-influence instances in my life. I think I was still drunk when I woke up this morning. I finally got a little air conditioning this afternoon - until one of the workers came back in and turned it off, that is. He explained himself in Korean, but of course I didn't understand. Hopefully it'll be back on by the time I get back to the dorm tonight.

They shut off the water and electricity this weekend, we assume because of the construction, but no one actually knows. To ensure that we could shower in the morning, my friend Ann and I went to a hotel. It only cost 10,000 won (less than $10) per person, but it was actually a traditional Korean inn called a "yogwan." We had to remove our shoes before entering the room and sleep on mats and hard pillows on the floor, and the bathroom basically WAS a shower that happened to have a toilet inside. Of course we took pictures, and we actually had a blast. More on that later.


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