Trivial Pursuit, birthdays and a band

On some Friday's nights, the foreigners gather at the Natural Map and play a few rounds of Trivial Pursuit with self-researched questions. Pay 2000 Won, and you're in for a race for the 1st prize, the collected money of all groups. It is fun, but the questions are usually hard and I wonder how some people could gather so much information in their lives. There's a little difference I notice between Koreans and Germans at my university. Many students in Germany are interested in several fields beside their major, like politics, economy, history, music, languages, literature, etc. I think. Korean students generally seem to be interested in fun, free time, fashion and music. Sex, too. Maybe I just didn't meet the right people yet, or we didn't get to the right topics yet. I'm not sure why this is true for Korean and Japanese students, but somehow their interests are less ...diversified. Perhaps the reason is that pressure for young Koreans is bigger than in Europe - especially Germany - when university is the last chance to relax, because entering the working society is hard, demanding and usually doesn't leave any room for creativity or originality.

After that, we had a surprise party for a friend of mine who had birthday. He was quite surprised when his girlfriend sang the birthday song for him in the red dress she got for the wedding. After the celebration, a Korean band was playing some hard rock music. Strangely, the singer (notice the baby-blue slippers) and the other performers didn't move an inch on stage...

touching

In the beginning it was irritating, but I think I'm slowly getting used to it: Body contact between members of the same sex in Korean society is much more common than in Germany. Often, I see women walking down the street hand in hand, and the men touch more often as well. I can imagine that for many Germans it is difficult to get used to such behaviour, as it can be misunderstood easily. - even more, because Korean men don't hesitate to mention how handsome you look when they first meet you. ;-)

no weapons on the table, please

In Japan and before, I got used to eat Asian foods with chopsticks. Wooden chopsticks. In Korea, in contrast, the chopsticks are made of metal, which makes them slippery and harder to use for eating. Somebody told me that in former times chopsticks could also have been used as waepons in emergencies, so that would explain why. In contrast to Japan, spoons are also in use.

busses

I have a special connection relation to busses in Korea. Today, I was waiting almost over an hour just for one bus to pick me up. There are usually no time tables, just approximations like "once an hour", which makes it hard sometimes to arrive in time. Compared to Japan or Germany: You have time tables down to the minute, in Kyoto even a special system that uses radio to show how many minutes are left. When a bus here finally arrives, I don't account myself happy as many drivers scare me: Either they drive like crazy and/or they talk on the phone while driving.

bars

Tonight I've been to several bars frequented by foreigners. The first one was the "Deep In", where for the first time since the J-pop year in Japan I heard decent music! Be prepared to get a noisy load techno music music when you go out to eat in Korea, especially in places for young people. I like the "Deep In" in the first place because I met a lot of different people with interesting stories - but I'm sure it was the first time in my life that I could use four languages in one room! That experience was very special for me. The foreigners meet at a few selected places as a retreat from the life in Korea. Even if you like to live here a lot, sometimes you need some distance, and that what"s "Deep In" for.

Natural Map, Deep In teacher retreat, great because could use all four languages in one room - great experience. many different people with different stories

rules

Today something funny happened on our way to school. We were waiting at the bus station when suddenly one of those long-distance busses stopped next to us and the driver shouted something over to us. It was a relative of my host brother, apparently offering us to take us to the unversity. We drove to the next bus terminal, where he stopped and lead us to another bus. Then he asked that other busdriver to take us to another terminal close to the university. No problem. We arrived early and saved 600 Won each.

It would be impossible in Germany or Japan. Firstly, it would be illegal as we didn't pay, secondly other passenger would have objected as the driver stopped somewhere on the route to pick up people, etc. etc. ... Koreans seem to be more dynamic and flexible in regard to rules, laws and regulations.

double standards and gender inequalities

As in every society, there are double standard in moral questions. Usually, men are allowed more things than women, and that's not different in Korea. Take smoking, for example. I didn't notice it until somebody pointed it out, but you won't see any women smoking in public, not one! They are also supposed to swear less then men. In matters of sex, women seem to be quite disadvantaged to me. In TV spots or movies already you see that men are the active part, women hardly move, although they apparently enjoy it.

I heard the opinion "Korean men don't like condoms" several times by now, and that pregnancies and a quick abortion is common among young people - I'm curious what else there is. There 's a lot of information on the net, official and personal.

drinking

Drinking is socially accepted in Korea. As in Japan, drunkness is a good excuse for a lot of things and it is a quick and easy valve for every day's life pressure. Coming home after work and a visit in a bar with your colleagues is quite common. You can drink a lot? Great, your friends are going to like that. I'll try to find out if there are some concrete statistics online available about alcoholism in Korea. The Aborigines in Australia might be better off, here it's so prevalent.

One short annotation for drinking habits: If one drinks with older people, you turn slightly away from them to be polite. In former times that was very common, today people turn around only half-way.

popular stuff

Have you seen those German cockoo clocks? They are everywhere, in my hostfamilie's living room, in restaurants, at the university, everywhere... why? There's something else, I have met the Alien in Seoul, Dae Jon, and now Jeonju, too. Here even twice. A figurehead for a company perhaps?

contrasts

After merely ten days in Korea, I observed several living conditions, which reminded me of Japan at first, but I think it is much more extreme here. Take the class rooms at Chonbuk University, for example. Many rooms are so old, there are foot prints all over the wall, the windows are, although not broken, not providing any warmth protection at all. The chairs are left-overs from the Dark Ages, the two doors, one for the teacher, one for the students, are reflecting a still existing separation in the class room, even more, as the teacher's spot is elevated. I've seen that in France as well. Although the seasons differ a lot in temperature, there is no heater in the room, so in winter you freeze without a warm coat. The kids in Russia are luckier. There are schools where they have to bring a piece of coal, so they have at least a heating system at all. The professors offices here have heaters, medieval and smelling because of the oil, but they're working. I'm just afraid the'll blow up into my face when I use them..

As a contrast, there's a huge state-of-the-art television set in a cabinet and if necessary, a modern overhead projector with a camera can be connected to the TV set. I wonder who decides what improvements to acquire for the class rooms.

On the street you can observe a similar pattern: On some places on the side walk (if there is a one) old women are selling groceries, fish and vegetables. Right next to them is a modern telecommunications shop or a internet cafe. New television sets have a link for D.D.R. including a scale for calorie consumption and there's even a channel for Karaoke - with the plug for a microphone on the TV set. On the other hand, if you drive by bus through the city, you can see houses which might be a few hundred years old so you wonder if they even have electricity.

health

Uh. Tell me about food poisoning. Out of mere stupidity I ate a dish of vegetarian Chapche, which didn't smell too fresh, so I spend the night with barfing into the toilet and trying to lower my temperature. Now, the KFDA warns only about meat poisoning, I guess being a vegetarian didn't help much in this case.

a wedding

I have been invited to attend to a cross-cultural wedding, an American man and a Korean woman decided to marry and become Mr and Mrs Faust. As it was not a traditional wedding ceremony, this is not a description of the common type, but more about an exception. The ceremony and the reception took place at the Hotel Riviera - unfortunately, their homepage is accessible in Korean only. The hall has been devided in two parts, in the left side mostly foreigners were seated - or friends of the bridegroom, the right side was for the family and friends of the bride. Left and right to the entrance the Hotel staff set up a huge palette of all kinds of food.

The ceremony started at 18:00, quite late for a wedding, but the party was supposed to take place all night long. To my surprise, there was no priest, none of any religion, the ceremony has been lead by a Korean English professor - the whole event took place in a hotel and not in a church. The speech was translated into Korean and vice versa. John, a writer, hold a speech about how the couple met the first time as well. The story was very funny, filled with jokes, alcohol and rather unconventional anecdotes. The left side of the hall had a good laugh, but I didn't hear anything from the right side - despite of a translation.

I heard that traditional Korean weddings have certain similarities to a Drive Inn restaurant, and as expected, the right side of the hall was almost completely empty after maybe one hour after the respection started. It seems that anything beside the wedding ceremony is of no importance at Korean weddings. Alcohol by the way has been withheld until the (grand)parents of the bride left!

After the reception started, many of the foreigners disappeared for a few minutes to change their dresses into less formal outfits - a few of the guys even started to play hackey-sack in the middle of the hall! Americans. ;-)


Later one of the other guests told me that the bridal couple didn't know all details of the procedure and setting of the wedding. They had it all: ten seconds of loud music snippets, bubbles, fog machines, even a swags-thrower, which was annoying because the couple dragged meters of it with them on their way out, trying to preserve a little dignity, after cutting a rubber cake. Latter tempted the bridegroom to "kick the next guys butt, if that ever happens again". In short, the wedding was great, as the party afterwards in the "Deep In", a retreat for foreigners in Jeonju.