Jeonju Archive

This is a blog I should have wrote about 2 months ago when it actually happened…but due to school and just forgetting about it, I had to wait until May to write it…so here we go.

So a few months ago I went out drinking with a large group of Americans to our favorite little haunt, Red Puncha. We all just refer to it as “Whiskey Bar”. The owner, Ke Baum is awesome and I suspect he cuts us a deal every time we go because we always bring about 9-10 people with us, and all get drunk and fed for about 10,000won each. So here we are sitting at this bar, drinking fruit soju and beer when I notice the table next to us keeps looking over at us. They are a decent size table of Koreans. Finally one of them looks at me and says “Where you from?”. “Mi gook!” I reply, and the Koreans all went “OOOhhh!”. One of them pours a beer and hands it my way, and which I take and say “One shot? Race?" (“One shot” is a borrowed phrase the Koreans adopted to mean “chug it”). The table cheered and the guy who handed me the beer’s face dropped. I think he knew what he was in for, but after much goading from his friends, he accepted. I promptly trounced him and immediately broke in to a USA! USA! Chant. The rest of my table joined in and it was all smiles. The guy wanted a rematch, of which I dominated him again….so again I busted out the USA! USA! Chant. So, at this point Molly wanted in on the fun so she challenged one of the guys to an arm wrestling match. It was a hell of a battle and she always won, but ultimately lost to the Korean MAN. They decided to do a Korea! Korea! Chant, so I started singing the Star Spangled Banner. Everyone joined in and this opened everyone up to start singing any patriotic song we could think of. We sang “This Land is Your Land”, “God Bless America”, “God Bless the USA”, “50 Nifty United States”, and a few others I am forgetting. When we ran out of patriotic songs, we switched to TV Theme songs like “The Brady Bunch” and “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”. All in all it was a damn good night, and I think we represented America well…at least in the drinking department.

And now a few random observances:

A few months ago one of my students was talking about putting animals down at the animal shelter by referring to it as “Killing them with kindness”. Sinwoo then began talking about killing arts with a magnifying glass saying he caused a “holocaust for ants”.

I get followed by Korean schoolchildren sometimes who literally point and laugh. It’s really annoying, and I swear one of these days I light throw one in to a busy street.

There is a guy who rolls around Jeonbukde on his hands and knees begging for money. It’s both sad and scary at the same time.

Before Top closed there was a school wide dinner that all the teachers were invited to except for me and Spencer. This is not the first time it has happened so I asked why we were being excluded I was told "because we thought you would be uncomfortable being in a place surrounded by people who don't speak English". I was like "What...like Korea?"