Sojufest

Sojufest was on last weekend at the Ulsan University. Soju is the local alcoholic beverage in Korea. It's similar to vodka, but it's usually made from sweet potatoes (rice if it's the expensive stuff). It costs the equivelant of $1 a bottle (355 ml, give or take). It's really cheap and it mixes well with soft drinks. It's around 25-30% alcohol volume.

Basically, the main area of the university grounds was covered in large, open tents with picnic tables underneath. It was a lot like a small town fair, with the beer gardens (well, soju gardens), midway games (like pop the balloon with a dart and win a stuffed animal) and little make-shift shops set up; selling random food and glowsticks. Come to think of it, the entire place was a large soju garden. I basically just chowed down on pineapples on a stick, chicken-rice curry and drank some soju. It was great. I don't really need to go on about the entire night, but let's just say that I had a lot of fun and that I met some really cool and fun people. I've you know what the shopping cart shabang from "Kenny Roger's on Jackass" is, then you have an idea of how the night went. Just picture me running around, pushing cute girls in a shopping cart full of empty soju bottles and you'll figure things out.

Saturday ended up being pretty cool. Two of my girlfriends, Leah and Michele, had volenteered to teach kids English for the Greenpeace folks. It was sort of a nice gesture from Greenpeace to the community. I showed up when they were already teaching. Those guys are actually pretty cool to hang out with. Basically, I just hung out with them all day and evening. I didn't drink at all, since I'd rode my motorbike there. It took me about a half hour to 45 minutes to find them from where I live on the other side of the city. I'm really learning my way around now that I have a vehicle. I'm enjoying my bike.

Some of the Korean kids camped out at the Greenpeace camp for the night, and I had a lot of fun entertaining them before bedtime. One girl, about 10-12 years old, was extra sweet and cute. She followed a lot of us foreigners around, trying to teach us "Korean-speak". She'd say a word in English, and then say, "in Korean, it's this word". It was extra funny one time when I asked her what her scooter was called in Koren-speak. She said,

"In English, scooter. In Korean, kickbordu."

I replied to her, "kickboard?".

"No", she said. "kickbordu".

"Kickbordu?", I repeated.

She joyfully replied, "O.K.!!!", in her super excited voice, which showed itself whenever she'd thought that she had taught me something.

She was great. If I ever have a little girl, I want her to be just like that girl.

Sunday was basically a nice, lazy day. I made it to my third K-League football game, between the Ulsan Hyundai Tigers and the Cheonbok Hyundai Motors. Ulsan won, one-nil. If you're curious about the K-League, you can check out this site: www.k-leaguei.com. If you have high speed internet, you can watch some of the games online. If you look close enough, you might be able to pick me out (probably not). I usually site in about the 10th row in the green section (behind the net), just to the left of the insane cheering section with the group of white people.


The Ulsan Hyundai logo

Following the game, CJ, Anne, Michelle and myself wandered off in search of food. First, we found an obscure Japanese resturant with a cool atmosphere. He had a few chicken and beef squres, and then moved on. It was then that we came upon a true gem. We entered into a small corner resturant with little figures of cats fishing above the door (catfish, get it?). We ordered a 12,000 won ($12 US) seafood meal. What we got was an amazing hotpan on top of a burner filled with ocean goodness. There were crabs, scallops, mussels, baby octopus, shimp and probably some other good things too. They were all simmering in a garlic sauce. It was nothing short of damned good. I'll for sure be going back there. My mouth is watering right now as I'm thinking of it.

After the good food, we make our way to our apartements and that was basically it.

My highlight tonight was watching a Tom Hanks movie called Shipwrecked (I think) and then going for a ride on my bad motor scooter before coming here to update this blog.