Cory And Katy » Night life

Mrs. Park and Noraebang

admin — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 02:36:30 +0000

Mrs. Park is head of the english department at Katy’s school. At work she is pretty serious, but after work she is a ton of fun. In this video she is dancing with me while Katy and Star are enjoying the show.

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A Night Out with the Co-workers

admin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:45:37 +0000

After only a month into this adventure, I have been exposed to what may be my favorite cultural difference between South Koreans and U.S. Americans. In SK, workplaces take out their employees on a somewhat frequent basis and actually ENCOURAGE the employees to drink too much. We got to experience this cultural difference firsthand when Katy’s elementary school took us out to a seafood restaurant last week.

While you may be thinking, “Wow! A country where you get brownie points at work for drinking with your co-workers on someone else’s dime?!?! What could be better?!” Well, stop thinking that. When I say seafood restaurant, I mean a raw fish restaurant… and not good raw fish. And when I say drink, I mean soju. Soju is the Korean go-to alcohol, and it basically tastes like a weak vodka. Raw fish + soju = fake swallowing. Don’t get me wrong; we definitely tasted a few new things and did some obligatory shots of soju with the principal and vice-principal, but we were not to the point we couldn’t stand up straight, like many of our fellow teachers.

Mmmm, doesn't it make your mouth water?

How's that snail, Katy?

That good, eh?

What about that red-pointy thing, Cory?

Are you ready for seconds?

So after raw fish and soju, all of the teachers headed next door to noraebang. We have some great videos of the event, but we’re still working on formatting them so we can embed them on our blog.

In other news, we now have internet at our apartment, so fear not, readers. You will be getting more Cory and Katy action in the future. Prepare yourselves accordingly.

We. Love. Noraebang. (노래방).

admin — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:49:25 +0000

The gods smiled upon us when EPIK chose to have our orientation in Cheonan. While the fabulous EPIK staff is busting their bums teaching us the language, pedagogy, and how to negotiate our way around Korea, we enlisted some fabulous people of our own to show us the ropes of Korean karaoke, called noraebang. My (Katy) dear, dear friend Tracy and her wonderful husband D have been living in Cheonan for the last year teaching English at a private school, and we were lucky enough to have our first week here during their last week.

Tracy and D met us at the Dankook University, where we are staying, and poured their year’s worth of acquired knowledge into our brains as they took us to their apartment and then out for some Korean barbeque with some of their other teacher friends. After the delicious lesson in grilling pork right at the table and wrapping it in a lettuce leaf (so good!), we headed off to a bar to consume countless kettles of rice wine and then left to go sing the night away!

The noraebang was AMAZING. Each group gets their own little room to sing to their hearts content, so the group of us piled in to do our thing. I’m not even sure how long we all stayed out, but our university dorms are locked between 1 and 5, so instead of getting in before 1, we decided our time with D and Tracy was so precious that we’d just stay out until the doors opened back up. So that’s what we did!

It didn’t prepare us too well for the tour of the Korean folk village we took a field trip to this morning though. I was pretty miserable between the pounding headache, crappy cold weather, and awful Korean food, but there we saw some great traditional performances while were were there and…

MORE NORAEBANG! I swear, Korea and I were meant to be. We had a badass charter bus to get back to the University and it was decked out with neon cosmic decor on the ceiling, flashing colored LEDs, a television screen, tambourines, and a microphone. Yes, we karaoked the whole trip back. BRILLIANT. I of course wooed the passengers with a rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody, which actually was really bad because I still have a hoarse throat from the night before when I lost my voice.

If I get to noraebang this much the rest of the year, I may never leave this wonderful land. Sorry, folks, but I have priorities.