"Penis Contest"

Well, I'm sure this post sounded a lot differently when I wrote it yesterday, as I was still coming down from a day of heavy drinking and hadn't had to keep from strangling my co-teacher all day (another story, suffice it say...I don't like her at all). My weekend began, or was supposed to, at 6:00am Saturday for a soccer club game. Since I really didn't feel like getting up that early just to watch a soccer game, I slept it...to the ungodly late hour of 8:30am. Yeah, I have that much of a night life...full nights sleep and still up before 9 on a Saturday. After I crawled out of bed and fed myself, I decided that rather than rot of boredom alone in my apartment, I would journey to Seoul and hit up the numerous markets to find some goodies from home. From there is was on to the train station and then on to Seoul, but not before stumbling into one of the fellow native speakers who was also heading to Seoul. I didn't catch his name, as he was Scottish/Irish/doesn't really matter as I couldn't understand him terribly well, but he did manage to write down directions to the foreigner/import grocery store in Itaewon. I now had a destination, and an hour or so later I was standing outside of my personal oasis in the middle of the desert. I thought it was pretty funny that the Hannam Supermarket was in the basement of the Volvo building...not sure what the hell they were doing in Korea either, the Asians certainly don't wanna buy their crap. The sights contained within the said grocery store were so beautiful that I actually started to tear up a little, no joke. My eyes got especially watery when I gazed upon their beer section and spotted real beers (Guiness, Spaten, you name it they had it). Also couldn't help but chuckle when I saw America's finest hard liquor, Dr. Boston's Rum, lining the shelves. But, alas, since Guiness and other like beers ran for around 4.80 per bottle and soju is very drinkable and 98 cents per bottle, I passed on the liquor. But I did walk out with salt, pepper, BBQ sauce (missed that shit), mouthwash, power converters, and my holy grail, Oreos (I really missed that shit). After leaving the grocery store it was on to the Tech market in Yongsan. Beautiful, that's really all I can say to describe it. I walked out of Yongsan with a copy of Okami for PS2 (my Korean PS2 that I have yet to acquire) and 4 black market DVDs. It seems odd to see such shady dealings just outside the door of legitimate electronics dealers, but whatever. If I can get Hellboy 2, Dark Knight, Iron Man, and The Incredible Hulk for 10 bucks, I'm content. From here it was back to the homestead, as my groceries were getting mighty heavy on my back (huge tactical error on my part to buy the heavy stuff first...dumbass). The train ride home was unusually engaging as I conversed with the woman sitting next to me...in real English, not broken words. Turns out she has been speaking English much longer than I have, hell, longer than I've been alive. She lived in New York for 25 years, her son was 10 months old when they moved to the US, and he now attends Stanford for grad school (got accepted to Harvard and Stanford). It was incredible to be talking to a middle aged Korean woman about American politics, economy, and foods we missed. You can't imagine the shock hearing this woman tell me: "I really miss Thanksgiving food...the turkey and cranberry sauce". Hell, I can't stand cranberry sauce for the most part, and here I am thousands of miles from home listening to a woman speak lovingly of it.
Sunday was even more fun, as every outing with the soccer club turns out to be...must be the heavy, heavy drinking. Our adventure started around 10am when the whole team and crowd boarded a couch bus donated by the county magistrate in honor of our success. The big man himself even came out to watch our first game. Everyone on the same vehicle with no concern for driving means only one thing: the drinking starts that much early. 10:30am, to be exact, is when the club started badgering (haha) to drink with them. Being a man of strong morals and principles, I held off...until we reached the field in Suwon at noon. Since I couldn't play as the tourney is 30 and over, it was all drinking and eating for me. No sooner had we hopped off the bus and relieved ourselves in the bushes, as there was no bathrooms anywhere, we eating kimbap (Korean sushi rolls) and chicken along with soju and beer. I felt a little uncomfortable going in the bushes as we were only a stones throw from Suwon Olympic Stadium, where only a few years ago some of the world's best soccer was played, but there really wasn't anywhere else to go. Plus, when in Rome... I feel like I did my part as English teacher, as now the entire club knows how to say someone is a drunk. Trust me, they used it alot. It felt like a Packers or Badgers game except that when they drunkenly got up and ran around, they actually ran out on the field and had to be pulled back several times by lines judges. The team won its first game 6-3 to move on to the round of 8, so, of course, drinking ensued. Sometime before our quarterfinal game, I was called over to chat with my old friend, the Yangpyeong Casanova. As you may or may not remember from the previous post, this entertaining man speaks very little English but makes up for it with graphic gestures and expressions. First, these men were amazed at the size of my feet, and as is custom with any gathering of males, regardless of location, the conversation eventually shifted to penis size. Naturally. They were all talking up their meat sticks and were curious as to my size, even going so far as to issue a "Penis Contest", where we were supposed to, I suppose, whip them out. The Casanova obviously built himself up, actually doubling over in pain when someone grabbed him around the knee, insinuating....well you can guess. The club pulled out the second game in PKs to move on to the semis, in a tourney that started with 500 or so teams. Not willing to pass up the opportunity to celebrate, the team, myself included, helped themselves to more soju before we even left the parking lot. It's an interesting feeling to be buzzed by 1pm and then sober by 5pm. Once back in town, it was off to dinner at one of the team member owned restaurants and more, you guessed it, alcohol. The tricky thing with team victory dinners is getting in a bite of food in between toasts and speeches, which obviously end with a shot of soju. Here the Casanova and I went head to head, as he decided we would drink our soju out of a real glass, the water glass, instead of those weeny shot glasses. This also meant that my sole liquid refreshment would be soju. As the custom is to never fill your own glass, we went back and forth watching the others glass in case it got close to being empty and the other was starting to wuss out. I believe that in the end I won, as I was less red faced and not sweating as badly as him, although he did invite me out for a drink at the bars later. I do have to thank my extra foot of height, German and Irish blood, and the fact he was 20 years my senior for this esteemed victory. Now it's off to the native speaker's conference for the next 4 days, where, one assumes, I will actually meet other English speakers.