Last night, miracle of miracles, AJ and I came home to find a TV and DVD/VCR set up in our apartment. Turns out, Korean TV can be hysterical, especially when you play the “put words in their mouths” game. Also, they have shows reminiscent of “Star Search” where people dress up gaudily and sing 80’s-esque songs. We discovered The Discovery channel (American stories, British narrator, Korean subtitles). Koreans also have a penchant for American cop shows, such as “Law and Order” and “CSI.” Oh yeah, and “Cops.” So TV is one reason for our not writing a blog entry yesterday.
The other reason? Soju. Now that we feel our jet lag is pretty much gone (or at least tolerable), we decided to try some of Korea’s most popular alcoholic beverage. It costs about 940 won/bottle, or about 95 cents for the Jinro kind. It tastes like vodka but with less alcohol (only about 20%).
Tomorrow night we have a dinner party with the Korean and English staff from our school. From what we hear, drinking usually ends up being the main event at these shindigs, so I guess we’ll find out if Korea lives up to its “Irish of the Orient” nickname…
Soju fun facts:
“Soju was first distilled around A.D. 1300 during the Mongol war with Korea.
Most brands of modern soju are now made in South Korea, supplementing or even replacing the rice with other starches such as potato, wheat, barley, sweet potato, or tapioca (called dangmil in Korean).
In 2006, it was estimated that the average adult Korean (older than 20) had consumed 90 bottles of soju during that year, with each bottle equivalent to seven shots.”
-Wikipedia
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