God Bless America

Having never really met any American's,

I realise now I have been seriously generalising. 

Which isn't entirely my fault, all I know about America is from what I see on t.v, and by t.v I mainly mean C.S.I or Criminal Minds rather than the news. So I naturally assume that everywhere in America has a heap of crime, and that everyone is either obese or super skinny. 

I also assumed that they all love God, or follow some sort of religion (not that I have anything against God, I am a Catholic myself albeit not a very good one) and watch the Superbowl. I assume that people from the South don't have all their teeth and have names like Cletus and Mary-Sue. And that people from California are blonde and tanned. I also didn't think they seemed like friendly people, rather, that they would be obnoxious and rude.

What I have discovered is something else entirely.

The American's I have met are warm and friendly, welcoming and helpful. The other teachers I have spoken with are outgoing and happy, and have come to Korea to shake their lives up and do something exciting. They are super fun. 

The military guys are proving to be both what I expected, and also not what I expected. They are rowdy and flirty (I went out to Songtan drinking with one of my AWESOME new girlfriends and we didn't need to buy a thing) and have weird drinking chants that involve guns and ammo or something like that. If they had started shouting "USA! USA!" it would't have surprised me. But they are also really polite. Well, the guys we met were polite anyway...

 

So I have learnt something about myself since coming here.

I am a serial generaliser.

It doesn't matter what it is, I will make an unfounded blanket statement about it. I used to joke around with one of the guys at my old work, we would play the 'Generalising Game' in which we made terrible statements like "Well he has an Indian sounding name, he must smell like curry" and other inappropriate things. It was a fun game... 

But it is a good example of what I am like. I don't ever generalise to discriminate, I am not that sort of person (even though I see I am coming across that way) it's more I don't know enough about something or someone so I make an educated guess. I had done it already about Korea too. In this case though my assumptions and generalisations have been pretty accurate. But that's for another blog...

Its an easy thing to do (generalise, I mean) but its also the lazy thing as well. So my new 'thing' will be to try and understand more about something before I jump ahead and call a spade a spade. Because it might be a shovel. 

In other news...

I am slowly starting to make some friends. I have met some really cool people from Pyeongtaek. I won't name names, cos i'm not sure how ok people are with that here, but I went out for dins with a group on Wednesday night and it was super fun. We ate Shabu Shabu (I think thats what it was called??) which is soup that is full of veggies and all that, then you throw meat in it and the meat cooks in the soup. Then once you have eaten all the meat the lady brings out noodles and puts them in the soup, so you wait for the noodles to cook then you eat the noodles. THEN she brings over rice and cooks it in the soup pot. It was souper tasty (see my play on soup? HAHA i'm hilarious ey?). Then a couple of the girls went but 4 of us went back into Pyeongtaek to meet up with another girl and her bf for Honey Bread. I capitalise this because of how awesome it was... To me, it tasted kinda like fresh toast without the egg and waaayyyy sweeter. It was the most fatty and delicious thing I have eaten since coming to Korea. 

 Every meal you get here comes with side dishes included.

 Honey Bread

Approx. 3 minutes later...

And last night was an awesome night! Shanda and I (I hope she doesn't mind I have named her - apologies if you are not cool with it I will update the blog ASAP) went out for dinner first here in Songtan then went boozing around the strip. We played beer pong, bar hopped and danced the night away. I bought our first drinks, but soon realised I really didn't need to bother. Everyone wanted to buy us a drink. Being in Songtan on a Friday night is an experience in itself, the military boys are out in force and getting wasted, the boy/girl ratio is about 20:1 and they just wanna party. And they were good fun for the most part. They fully acknowledge that they buy all the drinks, one guy even said something along the lines of "it must be nice to not have to buy any drinks when you go out". Shanda said she wants to take me with her all the time, i'm a "military magnet". I think its just they haven't seen a blond chick in a while. 

I was totally drunk, and ended up refusing drinks cos my belly literally couldn't take anymore. And then they boys bought us water instead :) so that was nice of them too. 

By 12:30 the party wraps up, they need to be back on base or they get into trouble. So we stayed for another song, and stumbled back to my little room and tried to sleep off the grape soju. It was a really fun night with a new friend :) So shout-out to Shanda!

Tonight hopefully it will be back to Suwon to go out with Mia for a party, its a friend of hers birthday and 15000won for all you can drink cocktails. Thats about $15 for the people playing at home. So probably another messy night.

Right now I am sitting here waiting for my washing to finish washing so I can put it out, i'm gonna have a shower and then go to E-Mart cos I can. And then come home, maybe have a nap and then head out again I guess. 

Oooo, and there is apparently a big typhoon coming on Monday, so hopefully it will be huge and I can have a day off school! I will keep you informed about the typhoon... I have never been in a huge storm so I am actually pretty excited. 

Thats really it for now...

xoxoxo