This entry is about my 24th birthday and, frankly, my birthday was a wild evening with good friends, lots of beer & soju, and me singing every rap song available at the karaoke bar. It was a hot evening (a rainy one as well), which I don’t remember completely. It’s an evening my friends talk about still as one of the funniest nights we’ve had so far; they’ve filled me in on what I don’t remember.
I won’t lie about the night, but I will balance this anecdote (like I have before in my other entries) with what I think is appropriate for all of those aboard the Little Wolf Express. I’ve got friends and family, potentially children, that don’t need every sordid detail from a late night of partying. (Those who want the details should know how to get a hold of me.)
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I left for Korea on the 15th of August: a day after my father’s birthday and eight days before my own birthday; I was turning 24. Our birthdays being so close makes August the “birthday-boy” month in my family: first up, my dad, then me. Before I left, my dad’s birthday was especially meaningful: It became the time to soak up and value my family. These were the moments I would later recall to nourish myself when I would, no doubt, become nostalgic or homesick. (Thankfully homesickness hasn’t been in an issue; having the Little Wolf Express helps with that.) Now, ladies and gentlemen, my 24th birthday in Korea:
I worked all day and kept the fact that it was my birthday as quiet as possible. I did tell Otto and Ace, my first friends at the hagwon (the English school). They knew about the birthday dinner I wanted to have. I figured it would be quaint: a couple friends, a couple beers, maybe a cake…Expectations are never what they seem though. Ace, the party-planner and drama-magnet, got busy spreading the word about my dinner. Because it was so short notice only a few people from work made it out, which I didn’t mind, yet far from the Super Sweet 16 stereotype. In the end it was just Ace, Otto, their girls, and three other co-workers: Jason, J.J., and Vic.
The restaurant we went to was called Mapo Galbi, it’s a Korean BBQ place that features Suwon’s famous meat: galbi. (Go to Suwon’s wiki page and it will tell you that Suwon is famous for its “Suwon Galbi”—I’m not making it up.) It was raining after work, which didn’t bother me, because I like the rain, but it meant we could not eat outside. Instead, we sat inside the restaurant on tiny plastic red stools that surrounded two circular tables with propane grills in the middle of each table. Korean BBQ means you actually cook your food at your table, the meat arrives raw. Someone brought a cake out before we ate and I knew it was going to end up in my face; my intuition was spot on: Happy Birthday Billy. Ace shoved a slice in my face, trying to avoid my glasses…what a gentleman.
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| From Left to Right: "Ace", me, "Vic" |
“Wait till your birthday,” I said to him licking the cake of my glasses (he missed). “You’re going to be a mess.”
“Do you even know my birthday?” he asked. (It’s in June everyone, Ace beware.)
The meat arrives. We ordered Galbi and Samgyeopsal (large slices of unseasoned bacon, very delicious) and the meat was of course complimented by an array of side dishes: green leaves of lettuce to wrap our cooked meat around. Mushrooms, garlic, and onion that go on the grill to accompany the meat as it cooks. Kimchi (of course, no meal is complete without kimchi in Korea), Kimchi jjigae (which is a kimchi stew; very mild and delicious at Mapo), bean sprouts, seasoned shuts of seaweed, some kind of runny egg soup (which isn’t as bad as it sounds), tins of rice, and assortments of sauces to dip our meats into. The objective of the Korean BBQ meal (I learned this from Ace) is to cook the meat, season it to your liking with the sauces, place it in the lettuce, and then add whatever you want to it: Mushrooms, garlic, kimchi, whatever—in a sense, I felt like I was making a taco…a very Korean-version of the taco. I remember smells vividly still: the grilling meat, the pungent odor of kimchi, and, of course, the love-hate smell of soju.
Soju is a fermented beverage, usually made from rice. Soju is a terrible drink for foreigners: it gives us headaches, leaves us with miserable hangovers, and we never think we’ve drunken too much until we’ve drunken too much. The Koreans, however, swill soju like it’s water (in fact, soju is cheaper to buy than water.) A lot of foreigners complain about soju because they’ve all had “that night” where they drank too much and experienced soju’s tremendous after-effects. I had “that night” that night. Besides eating a very filling and delightful meal, I drank lots of soju on my birthday, as is customary I suppose in Korea (reference: when in Rome…); I even mixed the soju with beer (to make a popular drink called somek). I felt like a reveler at a Greek symposium: food, booze, women, all I needed was some music…eventually I got that too.
Dinner paid for and finished, grateful for my friends, feeling great from soju, I assumed that my night was over—not in Korea however…no, the night was merely getting started. A portion of the dinner party, perhaps sensing a raucous showing, departed after dinner; they could tell we were going be loud, drunk, and probably annoying. The crew that stuck around headed towards the norebang (Korean for karaoke) with a slight drizzle overhead.
The proprietor of our norebang was an aged woman, an ajuma. She kept many tiny dogs around to stand guard and, probably, to drown out the awful singing. That night the dogs and I sang together—and what howls came from the birthday-boy’s room! (I already mentioned that I attempted to sing every rap song available.) We kept on drinking—more beer, more soju—and had toasts like, “Okay Billy, you’re 24—DRINK! DRINK! DRINK!” The norebang was where the heavy drinking started and somek drinks of 80% soju and 20% beer went down in “one shots” (Koreans scream out “one shot” which means you chug your beverage in one shot…I do not like the “one shot”).
(A funny side note: On our way into the norebang, we passed a definitely more drunk group of Korean guys and they overheard it was my birthday (or maybe I told them, I don’t remember). Regardless, they demanded I accept their unopened bottle of beer…it was 1000 mL…I obliged them, thanked them, and we drank the whole damn thing.)
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| Definitely me rapping--look at the lyrics... |
Surrounded by new friends in a new country, thoroughly satiated and inebriated, I welcomed in the new age of Billy: 24 at last! We stayed at the norebang until our hour expired and by that time the rain had completely stopped also. The prospect of walking home without an open umbrella and the notion of work tomorrow tamed the wild evening at around 3am. Ahead of me was a year in Korea and a mile long walk to the love motel. Truly I do not remember the walk, but I assure you that my 24th birthday in Suwon, Korea, will not soon be forgotten.
(Shoutout to Betty for the pictures! She took them and I'm reposting them from Facebook. You're a hot babe Betty, I miss you.)
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