Doing the Cha-Cha Korean Style

If you have been keeping track of the stories, you will have noticed that the number of people that I said was in our party does not add up to the number of people that I have talked about. That is because Carol did not join us until Saturday. She wrapped up her part of the assignment on Friday and will be with us for the remaining part of the trip. In addition to meeting up with her, we also got together with our first semester teachers from BRSKL.

Most people know that Koreans work very hard. But not everyone knows that they also play very hard as well. Saturday night we actually were able to participate in something that we’d only every read about – their version of a ‘pub crawl.’

It starts with food (and drinks!). In our case this was chimaek. Chimaek is a contraction for chicken and maekju (beer). This is considered 일차 (ilcha) or ‘round one.’ And it continues, counting up, until ….

At some point along the route, you inevitably end up at noraebang, otherwise known as karaoke. However, it is a bit different from our karaoke. Noraebang literally translates into ‘song room’ and each party has their own room and equipment. At this point, everyone has had enough alcohol that no one cares whether or not they look or sound like a fool.

Sadly our teachers had to leave early since they still had over an hour to travel to get back home but we very much appreciate them taking the time to travel that distance to show us a side of Seoul that we had yet to experience.

To be continued …