My Dinner With Joe Joon Boem

Kudos to Duane for reading my entire blog here from start to finish. I hope you got a good laugh reading it.

It's been busy here the last few days, with plenty of stories to write about, and I think I may get in two entries this week. Today's entry though is in regards only to a single episode from last week, a dinner party at a student's house with his family.

Dinner at the Joe's

On Thursday last week, my Prinipal arranged a dinner for himself, our school's 3rd grade teacher and me at Joe Joon Boem's house. From the beginning, it was a little hokey. To begin with, the 3rd grade teacher, Mr. Hwang Gab Soon, was showing some obvious displeasure about going. I may not be able to understand Korean, but I can certainly recognize when someone is pouting, and Mr. Hwang was throwing an awfully big fit about something. However, after a few minutes of sitting in a parking lot debating about whatever was upsetting Mr. Hwang, we finally started driving - aimlessly in circles around the block at first, trying to figure how to get to the Joe's house.

It turns out Joe Joon Boem's family is just up the street from my place, which quickly led to the decision I should visit more often. They have a very nice house, quite large for a Korean home, with the parents, three children and grandmother living together. The evening started off nicely, with a brief living room discussion before moving to the kitchen for dinner.

The Vegetarian I Used To Be

As usual, nothing worked as simply as it should have. It turns out that Joon Boem's mother, Mrs. Joe, is an English teacher, and quite fluent speaking English. However with the way seniority works, my principal was given the role of interpreting for me that night, and I was left out of the loop for the great majority of the conversation, despite having such a strong English speaker available.

Dinner that evening was meat, and lots of it. There was some raw fish, two stacked plates of octopus wrapped around popsicle sticks, the usual array of pickled cabbage and other vegetables, and 5 platters of beef. As the foreigner at the table, conversation was hard, and limited to a few key phrases, either involving feeding me more meat, feeding me more scotch, or asking me if I thought Joe Juun Boem's grandmother looked like Miss Korea. I dutifully said yes every time, took a heaping hunk of beef and grimaced as I sipped my newly filled glass of scotch.

The scotch was a bit of a problem, and I found myself chasing it with beef, as I wasn't offered water or any other drink besides Korean wine and scotch. A nibble of cabbage, a sip of wine, a drink of scotch, then chase it with beef. When most of the food was done, I found I still had a lot of scotch to drink, and for a moment I was relieved when Mrs. Joe pulled out two more large platters of beef that had been stashed away. So, I continued to eat beef, agree that "Mrs. Joe, she is very much Miss Korea", drink some scotch, chase it with beef.

Two hours later, I was starting to feel a little queasy. 10 years of eating mostly as a vegetarian meant my tolerance for eating meat quite was low, and as the 6th and 7th platters of beef arrived, I began feeling a little nauseous. I continued on with dinner, sipped some wine, ate some beef, drank some scotch, and despaired as another platter of beef was brought out. After two glasses of scotch, someone asked me if I wanted more. Now drunk enough to comfortably say "no", someone then poured me wine, fed me some beef, I chased it with the last of my scotch, and mentioned how much grandma looks like Miss Korea. Bleary-eyed, I completely ignored the final platter of beef put on the table, and sipped my wine till we finally could leave the dinner table.

Grandma's Room

Korean's are excellent at getting the most out of what they have. They recycle like crazy, serve any leftovers from one meal at the next, and they'll use Grandma's tiny bedroom to entertain the guests as well. Five adults and three kids made for some cramped quarters, but we packed ourselves in and continued eating beef and drinking wine. I was really trying to keep my cool with how drunk I had gotten, but I realized most everyone wasn't any more sober than I was. My principal and Mr. Hwang were now drinking from a bottle of orange juice, which I was pretty certain wasn't just OJ. My principal at one point lept up to give more "OJ" to Mr. Hwang, who did his best to refuse, but finally relented - an incredibly bizarre scene given the tiny size of the room and that we were guests in someone's house.

By now, entering the 3rd hour of dinner, Grandma too was getting a little tipsy. She'd been sizing me up all night, and now her questioning stares were becoming more frequent. Even when I stared right back at her (if only for a moment), I still couldn't break that "What's your story?" stare.

As we moved into the 4th hour, it was almost time to go. The adults were making the kids do magic tricks, we had moved onto our 3rd or 4th bottle of "Maeshe" (a rather delicious Korean wine), and Grandma was crawling back and forth on her bed on all fours. Still suffering from a cold, I was struggling hard to keep my head up and my eyes open, and it was a relief to finally do the 20 minute goodbye-and-who's-taking-who-home dance. No one was sober enough to drive, but I'm certain that was never mentioned to anyone as we left.

Well, a long night has turned into a long blog-entry. Time to jet, there's kids to teach and only me it seems to do it. I'll be back later this week with another entry I think. Thanks for reading!