Being Oh Soju Naughty..

So I went out with my new friend, Rona, who also happens to be my language exchange partner.  We decided to go for dinner and party it up this Saturday and after a lovely italian dinner (complete with Kimchi and pickles, lol) we went for a pitcher of Soju (similar to vodka) at a local place.  Unfortunately, Korea doesn't really work like Canada in the idea of just going out for a few drinks.  A group is usually required to order food as well. It's kind of a reversal of us going for wing night back home, you can have the cheap wings but you have to order the pricey drinks.  In Korea, you have to order the pricey food to get the cheap drinks.  However, we had just eaten and were absolutely stuffed so when I ordered our drinks (in somewhat decent Korean) I didn't think there would be a problem.  Happy with our order, I made my way to the ladies room and when I returned, poor Rona informed me that because it was a weekend we would be required to order food so we made the decision to leave. Easily done right???  Nope.  The manager stood in our way and informed us that because our pitcher was mixed that we would have to stay and also order food.  He was incredibly rude, to the point that even I, as a foreigner, could pick up on the fact that he was failing to use a formal and respectful manner of speaking.  After ten minutes of haggling, he finally agreed to poor our drink into a "to-go" cup and let us be on our way.  Now, I am not very good at insulting people in Korean except to tell them that they are either crazy, ugly, boring, or a dog-baby (yes, that is a huge insult) so I gave him the evil eye, pointed my finger (very rude in Korea because that is how you talk to dogs) and told him that he was a very rude man in a very rude tone, gave a flip of my hair and stomped out.

Poor Rona, she's never been spoken to like that and it was incredibly embarrassing for her especially since they poured our drink into an empty soju bottle.  Drinking on the street is perfectly acceptable but not for women and especially not if you're drinking soju so Rona was incredibly hesitant to do so.  My solution???  Go buy 2 "to-go" coffee cups from a convenience store and transfer our drinks into them for a secretive way for us to sneak them into the bar.  She loved it!  I told her that this is what teenagers do in America and she had a blast after I hyped it up as our way to bond as a Soju Adventure!!!

So, note to self: order food no matter where you go so that you can have cheap drinks and if the management is rude then feel free to be rude back because in Korea...rudeness is unacceptable and the man was either racist against me or just plain crazy with poor customer service.  Either way, I feel like we won that battle in the end, we had a fantastic night...!!!