First Bang at the Noraebang!

About the pics:

Rice wine with cider - you drink this from a bowl. I almost wanted to reach for a spoon thinking it was a cold soup. They usually use spoons for soup here.

Noraebang (karaoke room) fully equipped with disco ball and surround-sound along with a bar host right outside the door.

Our sad attempt at karaoke.

The worse you are, the better your score. We did, however, get a few scores in the 50s, so you can imagine how amazing those sounded.

Beth and Chase doing a duet perhaps.


Last night, Beth took me out with her friends from last year. We went to a restaurant in Wolbae (one subway stop over from SangIn, where I live) where the group of friends frequents - I would say they are definitely friends with the owner now. They continued serving us endless kettles of rice wine mixed with cider. It was a bit of a strange taste at first, but I fared alright. I'm not a big drinker as is so it was a bit more challenging with this beverage. We had a couple spicy dishes (of course): veggies with rice cakes that have a similar consistency to a penne noodle, but solid all the way through, and a soup with tofu, tuna and kimchi. I wasn't crazy about either, but it was alright. I'm still most fond of Korean BBQ of chicken (dak) or beef (sogogi) with veggies and rice.

After hours of socializing and having drinks at the restaurant, the group stumbled next door to a noraebang - private karaoke room. Korea is absolutely full of these places. I have no idea how much it costs, but it must have been very cheap. They also just add on more time to the machine timers when it runs out and apparently don't charge extra. There's a disco ball, big "u-shaped" seating, two microphones and surround sound, and you can get alcohol there as well. Some Korean guys that we met at the restaurant joined us for a few songs. We have similar places in the states, but this was a totally different level. It was definitely a fun and interesting night. We must have spent two hours there, and let me tell you - these places don't fill up until 3am or so. It's not exactly a place where you start your night... I'm sure I'll spend some future nights in one of these again.