Rock, Paper, Scissors

---

In order to keep from going bananas here in the great land of kimchi, its important for all good korea-bound expats to escape on the weekend. Sometimes I escape by leaving the city, but usually I stick around Seoul since its pretty hard to beat in most ways. So usually my friends and I go to one of three areas: we either head to clubland "hongdae," foreignerland, "Itaewon" or on laid back nights stick around my neighborhood "Isu." For us at my school, when payday is near and our wallets are full of dust, we head to one of my favorite places- the local FamilyMart. It's basically a 7-11 along the street with all the items of a normal Korean convenience store. Some of the most bizarre are boiled quail eggs, plastic wrapped turkey legs, dried whole squid, crawfish potato chips, and of course loads of Soju, basically chemical vodka. But they also have cheap beer and a few tables outside. It doesn't sound like the coolest place to spend your Friday night, but its always a blast. I think it's impossible to leave this place without having your table combined with another. It's usually one full of Soju-fueled Koreans, eager to finally practice they're English and keep your paper cup full of whatever they're drinking. Friday I was there with some friends when we were invited, or more like forced, to go to a Karaoke place with a group of Korean guys. To make a long story short, it ended when they extended some Korean hospitality and tried to bring in some "party girls" for "singing help." So we bowed out and went back to the Familymart for another parade of drunken conversations and free booze. Forget clubbing, the real Korean nightlife is in a plastic chair on the sidewalk.

The next day I headed with three other friends to Incheon, a city about an hour west, in search of an ocean view and a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, each of us thought one of the other was leading the way and we took the wrong subway line. So we realized about an hour too late that we were in Suwon, an hour south. Eeeesh. So we made the best of it and went to check this town out and maybe find a mountain to hike, there's always a mountain somewhere around in this country. The local tourist office told us to head to a temple and then hike around this famous wall that was actually a UNESCO world heritage site (a big deal for historical sites). When we got to the temple we noticed a huge sign with three hands all in the Paper, rock, scissors mode and a roped off section in front. It turned out to be a Paper Rock Scissors tournament! One thing about Koreans is they can settle anything with paper rock scissors. At school if there's an argument, paperrockscissors, and problem solved. No hard feelings, debating, or even a frown.. it's done. So the love of paperrockscissor here made it not so strange to see a tournament like this going on and we quickly decided to sign up. After a crushing defeat of my opponent with a last minute scissor, I made it to round two. Then on to round three, the farthest of any of my friends. But their cheerleading couldn't help me when I was destroyed by a sweet girl with a deceiving triple rock. Thankfully, I was consoled with a 5,000won gift certificate to a stationary store. It was gonna be a round of pens on me until we found it closed later that afternoon.

---