Have some confidence. Now with original photos (no promises on the originality of the original photos).

No this isn't alcohol. It's a vitamin/energy drink with a fantastic name.  There was another drink I had over the weekend that is probably a bit more well known among travelers to Asia for its bizarre and rather nasty name...

Pocari Sweat isn't nearly as bad as its name implies.  Think Gatorade/Powerade and you have Pocari Sweat.

Meanwhile...

Bundaegi (번데기) is hugely vile.  I will eat the evil that is Durian before I eat this stuff again.  It's silkworm pupae... and just... nasty.  It certainly doesn't help that pieces will get stuck in crevices of your mouth and pop loose to unleash the flavor again once you think it's all gone.

Since we're on the subject of food.  Chinese-Korean fusion food is pretty popular here... and tastes better than in the US.  I've also had the opportunity for some more traditional Korean meals (both in content and style).

This was much tastier than Bundaegi... considering how much I despise Bundaegi you could say I enjoyed this meal about ∞ times more.  This was about half of what was on the table.  And yes we were sitting on the floor... and yes my legs did fall asleep.

An interesting note about meals in Korea.  You'll usually only be given a spoon and a pair of chopsticks (metal ones... I've been told Korea is the only place that widely uses metal chopsticks).  Though my experience from my first night in Korea would imply that at least some places keep forks around for the foreigners for whom metal chopsticks may be difficult.

Most food in Korea, and presumably much of east Asia, is prepared in way where knives are unnecessary.  On the occasion that you need to cut some food in Korea... they'll give you a pair of scissors.  It actually seems to be easier than using a knife, at least in most cases.

So I also went to a preseason baseball game between the SK Wyverns (Incheon, red) and the Doosan Bears (Seoul, white).  For those who missed one of my past posts, the names of Korean baseball teams feature sponsors rather than geographical locations.  In this case, both SK and Doosan are big conglomerates that do a bit of pretty much everything.  Anyway, the home team (Doosan Bears) lost 5-1 and generally just didn't play very well.

At a couple points, where it looked like Doosan might put something together (I was sitting on the Doosan side, you can see the SK fans on the far side in the picture) it would get surprisingly loud for a preseason game with a 1/3 full stadium.

There was a St. Patrick's Day festival in Insadong (an area of Seoul with some traditional goods/restaurants, one pictured above, popular with foreigners) on Saturday.  I think every non-Korean in the country went there.  It's so strange to see that many obvious non-Koreans.

It proved to just be pretty obnoxious.  A bunch of people partaking in "traditional" methods of celebrating St. Patty's Day.  So yeah... I ended up walking into the one half block of negative American stereotypes in the whole of Seoul... outside Itaewon at least... I almost don't want to go there.

So now for some random notes that I don't think I've already mentioned.  My name, Jared, is kinda awkward for Koreans to say because Korean words end with vowels.  What seems to be the common, more comfortable, Korean pronunciation of my name is something to the effect of Jehraadu (three syllables).  My attempt to transliterate it isn't really making me happy because the "raa" part sounds more like a halfway between a "R" and "L" sound that I don't know how to write.

I don't think KFC uses the original recipe here.  A couple of the guys grabbed KFC at the baseball game and there was some red spices in the chicken (think kimchi spices).  Though I don't know if that's their default chicken or something else.  Chicken is very popular here... chicken and pork.  One of the phrases I learned relatively early on (thanks to my roommates) was "han maree" (again, I don't trust my transliteration skills), "one bird"... for ordering chicken.

It's almost bedtime so good night people.

Edit:  I forgot about Bill Cosby!