Day 5 - Patbingsu, Key Club Mixer, and Noonas

Since we didn't have any obligations besides Korean language class today, a few ETAs and I went wandering around the Kangwon downtown area to see what there was to do in this rare beautiful weather. We ended up at a patbingsu place, where I was able to successfully navigate the ordering process solo.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, today was the Key Club Mixer woooo!! I was so stoked for this. We split up into small groups to drink with small groups of the club members in a random parking lot. It was kind of like a tailgate, but with a lot more mosquitos and Koreans. There was a group of boys kind of hanging out by themselves in the back, so I ended up dragging some classmates with me to their group. It turned out really well--they were fairly shy English speakers, but since almost all the Americans in the group were Intermediate or Advanced with Korean, we were able to mix our terribly broken Korean with their broken English to understand each other. A few rounds to soju-cap-flicking and Baskin Robbins 31 later, we went out the front gate to a bar because no Korean outing ends with just one round of drinking (no joke).

While at the bar, the most AMAZING thing happened. For the first time in my Korean experiences, I was called "noona" (big sister). SO CUTE!! I was thrilled. The boy who called me big sister was being picked on by the two seniors at the table (they requested I call them "oppa", big brother). The boy was fairly cute and the two oppas were picking on him, calling him a Playboy and a heartbreaker. In my broken Korean I told them to be nice, and the boy--apparently thankful--thanked me and addressed me as "noona". [[He's wearing a black shirt and standing behind me in the picture. Speaking of the picture, how do you like the guy front row, center? Check out his pose--my roommate says he looks like he's out of a KPop album cover. hahaha]]

They insisted that they pay for the entire bar trip, with the expectations that we would go out with them again on Sunday or Monday, which is typical of Korea as opposed to going dutch like in America. They have our email addresses so hopefully we can all arrange a time to go out again, because they were a lot of fun and I'd love to see my oppas (big brothers) and my namdongsaeng (little brother) again soon!