Choco Monkey Shake

I met my friend Sam in Beomgye, where she lives, this afternoon. It was my first time to get off the train at this stop, and she took me to what she described as a "girlie coffee shop". I thought it was so cool, mainly because it was different than anything I have seen in Korea. Different than anything I have ever seen, actually. In Korea, particularly in Suwon, my experiences thus far have been very similar. Once you see one Hof (Korean bar), you've seen them all, and the same goes for restaurants, stores, etc. It was nice to have the change of scenery. And there was a non-smoking section which was really wonderful.

They had several different mini rooms set up with booths and curtains that separated you from people walking around. It was kind of like renting a table at a club, but they are even more excluded from each other. I guess the idea in the clubs is to be seen, and here they don't care about that. It's a pretty popular place, and we waited about 20 minutes just to get a booth/room. It was interesting that the entire place was so ultra-feminine, yet so private. It was as though they originally set it up for couples and then decided to decorate only for 15 year old girls. They had fuschia floral patterns all along the walls, flower prints on the booths, and light pink velvet waiting benches. They also had a purple and white chandelier hanging from the ceiling in the waiting room. I could have been in Libby Lou.

The food presentation reminded more of Serendipity's in New York than anything else I could think to compare it to. All the drinks were oversized, overpriced and most were  deliciously bad for you. It was wonderful. I ordered the Choco Monkey Shake, and tried to read it out in Korean. Usually, when I go to restaurants, I practice reading whether or not there is English on the menu. Very often the words are the same, though, and I end up looking rather foolish. Today was the perfect example. After reading cho go mong I had figured it out but still tried to go with it. Most Korean is like that, you have to read it like it is, and then interpret it into English the way we think of English in your mind. The cognates are not necessarily obvious.

Often, the waiter will just say, "Nae" (yes, yes), before I'm finished, but today he surprised me. Although his English wasn't that great, he goes, "Yes, yes, chocolate monkey shake" as if it was so obvious how to pronounce this in English. Usually they wouldn't understand it if I pronounced it dry. It was so funny. Here I was working to pronounce it incorrectly in English, correctly in Korean, so that he could understand me and he comes back at me with it in perfect English.

There are many consistent differences in words that I find amusing. They never end words with -er in -er, but rather, they just put an -ah sound on the end. Also, they use the j sound instead of z. For example:

cheese: cheej-uh

tower burger: towah buh gah (this one is really difficult to do correctly in English for me, so it's not exact. The tower burger is what I always order at KFC, my fast food restaurant of choice out here)

sauna: saw une ah 

Sauna doesn't really apply in the same way, but it always throws me off to hear it. Also, we say tomaeto, they say tomahto. In the words of many a Korean, "same same, but different."