Ahh Thanksgiving. A wonderful holiday filled with football, drink, hardy laughter, conversation that hopefully strays away from and not towards heated political debate with your extended family and best of all, coma-inducing food. It is a day spent reminiscing with family and friends and giving thanks for everything that we have while trying to forget that everything we have came at the expense of the Native Americans through conquest, disease and gradually, systematic discrimination and disenfranchisement for those who survived.
A bit too macabre? My apologies. In truth, I enjoy Thanksgiving as much as most, more than many and less than a few; being my first year away from family and friends during this festive period, I wondered how I would feel spending so much time with people I’ve only known for many months/a few months/a few weeks/just met as opposed to spending it with those who I’ve known for most of, if not my entire life.
What I’ve come to realize is that foreigners living abroad, particularly during the holidays celebrated back home (in this case mainly Americans), are like moths attracted to a flame, except in this case the flames are food, drink and other foreigners yearning for something to remind them of what they’re missing out on half way around the world.
While everyone was still tucked away in their beds dreaming of turkey legs, mac’n’cheese, mashed potatoes with gravy….and some were waking up to make these dreams a reality, myself and a conglomeration of foreigners were sitting down to a few rounds of – yup you guessed it – dak galbi. If you can’t get quality traditional Thanksgiving food at an affordable price, then you mine as well dine on some coma-inducing Korean food with Soju and Cass beer to boot.
Unlike in many households the night before or after Thanksgiving, things didn’t get too crazy in Seoul as we all had to work the next day; one could also argue that we were saving our bodies and minds, preparing ourselves mentally for… Rachie’s going away soiree!
Alas, one of the original Seoul Five’s time in Korea was coming to an end; Rachie had gotten here before any of the other four so she truly was the OG of the group. With her contract drawing to an end and having to leave shortly therafter, we decided one final night out in Seoul was a necessity.
A group of us kicked things off Saturday evening at Brick Oven Pizza in Gangnam – Korea is not exactly known for it’s pizza, particularly because they like to put weird things on them like corn, sweet potato, and…shrimp? I know pizza is one of those dishes that have limitless delicious possibilities, but many of those possibilities in Korea seem to hit a taste–bud-offending dead end. Fortunately, Brick Oven Pizza is done western style and is one of the highest rated pizza places in Seoul and it certainly did not disappoint.
After dinner, a conglomerate of foreigners joined forces over at Connor’s place right outside Gangnam station. You knew it was going to be one of those nights when pretty much every person stopped by the local Seven-Eleven to pick up at least one bottle of Soju and an assortment of beer for themselves.
We somehow managed to fit 15+ people into Connor’s studio apartment; the night was spent bantering, playing Nintendo 64, drinking and listening to music usually all at the same time. Fortunately we’re all millennials so multitasking wasn’t an issue.
It wouldn’t have been a proper going away party for Rachie without the OGs of the crew getting together for one final photo shoot. It was a great reminder of all the fun times the five of us have had these past ten months; from our first trip to Busan in the Spring, to eating and drinking our way through Seoul ever since. So without further ado….
Again, it’s not a proper celebration if you’re not poppin bottles, so I put the two that I won from the Halloween party to good use and we went ahead and did the damn thang on the rooftop.
We ended the night by going to Club Mass. I think the name is pretty self-explanatory for the rest of the night. It’s a Korean Club (not a church, although they do serve wine) not unlike any other club anywhere else – the music is loud, the drinks are expensive and the photos taken are non-existent. There may or may not be video evidence of certain individuals dancing in embarrassing fashion on the front and side stages, but in respect to those individuals, we will keep these videos stashed away and leave the reader to guess who could have been the culprits. Needless to say, a most epic of nights/going away party ended in fitting fashion.
Getting out of your comfort zone by moving abroad doesn’t mean you can’t find comfort abroad and this statement couldn’t have rang more true then it did on Sunday evening, not 24 hours from when we began Rachie’s going away soiree. Comfort found its way into our lives in the form of an all you can eat extravaganza at El Pino323, a Mexican restaurant in Itaewon that in my opinion can go toe-to-toe with most Mexican restaurants back home. The picture below of my gargantuan food plate doesn’t do it justice as it’s impossible to see all of the meats I piled on at the bottom, but let’s just say the plate was starting to bend as I finally stopped adding food onto it.
Unfortunately, this was the last time I got to see Rachie as plans to get together the following Friday for one final hang out sesh with the crew fell apart on my end as I had to teach my first advanced level adult English class (more on that another time) but honestly, I don’t think things could have ended on a higher note. We lost a good soldier to the game of life but hey, such is life. Take care Rach, try not to lose your voice/get sick every other day while teaching elsewhere and may the Gods allow for a Seoul OG crew reunion sometime in the future!
I can safely say that the only thing I missed from this Thanksgiving back home were friends, family and outlet shopping at 3AM with the boys but this was offset by time spent with the Seoul Foreigner Fam, which has given me a deeper appreciation and thanks for living abroad. Because what is a person’s time spent abroad but a microcosm of life in general – brief and ultimately fleeting yet meant to be lived on your own terms, expectations be damned.