So I thought I had experienced my fair share of Asian cuisine but no, I was totally unprepared for the meal I had last week. My co-teachers invited me to come eat with them after school. I was told we were having prawns. Ok, fine, I can do seafood right? So they picked me up and we drove to this restaurant about 10 minutes away. The table was typical Korean, long tables where we eat on the floor. I saw frying pans with salt in them, placed intermittently on the tables. Then we all started taking our seats and I waited as the food began to come out.
Well the waiter brought out three giant tupperwear containers filled with shrimp. LIVE shrimp. I was thinking, what did I just get myself into? So these shrimp are seriously jumping in the container, flopping around this way and that. At one point they bumped the top off the container and one jumped and landed right in my soup. It was trying to make a run for it. I screamed as others began to follow suit and quickly pushed back from the table. My co-teacher, Mr. Kim, put the lid back on as though this was normal behavior and I got embarrassed for screaming and began laughing and really couldn't stop. So my teachers were laughing at me and I said that I had to take some pictures. They didn't mind so I busted out my camera and got a few good shots. Well the waiter came by and began taking the live ones out and plopping them in the frying pan. There went the shrimp, twiching as the last bit of life was sucked out of them. I felt a little bad for them. Heads, eyeballs and all thrown in the pot. Then Mr. Kim proceeds to take a live shrimp out, pop the head off and offer it to me. I knew I couldn't refuse so down the hatch. I totally ate a grey, just been killed, shrimp and it was not "on the barbie". Not even close.
So throughout the course of the night, soju was passed around (Korean whisky) and each time a new teacher joined us, they gave me a shot of soju and another raw shrimp as though this was some kind of honor. I took a sip at a time and focused on eating yet another raw shrimp. As the night wore on, Mr. Kim got livlier and livlier, yet his English got worse and worse. It was hysterical since he was the only one who even had a chance of interpreting for me. I ended up downing 4 or 5 by the end of the night.
Eating the cooked shrimp also provided another challenge as I had to then pop the head off and de-peel it. With chopsticks! I consider myself a fairly proficient chopstick user, however, I learned that I cannot under any circumstances pop the head of a shrimp off using them. I had to go American style. Using the old fingers. It took me about 5 minutes to eat one or two shrimp cause I had to wait till they cooled off. I consumed a fair portion throughout our 2 hour meal and thought it was over, but no, I forgot about the rice. Where did I think I was? There is ALWAYS rice! I tried to muscle a few bites down but seriously thought I was gonna puke. Might have been the raw fish rolling around in the stomach. Anyways, had an enjoyable night overall and got to experience my first Korean karaoke night. They call it noriban here. Good times!
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