February 13 & 14
So we all meet at the airport and before we board we have to take a little test to make sure we are "ready" and able to go. Before the trip, we were told that we had to pick up a pill with chopsticks. No big deal, I can use chopsticks. I even tried a pill at home, easy! So Grandmaster (GM) Yun takes out a pill. I swear, this might have been the smallest pill I had ever seen. I mean can a pill that small could be useful? Regardless, today it's usefulness will determine who can and cannot get on the plane. Since there was only a small handful of us that were going for the first time, he only had us first-timers do it. Fortunately all of us were able to pick up the pill right away without any troubles at all. GM Yun then commented how much fun we weren't since no one was struggling with the pill. After that, he let us all board.
This is the first day of the trip, so naturally, we'll be flying all day and night and day again. The dateline kills a day for us hence the reason I merged the two days. Even so, I think the flight to Tokyo was about 12 hours and then from Tokyo to Korea was another 2.5 hours. Both flights were full and I think I got about 30-60 minutes of sleep throughout all the flights. So we finally arrive in Korea at about 10pm where we were picked up by GM Sang Ki Lee (Hapkido). We all piled into his van and got to the hotel around 10:30-11pm. From here we then went and had a Kalbi dinner. Kalbi is basically short rib meat marinated and cut into 50 cent piece sizes. You put a piece of meat on a leaf of lettuce with some shredded spicy green onions, slice of raw garlic and some spicy red sauce. Roll is up and stuff it all in your mouth. Repeat.
As a tradition (which I quickly learned), GM Sang Ki Lee poured us all non-minors Soju bombs. Soju is like a wheat vodka (20% alcohol) and mild flavored. It's like $1 for an 8 oz bottle, very cheap. And the beer out there is very clean and light tasting. Basically tasted like light beer mixed with Perrier. So the Soju bomb is a shot of Soju dropped into a glass of beer. Once it's dropped, you say/yell "Bomber!" and chug the glass while everyone claps and cheers. Keep in mind that the glasses there are typically are small, around 6oz.
After dinner we went across the street to a store and picked up some waters and then back to the hotel at about 1am.
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