I'm obese

Using the CDC regulations for Body Mass Index measurement, I come out to a hefty 30 points or so, 30 and higher is considered obese. Now, everyone knows that the BMI is simply used to measure how "dense" someone is and those with higher muscle appropriation would score higher on the BMI and doesn't necessarily mean they have copious amounts of fat stored.

That being said, I've actually lost quite a bit of weight here since coming to Korea even with eating the same amount/more than I did when I was back home. Actually, I think I drink much much more than back home. Soju sales do quite well here. I go to the gym quite a bit, just as I did back home, and just the same, the amount of progress I've had here is substantially higher as well.

This all leads me to think about the old mantra - you are what you eat. If you eat horrible foods filled with hormones, starch, and countless additives, you in turn will be filled with such delectable items. Oh, I forgot one thing, American food is filled with a grip load of corn. If you take some ground beef from the supermarket, cook it straight, you'll taste the corn straight away.

Since coming here I've noticed how healthy I've become. I don't feel like absolute shit after eating a nicely portioned meal. Some people say such meals are "hearty", I say such meals are full of crap ingredients. One thing I've noticed is the size of chickens here. They're tiny by American standards. I remember when my family raised some chickens in the backyard and when my mother prepared them for dinner, they didn't have nearly as much meat as normal store bought chickens, such chickens, as everyone knows, are pumped full of hormones because Americans have an obsession with nice white meat.

What bothers me is how effing fat America is. It seems that it's "okay' for people to be overweight and in some cases, extremely so. Yet we have no one to blame but ourselves. Cheap food, namely from fast food joints and such, are loaded with junk which then proceed to fill up the fat storage of Americans at an alarming rate.

So then people are are extra large and with these extra few pounds they develop problems with their health which in turn leads them to the medical system and insurance companies whose sole option then is then to prescribe drugs for the condition. It's all part of this viscous cycle.

If we all are able to watch what we eat, then so much better for all of us.

It's like AA

Taking it one day at a time.

Some days I feel pretty good and I feel like I could stay abroad for quite awhile, other times I feel like I just want to go home and be with everything that I'm familiar.

I tell myself this is simply a part of growing up - getting away and maturing.

I tell myself that everything's going to stay the same at home - all my friends tell me so, every time I'd ask them how everything was they'd say it's pretty much how I left it.

But I realize why I feel like this. It's the feeling of anxiety of not being at home and the thought of maybe missing out on something, something epic and extraordinary.

Also, it may just be that it's during break now and everyone's out doing stuff and I'm in Seoul.

A Linguistic Adventure

My Vietnamese skills are quite horrendous, to be sure. Any Vietnamese speaking friend of mine back home can attest to that and there are also two more examples in Korea that simply add to the testimonials.

Example #1
My homies and I went down to Ansan to get some legit pho and get some balut. In Ansan, there is a kind non Korean Asian Market Place complete with stores and goods catering to Vietnamese, Indonesian, Chinese, Filipino, and I'm sure much more. We go to this Vietnamese restaurant that I've been to before with my friend Christy and proceed to order. We all get pho and we order some balut for those in our group whom are brave enough to try it. I sure hope I used "whom" correctly there.

So we eat and into our meal I ask our Vietnamese waitress for something. Now, as a background, there are three Vietnamese dialects, Southern, Central, and Northern, I speak the southern one and our waitress spoke northern. So I ask her for this little side dish and she couldn't understand. I then try to articulate a little bit more and add more of an accent. No dice. I tried one more time just to be sure before I gave up and asked my Korean friend in English to ask the nice, patience Vietnamese waitress in Korean for something that I wanted.

Turns out they didn't have it.

Example #2
My homies and I stumbled upon a random Vietnamese restaurant in the middle of Suwon the other day and we decided to head inside because they actually had Vietnamese writing on the menu. I've stumbled upon many pho places in Korea and I always test them out by first asking if they speak Vietnamese in Vietnamese and then trying the iced coffee. I asked the ajumma that greeted us if she spoke Vietnamese and she gave a blank look and I thought it was another epic fail. That was until someone from the back came and spoke Vietnamese! My friends and I were delighted so we sat down for some iced coffee and other things.

So while we drank our coffee we spoke with the waitress - my friends in Korean with her and I spoke Vietnamese with her. Rather funny because we were translating back and forth since there wasn't a common language that we all spoke. The waitress asked if I had been to Vietnam before, now quick background check again - Vietnamese is a tonal language, so making the same phonemes with different pitches result in drastically different meanings, and I told her I haven't. Good good.

Then she asks me why. Of course, I could give her a normal reason like being in college, having no money, or not having time. Which I did, I told her I didn't have time to go because I've been busy since graduating and coming to Korea. Funny thing is, the word "time" sounds a lot like the word for "wife" in Vietnamese. Guess which one I said?

The nice waitress then proceeds to ask how old I am, why I didn't have a wife, and give my friends and I more free food. She also tells us to come back. True story.