tanya the russian prostitute

welcome to this edition of tanya's sometimes incoherent ramblings.

last night i went to "cool bar" for the drink special- 20,000 won all you can drink ANYTHING. i'd die if i heard that special back home, but i've come to realize that here drinks are cheap anyway, so i don't think i saved an extraordinary amount of money, although i'm pretty sure i got my $20 worth.

so i was having a good time, made friends with charles, who is either the bartender or owner, i'm not sure, but we thought it would be fun to write an email to karla, who lived here before me and was in a band that always played there.

then we decided to go to jrock, which is where the prostitution part comes in. i was talking to 3 guys- 2 of them seemed pretty cool and another was a drunken mess- it was his birthday. these two guys were trying to pawn me off onto the birthday guy, and i kept saying i wasn't interested. i managed to get away and was dancing with alisun and rika when these Russian girls came up to me, and one said to me "you are so pretty! you are russian?" and i said no... i don't know why she came up to me really, but later on my contact fell out and i went to the bathroom with rika and alisun to put it back in. of course, with no contact solution my eye started burning like crazy and watering and turned very red. the same russian girl happened to be in the bathroom and took it upon herself to start "wiping my tears away"- i think this has been the most bizarre moment in korea to date. meanwhile, alisun and rika were standing behind her making "why is she doing that?" faces. whatever, i guess she was trying to help her fellow "russian" out.

i would like to take this moment to clear up the meaning of "russian." although these girls were russian by nationality, it is still unclear whether or not they were prostitutes, but the terms "russian" and "prostitute" usually go hand-in-hand here in korea. usually when people ask if you're russian (i hear it's common that tall light-haired blue-eyed female foreigners are asked this, and they usually they take offense to this because usually there's a hint of "are you a prostitute?" in the question)

back in the us, a lot of people asked if i was russian while i was working at borders. i had a lot of russian customers who came in and ordered espresso- usually they were gruff old men who looked at my name tag and said "tanya is russian name- are you russian?" back home i didn't take it so much as an insult. last night was the first time i was asked this here, though.

so then it was back to the three stooges, but this time it was just one guy who wanted to talk to me. i told him i didn't want to be pawned off onto his friend, even if it was his birthday. at this point he said something like "well i want to go home with you tonight." well, sign me up man!! i thought you'd never ask! and i thought koreans were blunt. well turns out, after rika came in to kind of "save me" we discovered that they thought i was a whore. awesome. apparently they had me "mistaken for someone else." a russian prostitute perhaps?

and now you may be thinking "what were you wearing to make these people think you were a prostitute?" just a normal shirt- albeit sleeveless, but not anything too revealing, paired with some normal jeans, not even tight. then again, the russian girls weren't dressed like whores either. perhaps it was the giant pricetag on my back.

so, prostitution aside, it was a fun night, resulting in me not leaving jrock until 5 am. tonight's actually 80s night at jrock, but i'm skipping out on that, don't really feel like going out tonight, although the 10,000 won cover is hard to resist- all you can drink draft beer plus one shot. so tonight i have a hot date with the tv- american idol is right now, and bo bice is singing as i type. it's the semi-finals, week 2, and he just sang an awesome version of whipping post. seriously man, that guy has talent.