The Skinnies

Sou-Ji is leaving for college. She’s the secretary and although she’s only 18 years old, we love her, and she will be a greatly missed friend and familiar face in Daejeon. Michelle and Sunny took us (all of the girls who work at Kid’s College and Josh) out last night as a little going away party for Sou-ji. We were taken to VIPS – a buffet. I was imagining the typical kinds of buffets back in the States that consistent of a smorgasbord of foods that are not considered edible in my book, but this was nothing of the sort. We were seated quickly, but like most situations in Korea, indecisiveness ensued, and it took us another thirty-five minutes before anyone made a decision on what to order. For some reason no one understood how the menu worked and the girls kept asking us what we wanted. They repeatedly put the only two menus on the table in front of us as if we could read what they said and make the final decision for the entire table. All of these small subtleties have something to do with their culture and no one wanting to seem pushy, forward or intrusive. I respect all of that, but I was getting hungry, so I decided to go check out the buffet and leave Josh to patiently do the back-and-forth with our co-workers who were desperately trying to piece together short strands of English words to create somewhat coherent English thoughts, not sentences.

The buffet was magnificent. Shrimp, smoked salmon, escargot, fried chicken, veggie soups, fruits, pasta, pizza, a vast array of salads . . . need I go on? I came back to the table gleaming. “It’s amazing!” I said. “I want the buffet.”

“You want, um, seafood?” Min asked while pointed to a picture on the menu of an enormous seafood platter that consisted on prawns, lobster tails, shrimp, scallops and salmon.

“A seafood platter and the buffet? No. Are you?”

“Oh no, I . . . I’m get steak.” She replied.

I was confused. Why would anyone order a meal when there’s the buffet?

“Oh, we get buffet too. Both.” Min explained.

“You’re going to eat a steak and the buffet?”

“I am!” Announces Josh

Everyone at the table, aside from me, orders a steak that inevitably comes with multiple side dishes, as does every Korean meal. We all make our way to the buffet. Josh and I spot a weird western girl that we had seen on the subway a couple of weeks earlier and are momentarily distracted from the incredible display of food because we must stare at her and recall where we saw her last (she dresses Goth with blue hair in South Korea. It would be impossible not to notice her).
I pile a stack of French fries onto my plate only to realize they are sweet potato fries, but the buffet has salt so I’m in heaven anyway. Tomatoes with cheese and olive oil? Yes, please. Fruit salad, fruit and yogurt, everything even remotely western is on my plate, unless it contains red meat, of course. We have not even finished our plates from the buffet when the steaks arrive. I sit for a minute watching everyone dig into his or her steak and side dishes. I think about returning to the buffet for a moment, but I am so conscience of looking like a fat, greedy American, so I sit overly aware of being lady-like and polite. After a few minutes I decided to hell with it and returned to the buffet.

Fried chicken. I apologized to myself before I even put it on my plate, but it looks so good with this sweet and sour sauce Korean style and they pride themselves on their chicken here, so I breakdown and there the little strips are on my plate. By the time I arrive back at the table and am cutting into my chicken the Korean girls are pretty much done with their entire steaks, side dishes and the first plate from the buffet. Josh is cutting the last half of his steak very slowly and I can tell that he won’t be able to finish it. He has that lethargic, full look in his eyes.

“Ok, we go back to buffet.” Min declares.

“Dessert?” I ask hopefully.

“Uh . . . no, pasta. You have?”

“Me? Oh, no. I think I’m too full for pasta now.”

The four petite, I wasn’t-even-that-small-when-I-was-ten, girls go back to the buffet for several different kinds of pasta and pizza and croissants and more meat. Josh and I sit at the table and look at each other in some kind of amazement or confusion. We watch them eat several more plates full of food. I’m thinking that there is no possible way these girls are going to eat dessert now, but they do and coffee as well. Frozen yogurt, little cakes, and fruit with yogurt. It’s incredible. I’m actually somewhat annoyed. These astoundingly thin girls just piled more food into their stomachs than I could in three or four days and they are thinner that I could ever be. I am almost positive they could out-eat my brother. Josh knows exactly what I am thinking. He looks at me and in a low voice says, “That’s when you know it’s genetics and not diet.” I feel better about it all now. It just happens to be in their cards and not so much in my Anglo-Saxon-Greek mix.

We stay at the restaurant laboriously trying to communicate with our co-workers. After quite a while, we decided to find a bar and hang out a while longer. This process lagged on as no one could decide where to go and they kept asking us where we wanted to go even though we had never been to any of these places and only vaguely knew where we were. Min eventually decided on a place, because she is the least indecisive in a culture that almost demands indecisiveness. It’s a clean little spot on the fourth floor. It’s smoky, but not dingy. The waiter brings over a menu that Min opens and starts pointing at enormous platters of fried foods and fruit. She speaks in Korean for a minute and then asks Josh what he wants. He takes her to be joking, and laughingly points at an oversized platter of cheese sticks, fried chicken, mounds of fries and fruit slices.

Min nods, “Ok, you want?” She’s pointing at the picture on the menu.

Josh is smirking, “Yea, ok, that one.”

We both think they’re joking because it had not been but an hour ago that these girls piled plates and plates of food into their stomachs. But to our astonishment she orders this grossly oversized portion of food and one small pitcher or Korean beer for the table. Josh and I laugh because there is nothing else to do, and they don’t understand what’s funny and we couldn’t possibly explain so we pass it off and say,

“Nothing. Nothing’s funny.”