Eh?

It's funny, but I think the culture I am learning most about here in Korea is not the culture that exists 8,000 miles away from my home, but that which exists only a few hundred. Canada. Maybe it had to do with growing up in Southern California, where Mexico was our closer neighbor but I've never really given that massive country due North much thought. Until I came to Korea. Last night I ended up hanging out in a sports bar in Itaewon- a very foreigner friendly area-to watch a hockey game with a bunch of co-workers. Everyone of them with the exception of myself and one other, are from Canada and it just realy hit home how different that culture is from our own. I mean they speak English. But they also speak French. Do you know theres a tradition of pieing their prime ministers? As in taking a pie and shoving it in the face of the leader of their country? Or that they, technically at least, still look at Queen Elizabeth as their monarch. She's still on all their currency. I learned about Don Cherry, a former NHL coach and now a pop culture mainstay who is known for wearing absurd jackets when doing his half time commentary and who is so iconic that the room was silenced and the volume raised when he came on. I tasted my first Ceasar, a ridiculously popular Bloody Mary type drink with clam juice, that I had heard about for weeks but which the bar had not been able to serve because of their lack of clamato juice. As soon as the owner entered- all decked out in his hockey paraphenelia- the bar erupted into joy and at least 3 people at every table in the bar started ordering them and kept them coming until the game was over. Best of all, I got to see how incredibly caught up everyone got with this game. I mean, hockey? In the State's we're all about football all the time. In Europe it's soccer. Korea seems really into baseball. Canada, however, fulfills every stereotype and is ALL about hockey.