Korea and Culture

JJ and I checked into the Marriott, which was free thanks to my reward points, and rested up for a bit.  We had decided that we were going to make a brief stop at the casino before having dinner.  We budgeted about $80 for gambling, and less than 30 minutes after arriving, JJ was already up about $240.  She was playing a “Super Jackpot Party” machine that sent the player to a bonus round if a certain combination came up on the reels.  The player had the chance to choose a number of gift boxes, and JJ was one box away from making some serious money.  Even though she didn’t advance to the big money round, we were happy with her profits.  JJ and I have a method to keep up with our winnings; since the machines no longer dispense coins, if we are up a large amount, we print out a claim ticket and pocket it.  At the end of the night, we cash in all of our tickets.  I added another $60 in tickets to our winnings and since we were up, we decided to sit and play roulette for a spell.  We spent about an hour playing and after a couple of late hits, we broke even and changed out our roulette chips.  We then cashed in our tickets and came away with a healthy profit.   We walked away feeling great and ready for a nice dinner.

We left the casino and made our way to Felix’s Oyster Bar.  This has turned in to our go-to place for seafood.  We ordered our favorite beer and a dozen char-grilled oysters.  We also ordered a couple of shrimp-oyster Po-boys and were enjoying our dinner when suddenly we kept overhearing a group of customers speaking Korean.  The hostess had sat a group of four a few tables behind us, and it was fairly obviously that they really didn’t know what to order.  Since I have been embarrassed before by trying to help a bilingual speaker navigate in English, neither JJ or I got up.  After listening to them struggle for a few minutes, I finally walked over, greeted them in Korean, and asked if I could help.  They were happy with the assistance and my help consisted of getting JJ to translate for them.  They ordered a few different dishes and seemed to like the jambalaya, and they all claimed that it reminded them of bokumbap.  Both the Koreans and the waiter seemed relieved that JJ was their to help translate.  It brought back memories of my first visit to Kimbap Cheonguk, and the nice older lady who spoke enough English to come to my rescue and help me order. At that time, this looked like nothing but a bunch of gibberish.  I can only imagine what the menu at Felix’s looked like to the group of Koreans.

We said goodbye to the grateful Koreans and headed down to Bourbon Street for fun.  We tried to break up our usual New Orleans agenda and try a couple different venues.  We hit Tropical Isle to see if my buddy’s band was playing, and unfortunately, they were scheduled for Saturday afternoon so we missed seeing them.  We did stick around and have a Hand Grenade and listen to the band, The Hangovers.  They were pretty good, but we only caught the last 30 minutes of their last set so we left and moved down to Pazzo’s to listen to their band.  For a Thursday night, the bars were very empty, but we still had a great time.  I was shocked that the bars were so empty since there are two big football games coming up.  The Saints play the Lions in an NFL playoff game on Saturday, and the BCS championship game is on Monday night.  We saw members of both Alabama’s and LSU’s football team enjoying the Quarter and the casino, and ran into a few players hustling back to their hotel to meet their 12 am curfew.  I guess most fans were going to arrive on Friday.  Which was kind of nice since we had the place almost to ourselves.

Potent, but Tasty Hand Grenade

We stayed at Pazzoo’s for awhile even though I wasn’t real happy about paying $27 for two drinks, but the band was good so we stayed for about an hour.  We ended the night at Pat O’ Briens piano bar as usual.  We had one drink, requested a few songs, and then decided to crash out for the night.  It was a nice break from Hattiesburg, and it was great trying a few different establishments.  I actually have a list of other restaurants and bars that I want to visit, but those will have to wait for our next break from school.  We will be back in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but there is no way we will be able to visit any of the more popular restaurants/bars since the city is so crowded.

We woke up late, checked out, and made our way to the Korean grocery store across town.  We had lunch at the Vietnamese restaurant next door, made a few purchases at the grocery, and headed back to Hattiesburg.  We have a little more than a week before our final semester starts, and JJ and I are both excited about getting this last semester behind us.