Korean Pimp Juice

Koreans are all about energy drinks. Who knew? I certainly didn't. When you go into the grocery store, there is a huge energy drink section. In the 7-11, my city has two 7-11's but they don't have slurpies or big gulps at all... what's the point? The 7-11 has a wide variety of these energy drinks. They are easily identified because they come in very small glass bottles.

At school, teachers or someone brings in these drinks all of the time and hands them out to the teachers. So far I have had one drink that was super fortified with vitamin C. I've had the red hot Korean ginseng drink. Korea is famous for growing the best ginseng around. The teachers explained to me that this drink is very good for sexual stamena. It seemed inappropriate at the time, but who am I to question the establishment? I've also had a variety of unidentified Korean energy drinks.

It's a huge market here. This must be due to the lack of caffeine in the country. You cannot buy black tea here if your life depended upon it. All you can get is green tea and barley tea. Believe me, there is only so much of this tea that you can drink before needing good old Lipton tea with caffeine. There is coffee here, but it is of such poor quality. There are some good coffee bars in the city, but at work you're at the mercy of the coffee machine, that adds powdered mix to hot water. Not the recipe for quality.

This is the reason that I'm so tired each day. First I thought it was jet lag, but it's been nearly a month since I left. Then I thought it was because the school day goes until 5 not until 2:30 like U.S. schools. Now I realise that at school I drink tea, lots of it. During the day I drink pepsi, lots of it. I was a caffeine addict. Now, I have basically gone cold turkey and it's killing me. I need me some caffeine. I know some people will think that I should just stop drinking caffeiene and that my body will reach homeostasis and I'll live forever in strawberry fields and such not. Reality check, I don't drink, I don't smoke. Don't take away my caffeine, I need it. I'm like most Americans, my main source of calories comes from caffeinated beverages.