Ser-bis-sa

Last weekend Riley and I went out to dinner at a small restaurant in the countryside. The countryside here is Korea is really beautiful.  It is also not frequently visited by foreigners, so we stood out a lot.  This means we got a lot of "service" which is pronounced "ser-bis-sa" since there is no "v" or silent "e" in Konglish.  "Service" is a concept that I find very interesting.  Shop owners, restaurant owners, market venders, and pretty much everyone who owns a business give the customers free things and call it "service."  I think its to create a good feeling and have return customers.  Some people will not even buy from a vender that doesn't give them some service.  Some examples are an extra handful of lettace, and few more sticks of glue for a hot glue gun, and not charging for extra food at a resturant.
This brings me back to that restaurant we went to in the countryside.  There were only 3 employees, the owner, her son, and a cook in the back.  Each employee gave us "service" in their own way, mainly due to the fact we were foreigners.  We ordered the house special, the best sam gap sal (Korean barbeque) in Korea.  As service the owner gave us an extra cut of meat, or I should say, fat.  It was the part of the pig belly that was all fat and skin.  This is probably not unusual to those of you who grew up on a farm, but it was strange for us to eat something that we could identify as a female pig.  It wasn't too bad...
Then her son gave us service we were used to, a bottle of coca-cola.  This is very common. 
The last employee in the back gave us something we had never gotten before, scorched rice.  Its a little hard to describe.  When people make a lot of rice, they leave the cooker on a while, just scooping out the middle.  This means the layer on the bottom becomes kind of hard and crispy.  This is traditionally served as dessert in a soup, or you can just snack on it.  So, when we ordered rice to go with out meal, the rice was at its end and the lady in the back decided to give the leftover scorched rice to us.  We had to hide it from the rest of the customers because it was a really nice thing to give and they didn't want other people expecting something similar.  This restaurant gave us the most service of any we have been to before, so we need to go back sometime.  That's how it works.