Mmmm...food....

As promised, my food post.

Now, as I mentioned, we have very little implements for cooking in our apartment, and as we're new to the country and excited to get out and about, we've been doing a lot of eating out.  And it has been delicious.  Prior to coming to Korea, I must confess, I had never had Korean food. As our departure was approaching we kept talking about tracking down a Korean restaurant to give it a try, but at that point it seemed like we might as well wait for the real thing.

Our First Meal:

Our first meal in Korea was lunch-- our handler Sean took us out.  He was hesitant to take us out to get Korean food because, apparently, most Americans don't like it.  But we insisted-- hey, we just spent 30 hours in travel to get to Korea, we want to experience Korea damn it!  

It was very nice that, for that first meal, we had a Korean with us to order the food, explain what everything was, etc.  It was very stress free, and very delicious! 

bimbimbap

Unfortunately I photographed it after mixing it all up-- it looked prettier beforehand.  It's a mixture of beef, veggies, and rice.  

And here's the enormous platter of sides that comes along with it:

So here's the crazy thing about the way Koreans eat: they have all of these "sides," that don't really go together and don't necessarily go with the thing you're eating, and you don't really have to eat them.  I'm constantly thrown off my this-- I feel as though I should eat all of it-- or attempt to. I feel wasteful.  But that's just not how it works in Korea.  The way they eat seems very deconstructed: there are all of these individual elements that add up to a full meal: starches (rice usually), protein, lots of veggies.  There is usually soup-- also to be shared.  And you don't usually have your own plate or bowl, it goes from dish, to chopstick, to mouth. And in my case, sometimes to table or floor (especially soup, this feels like a camp team building exercise.  The spoons are so shallow and it's a long journey from pot to mouth!)  But all of these things don't necessarily work together as a cohesive meal.  If you like grazing--- picking at a little of this and a little of that-- definitely come to Korea. Or at least a Korean restaurant. 

Eating On Our Own:

Eating out when you don't speak the language, or read the language, is at times exceptionally difficult.  Some places have menus with pictures, which is great. We spot a picture that looks appetizing and point.  Places that are western style will often have English on the Menu, but the server doesn't understand the English so, again, we point.  But there are many restaurants where there is neither English nor pictures, and once we've sat down and discover this, I always feel committed.  For example, on Sunday we decided to have sushi so we found a promising looking japanese place.  The menu was nothing but Korean (had there been some Japanese we would have been better off, as I've eaten enough sushi to know the names of most fish).  So, we just pointed randomly as something on the menu.  It wasn't cheap (but was the cheapest thing there, Japanese is expensive here!), and I didn't really like it.  Bummer.  The sashimi was all still partially frozen, which I found very unappealing.

However, the people here are very friendly and try their best to understand us.  If they know any English they try to communicate that way-- but most people here really don't know English.  One neat thing is that it's common, as white people, to get free stuff.  We'll go to a chicken place and get free fries, or we'll go for bbq and get a free extra portion of meat, or we'll go for pizza and get a free slice of cheesecake.  It's pretty awesome.  However, we frequently end up with things we did not order-- and with no ability to explain that we didn't want it.  We usually just eat it anyway and pay.  I don't believe they're attempting to rip us off or anything, and it's hard to argue when they've also given us a bunch of free food. 

One thing that makes eating out easier is that you interact much less with the server than you do back home. Most restaurants have a little button that you push when you want something and, like in a diner, they constantly update your bill and leave it on the table.  When you're ready to leave you go up to the cash register and settle your bill there. 

Korean BBQ:

Korean BBQ may be the greatest thing ever.  You get a little grill right at your table and cook the meat yourself-- the meat is so flavorful and tender.  

And you get onions, garlic, and peppers to throw into the mix as well.  When the meat is all cooked, you take a bit of everything-- especially the ridiculously tasty red sauce (I have no idea what it's called), and wrap it up in a lettuce leaf like so:

Seriously, best thing ever.  I read an article before leaving Philly that Korean BBQ was blowing up there-- so do yourself a favor, and get some.  Your mouth will thank you.

Western Food:

For the first week or so we ate nothing but Korean food because, hey, we were in Korea.  But then we started to want a little variety and familiarity.  Now, we typically eat one Korean meal and one western meal a day (I know, I know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  Except that we all know that's a lie. It's totally dinner-- you could make an argument for lunch-- but it's definitely not breakfast).  There are several things that you can get easily in Korea: fried chicken, for example.  There is fried chicken everywhere, and it is every bit as good/bad as it is back home.  Coffee-- we made the assumption that everyone would drink tea, because we're in Asia, but Koreans are obsessed with coffee, and overpriced sweet coffee beverages.  Waffles-- for some reason, waffles are everywhere.  Donuts--- ditto.  Other things are less easy to find.  While there are many places that serve burgers, they mostly taste...weird.  Like the meat isn't really ground beef.  However, there is one place called Kraze Burgers that is really good, though none too cheap.  Pizza is everywhere, but I'm largely skeptical of it. There is a really good place that we found that has good Italian style pizzas, and there is a place downtown run by a westerner that has good Chicago Style pizza.  

Things that I have not seen at all: Deli sandwiches, real dill pickles, anything with peanut butter, soft pretzels, and Mexican food. (this is probably an incomplete list, but I'm blanking at the moment).

So, the food is really good-- and there is plenty of good Western food as well.  As long as you aren't craving something really specific, I think most Americans would be fine eating in Korea.   

Hope this was at least mildly interesting-- I love food, so I'm liable to bring it up a lot.  

-Meg

Home

Cue Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes:

Here's a little photo tour of our Korean apartment:

Our front door-- also, to the left, our closets for all of our clothes and to the right the bathroom.

The bathroom.  This was a huge relief because it would seem that not all Korean apartments have a real shower.  Many have a hand held shower head and a drain in the floor.  The shower is a bit crazy-- the temperature in the water shifts erratically from boiling lava hot to freezing cold.  Also, there is an over head shower (which is, thankfully, tall enough for even Dan), then there is "body" shower heads, which are four mini spouts directed straight at--you guessed it-- the body, and there is a hand held shower head as well. Odd, but serviceable.

The living area: we have a big 'ol TV that plays two english speaking stations-- exclusively crime shows it would seem, as I've seen nothing but CIS and NCIS.  And one time, strangely, Spartacus.  Not really my cup of tea.  We're hoping to track down a cord to connect out laptops to the TV so we can at least play some DVDs we brought from home.  

Our kitchen: Pretty self explanatory.  The cabinet to the far left (cut off in the picture) is actually a fridge.  The silver thing above the sink is called a "kimchee refrigerator."  As we're not crazy about kimchee, it's just more shelving. And, what's that below the stove top you say?  An oven?  No, friend!  Not an oven-- it's our washer / dryer combo! 

(here's dan attempting to translate the buttons on the washer-- as they are all in korean.  Mostly we just hit the big button that makes it go and hope for the best.

So, as I'm sure you've pieced together, our kitchen lacks an oven.  And a microwave.  All we have is two burners.  We may buy a toaster oven to remedy this, but for the mean time we've just been eating out every meal (I'll post more on that later).

The World of Warcraft corner.

Then *thump* *thump* *thump* up the stairs to...

Our lofted bed!  Now, even I can't stand up here.  Poor Daniel needs to essentially crawl.  We pretty much only go up here to sleep, as the low ceilings are spectacularly annoying.  But, it's much preferable to having our bed in the middle of our living room like in a typical studio apartment!  

Aaaand, last but not least:

The view from our 9th story window.  We can see City Hall, and some mountains in the background. Very pretty.

So... All in all, we got very lucky.  Our apartment is nice-- and not as small as I feared.  If the loft were a full size bedroom in would be pretty comprable as our apartment in Omaha. Thanks for coming along on our tour!

I've got a lot of photos and stories stored up for some future posts.  Will update again soon!

-Meg

First Day of Teaching

To begin with we did not know Tuesday was going to be our first day.  This fact turned out to the theme of the day. 

We didn’t know.

Apparently the other staff (all Korean by the way) have been anxious for us to start working as we were delayed in the moving process.  We were told that nothing more than introduction was required for the first week.  Then our boss places before Meg and me a giant pile of books and notes apparently organized by a mad man.  We waded into the mess to figure out our schedule and what we were teaching to whom.  Our handler, Sean, seemed vaguely amused by our befuddlement.  He made up for it by buying us smoothies at the coffee shop down stairs.

After working with Korean children I have concluded that all children are fundamentally the same.  Some are hyper, some are quite, some are smart and some embarrass easily.  Our youngest students are 11 and the oldest are fifteen.  They think it is hilarious that we cannot pronounce their names.  Only one of the classes had American names and one of the students calls himself Iron Man.  You have never lived until you have shouted across the room “Iron Man, Stop Kicking Alex!”  Their names are difficult to pronounce which is compounded by the fact that they speak softly (almost whispering) when directly speaking to an adult.  If I didn’t know any better I would guess I was being punked.  At first I tried to write their names down but it confused me more.  I think next time I will have all of them fill out a piece of paper with their names in both English and Korean.  Maybe that will work… maybe.  They are fascinated by my height and have no reservation about showing their amazement.  Every class asked me how tall I was which presented yet another cultural barrier.  As a proud ‘Merican I use the Old English System of measure and my students (like everyone else in the world) use the rational Metric system.  I told them my height in inches and they just looked at me confused.

Dinner was served which was rice and kimchee.  I spent a solid ten minutes trying to figure out how to open the rice steamer  I didn’t know there was such an appliance. 

By the end of the night we were exhausted but we still had one challenge left…

THE BUS

Here are a list of our impediments

1)      We do not have cell phones

2)      We do not know the number for our handler Sean

3)      We do not know the address of the school

4)      We do not have the address for our apartment

5)      We do not speak any Korean

6)      It is dark out so we may not see our apartment building

7)      We do not know how much bus fare is

The bus driver, to his credit, was very concerned for us.  He kept asking us where we were going.  At least I assume that was what he was asking; he obviously only spoke Korean. Every time a young person got on the bus he asked, “yuhng uh?” which is Korean for English. Finally, a lovely young lady knew enough to ask us if we were headed for city hall.  We can see city hall from our window so we just said yes.  We got off at city hall and made the hike back to our apartment.

On my way up I bought two Korean hefe-weisse.  We earned them.

GUHN BEH!

-Dan

How We Got Here

Hello! Dan and I have been in Korea a little more than two days, and I already feel as though I could write a novel (ok, maybe just a novella) on our experiences so far.  This post will be dedicated to our journey.  I’ll label the different sections for easier skimming.  Buckle up kids, this might get long.

The Road (Or, um, Sky) Goes Ever On And On

Our flight departed at 3:20pm Saturday afternoon, but we left good and early to stop off and have a last meal at home.  We hit the Country Squire, a diner we frequented when Dan was living in Broomall (and sorely missed when we realized Omaha didn’t have diners).

We arrived at the airport with plenty of time—we didn’t even get “randomly” selected for an invasive search, as we half expected given our rushed travel arrangements to a foreign country.  As we departed Philly I snapped a few goodbye shots from the plane window:

The flight from Philly to Houston was uneventful, aside from the ridiculously uncomfortable seats and nonexistent personal space.  We were grateful for the layover in Texas, just to get off the blasted plane.

Our plane in Houston was over an hour delayed, so we had a good three hours to kill.  We decided to go all out for our last meal in the US, and set about finding a likely institution to satiate a year’s worth of American gluttony. We found this great bar and restaurant called Pappa Deaux—if you ever have a long lay over in Houston I highly recommend it.  It was even on it’s own separate floor, so it didn’t even feel like we were at an airport (and given the extensive traveling we had only just begun, this was a pleasant illusion). 

As I’m sure you can tell by the bizarre silent “x,” it was a Cajun Soul food joint, undoubtedly a chain I had never experienced having never been in the south before.  We asked for a beer, not being asked to specify size, and received this:

I guess everything really is bigger in Texas!

My last meal: Shrimp Po Boy.  Yum.

Our American pallet satiated, we went back to our terminal and waited for our very delayed plane, and if it weren’t for the soothing presence of two monstrous tumblers of beer, might have been anxious about what this delay would mean for our connecting flight in L.A.

The flight from Houston to L.A. was much less uncomfortable than the previous one, which by this time of night proved to be a hindrance.  I was determined not to sleep—I wanted to get as close as possible to a reasonable sleep time in Korea, to make the transition easier.  (However, as they’re 13 hours ahead this was probably not a reasonable aim.)  It was about 11pm local time, 12am to me, and I was chockablock full Po Boy and beer in a dark lulling plane, so the desire to sleep was fairly imposing.  However, I managed to keep myself awake by focusing 100% percent of my attentions to the inflight movie—which probably only required about 10% of my attention, as it was Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, a film so dreadful that not even the combined talents of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Michael Caine could salvage.  By the time we arrived in Los Angeles, it was 3am in EST, midnight to the locals, and I was straining to keep my eyes open.  We were becoming worried that the long delay meant we had a much shorter layover.  We had been vaguely worried about this portion of the journey from the start, because of the ominous print out we got when we received our boarding passes saying that we would have to take a bus to find the location for our next flight.  Having never flown internationally, I was not aware that these flights depart from an entirely different part of the airport.

So, we were all the way in the back of the previous plane, and despite the flight attendants urging to let people with connecting flights leave first, we had to wait the twenty minutes or so for every single passenger ahead of us to slowly collect their carry-ons and depart (God bless America).  So, by the time we were free from the plane, we had approximately 30 minutes to figure out where the heck in LAX (an airport we had never been to) our next flight would depart from.  Exhaustion hastily yielded to panic.  We could not miss our flight!

Fear and Running in Los Angeles

A lady at the terminal as we departed told us that we needed to follow the signs for baggage claim and exit the building then look for a bus to take us to the International terminal.  So we booked it, sprinting down people movers like madmen, until we were out in the LA heat and overwhelmed by all of the different buses we were seeing.  Which one was it?  What happens if we get on the wrong bus?  We ask another employee, and she said that the buses make a huge loop, and it would probably be faster for us to walk.  She pointed up at the sign above us that said “7” and told us to continue down to “4” where we would find the “Tom Bradley” terminal.  The idea of the bus made us nervous so we heeded her advice and began speed walking / jogging down the sidewalk.  My backpack was full of every possible thing I could fit in it, it was hot despite being nighttime, and I was wearing flip flops, so all in all this was an unpleasant, ungraceful, and frantic sojourn down the unappealing cement exterior of the Los Angeles airport. 

If this woman was correct in saying that walking was faster, it must have been one hell of a bus ride, because we were jogging and it was far from quick.  The “7”s above us continued on ahead for ages, then finally yielded to a quarter of a mile of “6”s, then (I was grateful to see) “5”s, and at long last “4”.  But “4” was definitely not the international terminal.  We had about 20 minutes until our flight boarded and were beginning to wonder if we had been given wrong information.  Do we turn back?  Keep going?  The sidewalk curved here, so we couldn’t see what lay ahead well.  We decided to continue on, we had come this far.  We walked on and eventually began seeing the names of airlines that sounded decidedly international, and began to feel relieved.  Eventually we found the large sign that said “Tom Bradley” and knew for sure we were in the right vicinity.  As we hurried on, looking for “Asiana,” I contemplated how decidedly un-international the name “Tom Bradley” sounded.  Asiana was a about as far as it could be, but eventually we found it and were beginning to feel optimistic that we might make our flight after all.  We still had 15 minutes.

We entered and asked someone where our terminal was.  He informed us that we needed new Boarding Passes and pointed us in the right direction.  We had our passports scanned and were given new passes and pointed in the right direction for out terminal.  But first we had to go through security again (which was, perhaps, obvious—but we hadn’t thought of it).  There was a bit of a line, and I was internally freaking out.  I went through the scanner, along with my carry-ons, without a problem.  However, Dan’s bag raised some sort of suspicion, and a man, who was in absolutely no rush, slowly looked through his bag, emptied its contents, and sent it through the scanner again.  When it was deemed acceptable, we were jamming his belongings back in and dashing down the long hall way to our terminal (and noticing that we were just about the only white people around, so we must of looked pretty crazy).  So when we arrived, thankfully in time, we were drenched in sweat, out of breath, and (in my case) wheezing marginally.  And that is how we exited the country.

Leaaaving on a Jet Plane…

The plane we took from L.A. to Incheon, South Korea was a Boeing 777, which for those of you who don’t know (like me), is absolutely monstrous.  We boarded and found our seats, which had a bit more legroom than on our previous flights, but was by no means roomy or luxurious.  It was hardly a comfy place to be for 12 hours.

The next thing that I’m about to stay may sound racist, but know that it’s not.  The flight attendants were all eerily identical.  Now, understand, that I have no problem telling Asian people apart.  It’s just that these girls all had their hair in identical buns, they all had their makeup done the exact same way, they all had the same uniform: pencil skirt, blazer, and scarf tied around their neck, and it fit them all exactly the same way, and they were all very pretty (you must be this attractive to fly?).  It felt kind of like something out of the 1960s movie meets the Stepford Wives.  Dan and I kept trying to count how many of them there were, with no success.

The flight was operating on Korean time, so as soon as we reached altitude and leveled off we were given a beef dinner.  Now, it was about 4:30pm Korean time, but more like 4 o’clock in the morning our time, so a beef dinner sounded a bit strange.  But, it was free and I wanted to adjust to a Korean schedule so I attempted to eat it.  Let me tell you, just because you know that you’re changing time zones, doesn’t mean your stomach does.  And a beef and potato dinner at 4am is not exactly a great idea.  So, about four bites in, I had heartburn like you wouldn’t believe, and a good ten-hour flight ahead of me.  If I could turn back time…

The flight was pretty uneventful aside from the sheer length of it.  There were all the typical annoyances of flying: crying babies, having to make people get up to let you out to use the bathroom, close quarters, and turbulence.  I managed to sleep for the vast majority of the flight.  Not the kind of sleep where you lose consciousness for a long stretch of time and then wake up feeling refreshed.  The kind of sleep where you wake up every 20 to 30 minutes because your neck / back / legs hurt, try unsuccessfully to reposition yourself more comfortably, and repeat.  The gentleman sitting next to Dan proved to be very nice, he gave us his information and told us to contact him with any questions or issues, and offered to help us when we reached the airport. 

The seats each had little televisions in front of them, which had either in flight entertainment (which cycled continually, and I never managed to catch one anywhere near the beginning of a movie) and a map with a plane that showed how far we’d come.  It was a pity it was dark out, I would have loved to have looked out the window and know we were passing Japan below, etc.  In a way this was neat, but in another way it made the flight seem even longer.  Every time I jerked awake I would check it and find that we had only moved marginally across the pacific. 

Eventually, after a painfully long 12 hours, we landed in Incheon.  It was too dark to catch a first glimpse of Korea, as I had hoped.  When I finally stood my legs felt incredibly sore and my back stiff.  It’s one of those strange moments where you long desperately to move around, but doing so is very uncomfortable.  We exited the plane and made our way to immigration where we had to wait in a very long line to have our passports scanned, our fingerprints taken (so much for my life of crime), and our photographs taken. The worst part of this is that the picture showed up on the screen very largely, and this may be the most unflattering picture of me ever taken. Ever.  A day and a half of travel, restlessness, and fatigue is definitely not beautifying. 

After claiming our bags without difficulty, we exchanged some of our US money for Korean Won and exited the airport.  We found a gentleman with a sign that said “Dan Keisling” (I guess I was an after thought), who was in charge of making sure we got on our bus to Gwangju without a problem.  He didn’t speak English, so we communicated with a lot of pointing.  Soon enough we had tickets in hand, and just had to wait the hour for the bus to arrive.  Being the only white people around and having a huge pile of luggage that was inevitably in everyone’s way no matter where we put it led to a lot of staring.  However, there was a very nice man who spoke English and helped us at the Bus stop, he too gave us his card and told us to email if we had any problems.  This man is something of an iconic person for us, as (aside from people at our school) he is the last person we’ve met who speaks English. 

Korean Buses don’t have Bathrooms

The final leg of our journey was a four-hour bus ride from Incheon to Gwangju.  Despite being utterly exhausted, I was looking forward to seeing some of the Korean countryside.  Now, if you’ve actually read this whole absurdly long post, you will know that Dan and I arrived at the LAX international terminal having just run a good half a mile (I think it was more, but Dan says otherwise) with burdensome bags.  We got a bottle of water each and downed that in a few minutes, then had nothing to drink but the tiny thimble sized airplane cups of water that were provided twice during the flight.  So, by the time we were waiting for the bus, we were well aware that we were dehydrated.  I was feeling pretty lousy as a result.  So Dan bought us two absolutely monstrous bottles of water (seriously, Korean bottles of water are ridiculously big), and we proceeded to down half of them while we waited.  We then boarded the bus, which was rather nice, and set out.  About five minutes in, I realized that there was no bathroom.  And I hadn’t used a restroom since an hour before the plane landed.  And I just downed a ridiculous amount of water.  And the bus ride was 4-5 hours.

Whence began one of the most uncomfortable rides of my life.  Within ten minutes I had to go.  By 45 minutes it was getting uncomfortable.  By an hour and a half this was becoming a desperate situation.  I was in classic cross-legged, I-have-to-pee posture.  Dan and I kept exchanging looks that said, “I don’t think I can make it.”  And no one spoke English, nor do we know enough Korean to ask if there is a stop.  Every bump in the road made the situation worse. 

Fortunately, after two hours, the bus pulled over at a rest stop and we were able to empty our tanks and enjoy the second half of the journey much more comfortably.  The strange thing about Korea is just how not strange it is.  It doesn’t feel that foreign.  The people look like people anywhere (they’re all Asian, obviously, but their hair and dress are no different than back home), the architecture is similar to any other place I’ve been, and the landscape is full of greenery and rolling hills, not unlike central Pennsylvania (if central Pennsylvania had tons of rice paddies)    

By the time we reached Gwangju we were sore and tired, but excited to finally be in Korea and to see some of the City.  We’d been traveling for what felt like an age, but it was about 10:45am Korean time, so we had a lot of day ahead of us.

Recap

45 minute drive to Philly airport

+

2 hours of waiting in Philly

+

3 hour and 20 minute flight to Houston

+

3 hour layover in Houston

+

3 hour flight from Houston to L.A.

+

30 minutes running around LAX

+

12 hours from LA to Incheon

+

20 minutes waiting at immigration

+

1 hour waiting for bus

+

4 hour bus ride to Gwangju

+

15 minute drive from bus station to apartment

30 hours and 10 minutes of travel

As this has already reached an unreasonable length, I will save our first impressions of Gwangju, pictures of our apartment, and an account of our first Korean meal for a later post. 

Remember: safety first. then teamwork,

-Meg