Food, Glorious Food!

Another thing I’m frequently asked about is the food here in South Korea. A few things about the food: 1. In general, it IS spicy. While I’ve found that, most times, they try to achieve that “umami” thing for balance of flavors, whereby a dish has all the different flavors your tongue can distinguish (i.e. sweet, salty, bitter, sour), it’s also, oftentimes, spicy. The range can be mild to … hell, I don’t even know because I don’t eat stuff that spicy. Once my nose starts seriously running, I’m done. Suffice it to say, most foods here are spicy. However, I am a chicken when it comes to spice and I have found most of it really good and easy to eat. 2. Meals here tend to be seriously veggie rich. You will find veggies in practically EVERYTHING. And if it’s not IN a dish, most of the multitude of side dishes you get will be nothing but vegetables. 3. The side dishes…they’re called ‘banchan’ and there are a TON of them! They’re literally small bowls or plates of different things like spinach, bean sprouts, kimchi, veggie pancakes (jeon), a noodle dish (japchae), some greenery that looks like rosemary, but isn’t quite, salad, … the list could go on and on, trust me. Usually, the nicer the restaurant, or the bigger the occasion, the more banchan they serve. It can be quite a challenge not to fill up on the sides before the main dish is served! 4. Rice is served with EVERYTHING. I mean EVERYTHING. And if, by some small chance, you order something and rice is NOT served with it, you best believe it’s only because rice is IN it somewhere. And, 5. They don’t eat ‘breakfast’ foods here. Whatever you’d eat for lunch or dinner IS breakfast. No eggs, sausage (or GASP, BACON!), toast, etc. The traditional breakfast here is the exact same meal one would get at any other time of the day. You can buy breakfast foods (with varying degrees of difficulty), but don’t think you’re going to the local restaurant and getting an Eat ‘n’ Park kind of breakfast. Ummm, no.

That aside, I have to say I’m enjoying the food by and large. I tend to be greedy and adventurous (food-wise) anyway, so for those that know me well, it shouldn’t come as any surprise. I will try just about anything at least once. Just about. I’m thinking about that time in my local grocery store when the nice man that works there tried to offer me Beondegi, which is boiled and salted silk worm larvae. Hell to the no. It looked like a pot full of headless, legless roaches and it smelled like it looked. But I’ve eaten many other things I thought I would never put into my mouth and it’s usually been good. I’ve eaten blowfish, jellyfish, this dish consisting of baby anchovies, nuts, and honey (it’s good!), octopus, tofu, sundae – which is this sausage-shaped casing with noodles, liver and animal blood in it, chicken feet, and on and on. I know, I know…it all sounds disgusting, but most of it is pretty good. I didn’t like tofu and octopus when I tried them in the States, and I still don’t like them, no matter how many different ways I’ve had them served. And the ‘chicken feet’ incident (which it will now be called), couldn’t be helped because I had NO idea what I was ordering – all the menu said was chicken. I couldn’t get past the texture, I’m sorry … I tried.

Anyway, I suck at remembering to take pictures, but I have a few I’ve taken of some of the food I’ve eaten, and one I collected from a source on the internet. I hope you enjoy! J

 An ‘end of winter camp’ feast with my students: the dark, brownish/grey stuff is sundae, there is also gimbap (looks like sushi – not my fave), the orange stuff is doekk bokki, the green stuff towards the bottom is pajeon (green onion pancake), and the tan-ish stuff above the doekk bokki is mandu (dumplings stuffed with pork and veg.). Oh! And the bright yellow stuff sandwiched between the drinks is pickled daikon radish – not my fave, either. The other side of the table is the same stuff.

 Homemade doekk bokki (dense, chewy, rice cake cylinders in spicy sauce – I added onions too. It’s good stuff!)

                                         Left to right: sweet pumpkin, sweet & sour pork.

                     Top: kimchi, middle: japchae (glass noodles & veg), bottom: jellyfish and veg. Notice the silver   canisters? That's rice. Told ya!

 Center: steamed fish stew (mm mm good!), left of center: tofu studded with black sesame seeds, bottom: regular salad, top left: remnants of another salad, top right: I think that’s fried veggies.

Center: main dish of mixed seafood in spicy pepper sauce with bean sprouts (yes, there were whole shrimp in there, head and all!). 

A different pic of the banchan from a dinner I went to. Clockwise: kimchi, fried veg, sweet and sour pork.

Beondegi (I mean, REALLY??? UGH!) (Picture courtesy of http://www.streetbonersandtvcarnage.com)

One of my favorites: Sanji- a noodle dish (and I mean this is like a pound of pasta!) in a fishy broth topped with nori, green onions, spinach, sesame seeds, and kimchi. This is seriously good!

So, as you can see, I’m not starving. The next post will be a “School Lunch” edition. Aaah, school lunch! My favorite part of the day….

Take care, everyone!

The Kindness of Strangers

Unlike Blanche, in A Streetcar Named Desire, I have never really depended on the kindness of strangers. Before. Now, it seems I do. Quite a bit. I thought, before my plane touched down, that I would be greeted at the gate by a banner and loads of people looking for me. That was not to be. So there I was, shoving two immense rolling suitcases around the airport, not knowing where to go, or to whom I should announce my presence. That was the first time I encountered a certain breed of kindness found here in South Korea. A taxi driver helped me find an information booth to get the aid I needed. I found my party and all was well. No big deal, right? I agree, but that was just the beginning.

A few weeks later I was getting money out of the ATM machine at my bank (after hours), when the machine ate my card. I panicked. I needed money, and the bank was closed. One little “Oh no!” exclamation from me and the other eight people in the vestibule instantly rallied and made such a ruckus that the security guard went around back and retrieved my card.

Then there was the time I was meeting another American teacher downtown and got turned around and was lost. Before I could panic, an older lady called me over to her stand and gave me directions to the place I needed to be. She must have seen the abject horror on my face.

I could tell several more of these kinds of stories: The students who let me cut the line in front of them at a food stand after school; a neighbor, Mr. Kim, greeting me with a broad smile and ushering me into his store to meet his family and have a vitamin drink; the lady at the convenience store who FED me some sticky, sweet rice treat she made, and when I indicated they were good, she gave me a huge handful of them in a bag to take home (for free); the shop girl who walked me to an ATM and waited for me to come out of the vestibule so she could walk me back to familiar surroundings (yep, that happened).

And these instances are completely separate and apart from all of the freebies I get when I go shopping. I get handfuls of samples from just about everywhere I go. So many, in fact, I gave many of them away to my daughter on a recent visit home. Free pop at a restaurant? No problem. A whole cake just for delivering a good lesson in front of the principal? Yep.  It is truly amazing.

I wish I could say everyone is treated like this in South Korea, but apparently, that’s not the case. A Korean co-teacher of mine said she NEVER gets free stuff when she goes shopping. I was shocked. So then, what’s the deal, you ask? Good PR. South Korea wants people to speak kindly of her, it seems. Yes, when I go home, it is this country’s wish that I expound on all of the wonderful treatment I received at her hands. Now, I have to be honest, I’m appreciative. They could not give a crap and treat us foreigners like dirt. But it takes the shine off of the situation a bit. I mean, it’s all for show. It’s a sham of sorts, a ruse…mendacity (one of my favorite words), a mask. So what does the real Korea look like? You know, to a Korean? I have no clue. Not knowing the language kind of takes me out of the game. But I do know what I observe, and that is “business as usual”. Service workers are efficient and polite enough, but they’re not bending over backwards to help out their fellow countrymen and women. Then again, Koreans don’t typically require the kind of help I do. Depending on the store, Koreans MAY get a freebie here and there, but I sure as heck don’t see them being loaded down with samples and free treats. But I must say that I also don’t observe them being overtly rude to each other, either. I guess it’s just the way it goes here.

 To be truthful, it can be kind of embarrassing. I’ve tried to decline politely, but it doesn’t work. They tend to look genuinely hurt if you don’t accept. So what do I do? I take the bag, bow my head, say “Gam sa hap ni da” (thank you), and keep it moving. I mean, it’s free! Wouldn’t you do the same?

*Next week I’m going to start adding some pictures whenever I can. It’ll make things a bit more interesting, I think. Take care!

“I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me”

I watched a lot of Youtube videos from people teaching in South Korea before I came here, so I was pretty cognizant of the fact that I would be stared at. But Holy HELL!

See, there isn’t much diversity here. If I had to make a pretty educated guess, I’d say 1% diversity. That means, in a country of 50+ million people, half of one million people are foreigners (foreigners = non-Korean nationals). But, wait…here’s the rub: more than half of those people are of Korean ancestry – so they look Korean, even if they grew up elsewhere.  Now I’m sure that brings with it its own set of problems, but I can’t speak to that.  What I’m taking forever to get to is that people who don’t look Korean are few and far between. Yeah, near the military bases, you see a lot more foreigners, and in the bigger cities, like Daegu (where I am), you see a decent amount in the downtown area. Oh, and by the way, a ‘decent’ amount is like an average of 10. Ten people who are clearly not Korean during an entire, hours-long wander around the downtown area. Not too many. And just so you know, Daegu is the 3^rd largest city in the whole of South Korea. So I’m not talking about a city the equivalent of a “hick town” in the USA. There are over 2.5 million people in Daegu. And downtown is literally TEEMING with people. I’m sure I’d see more if I frequented the foreigner bars, but I don’t. That ship has sailed for me a looong time ago.

 But I digress… My point is that, in a hugely homogeneous country, I don’t fit in.  I get stared at… a lot. I mean, A LOT, a lot. Like, every time I leave my apartment I get stared at several times by many different people. I have had older Korean men and women literally stop in their tracks, mid-sentence, to stare at me. I have had people driving their cars slow down to stare at me (yes, the car was still moving, and no, they were not watching the road). When I’m on the bus, bus drivers have stared at me through the rearview mirror while they should be driving the bus, and let me tell you, they’re scary enough drivers when they ARE paying attention! Teenagers and younger, school-aged kids do it with a smirk I didn’t understand at first. Then one of them works up the courage to say “Hello”, and I realized they seem to get a thrill out of  speaking English to a native speaker, and well, showing off around their friends. What completely surprises me, though, is that small children don’t stare at me. In my country, toddlers are NOTORIOUS for staring a person down if they look the slightest bit different, but not here it seems. At least, it seems this way to me.  And I must tell you, this staring that’s going on is in NO way malicious or threatening. It is simple curiosity. It’s even almost done with a sense of wonderment. Like, “Well, hey! Look at that! A foreigner!”  I have never had anyone hurl mean-sounding words in my direction (not that I’d know what they meant, but I’m just saying).

Back to the beginning so I can wrap this up… I knew before I came here I would get stared at, and I’m generally OK with it. I know I’m a foreigner and that there are simply not enough of us for that novelty to have worn off yet. I mean, I can go DAYS without seeing another foreigner, myself. I watched one particular video in which the girl said she has fun with it. She fixes herself up so that she looks good and when all the stares start, she pretends she’s a model on a catwalk. I like that. Usually I have my headphones in and am in my own little world. But sometimes I pretend I’m a celebrity and that I know exactly how Halle Berry must feel. Hey, it’s fun…and whatever you need to do to cope, you do it, right? Because I have to tell you, there ARE times when I’m not in the mood. Times when I just want to be anonymous. Times when I miss my hometown and my family and friends and don’t want to be here anymore.  Times when it’s early and I’m tired and the SAME old people stare at me as I walk past just like they do EVERY morning, and I want to scream. But mostly, I have the urge to start dancing right there in the middle of the street and really give them a show – you know, a REASON for staring. But I don’t. I take a deep breath and remind myself how lucky I was to grow up in a country with a ton of diversity, and I feel a little sorry for them. And besides, I’m sort of repping the United States…I can’t go around acting a fool now, can I?