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Published: July 19th 2009
Hello it's Fran. Sorry it's taken so long to write something here. I've been busy over here settling in and spending so much time at the school. When i have had free time over here it's been spent exploring the area, eating weird and wonderful food, meeting people and trying not to get rained on in between. Things over here are going well and i'm sure they'll get even better. I just wanted to quickly share with you some of things we've come across so far.
Food
To start with the food is excellent. In the beginning going out to eat was a guessing game followed by a spicy surprise. Since then then we have been able to pick the food we want almost every time. Despite not knowing what I was getting to eat there have only been three things which have shocked me so far.
On one of the first days I had a green tea looking drink which turned out to be almost muddy water flavoured. Jess says it was green tea but there's no way I can believe that. Tea could never be that bad. The second bad thing I had yesterday for my
Family Mart
Diagonally across the road from our place. Looking out our study windowschool lunch. Imagine eating a small limpit looking thing but instead of tasting like fish it turned out to be something like Old Spice. That was after it burst in my mouth. The last thing was a candy I got after eating out with my co-teachers in Seoul. It was chestnut-flavoured jelly thing and I spit it out almost immediately. Apart from that the food is amazing. Eating with chopsticks can still be messy but still a novelty, especially for school lunches.
Fish skins, which look like sponges, and some of the snacks the kids brought in for their "party" have proved to be interesting. A few types of crisps which tasted like fish. I mean a proper prawn, not just the flavouring. Some of the snacks they brought in were really really good and we've hunted a few down since then. I've had sweet potato lattes, and today at lunch we had roasted sweet potato for lunch which tasted like roasted parsnip. The time I had it for dessert with fruit wasn't so good. Surprise! Potato and fruit doesn't go. But sometimes, like in the latte, it does. Especially with nuts on top. It is also somehow a
Ugly Fish Restaurant
Across the road from us. Looking out our living room window good replacement for apple in pies. You'd almost never know it wasn't apple.
Lots of pickled foods have shown up. You get a side of pickles with your pizza from Pizza Hut, you get the Korean national dish, Kimchi everyday. It is pickled fermented cabbage usually, but there are a variety of other kinds including one made with cucumber. Almost every meal has radish. Either thats pickled as well, or comes in slices to wrap something in (and comes sitting in vinegar so is almost pickled as well!)
The best eating so far has to be the Korean bbqs. You cook the meat at the table and its accompanied by many side dishes. The meat is generally the same wherever you go (pork or beef mostly) but the side dishes always change.
Something really weird which we always come across is a jelly-like side dish. We found out recently that the brown version is really made from pine trees. But we're not sure about the white/clear one.
Jehovah found us at E-Mart.
A few streets over from where we live there is a supermarket called E-mart. It is always an interesting experience going around this
Looking down our street
You can actually see the sign for the duck (ori) restaurant we live above in this picture place even if you're not after much. It is a great opportunity to try lots of weird things (Jess says sort of like Sam's club or BJs for those in the states). Almost every isle you walk past someone is trying to get you to try something. From dumplings to rice wine. Jess gets annoyed about the people calling her over as she's trying to shop. Sunday night shopping is a whole different ball game. Its like being in a nightclub. The place is PACKED. Its crazy and chaotic. It's my dad's version of hell. And yet its funny at the same time to just stand back and watch everyone going about their business.
Note from Jess: In my mind our most interesting E-mart experience has to do with the title of this section. It was the day we could not figure out how to get our washing machine to work & we were getting desperate to do some washing after having been here a few weeks. We were examining a display machine in E-mart when a woman walked over and spoke to us in very good English. She was polite and we spoke to her for a moment. After
that, in my desperation, I asked her to translate a few of the things I'd written down in Korean from my machine. She patiently helped with a few and then politely changed the subject to ask where we worked, etc.
Then, out of nowhere she whipped a magazine out of her purse. I knew something was up then. I can smell a rat-like salesperson a mile away when they go into selling mode. And boy was she selling (and quite sly about it at first as well). She went on to talk to us about Jehovah and how we could be saved. Then she wanted our emails. At this point a friend joined her. Once they stood together I realized they looked like the stereotype of churchwomen in the mid-west on Sunday morning except that we were standing in a department/grocery store in Korea. I was a bit shell-shocked and my brain began to process the fact that I'd just been hunted down by this person purely because I spoke English. The whole thing was quite amusing in hindsight.
It gets better. It wasn't even a week later and another woman spoke to us on our way IN to E-mart.
Within 30 seconds I knew where it was headed and not 10 seconds later she pulled out the newer version of the Jehovah magazine the other woman had shown us. We somehow weazled our way out of that one pretty quickly by explaining we'd already met some of her "friends" and given then our email. She made it seem like we'd be prize chickens if she could take us with her sometime. Not exactly appealing.
One of the native teachers we met who has been here for almost two years now met some Jehovahs right after he got here. His experience was a bit different as he was thinking he was going to get a date of the conversation he was having with a pretty Korean out of nowhere. I think he might have actually been more shocked by the outcome than we were....
Our Neighbourhood
We live on a busy unnamed street in a place called Hopyeong. It is very different from back home, although some things are similar. The main differences would have to be the food and the people. We live above a duck restaurant, and on our block there must be 10 or 15
more restaurants. The strange thing is, we haven't tried any duck yet. We'll save that for Beijing.
Living here can be very noisy and the lights from the shops in the area mean our apartment is always bright. We constantly hear the sounds of motorbikes, people walking home from the pub and the fruit guy. Jess will tell you about the fruit guy. Walking down our street there is no pavement (sidewalk for the Americans). You will come across crazy delivery guys on scooters and lots of live fish in tanks waiting to be chosen for someone's dinner outside the fishmongers. They're always in these tanks outside, even at night.
Because Korean people are very trusting when you walk around the area, you'll find that many shops keep their goods outside. I like how people over here are very trusting. A few examples of this - if your car is blocking someones driveway at a restaurant, it is normal to give the owner your keys & let them move your car. Not just moving it a few feet, but reversing it down a narrow alley.
Back to the neighbourhood. Children play in the park or on
Clouds over the mountains
Looking out the window from our bedroom the street until gone midnight. It's normal over here. Probably because they finish their afterschool tuition / taekwondo lessons late. Then about an hour and a half later you'll hear drunk red-faced Korean men going home from the bar laughing and joking around. This happens most nights. I don't know how they do it and then get up for work the next day. Even on a Sunday morning. They are hard workers.
One more thing before I go... and its about pigs.
Recycling and waste disposal is a big deal over here. Different types of waste have to go into different government-issued bags. If you don't you'll get fined or perhaps just yelled at by the waste collection man as happened to our American neighbours. You have to separate your food waste out from everything else. And the food waste goes in the orange bag. Are you wondering why and what happens to this waste? Everybody knows that pigs will eat anything. And supposedly this is where the food waste goes. No wonder pork is so cheap over here! (That's just what I've heard, but its just swill isn't it?)
Bye bye. Hope everyone is enjoying their summer
back home!
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Patricia
non-member comment
Great pics
Great information and pictures. Hope you met your principal and all went well.