Korea and FOOD

Whether it's late at night and you're a bit drunk, or it's 10am and you've got a hankering for a waPPLE (waffle) Korea never ceases to surprise my taste buds. Unfortunately, I've gotten into a groove of going to the same places and eating the same things, but none-the-less, it's been delicious!

Barbecue. 

It means something different in every country, but the basic idea of meat over fire is the same-same everywhere. About 2 blocks down from us is the expat popular "Pig Place". It was introduced to us as the "Pig Place" and therefore we will never actually learn the name of this establishment. In Korea, restaurants serve one type of animal, i.e the "Pig Place" the "Duck Place" and the "Beef Place". We've found that in Korea is actually cheaper to eat out than it is to cook at home. When you go to a barbecue joint you usually pay 9,000-12,000W ($9-$12) a person and get a million 반찬 banchan (side dishes) including 2 salads (one as a salad, and one to put into your wrap) a soup, kimchi, some form of eggs, and a number of other random little tidbits depending on the place you're eating and the season. 

Mmmmm... Soju.

sizzzzzzzle

I'm a fan of the sauces you dip your meat in. The farthest plate are hot chili peppers. Just one pepper per meal will burn a new hole in your body. The middle sauce is garlic, and the closest sauce is a spicy sauce.

Handsome man mid bite.

Upon ordering a man whose sole job is to keep the coals burning comes out carrying a stone pot filled with red hot coals. Your 반찬 comes and you instantly dig in. I've gone to several different types of Barbecue places, but they are all generally the same... EXCEPT this one place we found at 4am in the morning that had a moat around the outside of the grill where you pour egg around to cook while your meat barbecues. Drunken finds are often the best ;-) I digress... After eating your 반찬 and letting your meat cook you cut up the meat with scissors, throw some garlic on the grill, and wrap your meat up in lettuce. This is the thing that I love the most about Korea, you don't find carbohydrates at every turn. Don't get me wrong, I would kill for a burrito with some sour cream, but health wise I never feel guilty after eating a Korean meal. Here are some pictures of our favorite "Pig Place".

Duck... Duck.... Duck...

 Another favorite place of ours it the "Duck Place". It's a bid odd of a story though that goes along with the "Duck Place." The first time we ate here we went with 4 other teachers. Koreans don't know how to handle that many foreigners at one time and often stare at us and get flustered because they don't understand our Korean pronunciation. Anyways, the owner comes over to us and sits down with us and just stares at us while we talk for awhile. She speaks very little English, but mustered out enough to ask if we were English teachers and for a business card. Of course being English teachers we don't carry business cards so we gave her our bosses business card. She picks me out of the bunch and asks me to write everyone's name down on the card. When we pay, we find out we were getting a discount. SCORE! About 2 weeks later Carl and I come by ourselves to eat. The lady instantly recognizes me and sits down next to us bringing us free cook and rice nectar(and yes, it tastes awful). Her husband speaks a little more English than she does so we found out the real reason for the discounts and free stuff. They wanted me to teach their children private lessons... I've known since before I arrived in Korea that private lessons are illegal since I am here on a work visa, but many foreigners do it here because you can often make good money doing it. For 2 hours the Duck parents feed us too much food, stared at us, haggled prices and hours with me, until there was nothing I could do but say yes. I felt awful about it because in reality they weren't willing to pay me what the going rate is and I knew that with our job I just wouldn't have the time. (Leave for work at 8:15a back home by 6:30p ish) That whole night I wrestled with what I did. I agreed to something I didn't really want to do and didn't have the time for. The next morning I wrote a nice heartfelt note and plugged it into google translate. I'm sure it didn't come out exactly how I wanted it to seeing how things are often missed in translation, but when she read the letter and saw my face she understood that I meant well. She gave me a big hug and kiss and sent me out the door with some more rice nectar and asked me to please come back to the restaurant. The food was too good not to come back... I always forget to take pictures, so here is an article written about our beloved "Duck Place" http://gwangjublog.com/1496?category=18

Shabu Shabu

육수 pre vegetables

o.m.g the vegetables... the VEGETABLES!!!

O.M.G. Heaven in a pot... Seriously... Shabu Shabu starts out as a 육수 (which strangely is translated into gravy) but it is basically a broth. You shove massive amounts of vegetables into this bubbling broth. Bean sprouts, mushrooms, grass (I don't know the officia lname of it, but it's like a bitter tasting grass) cabbages, and various leaves. After the vegetables are cooked you add thin slices of meat. The next step depends on what type of Shabu Shabu you are at. We have "Spicy Shabu Shabu" where you take the vegetables and meat and dip it into soy sauce with wasabi, and then there is "Lotte Shabu Shabu" (because it's located in Lotte Mart) At "Lotte Shabu Shabu" you take rice paper and dip it into this mystery hot pink liquid which softens the rice paper. You then fill your rice paper with the meat and vegetables. But watch out! If you close up your rice ball too quickly you're going to put a fire ball of steam into your mouth! You then dip the rice ball into your choice of sauces (Oil, Peanut (which is ammmmmmmmmmaaaaaaaazzing) and spicy). After about three courses of this vegetable and meat combination you think you're just about done right? Wrong. There are still two more courses. Your 육수 has now become a broth of yummy goodness from all of the vegetables and meat that have been cooked down in it. You then add noodles to the pot. O.M.G. This comes to a nice little noodley soupy mush of wonderfulness. What? You say there is ONE MORE COURSE!?!?! Yes. Now you add some egg to the liquid to cook up and then rice with seaweed and chopped vegetables. Depending on how much liquid you have left in your pot it can be a rice mush or a rice soup. Either way this part is filled with so much flavor. Here is where I'm going to blow your mind. For two people to eat this massive amount of food it is only $20. The same price it would cost you to eat an overcooked steak and potato at Outback. Shabu Shabu is probably my favorite thing to eat here in Korea. All the vegetables send me into a healthy food craze!!!

Ball of <3

the amazing peanut sauce in the middle

Ok. Bad photo. But this is pre-wrapped

CoPEE

Ok, because of the way the Korean language is pronounced, they do not have an "f" sound. "H" also turns into "h-eeeeeee" Therefore, coffee is pronounced "copee" or "copy". I feel for the Koreans sometimes that listen to me speak or order. You can get two kinds of coffee here in Korea. The instant tiny cups of crap. And the heavenly Starbuck-like cups of yummy goodness. Of course these large-eeeeeeeee cups of coffee come at a Starbucks price, but sometimes you just need some of the good shit. As I sit here at my Angel-in-us (no, it's said Angelinus) drinking my "coPEE" and eating my "waPPle" I truly appreciate Korean food. Do I miss American food? Sometimes. But on nights that I am given a choice I'd rather opt for Korean food. :-)

4 months in...

Wow, it's been a long time since I've been on here! I've recently hit the busy season at the Village which means working a couple of 12 hour days and teaching 7 hours a day... It's been crazy when I look back on my life in the past 4 month, and not just culturally, but also professionally.

4 months ago I was scared to death of having to teach a new class I've never taught or seen before... now, I go into classes completely blind and figure it out as I go along. I've now started to develop "tricks up my sleeve" and ways to maneuver my way through a 45 minute class. I've learned that often times Korean teachers have too high of an expectation of what their student's English ability is, which unfortunately then becomes my problem because they've been stuffed into a class that is way too difficult for them. That Grammar for instance... How the heck do you teach Grammar to Korean kids? In the schools Grammar is taught by a Korean because its nearly impossible to explain what a subject, object, verb, adjective, past tense, present tense, and all that other stuff that I don't even know how it works without using Korean. Imagine being 12 years old, sitting in a French camp (where you've been lectured and yelled at saying you can only speak French in the classroom) and your teachers don't speak a word of English, but only French. Boy are you screwed! I see it in the kids eyes every time they come up to me and mutter something to me in Korean and my only response is, " Hanguel moh mal tamneeda." (I don't speak Korean.) Sometimes they just immediately give off a large sigh realizing that they aren't able to communicate their frustrations, and sometimes, the students don't realize what I said but only recognize that I spoke Korean... Therefore I MUST speak Korean! (geessh) 

I do find it amazing though that sometimes these children can have conversations with me. I think back to when I was there age and I was going to Girl Scout Camp or 4H camp having fun and doing crafts, not going to ENGLISH camp! Korean children go to school for an ungodly amount of hours, but to top it off their parents send them off to camp to LEARN. Thanks Mom and Dad for never subjecting me to that! BUT when I was there age, I didn't know a foreign language. Especially not well enough to attempt to have a conversation with a native speaker. I can't even have a conversation with a Korean past, "I'd like this." or "Good job!" and I've lived here for 4 months! Every time I go shopping and the sales ladies come up to me jibbering in Korean and asking me questions I get that same blank stare across my face as the 7 year old students in my classes... The I-don't-have-any-freaking-idea-what-you-just-said-so-I'm-just-going-to-nod-my-head-at-you-and-say-thank-you look. 

4 months in and I've learned...

You can do almost anything except find a doctor and book ferries without knowing Korean. Thus far I've been able to navigate throughout the city, book hotels, travel on buses, hail a taxi like a champ, and read a menu (kinda...) I've learned how to work and live with the person you love, which is probably one of the hardest things I've had to learn. Usually work and love are separate, but when you work side-by-side with the person you love it can become tense. It can also make you personal life rather boring. What are you going to talk about when you get home from work when you've been working together all day??? 

In 4 months I've learned that Korea is still unpredictable. You can't assume that you've finally seen the sunlight, because 10 minutes from now there will be a typhoon and you're world will be upside down. You also can't assume that after the rain it's going to cool down, because inevitability it will become even hotter. In 4 months I've learned a lot about myself, teaching, my relationship, and Korea, but in the grand scheme of everything, I'm the same as the kinder kids in my class room "tada hasayo-ing" after the foreigner in the front. I've barely even begun...