Lunch Time Woes

It wasn't so bad at the beginning. I was eager to try new things and determined to keep an open mind. Suffice it to say, those day's are over. Korean lunch has become a monotonous blur of tofu, vegetables drenched in some kind of watered down pepper paste, and soup that consists of what I think must be the Korean equivalent of chicken broth.

First, the tofu. I've never been a big fan of tofu to begin with. But, we do have a couple teachers here that are vegetarians, so I think it's great that the school provides that option when vegetarianism hasn't been quite embraced here. However, we have tofu in some form, in some dish, literally every day. I actually don't even remember the last time we had beef of some sort. But seriously every day, tofu in the soup, tofu and vegetables, tofu in the noddles. I was thinking my current weight loss had to do with the regular exercise I have been doing, but mostly I think it's just from steering clear of most the lunch items everyday.

The next killer is the soup. Like I said, it wasn't so bad at first. I'm not entirely sure what the broth is based in, but it's the same... every day. Today, there was some pepper paste added to make it spicy and there was tofu (shocker) and kimchi in it. Yesterday, the broth was plain and there was tufu, yet again, seaweed, and bean spouts added. Earlier this week I had the pleasure of scooping some quail eggs into my bowl along with that super tasty broth.

I can think of 3 days in the 3 months that I've been here when I've actually gone back for seconds of something. Pasta day, which consisted of: pasta, tomato sauce, cheese, garlic bread, and of course, kimchi; Hot dog day: hot dogs complete with hot dog buns and ketchup, "cole slaw" (which was actually decent) and probably a tofu soup; And today we had some sort of very thinly sliced potatoes mixed with small pieces of ham and green onion. Regardless of not being sure what it was, it was delicious mixed with rice. These are the glory days.

In lieu of my school lunches though, there is a lot of Korean food that I do like and will actually miss when this year ends. I'm a fan of kimbop (which is like Korean sushi), bibimbop (in a nut shell it's is vegetables, rice, and egg mixed together with spicy sauce), the handmade dumplings, dokbokki (rice noodles in spicy sauce), and without a doubt, Korean BBQ. I also realize that school lunches are part of the experience and what I signed up for, but that still doesn't stop me from making a list of all the things I'll eat in the first week I come back to the US. At the top of that list: a real, big ass burger with bleu cheese and bacon, simply yogurt, and a pulled pork sandwich with real cole slaw and rough cut fries drenched in malt vinegar from Maxie's in Ithaca as soon as I can get there.

Just another Saturday at Gwangalli

And I'm back. I know it has been a while since my last post, but I haven't had much to write about until recently. However, since everyone has been asking for more posts, I'll try to be better about putting up shorter posts more regularly. But the last couple weeks have provided some comical and enlightening experiences. The first of which is getting sick in a foreign country. I had the good fortune to catch the flu about 2 weeks ago now. And it wasn't until I was throwing up for hours, alone and in the dark (my bathroom light decided to die just before I got sick) that I realized how much we take for granted from simply getting sick in our home country.

If we could live on the beach, we would.

Fortunately the bug passed through my system and only kept me out of school for a couple days, but it wasn't until that happened that I realized how difficult it might be if I really needed help. Korea does have a 911 equivalent number ( 119 actually, not too hard to remember) but there is always the question of whether or not someone will speak English, and I am definitely not confident that I could figure enough Korean to get myself help over the phone like that. Then there's the matter of getting to an English speaking hospital if need be. Again, I luckily didn't require any hospitalization here, but it was definitely enough incentive to figure out the emergency number for the closest English speaking hospital. But even beyond figuring out what to do if I was really in dire need of help, was figuring out how to help myself. Unfortunately I don't live particularly close to any of my friends, plus they were all in school all day, so getting what I needed was up to me. After a night next to the toilet, I could finally keep down water and advil, but the next step was trying to eat. Luckily, there is a convenience store just around the corner from my apartment building, literally less then a 2 minutes walk, but that was one of the hardest walks I've ever had to make in my life. Barely holding it together, I was able to purchase more water, some coke for my stomach, and a couple packages of saltines. If I had had enough energy when I made it back to my apartment then I would have done victory dance, but that 5 minute walk wiped me out.

A glimpse inside the elevator

On the more comical side of things though, this past weekend I managed to get stuck in an elevator with 10 people and somehow accidentally ordered cow intestines for barbeque all in less then 24 hours. On Saturday I made my way over to house party on the roof of a friends apartment. Naturally, we opted to take the elevator to the roof and crammed 10 people in. Korean elevators haven't been known to be particularly strong but usually beep and refuse to close when too many people get on. However, in this case, the doors closed, refused to open and the elevator wouldn't budge. Fortunately, someone came in from the party and heard us banging on the doors. 30 minutes later and 1 near hyperventilating friend, a small Korean man managed to get us out. In his broken English and Korean he managed to communicate that the elevator was only meant to hold 5 people and that reason it was no good was because it was made in China...we all got good laugh out of that one. It ended up that we spent more time in the elevator then we did at the actual party as being stuck was a pretty big buzz kill. However, the 10 of shared some great bonding time playing "Never have a I ever" and the alphabet game to pass the time.

Cow intestines for all!

The following day, after spending all afternoon on the beach (because that's what we do every weekend and it's amazing) we went out in search of BBQ. Korean BBQ isn't usually tough to find, but on late Sunday afternoons it's a little more tricky. Most places are either just opening up or closed. And unfortunately for us we unknowingly ended up at a place that only served cow intestines. I'm sure this isn't the first time I've eaten intestines since I've been here, but this was the first time that I was completely aware of what I was eating. To be honest, they actually tasted good. There was a really tasty sauce that came with them and that combined with the smokey taste from the grill was great. However, the texture was a little difficult to swallow, literally, and I wasn't quite able to mentally get over what I was eating. But it certainly was an experience. So like I said I'll try and start getting some shorter posts and more pictures up here more regularly. Plus, I've hopefully got a birthday on pirate ship and trip to Seoul coming up to write about!