We owe Jim Henson more than we can ever know.
In class today, I’ve been using a clip from an old Sesame Street episode to teach. In fact, several old clips, and not just today.
I know I grew up with it, as well as most of you reading this, and it just seemed entertaining to us as children, but there’s something weird about going back and watching it again after all this time. The show was actually educational. It was intelligent, and it taught us everything from brushing our teeth to spanish. It was also funny, and to me, a lot of it still is. It uses a lot of sophisticated wordplay and I think that did a lot to improve our vocabularies. The show has since gotten as bad as any other kids programming, and I think it shows in today’s kids’ near illiteracy and ignorance of the english language, as well as any other language.
Especially post-Elmo, Jim Henson’s first controversial muppet suffering from Downs Syndrome.
I really wish I could read
Well, I can. Korean writing is designed to be learnable in an afternoon, literally. But I wish I knew what I was saying when I do read.
I was at the Family Mart alone (always alone :O), and I needed some water. I saw one large bottle, and rather expensive. I figured because of the ornate plastic bottle, it must be artisan water or something, and decided to give it a shot. So I buy it, and go home.
A couple days later, I’m thirsty, so I open the bottle and take a big drink.
I spit it all out pretty quick, because it was not, water, but was, in fact, soju. Soju is a popular Korean liquor, probably best compared to the strongest, cheapest vodka you can find. It seriously tastes like cough medicine and battery acid. I could handle that if I was expecting it, instead of the neutral bliss of water. I felt like all my senses suddenly shifted briefly in my brain, and was a little disoriented for awhile. Imagine going for apple juice and ending up with a large mouthful of Crown Royal.
Pepero Day
Korea has so many holiday, and a lot of them center around food.
Today was Pepero Day. Pepero is that little cookie stick with chocolate on it, also known as Pocky in America and Japan. On this day, women give pepero to their boyfriends, although they end up just giving it to everyone, really.
I ate too much, I love chocolate and cookies and especially pepero.
I learned something interesting, though. In Korea, its typical for the girls to chase after boys, as opposed to the inverse back home. It shows too, as the girls are extremely active and loud here, and the boys walk around with their heads down and spirits apparently crushed. If the girls didn’t, Korea would die out as the birth rate plummeted to zero.
Food that fights back.
Just had my most interesting food experience. About a week ago, I bought sushi for everyone in my office. There were about four of us, and they were very impressed and happy with the gesture, and promised to take me out very soon in return. Tonight, they did.
We went out to a restaurant by the ocean, owned by Mr. Mo’s younger sister that serves traditional Korean seafood meals. I had no idea what that meant. The meal started with a plate of writhing tentacles, from some kind of cuttlefish. They had recently been cut, and served to us fresh. It actually tasted pretty good, but I used too many peppers and drowned out the taste on the first bite. I have a video of this that I’ll upload once I figure out how to get it off my phone. The rest of the food was pretty harmless, boiled shrimp, kimchi (there’s always kimchi, always), hard boiled quail eggs, roasted mackerel, and raw fish of some type, all pretty tasty. I also ate several strange tubes of meat. I’ve learned to eat first and ask questions later, so it turns out that what I ate was a hagfish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8pONkTyk2c&feature=related
Cooked, these guys are actually pretty tasty. We also had steamed crab, raw oysters, and some hermit crab looking thing, also raw, but dead. You eat the crab from the shell itself like a bowl, its upside down eyes still looking at you.
After that, a small box was brought to our table. Pastor Kim opened it and I saw about 12 uncooked shrimp. I’ve eaten worse, so I wasn’t too worried. Above all, I’m determined not to deny any food I see them eat. Pastor Kim put one shrimp on my plate. Everyone was staring at me, of course, which is the norm when something I don’t expect is about to happen, food related. I noticed a difference once the shrimp leapt from my plate and into my lap. Alive, and completely unharmed. This was the first time I showed any hesitation with the food here. Again, though, I will not be the foreigner too afraid to eat the food, especially considering that small girls eat this stuff here all the time. So I peeled it, catching it twice after it jumped away from me, and put its wriggling body in my mouth, where I could feel all its little feet scrambing against my tongue, chewed, and swallowed it.
Turns out its expensive, and we had three apiece, so I do the ritual again, somehow actually eating four of them. To be honest, the taste was fine, I’d eat it again. Its eating something that is trying to get away that was a little disconcerting, if you can understand that. I also have that on video, which I’ll upload ASAP.
From that point on, it was actually pretty tame. More Kimchi, boiled fish in some kind of spicy sauce that was actually pretty great, salmon eggs, and a lot more raw fish. Overall, it was a pretty good meal, and very different from any American cuisine. I contemplated how I would get my revenge should they ever find themselves stateside, but I couldn’t think of any American cuisine that would beat that meal.
Overall, we had a great time, the Koreans found my new experiencing quite hilarious, and I was a good sport about it all, of course. I know when I look weird, and eating this new food evoked many unique facial expressions from me. The funniest point was outside the restaurant talking to Mr. Mo’s sister, a dog walked behind us and sat down, looking at me quizzically. His sister pointed at it and said “Next time”, then grabbed me by the shoulders and walked briskly at the dog, who got up, and trotted away from us as we chased it, laying down a few feet away. My hosts nearly died laughing, as did I. They joked the whole way home about the dog understanding.
We went to Mr. Mo’s house afterward. Apparently, he’s lived there all his life. 11 generations of his family have lived and died there, for over 400 years. It is a tradional temple style home, with outer gates and stone courtyards, and was very large, since he, his wife and kids, and his parents lived there with him. It struck me halfway through the time we were there that his home is older than my country. Just imagining all the history there left me speechless.
