More food.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Any food it looks like I’ll love, I usually don’t, and anything that looks terrible, is usually quite delicious. It really never fails. This time though, was something common in America too.
I was shopping when I ran into one of the teachers from the boy’s middle school, right next to mine. We passed by the mixed nuts when I saw it, almonds and anchovies. I immediately register my disgust, and he looks at me like I’m crazy.
“You don’t like anchovies?”
“No”
“Have you tried them?”
“…No.”
It surprised me, I’ve grown up hearing about how bad they were from friends and TV and movies, but I never really tried to eat the little salted fish. I’ve always come down on friends who balk at food they’ve never tried just because it isn’t deep fried and covered in an inch of salt, but here I am, decrying anchovies. So I picked up a can.
I got home and opened it, and a strong fishy nut smell hit me. I really wasn’t sure about this, but if you learn one thing in asia, its that a lot of food doesn’t taste the way it smells (Takoyaki smells awful, but is absolutely delicious, for example. Fried baby octopus for those of you not in the know.) Nuts and anchovies were absolutely made for eachother. I ate the entire can in one sitting, it was so addictively great. The only hurdle is one you get over quick living here, the food still has eyes. Its really not a big deal, and they’re high in calcium, because you eat the skeleton (which is so tiny and brittle, you would never know it was bone). I’ve actually taken to buying dried anchovies (you can find them in any asian food store in the states) by the bag and eating them like popcorn, they really are that good.
English Camp
In most of Asia, English is a really big deal. I mean a big deal in the way that mountain climbing or training for the olympics is viewed in the west, its a life goal and a hobby for people here. Very commonly, when I walk down the street or enter stores, people of all ages try to practice English on me. Lots of times I walk by little kids, some of whom are very shy and will wait until I walk a long way away, shout “Hello”, and run off like I have a gun (and of course, because I’m from Texas, I most certainly do).
At the start of the Winter break, I taught at an English camp. The camp was held at a tourism high school (a boarding school where students learn to run hotels, casinos, boats, bars, etc.). These kinds of high schools are common here, I’ve even seen a bodyguard high school. It was strange at first, but then I realized that these kids graduate high school with the equivalent of a bachelors degree in actual skill and knowledge in something. And if they decide not to pursue that, they just go to college. Its sad the idea of a useful education from high school was so alien to me.
We (teachers and students) stayed in the dorms the whole week (it was break, and most of the students had gone home). There were 7 or 8 foreign teachers, including myself, 3 from South Africa (very nice people). We each taught a subject and rotated classes all week. I taught Science. I hung space filling models of various elements from the ceiling and pictures of Einstein and Newton and the like. My class was about motion, specifically, the Egg Drop. Korean kids are really really good at the Egg Drop. These were elementary to middle school kids, and few of them lost their eggs, even from the 5 storie drop with no parachute allowed. My class actually ended up being pretty popular, and we had a TV news crew in there for enough time to get in the way of everything.
We ended up going to a weird little petting zoo midway through the week, with a few pigs, chickens, and for some reason, an ostrich, which managed to bite about 6 kids because they have no common sense at all (the kids, not the ostrich, although I doubt it was much smarter). No one sued.
F*ck the Police
Been awhile since I last updated, I’m busy and lazy, but I have a few posts ready to go.
I’ve been spending a lot of time lifting weights at the gym. It’s a thoroughly awkward experience. Combined with my general lack of knowledge on proper form and what all the equipment actually is or does, with being the only white guy in the shower (korean guys are not shy about staring, or asking questions 0_o), its yet another unique experience I never thought I’d have.
Yesterday, I was running on the “walking machine” (koreans don’t run on treadmills, just walk), when one of the trainers at the gym (really nice guy, decent english) comes up to me, and says, with a friendly smile, as if he was commenting on the weather, “Fuck the police”. I just kind of stared at him; I’ve been in Korea for 5 months now, so this wasn’t nearly as surprising at it would have been 5 months ago. Truth be told, I’m used to 12 year old girls quoting offensive phrases to me with big grins.
Not surprised, I was still at a loss on how you properly respond to a phrase like that. I guess the look on my face told him I wasn’t understand, so he said it again. I narrow my eyes in concentration, and ask what I think was a fair question. “What?” He points at the radio, blaring terrible rap (after this song, “Close to you” by olivia newton john came on, the music mix at gyms is completely random and spread across three languages), and says it again. I’m still not getting it, pointing at the speaker just confused me more. Then he says its the name of the song. I hadn’t heard that particular piece before, but it was gangsta rap, so it all snapped together for me there.
I asked him if he knew what that meant, and of course, he didn’t. I merely asked him that should he ever find himself in America, not to use that particular phrase.
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.
My first day in Korea
Nothing too special, I got off the 14 and a half hour plane ride. After wandering around trying to find customs for awhile (clearly marked by signs with totally non-sensical English), and eventually got my passport stamped and got in. I managed to get a bus ticket and started on the two hour ride from Incheon to Pyeongtaeg.
The first thing I noticed about Korea is that most of its architecture is a little unimaginative. Just large, square buildings with pipes protruding from them, heading up to the roof for water, air, etc. I was really getting confused by several building I kept seeing. They were large wire fences, also fenced in over the top, probably about the size of a large office building. They were draped with green tarp on the inside. For days, I didn’t know what these were. Turns out, golf courses. There’s no open space here, so they have to fence off golf courses so the balls don’t fly into the awful traffic. God, I’m glad I don’t have to drive here. Imagine Houston’s traffic behavior, combined with the pedestrian behavior in Austin down by the campus, and that is Korean traffic in a nutshell. People frequently dart in front of cars, and cars always run red lights. I can’t imagine how the birth rate stays above the death rate here.
Anyway, I got off the bus in Pyeongtaeg City (although I wasn’t totally sure it was at the time), and my co-teacher greeted me with the school admin. They had set up a motel room for me since my apartment was not yet ready. After I dropped off my metric ton of luggage, my co-teacher, Nam, took me to see the school. As it turns out, there is a girls middle school, a boys middle school, and a girls high school and boys high school on the same campus. I teach at the girls middle school. I was a little surprised. It was 8 in the evening, and the school doors were still open, and many students were still here studying. Apparently, the school stays open until 10, and many students stay here very late to study. I could only imagine the destruction if you let students enter American schools alone after hours. Anyway, we talked for awhile about the school and students, and I went back to my motel (with help, of course, Korea is a confusing maze, more on that later.)
I got into my hotel room and decided to see what was on tv. Of course, most of it was korean dramas and kids shows that I couldn’t understand. There was also a televised StarCraft competition and Go. I did run across “That 70’s Show”, subtitled in Korean, so that was nice to see. Oh also, hardcore porn on korean cable, a little unexpected, just boom! there it is. No warning or anything. I needed to take a shower, so I got into the bathroom and noticed there was no shower curtain. In korea, bathrooms have drains in the floor, so you just splash water all over the floor, no big deal. It seems odd, but the more I think of it, the more sense it makes. The bathroom flooding is not a big deal, here.
Ah, it turns out my school is a private Christian school, complete with a chaplain (who studied in the US Army Chaplain school). My co-teacher teaches a high school sunday school, so he took me to his church. The sermon, according to him, was on Genesis 2, so it was probably about sexual purity, I don’t know, I was reading Numbers. The Sunday school was mostly just asking me questions about America. Most people here know at least a little bit of English, especially students, as it is required coursework here. Anyway, I fell right asleep, because not only did I not sleep much before the flight, I left in the morning, and followed the sun all the way to Korea, resulting in a 21 hour long daylight, which really screwed with my system. Oh, and I can’t sleep on planes, cars, or buses. It took 4 days before I wasn’t tired all day and waking up at 3AM.
