Fooooood…

I’m sure many of you wonder what I’m actually eating over here.  While I am surrounded by all the major fast food chains that I love, I try to stay away from them.  The newly open - directly across the street - Burger King seems be posing a bit of a problem, though.  Mostly I try to eat Korean food.  It’s cheap, and generally healthy.  Even if it’s as simple as kimbap.  Over the last week I have tried to take pictures of what I’m eating so you could see this part of Korea. I don’t think I’ve focused much on the food here other than the bbq.

Last week, I got a craving for some fruit.  That’s a very strange feeling for me.  I guess that shows how very little of it I actually eat here.  I stopped at Arista on my way to work. It’s a quick service restaurant/coffee shop that I get sandwiches from a few times a week, and I knew they had a fruit salad on the menu.  One of the fun things about Korea is that no matter how straightforward you think something may be, you never know what you are going to end up with.  Fruit salad seems pretty basic, right?  Well, the Korean version of it is far more literal.  A fruit salad is a salad with fruit.

Hi. I’m Thirty.

It comes as a surprise to most people but I have actually been looking forward to my 30th birthday for quite a while. I’ve embraced it in every way possible.  I was so ready to be 30. It’s not that I expected to feel any different or have any major epiphanies at this great age, I just felt like it was a good marker.  The end of one chapter, and the beginning of another. I enjoyed my 20s.  I actually loved my 20s, I had a blast.  But now I’m ready to bury that decade, volumes 2, 3, & 4 of my life so far, back in the deep dusty corner of the library. The World According to Amy: Volume 5 is gonna rock for completely different reasons.

The birthday celebration started Thursday night, sightly after midnight when I got a call from Marisol, Madelein and a taxi driver who all sang Happy Birthday to me over the phone.  Then we went to my favorite bbq place, LA Galbi, that’s right around the corner from my apartment.  I go there a lot.  Like 2-4 times a week a lot.

Birthdays In The Park

I never wrote a blog about this but I really meant to.  A few weeks back we had a birthday party in the park to celebrate all the June birthdays in my little group.  The most important birthday of course being Charles’.

Top Ten Favorite Things About Korea

In no particular order…

#1.  Dr Fish – The fish pedicure. It’s unexpectedly relaxing to have little bitty fish nibble all over your feet removing the dead skin.  The first time it was a little gross but it immediately crossed over to becoming really, really cool.  Also, it costs only $3-4 for an unlimited amount of time so it’s a fun inexpensive afternoon.  It’s nice to just grab a book, a cushion for the floor and sit back and relax. 

Everything I Want To Do In Korea–Updated

Even though I have all but abandoned my blog this month I have been keeping very busy otherwise.  In effort to regroup and reprioritize my remaining 4-5 months (though I will be signing another year contract this Fall) I am posting an updated version of my “Everything I Want To Do In Korea” that was originally posted December 2, 2011.

I’ve definitely kept busy…but there’s a lot more that I want to do still.

1. Learn the language. -I have a private tutor that I meet with twice a week so I think I’m doing fairly well on this one. 
2. Yoga. -I liked it!  And then I fell out of the habit of doing it when I got sick.
3. Dr Fish.  -Love it!  Top 10 favorite things about Korea
4. Mountain climbing – h.a.r.d.
5. Cherry Blossom Festivals in the Spring – Beautiful!

Snow Flower Festival

Yesterday we went to the Snow Flower Festival in Yuseong Spa, which is a beautiful upscale part of Daejeon.  It poured rain almost all day but that didn’t stop us.  Kate came up from Gwangju and Maggie and Bomi came up from Nonsan, which is only about 20 minutes outside of Daejeon. 

Korean BBQ

The following is written by Allison.  Be nice, it’s my first blog ever.  Amy is sleeping, so I’m taking over.

Saturday night we had dinner at a new Korean BBQ place across the street from Amy’s apartment.  It’s the traditional take your shoes off and sit on the floor kind of place.  And it was delicious!  (Are you noticing a recurring theme here??  Korean food is fantastic!  Well, most of it.)  (Amy wrote this paragraph before passing the torch to me!)

Korean Night Out

As I’ve said before, Korea is like college.  Well, college with a paycheck.  As part of her trip, Allison needed to experience this so on Friday we took her out for a night on the town.

At 10:30 we met up for a dak galbi dinner.  It’s totally Korean and absolutely delicious. There ended up being twelve of us at dinner, but we failed to take any group photos.  Sorry.

Allison & Amy Day One

Today was pretty quiet for us since she is still adjusting to the time change and we have plans to go out this evening. This blog will be pretty short as we really didn’t do anything of merit today. We went to the bank to exchange currency, walked around town, grabbed lunch and a cupcake.

First stop… Starbucks.  You buy a cake pop, you get a gift box!

Gwangju, Kate, & Shabu Shabu

My friend Kate arrived in Korea this past week.  She is in Gwangju, which is a little over two hours south of Daejeon.  I went to visit her on Saturday and make sure she was getting settled in all right.  She really lucked out, I think.  Kind of like I did.  Great apartment (who couldn’t love sparkly cabinets!), a seemingly well-organized school, and a rockin’ cool co-teacher who took us out for the day.   

I took a 12:40 train so I got there around 2:30.  Her co-teacher’s husband text me our meeting location in Korean so I would have that to show the cab driver once I arrived.  (It’s always handy to have a Korean nearby!) We met at the YMCA (yes, they have those here, too) and began our day.  We spent a lot of time just hanging out at her apartment educating her on the little things that make Korea, Korea.  The things that you won’t read about on my blog. (i.e. public urination.)

“Korean Lessons” & Sushi

So I dropped out of Korean class. A few weeks ago.  It just wasn’t really working for me.  The class was structured for people who want to learn the Korean language in all it’s entirety.  I want to learn survival Korean.  How to get from here to there.  How to order is restaurants.  How to count to ten.

A small group of us have decided to continue to have our own study group on Saturdays.  Needless to say, the studying thus far has been, well, less than productive.

This week we had sushi and cupcakes.

에이미 맥클로스키

That’s my name in Korean…  weird, huh.   If you were to pronounce it as written you would come up with this…

A-E-mE  Mek-Cul-LO-Su-Key   

When I first saw it written this way I protested greatly with my limited knowledge of the Korean alphabet.  Now that I’m taking Korean classes and know the letters and the rules of how they are used, I no longer protest it.  Well, I don’t understand the A-E-mE part, but I can deal with that. 

I’m on vacation for the next five days for the Lunar New Year.  Due to the holiday the entire city shut down today for the next three days.  And as I sit here drinking Coca-Cola out of a whiskey glass, I realize that I honestly have nothing culturally exciting to say.  Nada. 

So instead, I thought I should make this blog educational. Enter: Lunar New Year.

Korean Food - In Pictures

I’ve been really bad about posting pictures lately. My apologies.  Here is a photo blog dedicated to Korean food.  Well, my three months of experience with Korean food anyway.   This is by no means a comprehensive list, it is just the stuff that I eat.  And don’t eat.

Most popular and most important…

Korean BBQ - Yum.  (Not my picture.)

Wa Ba Pu

Each time I go to the store the sweet ladies working there like to help me find what I need.  And by “help”, I mean that they actually take whatever I am holding out of my hands and give me something different.  The first time this happened I had only been here a few weeks and was looking at olive oil. I had just decided on my selection and was turning to walk away with my choice in hand. Without missing a beat, the little retail helper snuck up from behind and took it away from me. She handed me an obviously lower priced olive oil with two bottles saran wrapped together. 

“1+1”, she tells me and smiles, while lightly bowing.  At this point I had no idea what “1+1” meant or why she was suggesting I buy the cheap olive oil but I didn’t want to be rude so I gladly took her recommendation, smiled back, nodded, and went about my business.  I know she was being helpful and I appreciated the gesture, but for her to just grab something out of my hands I thought was quite ballsy. And eventually I learned that “1+1” is the Korean way of saying Buy One, Get One.

From SoKo, with Love

Bibimbap and the Ballet

What a lovely Sunday.  I love the ballet so when I found out The Nutcracker was in Daejeon, for this weekend only, I had to go.  I had four days to figure out the venue, how to get there, how to buy tickets, and hopefully some people also interested in going. I had a mission. I was not going to miss this show. After spending thirty minutes trying to understand the bus map I gave up and took off on the subway. There is a stop remotely close to the theatre, I’m smart, I’ll figure it out.  A short subway ride and a LONG walk in the cold later I found it.  And thanks to Facebook I was able to find 5 lovely people who also wanted to go.

 

Pizza, With A Bow On Top

Updates… what you have I not told you, my little public diary???  It’s been kind of quiet actually. 

I spent 7 hours Christmas shopping in the freezing cold on Saturday.  It was warm, respectively speaking, at one o’clock when I left my apartment.  Not so warm at 11pm when I returned. Needless to say, I was not dressed appropriately once it hit about four o’clock.  By the time I returned home I was surprised to still be alive, much less with all my fingers and toes still fully attached.  You don’t fully appreciate having a heated car until you’ve walk for miles all day in the freezing cold.  I could have taken cabs but each of my stops were only a few blocks from last so it seemed silly. But trust me, the temptation was there.

On my way home I felt I deserved  a treat so I broke the seal and ordered my first pizza.  Mr. Pizza is one of the main pizza joints but it gets mixed reviews from the foreigner crowd, the people who actually know what good pizza is.  It’s in my building and my students constantly talk about the amazing thing that is bulgogi pizza so by process of elimination, that’s where I went.  I already know that I like bulgogi because my lovely friend Matt took me out for Korean food in Orlando before I left.  Bulgogi, which translates loosely to “fire meat”, is essentially just marinated and grilled meat that would pretty much appease even the pickiest of eaters.  But bulgogi on pizza?  Maybe good, maybe not.

Kimbap = Kid Sushi

Everyone hesitates when I call it this but I don’t care, I think it’s true.  It’s super good too.
 
After hearing Marisol talk about her local kimbap shop I decided I needed to find one of my own. How exactly do you go about finding a good kimbap shop?  Ask kids.  Kids always know where the good food is.  They even drew me a map.

HangMan

After playing HangMan most of today I am completely certain of one thing - these children have never seen Wheel of Fortune.  R S T L N E - The most popular letters in the English language, yes? Ask any 10 year old Korean child and the first letters they come up with are U, H, W, and G.  I’ve never seen a game of HangMan take so long. By the end, the little hangman guy had eyes, ears, a mouth, fingers and toes.  It’s absolutely silly.

Korea is like College

The part of college I never really experienced.

We all went out for Korean BBQ after work last night, all 35 of us.  It was pretty fantastic. As with most other places, you kick your shoes off at the door then go find a seat on the floor.  Here are some pictures…  Everybody likes pictures.