It's foreign to be foreign...

Ready for school!

I was prepared to start my blog today by boasting about how I had mastered my commute to and from work. However, this morning my bus drove completely past the bus stop leaving me standing there with a perplexed look on my face. The bad news is that I had to spend four times more on a cab, the good new is three-fold: The cab only came out to about 4,000 won (approx $4), I was able to tell the driver where to take me in Korean (hurrah!), and, most importantly, I wasn't the only one standing there confused. Meaning it wasn't a Mi Gook mistake, it was something that confused even the locals. 




My crowded bus of students in the morning.

A mini traveler, every day on her own.

Getting around hasn't been so easy, especially if I plan on taking the bus anywhere but to and from work. Google maps is confused by anything that's not in Hangul (aka the written form of Korean) and I'm confused by anything that is in Hangul. I can safely say that I am getting the hang of it, but by no means am I doing so quickly. It'll take time. I am beginning to identify locations, downtown is called sinae – pronounced “shin-ay” (시내), and the university area is chungdae – pronounced “choon-day” (충대). I live in Uam-dong – pronounced “oo-am-dong” (우암동). For my friends/family in Philadelphia, Uam-dong to Cheongju is like Rhittenhouse to Philadelphia. For my friends/family in Orlando, the closest I can explain it is like Maitland to Orlando. Essentially, it's Chungbuk (state), Cheongju (city), Uam-dong (neighborhood).

 

A view from my school

A view from my apartment

I started my weekend in my neighborhood at a school dinner then ended up in Chungdae. The school dinner was to commemorate our vice principal's career as he was retiring. It was a special occasion which required a traditional Korean meal consisting of about 40,000 courses of food – or at least it felt that way. Sitting on the floor, I enjoyed a bite of each course, having no clue what I was eating most of the time. My coworkers around me hardly spoke any English but they did their best to keep me in the conversation, which I appreciated. The older woman next to me spoke no English but was insistent upon refilling my shot glass with soju the second I emptied it. The one expression she knew, and may others her age know, is “one more shot”. 

I had heard that Korea was a drinking community but I never really understood it until now. There is a huge sense of family and community here, they take care of each other, they dine together, they drink together. To turn down a group meal or a group drink session is considered rude and stand-offish. We were told during orientation that we should accept every invite at first and then later we can decline. I don't know why anyone would ever want to decline – I would assume if we are the kind of people who would pick up and move to Korea for a year, that we would be the kind of people inclined to accept any and all invitations, especially one that consists of exotic foods and free alcohol. 

In addition to the mass amounts of alcohol Koreans can consume, I was also surprised how much food is eaten in one meal. These people know how to eat, and it's all healthy enough that they can do so without guilt. I watched two women next to me de-bone a fish with chopsticks in under 20 seconds and they became my new heroes.




A shot glass as part of a standard place setting

More baby anchovies - teeny tiny ones!

The 70,000 courses from our school dinner

After dinner I met some friends from orientation and had my first (and most definitely not my last) experience at a Noraebang (노래방) which is, in essence, Korean karaoke. It's a huge deal here, and it's scored. I'm not sure how it's scored, but for a girl who can't sing, I did pretty well. So I am assuming it's scored on accuracy of the words and not pitch.

Cute



My first meal at home (it's from a box -
don't get too excited)

Saturday I spent most of the day cleaning and organizing my apartment (I promise to have a video tour soon of my place). I was interrupted by a much needed invite to a local pub from some of the people from orientation who lived here for a year already, as well as Natalie, a girl from Orlando who lives the closest to me. We met in Chungdae in a bar that was extremely foreign. I was excited to see foreigners both Friday and Saturday night. I promise my ultimate goal is to assimilate as much as possible, but in the beginning, it's really nice to sit down, speak English, and eat a burger while I adjust. During that evening I realized how strange it felt to be the foreign one. Once we were done our game of trivia, and I stepped outside the bar, it smacked me in the face that I was actually in Korea, something that's easy to forget about in a bar that serves Philly cheese steaks and Sam Adams.

A real live burger and fries!

Sunday a few of us (including Natalie), went to a place called Hwayandong Valley which was about 1 hour and 20 minutes outside the city and a favorite spot to go hiking and swimming in the river. It was nice to get out of the city and into nature. It was, however, excruciatingly obvious that we were foreign to everyone around us. I gathered the more “in the country” we were, the more we stood out and the more attention we received. 

Once we arrived, we all changed into our bathing suites under our clothes. I had brought a black tank-top to change put on just to swim in, as we all knew well enough not to go into the water in just our bikinis. In the mean time I wore my white shirt on the hike, thinking I would change shirts once I was ready to swim. However, I did not think about the fact that you could see my bright pink bathing suite through my white shirt, which accentuated things I did not want accentuated. It took a while for our group to figure out why everyone (mostly men) were staring at me, and just me. I was inadvertently giving off the worst impression possible but once we figured it out, I remedied the situation as fast as possible. Lesson learned. Eek.



Gyeongcheonbyeok (Rock)



 

 

 

 

 

 

Note the shirt change :/

 

Badminton

 

Some kind of volley ball game involving feet

Daddy long legs!

 



Catching fish, then grilling them right there on the rock.  Now that's fresh!

 
After a long day we took the bus back to the city and feasted at a Korean BBQ buffet, where you selected your own meats and sides, then headed back to your table to grill it up. We were warned that we would be charged for any unfinished food. Unfortunately, we hadn't had lunch that day besides a few snacks on our hike, so our eyes were much bigger than our stomachs. We managed to leave only scraps behind but finishing off the giant quantities of meat we picked out was not an easy task. 

 

 All in all, it was a great weekend with a lot of lessons learned and a lot of foreign feelings.  Here are some extra Korean tidbits for your enjoyment.

Communal bar of soap in the bathroom

Mirrors are EVERYWHERE - even on hand dryers

A Korean Cowboy - yeeeehaw!

Spam is a luxury item here...repeat...Spam is a luxury item here.