This week was good, same as usual. One new thing is that, on Thursday, we had our first Korean lesson with our friends Dave, Tom, and Jonathan. A tutor came to Dave and Tom's apartment and gave us lessons for an hour and a half. Hopefully we'll continue lessons until we go and become pretty good at Korean. In our first lesson, we learned about 15 verbs and how to make statements, questions, and commands, both to friends and to important people. It's pretty tough but we're getting the hang of it.
Also, on Thursday, while you were all having Remembrance Day, Korea was celebrating a much less somber holiday. A company, called Pepero, somehow managed to create a massive holiday, solely devoted to the giving of it's product. Pepero is a long cookie/cracker stick, dipped in chocolate. There are now tons of variations on the traditional pepero, some being as long as walking sticks, some being made of a sugar-cone material, some where you dip the stick in strawberry or vanilla icing... but basically, everyone gives everyone else Pepero on 11/11 (so chosen because the number 1 looks like a Pepero stick). Ali got about thirty boxes Peperos from her students but I didn't get any. Luckily, I can eat all of hers.
Here's a pepero display at lotte mart.
Ali has finally found some Korean food she really likes, which is great because now we can go to Korean restaurants where both of us can have a full meal for about $5. Pretty great. In case you're wondering, her favorite Korean dishes are called Rak bokki (ramen noodles, dok bokki noodles (kind of super thick rice noodles), and a hard boiled egg in a super spicy sauce) and chamchi chumok bap (basically canned tuna inside a rice and seaweed ball). They sound not great but are actually really good. And I eat everything so I have fun ordering random dishes off the menu to see what they are.
So, this weekend Ali was supposed to have to work on Saturday but her director changed her mind at the last second so she had the weekend free. On Saturday, we went into Seoul because Ali really needed a new winter coat so we did some shopping in Myeong-dong (a place with American stores). Ali got a coat and some new clothes and then we headed to a new area of Seoul, which is in my book of the Top 100 Things to do in Seoul. The area was called Seorae and it is a small community of French people. There are about 600 French people, more than half of which are children. The international French school is there as well as French bakeries, cafes, and street signs.
It was a really nice neighbourhood, and it was very unlike most of Seoul just because there were lots of living space. It had tree-lined streets, all of which were changing colors, and small tri-plexes, instead of big apartment buildings. We went to a French bakery and got chocolate croissants and baguette and listened to French people talking to their kids in French - it was pretty cool to hear another language for a change. We ate our pastries and walked all over French town looking for this big park, which, after about 2 hours, we gave up looking for because it was impossible to find.
In search of a park.
After that, we went to Itaewon to meet Ali's friend, Jenn and some of her Busan buddies who were in town. We met them for dinner at a place called Gecko's Terrace where Ali finally found a Veggie burger (she was ecstatic) and I had a cheeseburger. It was fantastic. Then, we headed home. Sunday we just relaxed and cleaned and did our Korean homework together.
Now, since we've been here 8 1/2 months, we thought we'd do another post highlighting differences between Korea and Canada, only this time, it's things we've noticed here that Korea does WAY better than Canada and we think someone should work on back home:
Things Korea Does Right:
1) Movie Seats: In Korea, you can choose the seats you will sit in on a little screen when you buy your tickets. This is so nice because you don't need to go into the theatre half an hour before your movie to get the good seats. And, for really popular movies, you can go early, get your tickets and reserve your seats, and then go and have dinner or something and show up right on time and stroll into great seats. The other thing they do here is, if your movie starts at 8:00, the actual movie starts at exactly 8. The previews are before that so you know exactly when the movie will start.
2) Cell Phone Chargers: In Korea, every single cell phone (and there are a lot) all can use a universal cell phone charger. It's great because you can share chargers, have a charger in the office that everyone can use, and restaurants and bars will charge your phone for you while you eat. If you lose a charger, you can borrow from a friend or buy a new one from any company and it won't cost a fortune. It's really nice.
3) Side Dishes: Any Korean restaurant, when you order a meal, or even if you just get drinks, they bring you tons of side dishes. Like, seriously, tons. Just two people eating a $5 meal, we get an average of 6 or 7 side dishes - soups, vegetables, kimchi (of course), meats, seafoods, nuts, etc. Just tons of things. Granted, a lot of the side dishes aren't super delicious to our Western tastes but it does amount to a ton of free food.
3) No tipping: This one is obvious and so awesome. Probably not awesome for the waiters, taxi drivers, etc. but it is awesome for us
4) No taxes: Or, rather, all taxes are included in the price and prices are usually even numbers. So, when you see a price on a menu, that's exactly what the bill will be. Very handy.
4) Yo-gi-yo buttons: In Korean, "yo-gi-yo" basically means 'over here!' so, in most restaurants and bars, you can just yell 'yo-gi-yo' whenever you are ready to order or you want something else or whatever. But, even better than having to yell at someone in a crowded restaurant, most places have a button on the table you press and your waiter comes right over. It's not rude or anything and it's much easier than having to try to get someone's attention when you want the bill or wait for them to come check on you.
5) Crime: Korea is ridiculously safe. We've talked about this a few times but the crime rate is so low here that it's amazing.
6) Convenience Stores: Convenience stores here are everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. And you can buy all your normal convenience store stuff but also can buy coffee, or ramen noodles or sandwiches, kimbap (like sushi, kind of), and a bunch of other 'meal stuff' as opposed to just snacks. If you're starving, you can go buy a cup of dry noodles for, like 60 cents and then they have hot water and chopsticks and everything so you can just eat it right there. Very convenient.
7) Free Samples: At grocery stores, on every day of the week, all day long, there are millions of free sample people. At least one in every aisle. It makes grocery shopping pretty good.
8) Bringing in Outside Food: Here, no one cares if you bring your own food to the movies, to sports games, to restaurants - whatever. It's all good. In fact, some baseball stadiums have special seats with grills so you can bring your own meat and have a little BBQ at your table.
9) Shopping Carts: Here, shopping carts never have a bad wheel and they can maneuver with ease. I don't know how they do it but it's very pleasant.
Anyway, these are just some of the things we really like about Korea and that will be hard to adjust to not having when we go back home. Korea can be difficult a lot of the time with language and cultural differences but sometimes they do things that just make a lot more sense than the way we do them.
That's it for this week,
Ali and Jesse
