My First Teacher's Mug!

We all got cute little mugs so that we can be all caffeined-up to greet the day...and our students.  For a mere 100 won, I can get half a cup of instant coffee from the machine. Yay!!! Actually, more like yuck. Also, though the packaging is super cute, the coffee from the Paris Baguette is not only bitter but watered down at the same time...how is that possible???  So, I vowed that I would never drink from there again.  Thankfully, I finally got my hands on a coffee-grinder and french press so I can have a decent cup of caffeine in this city of instant caffeine.

Being Oh Soju Naughty..

So I went out with my new friend, Rona, who also happens to be my language exchange partner.  We decided to go for dinner and party it up this Saturday and after a lovely italian dinner (complete with Kimchi and pickles, lol) we went for a pitcher of Soju (similar to vodka) at a local place.  Unfortunately, Korea doesn't really work like Canada in the idea of just going out for a few drinks.  A group is usually required to order food as well. It's kind of a reversal of us going for wing night back home, you can have the cheap wings but you have to order the pricey drinks.  In Korea, you have to order the pricey food to get the cheap drinks.  However, we had just eaten and were absolutely stuffed so when I ordered our drinks (in somewhat decent Korean) I didn't think there would be a problem.  Happy with our order, I made my way to the ladies room and when I returned, poor Rona informed me that because it was a weekend we would be required to order food so we made the decision to leave. Easily done right???  Nope.  The manager stood in our way and informed us that because our pitcher was mixed that we would have to stay and also order food.  He was incredibly rude, to the point that even I, as a foreigner, could pick up on the fact that he was failing to use a formal and respectful manner of speaking.  After ten minutes of haggling, he finally agreed to poor our drink into a "to-go" cup and let us be on our way.  Now, I am not very good at insulting people in Korean except to tell them that they are either crazy, ugly, boring, or a dog-baby (yes, that is a huge insult) so I gave him the evil eye, pointed my finger (very rude in Korea because that is how you talk to dogs) and told him that he was a very rude man in a very rude tone, gave a flip of my hair and stomped out.

Poor Rona, she's never been spoken to like that and it was incredibly embarrassing for her especially since they poured our drink into an empty soju bottle.  Drinking on the street is perfectly acceptable but not for women and especially not if you're drinking soju so Rona was incredibly hesitant to do so.  My solution???  Go buy 2 "to-go" coffee cups from a convenience store and transfer our drinks into them for a secretive way for us to sneak them into the bar.  She loved it!  I told her that this is what teenagers do in America and she had a blast after I hyped it up as our way to bond as a Soju Adventure!!!

So, note to self: order food no matter where you go so that you can have cheap drinks and if the management is rude then feel free to be rude back because in Korea...rudeness is unacceptable and the man was either racist against me or just plain crazy with poor customer service.  Either way, I feel like we won that battle in the end, we had a fantastic night...!!!

Nom Nom Nom Nachos!!!!

Yes, I admit it...nachos are the love of my life!  I absolutely can't live without them and their cheesy, spicy, crunchy goodness!  It's not like I haven't tried but everytime life gets me down it's the salt and spice that have given me my strength back.  Unfortunately, I knew that our time together as the food lover and beloved would eventually come an end and so I took it upon myself to mentally and physically prepare myself.  Everyone informed me that nachos would be a no-go in Korea and after going through the five stages of grief, I finally came up with a brilliant plan to part from my favourite food without having a mental breakdown and resorting to setting up a salsa and chip creation-station in my Korean apartment where I would use anything that I could find to mimic my mexican goodness!

And so, it began...I ate nachos every week for two months before I left.  I figured that if I saturated my taste buds with enough salsa, jalapenos, guacamole, and such then I would become so sick of them that I wouldn't want to see another chip for at least sic months.  Did it work?  Kind of...I did tire of them but only at the very end of that two months.  But here I was, three months into Korea and dying for a plate of nachos!  Leave it to me to hunt down the needed ingredients in a country where mexican food is practically unknown.  So, how did I manage to find all of this deliciousness?  Well I scoured the markets for whatever I could find and I did manage to find a TINY jar of Salsa...for $10.  Could I do it?  Well I did.  And it was delicious!  But I wanted more!  More dammit!  Thank goodness for the military base with all of that American food!  Cheap tortilla chips, salsa, and some Costco jalapeno havarti cheese (from the city of Daejon) made out meal complete!  Our?  Yes, I shared with a couple of friends and we ate our nachos ghetto style...on the floor using a box as a table and mason jars as glasses...that my friends, is how we roll in Korea!

WTF!  Who puts lettuce on nachos???  American friends that 's who!!!

Drag Queen

I went to the club last Thursday and even though it was an incredibly slow night, it was still a ton of fun.  I learned some more Korean, chitchatted with the staff who now absolutely adore me, and met the most adorable Korean guy who works there as a bartender.  He likes to dress up for fun and he decided to wear a lion costume that night. Upon sharing our costume stories, he disclosed that he likes to dress up as a woman, particularily as famous Kpop singers.  I was amazed.  There is apparently a drag community in Korea!  So that conversation quickly turned into an English lesson as I explained to him the meaning of the word Drag Queen.  I'm telling you, there are all sorts of crazy and fun people in this city.  Whoever said that Koreans are super conservative and stuffy might have been right about the general population but I'm always able to find the wild ones that like to have a good time!

Cafe Arista

Another fantastic little coffee shop.  I know that you folks are probably getting tired of me posting about them but here in Korea, the woman go out to coffee shops in droves.  This particular one is along "Bar Street" and is usually quiet and fairly unoccupied.  The cozy couches and english music creates the perfect atmosphere for writing and quiet contemplation.  It isn't quite as artsy inside as one would think but rather more old lady-style but it is still a nice place to check out.

Fat Korea!!!

Breads in all shapes and sizes!!!

Hot Dogs on Everything!!!

It is my personal opinion that globalization is going to be the end of good health in Asia, at least from what I’ve observed in Korea.  A trip to the market leaves me yearning for a good salad.  Back in Canada I went through phases of being a health nut and then I would fall into bad habits but I haven’t eaten like this in a very long time.  Even my month of noshing on taco chips (it was my plan to beat my crippling taco chip craving while in Korea: eat them until I never want to see them again) wasn’t as bad as how some people eat here. 

The stereotype of healthy Koreans no longer holds as much truth as it once did.  While some meals do include many veggies, many of them are lacking anything green whatsoever and are a combination of carbs, meat, and oil.  Still not that bad though.  What is going to kill the next Korean generation is their obsession over sweets.  Donut shops are rampant in this city. There is a Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins right across the street from one another.  You only have to walk a mere five minutes in almost any direction to find a Paris Baguette or Tous les Jours to get your crème puff, pizza bun, or cinnamon bun fix.  Oh wait, what about the weird tendency to slap hot dogs on anything from bread, pizza bread, and...donuts??? Chocolate sticks and chocolate bars (actually anything chocolate) causes these children to lose all rational. I could pour chocolate syrup on a piece of bread and they’d all be climbing on top of one another in their attempt to get the first bite as I wave it in front of them.  Now I know that I’m often an enthusiastic story teller but this is not an exaggeration.  Maybe I’ll test out this theory and tape it for you. 

I haven’t eaten so many sweets and breads in a year as I have in the past month.  They also have a weird love for hot dogs here.  There’s a huge section in the market for hot dogs and each bakery has its share of hot dog sandwiches smeared with gobs of mayo.  Mayo is another favourite of this culture.  You can buy tubs of it at the Costco and oftentimes the “salad” at a restaurant is a half cup of mayo with a sprinkling of cabbage.  Ramen noodles and chip sticks are common snacks for children here and my students never seem to be without a good supply. 

America has come to Korea and it’s going to take its toll in the next decade.  After witnessing the effect of bad diet in the western world, I would have hoped that Korea would be more careful with what is on the daily menu.  Right now Korea has public health care and from what I hear it is a good system.  Just wait until all the children from this generation grow up, get fat, and become diabetic and have high blood pressure.  I’m pretty sure that it will drain the healthcare system.  To the people of Korea!  Stop eating cake, and donuts, and chips!!!!  You are making yourselves fat and now that I’m living in Korea…I’ve already started packing on the pounds…L

Uhhh....We Lost Him, Mack

Not exactly the words that I wanted to hear when inquiring about the whereabouts of my dinner partner who had yet to call me today.  I'm surprised that USA hasn't started tagging their military boys (and women, I suppose) with GPS tracking devices.  If I had a dollar for everytime I've heard that a story about one of the boys being MIA, I'd have enough money to buy a ticket someplace cool so that I could have the opportunity to be MIA too.  It's not fair that everyone else is having all the crazy fun in this country.  But seriously, what happened to the mantra of "never leave a man behind"?  How do all these military boys end up waking up in different cities than where they began or showing up looking dishevelled almost 24 hours later. Well, it should be interesting to hear the story this time around when A-Rod finally shows up.  I wonder what trouble he got himself into...