I’ve been very busy, hence the silence. Here is a tentative schedule of what I want to write about:
Monday: first week of classes, and a nice cafe.
Tuesday: My apartment.
Wednesday: The weekend.
And by then, there should be plenty of material to continue with.
Although I’ve been taking care of my apartment and my sleeping habits have been slightly improved, my eating schedule has been erratic. Two major forces have conspired to make sure that meal hours and portions change.
The first, less important reason, is that the school workday for me is later than the typical work schedule; I get to work around 1 and don’t leave until 8 or 9 at the earliest, which means it eats into both lunch and dinner. I knew this already, though.
The major reason I haven’t been eating well is that the language barrier prevents me from going anywhere that doesn’t have a menu in A. English, or B. pretty pictures. I’m often very confused walking around whether a place is a restaurant or not, whether it is open or not, and what I should do when I go in. There are a handful of places near my home and the school which cater to expats, mostly coffee houses and the dreaded Dunkin Donuts. There is a nice bakery near the school called Paris Baguette which seems to have some goods imported from Europe.
The biggest problem with the language barrier, however, might be that I can’t figure where I am. I can’t recognize street signs unless they’re in English so unlike a typical city in the US or elsewhere, it’s almost impossible for me to retrace my steps if I stray too far from familiar routes.
Thankfully, the school is near a giant rotary, helpfully pronounced “rotary” in Korean as well, so that is how I’ve been orienting myself around. I was able to find the rotary from my home, and now I can sort of hover around the general area.
Ironically, I can take a taxi from my home to the school, but not the other way around. On Tuesday I was running late so I flagged down a cab and said “rotary”, so he knew where to go. However, I don’t know how to tell someone to take my back to my apartment. I don’t know the street name or number, there aren’t really any landmarks nearby that would be helpful for a cab driver; I don’t even know my own mailbox number.
Even before I found what I was eventually looking for (ie, a western-catering commercial street), my usual routes had no shortage of eateries, quick-serving type places which specialized in only one or two dishes, like fish or fried chicken or pork belly (very popular here). However, there was no English on the menu and especially in a place that would serve pork belly, I want to be careful what I order so that I don’t spend 10,000 won on a slab of pork fat or something even more exotic, like an eyeball.
Earlier last week I found a place near the rotary called “Young Gu’s Pizza: Casual American Restaurant” which I felt was a safe option as far as possibly having an English menu, and I was right. So how ironic: at the San Francisco airport last week, I made sure to have a pizza (at 9 am local time no less) so that I could have one before I went a year’s absence without eating a pie, and then of course the first real meal out I had in Korea was…pizza. : p
Young Gu’s pizza was very mediocre but I was very hungry so it hit the spot. There are apparently some okay pizza places here, I might have to use them at some point but for now I’d hope to avoid bad western cuisine. I also don’t have a phone yet, so that makes the decision easier (the chief benefit of a place called “Mr. Pizza” would be that you can have them deliver, no?). The pizza delivery guys around town ride around in motorcycles and scare me because unlike cars, which will stop before they kill you, the cyclists don’t care.
A few days after Young Gu’s, one of the girls at the school was nice enough to direct me to a part of town where there are considerably more exciting eateries and, more importantly, places where there is some English.
So last Thursday, I had a Korean “feast” at a restaurant whose name I still cannot pronounce. All the food is fresh and in one corner a man is making fresh dumplings and rice balls, and in the other corner someone is preparing rice, tofu, and veggies wrapped in laver (some kind of seaweed stuff). I ordered 20 dumplings (1/2 with meat, 1/2 with kimchi) along with fried rice and kimchi stew. I was also constantly handed plates of cold kimchi (a complementary snack along with the meal) and some kind of spicy green things. It was delicious. The next night I went to a kimpab place. I’m still not sure what kimpab is exactly supposed to be, but I was served laver rolls and they were great too.
Not only is the Korean food around here delicious, but I think eating out here (for the most part) is going to be extremely cheap when compared to the US. I over-ordered both times I went alone to that street this week, because I assumed that a plate of dumplings for 4500 won was not going to be enough food (4500 is roughly 4-5 dollars). I was very wrong. You can get a good meal here of local Korean food for between 5-8 dollars equivalent. The only thing that costs that little that I can think of in Albany that’s any decent is Chipotle or Panera, and again, that’s only if you order just one main dish. Here you can actually a full MEAL for 5-8 dollars, like two main plates and some side dishes. That’s crazy good. We will see how many dumplings I can cram into my mouth before I get sick of them. (in Barcelona I basically was eating the same two or three tapas at least once every day and now I’m not sure I can look at pimientos de padron for at least another decade).
For now, I have easy access to FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD!
Culture Time 