Chuseok on this!
Well hello there.
It’s been awhile, and for this I apologize.
Athough time seems to have stopped on this blog, it has done anything but in the living world. Today is my one month anniversary in Korea, happy anniversary to me! I hope Korea is happy about it as well. Anniversaries are lonely things to celebrate alone.
Anyhow, boy have things been happening. This past week was a big Korean holiday: Chuseok, the celebration of the harvest, which means that all the Korean kiddos go to grandmother’s house for the weekend and the foreigner teachers bond together to try and battle the traffic and make something of their unexpected- and- rather- abrubt week off from teaching duties. Being that we are all without our official Alien Registration Cards, and consequently unable to leave the country, a small collection of Wisco grad kids and I gathered up our cameras, notebooks and odd- number of travel clothes and went to Seoul! Hooray!
It was great. My second time in Seoul, and I’m in love.
There are, however, a few notable accomplishments that must not be overlooked.
First big demon: the subway. When one is a newbie to big cities in general, subways are a formidable beast to face. There that newbie stands, a colorful bowl of spaghetti noodles mapped out and open in their hand, and for whatever confusing, awful reason, that map stubbornly refuses to let up its secrets. Meanwhile, all around is ordered chaos, a never- ending flow of people that know exactly what needs to be done to get past those beeping, blocking machines and don’t appreciate the awkwardly gawking around and blocking the perfectly synchronized flow of traffic.
Well friends, I have to admit that on my first trip to Seoul, I was that newbie. I meekly followed where my equally foreign friends led (which was, I’ll admit again, to a safe corner of the subway system as we poked the map and begged it to release its secrets), but now! Oh, now.
Let me just tell you, I am a newbie no more. I have conquered the Seoul subway system. When I take that bowl of colorful spaghetti noodles from its expertly folded home in my back pocket, those beautiful lines all crissing and crossing that enormous span of city, I hold a puzzle! An intricate puzzle that allows me to get from any point in Seoul to any other point in Seoul almost instantaneously. It’s amazing. Instead of confusion, it’s a code. Awesome. Plus, I now have a T-Money card that is good for use on the subway, for any taxi in Seoul, and for half the pay- phones in the city. Equally awesome. Goodbye, awkward gawking. Hello suave new white girl, welcome to your second home.
Second demon to face down: traveling alone in such a big city as Seoul. I have to admit, this also was intimidating for me. Something about the ultra- foreign feeling of the language, the absurd way I stick out in a crowd, and the still- not- completely- acclimated- to- the- culture in Korea has made me feel a bit like a turtle roaming out of its shell. I kind of miss that cozy turtley- shell feeling.
But, again, I’ve done it. My first subway ride on my own was a bit nerve- wracking. It didn’t help that as I sat alone in the corner of the train, a little old Korean man sitting across from me and staring at me, without a single blink, dusk slowly setting outside the windows, a blazingly bright traditional Korean mask rested on my head, (one that I had decorated earlier that day at the Seoul World Design Fair 2010). It wasn’t long before I cracked under the pressure and took it off.
Not only did I travel alone to meet an old friend from Madison that evening, but I spent the entirety of the next day kicking around Seoul on my own, and it felt great. I unexpectedly visited the Gyeongbokgung Palace in downtown Seoul, figured out the city map and made it to Insadong, (okay, it was only a few blocks away, but still….): the artsy hub of Seoul, known for art galleries, paint studios and a beautiful open- air market that stretches for several blocks. It was so peaceful to wander the city alone without the stressed- out feeling that has been camping in the back of my head for far too long.
The next few days in Seoul were relatively uneventful in terms of blogosphere ratings, but for this:
Picture us, three ragged companions with me on a train back to rural Yeoju after three nights of very little sleep. Matt plays with his iPad, I sit beside him reading a book, Brian sits beside me staring out the window, Ryan sits beside Brian napping with his headphones in.
We are tired. We are hungry. We have very little money and we haven’t eaten any food all day. The train unexpectedly unloads us and we have to transfer. Before this, we accidentally rode on the train for too long and had to backtrack twenty minutes. We want to go home and we each want to sleep in our own beds. Seoul is beautiful but exhausting. Korea is beautiful and exhausting. I want to be in my own bed in my big apartment and I want to sleep for a very, very long time.
Transfer in Yeong Peyong, get off the train and walk a half hour through the downtown towards the bus stop. It is Wednesday, Chuseok day, and aside from soldiers in the streets with their families and random scatterings of large groups of friends, there are few people out. We are a gangly, the odd ones out in the streets and we are hungry. Most of the restaurants are closed, but as we are passing Baskin Robbins we see a little hole- in- the- wall restaurant beside it that is pretty packed with people. We look at each other and decide to walk in.
Enter the hole in the wall restaurant. There is one open table in the middle and three filled, the restaurant is very small. The corner table to the left is brimming with a group of teenage friends, the back corner table has a couple of old men laughing and eating, their eyes beginning to have the drunken Soju glaze in them. The table to the right has a little old man, his wife and daughter and they have an abundance of food and alcohol on their table. The lady that owns the restaurant clears off the fourth table and wipes away the dead flies and mosquitos as we sit.
Little old man on the table to the right is extremely entertained that we have entered this restaurant. He grabs Ryan’s attention and speaks loudly in Korean, I am beginning to see that he is quite drunk, and he uses his chopsticks to feed Ryan food from his communal dish in the center of his table. Little old drunken Korean man then walks to the back table, grabs a bit of food from their communal center plate, and proceeds to walk back to our table feed it to Ryan. Ryan is doing well under all this attention. The rest of us are half- paying attention, half- figuring out how the hell we’re going to order any food when nothing is in English and we’re bone- weary with exhaustion.
Little drunk old Korean man then decides to feed me a bite of his food, via his hand with his chopsticks, and I am too tired to refuse so I let him. I don’t want to think about what it is, so I just chew. And chew and chew and chew. It’s unchewable, I can’t think about it so I just swallow. One huge gulp and it is down.
“Guys, whatever we order, we do not want that. I promise you. Don’t get what he has. Please. It’s not meat.”
The nice Korean woman is trying her best to take our order but the little drunk old Korean man behind us is telling her we want what he has, pointing at his dish with much enthusiasm, my eyes are begging Brian to change it but the woman is crossing her arms in the ‘no’ symbol and walks away.
At this point, little drunk old Korean man decides to feed us shots of Soju and mechu (beer) mixed together. In the Korean culture it is considered very rude to refuse drinks, especially from people that are on a higher tier of respect than you. Being unsure whether his age is enough to qualify him on a higher tier of respect, and knowing that refusing it will be a much greater battle than taking it, I regretfully accept the shot, and immediately afterwards find another bite of unchewable chunk and liver- paste noodles in my mouth and, desperate not to puke, gag before spitting out the unchewable into a napkin wad beneath my plate.
The rest of the meal consisted in teary disbelief at the enormous plate of pig intestine and, possibly testicle, that we had knowingly- but- powerlessly ordered as all the sounds, sights and smells swirled around me and smacked me hard in my empty gut.
As soon as possible we excavated that restaurant and learned the hard way that a hole- in- the- wall restaurant in Madison is incredibly different than a hole- in- the- wall restaurant in Korea. We trudged on to the bus station and hungrily, with the taste of intestine hoovering on our lips, split ways to our apartments.
Rarely before has a bed felt so wonderful. 😉
Hello, culture shock. Hello, new side of Korean food. Hello bright new world! Can’t wait to see what’s next, haha. Suffice it to say I’ve been taking it easy for the last few days, reading, eating rice, eating eggs, ordering safe things like kimbop and dragon noodle soup, both of which are incredibly delicious and wonderful.
Well! That should be enough of a post to make up for awhile. Take care, until we meet agaiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!! I promise in the next post I will use more pictures than I use words. That’ll be a change, eh? 😉