First Post

I walked to work today. It seems as though the the weather can't quite commit itself to Autumn. The leaves have changed, which I haven't seen for quite some time thanks to Florida's lack of seasonal change, but the temperature continues to fluctuate. It was warm enough today that my scarf and wrist warmers seemed superfluous, although that is generally the case with any type of individual body part "warmer" be it the wrist or the leg variety. According to my students "Today is sunny and mild."

I took the route to school that bypasses a butcher shop that a golden retriever inhabits. It's rare to see big dogs in Korea and this one is always really friendly. I normally stop and pet him and exchange some words with him as he wags his tail and sniffs my crotch but he wasn't there today. I peeked in the window and saw him asleep on his bed. I was sad to be deprived of the perk. I went to Starbucks and got my usual and a paper. I feel so damn grownup it makes me sick.

My morning passed with very little excitement. It's getting harder and harder to find a suitable place to eat lunch though. I've completely given up on the lunches at school seeing as they're always cold and occassionally questionable. I think the final straw for me was the day that I stuck my chopsticks into one of the various communal bowls and deposited what I thought was some sort of mysterious vegetable into my own bowl of rice. I stuck a bite in my mouth only to realize that the crunchy saltiness was in no way any legume I was familiar with. Anchovies. Korean freeze dried anchovies that are small, blue and see-through. I've been told that the lunch ladies take offense to the absence of foreign teachers at lunch but I don't really care anymore.

Due to a lack of blogable material I've decided to include in each entry one bonus and one drawback about life in Korea.

Bonus
Street food. Street food in the States is limited to the occassional hot dog or pretzel stand and even that is really only commonplace in big cities. The best street food I can think of outside of Korea would have to be the food carts that provide the hungry staff and students of UPENN with a delicious variety of snacks and delectable Greek and Mexican dishes, to name a few. Yeah mmm yum those food carts are something else but I'm not sure if they truly qualify as 'street' food. They're more like movable restaurant food.

Anyway Korean street food is some of the highest quality I have come to encounter. There is NOTHING in the World that seems like a better idea at about 3:00 or 4:00 AM than a delicious selection of fried nibblets or some spicy 'tukbogee'. You generally get a cup of hot mystery soup with it and the spiciness, the heat of the food and the coldness of the morning air makes your nose run but you don't even care. The delicious chewy rice-cake (whatever that is) is the perfect remedy. The prices are cheap, as is usual for most Korean cuisine, probably between $2 and $5. In addition if you have decided that maybe you haven't had quite enough to drink you can always purchase a bottle of Soju, the flavorless, extremely potent and EXTREMELY cheap Korean rice vodka. When I say extremely cheap I am truly not exaggerating. A bottle of roughly 16oz is less than $1, and only about 40cents more expensive than a bottle of water.

Another Korean street food highlight are the fried fish-shaped pastries filled with red bean paste. Most foreigners don't take to the bean paste which seems to be the Korean answer to chocolate filling, but I rather like its semi-sweetness and the gooey texture. I can't remember the name of this little snack but it comes out in the Fall and brings a smile to anyone's face. It is freshly made and warms one's hands, belly and heart on a brisk day.

(I will hopefully be able to add pictures for your viewing pleasure so that you can truly appreciate what I'm talking about, until then please use your imagination).


Drawback
The lack of cultural diversity. I know this is a big one for a lot of foreigners. In all of the countries I've lived and visited I have never before felt like such an outsider. The closest contender would be Turkey but even that with the Muslims in conservative attire didn't seem as bad. There are few more daunting feelings in the world than being in a overly-crowded place ie. the subway, marketplace or Myeong-dong, and being the only person of the thousands who does NOT have dark hair and dark slanted eyes. It makes you very aware of your appearance and self-conscious for a whole slew of different reasons other than the traditional ones of weight, height and nose size. It has been said that this lack of diversity causes racism, intollerance and has even incited the use of the heavily loaded political science word 'xenophobia'.

Aside from unabashed and continuous stares of curiosity I thankfully haven't consciously been on the receiving end of any sort of hatred from the Korean people and I hope it stays that way. It seems ridiculous but this isolation from anything or anyone familiar or similar to me makes it that much more exciting when I do see a foreigner or hear a familiar song. My heart gets all aflutter with excitement. It's the strangest feeling.

Well that's all for now. I have five more classes to make it through before I'm in the home stretch towards the weekend.