Food thoughts

After being here almost a year I've discovered a few things. Firstly my taste in food has expanded and changed. Over the last week I've tried a few new things and eaten somethings that I've learned I love. I"m sure my mother will have a small heart attack reading this next bit but. When I was at the Organic, Vegetarian, Korean buffet with some of the other teachers and the principal and VP I found and dug into one of the traditional foods I've developed a taste for. They are a type of mushroom that are cooked in a tempura batter and then covered with a sort of sweet and sour sauce. I also ate quite a few other mushroom dishes. There are so many different types of mushrooms here that I'm learning to like them. `I'm still not a fan of the plain old mushrooms that are slimy and everywhere in the US.

I've also developed a taste for this soybean and red pepper paste that is a main stay of Korean cooking. I've been really lucky. In recent weeks thanks to the cafetria being under construction I've been bringing my lunch. I've also been invited out to lunch or invited to have lunch with a couple of different grades. 6th grade took me out for noodles one rainy afternoon. They were wonderful but burnt the heck out of my mouth they were so hot. This past week one of the 1st grade teachers made Sunny and I lunch. It was wonderful. It was 2 different types of rice, the soybean/pepper paste, chicken, lettuce wraps, and homemade Kimchi, a cucumber and some red spice salad. It was wonderful. There has been a lot of talk around the school about how "Korean" I am. I was given a great complement by the Vice Principal she said I must have been Korean in the past because I have done so well at picking up customs and taking to the food.

I should probably talk a little about the soybean/ red pepper paste. When I first got here I could only tolerate a very little bit of it. Now I love the stuff. I slather it on when I have BBQ. I also have bought some to have a home to make a meal of it's wonderful.

This was dinner tonight, lettuce, rice and the paste. It's all that's needed. I'm wondering how my new taste buds are going to react to eating food back in the US. Are things that used to be too spicy be bland now? Is my body going to react well to the switch back to American food for 3 weeks? Just things I'm thinking about right now.

Shoes and Socks!

Guess it's time for a cultural interlude. In Korea, like may Asian countries. You take your shoes off when you go inside many places. At school every morning my first stop is the shoe cabinet for teachers. Inside sit in nice neat rows the slippers or shoes for all the teachers at the school. I pull off my tennis shoes and slip on a pair of slippers and then head up stairs. Meanwhile the students go in two side doors where they take their school slippers out of the shoe bags they carry every day and put them on. Then they put their tennis shoes or whatever they are wearing in the bag. When they get outside the classroom there are rows of shelves where they line up their shoe bags. They wear their slippers all day with the exceptions of in a few classrooms. The English Center is one of those exceptions. Because the students sit on the floor they take off their slippers at the door. They then are supposed to line them up against the wall. They don't always get them perfect but since it has been part of the class score in the English center, they are getting better at it.
I've talked to a couple of students and they were telling me that if they wear their shoes inside at home their parents get really angry at them. They were asking me why we don't take our shoes off in the US. I said I think the difference is that our floors aren't heated.
One by product of all this time spent in slippers or without shoes on is that the socks here are really fancy. I have acquired a few pairs of fun socks while I've been here. I have a pair of Mickey Mouse ones that even have little ears that stick out. I also have a pair of Starbucks socks (copyrights aren't really respected here). The best pair I have so far are a pair I don't wear at school. I found some Obama socks the other day that I've been debating picking up and bringing home with me. You can find anything on socks. Most socks for kids are band members, cartoons, sports people, or just whatever current trend is going on. Adults tend towards simple patterns or plain. I figure I can always play the crazy American card and go for a mix of fun and plain socks at work most of the time.

Korean Queer Cultural Festival

Adventures in Korean communication

Cellphones are everywhere in Korea, if you don't have one you are way behind and will probably get laughed at. I've had a phone here since I got here but it was a "pay-as-you-go" phone. Which meant that every month I had to hike down the street to a store and hand over some won to make sure it kept working. Occasionally I'd go through the won on my phone quicker than expected and suddenly I'd be without a phone. It happened at odd times. Usually while I was out of town or even on a weekend when I couldn't go add minutes so I was not accessible on a weekend. I have enough ways to get in touch with people it wasn't really a big deal for me except when I was out of Daegu and trying to meet up with people. My cellphone was in the name of a nice Korean guy who owns a cellphone store at the corner. I started talking to Sunny about her helping me get a phone in my name. She was more than willing and we took off from school one afternoon to visit a couple of stores in the area and get me a phone in my name that would direct bill from my bank account. We walked into 3 stores and they would be friendly but say nope we don't have the right type of phone to let a foreigner have. I was like is it because they are in Korean? Nope. Is it because they are afraid we will leave the country and not pay our bills. (well maybe.) Nope. If you want a phone in the name of a non Korean here. It can't shoot video. This is in a country where cellphones can be used to pay for everything from subways to food. You can listen to music, watch tv, play games, everything on the cellphones. But they lock them down so that foreigners can't use all the features. We eventually had to take a bus downtown and ended up with the phone in Sunny's name but auto-pay from my bank account.
It's just another reminder of how things work over here.