Small victories

I've been deep in the doldrums for some time now. I don't know if I'm sick of Korea, sick of teaching, or just sick of myself (...after all, I'm with myself almost constantly), but it's been a while since I've gone anyplace without trudging.

But sometimes little wins come along.

Hashing, particularly my home pack, Yongsan Kimchi H3, has been my social life, my exercise, and my outlet; I've been to nearly 300 runs, 230-plus of them at YK, in under 4 1/2 years. Even that has lost some of its luster, as my best friends in the hash have departed, one by one, and I've gone on with newbies. I was recently selected as GM (Grand Master [leader]) of YK for the year, which is nice, but it's mostly meant responsibility more than prestige.

This past weekend, I hared a trail at Maebong, right by the school and not far from home. Choopa Cabroan, one of the nicest and most popular human beings ever at the hash, had on-outed a few months ago, but he was back from California for the week and it was great to see him. My trail, over Maebongsan (Hountain) and Yangjaesan (Hountain) and along the Yangjaecheon (Stream) kept the pack together...

 ...and elicited plenty of praise, which is rare. It was the first gorgeous day of spring and we had a great, happy turnout. It was a golden day.

This evening, three days later, I headed out for dinner, which is always a boring routine, sitting alone night after night and eating one of four or five things I can find in the neighborhood that isn't full of dead animal; even kimchi, which is ubiquitous, is preserved in clam or fish juice, and mool naengmyeon (ice noodles), which I used to enjoy in blissful ignorance, turns out to be in meat broth.

Tonight, I realized I needed to get some of Tug's specialty dry cat food, so I begrudgingly went eight blocks to the pet shop outside the huge Lotte department store. Afterward, I strayed down to the Lotte basement and found a Korean-style restaurant. I read hangeul, but I don't know all that many words; however, I found one I do know: dubu (tofu). I knew just enough Korean to ask the waitress, "Dubu isseoyo?" (It's tofu?) and "Gogi eopseoyo?" (No meat?) and say, "Eegeo juseyo" (Bring me this, please) and ended up with what I can only describe as tofu tempura in sweet-and-sour sauce:

It wasn't the best dish I've ever had, but it was tasty, and I was so happy to expand my dining options by 20 percent or so that I didn't even get offended that she'd brought me a fork when she trusted everyone else in the place with chopsticks.

Things aren't magically great now, but a win's a win, and I'll take every one I can get. And maybe the tide's turning.

Secret Asian man

Possibly the three prettiest girls I've ever dated simultaneously. Possibly.

So... there's a lot more money in producing K-pop music than in teaching, so I've quit my job and am seeking my fortune choreographing, writing music for, and producing these three lovely ladies. They're called Corngirl 21. They're currently number six with a bullet on the Korean Billboard chart.

Okay, that's a total lie. The truth is that I've found one woman isn't enough to handle all my manly manliness, so I'm dating three.

Okay, that's a total lie, too, though clearly more credible than the first one. Actually, this is Kate Yook, our school counselor, on the left; Qin Jie, our Chinese teacher, on the right, and Ms. Jeon, who comes in once a week to teach Korean to Qinjie and me, in the middle. We all had a dinner date tonight, in the Konkuk University area, which is famous for block after block of (genuine) Chinese restaurants. (If you're used to American "Chinese" food... yeah, that ain't Chinese food... notice, in the photo, the huge yin/yang-shaped pot of two kinds of soup; there were spiced sliced potatoes and corn salad with a touch of hot peppers and a couple of bottles of Tsingtao beer... no veggie fried rice or General Kapow chicken here.)

It was an exhilarating and enervating dinner; Qinjie speaks Chinese and English, Ms. Jeon Korean and Chinese, Kate Korean and English, and I English and Elvish. So the conversation sped ahead, halted, limped forward, looked over its shoulder, scratched an itch, and hopped on one foot. Mostly Ms. Jeon (Jeon Seonsangnim--Jeon Teacher--in Korean terms) would ask me questions in Korean and I would understand a quarter of the words, or Kate would explain something to me, or... well, once Qinjie told me an American friend had taught her a French term: "menage a trois". I explained what it means: "When three people love each other very, very much..."

It was really nice, being invited out to someplace I haven't been and just sharing food and time with these women, none of whom I ever would have met in my "real" life.

The Korean class is going well. Qinjie and I had coffee on Sunday and studied together. Both Kate and one of my students told me yesterday that my pronunciation is really good, almost without accent, and Kate and Jeon Teacher agree that I have enough vocabulary (mostly nouns) that when I get a little more practice with verbs and grammar, I'll actually be intelligible in simple, basic conversations.

I feel that, after many false starts, I have the key in my hand and I just have to fit it in the keyhole and turn the knob.

And I'd long forgotten the satisfaction of working to learn something. It's nice to have that feeling back.

And to be dating all the members of a K-pop girl group. That's cool too.

Score!

I'm halfway through our school's winter break, and so far it's been the best staycation I've had in Korea. I usually sit around and mope about how everyone else is off on a Southeast Asian beach...

This is a Northeast Asian beach, along the Han River in downtown Seoul.

...or in Europe or back home in the US of A while I freeze my Niblets off in the Land of the Morning C-c-c-calm. But I've watched good movies on the computer, read an extraordinary YA book (The Hunger Games) and am about to start reading the sequel, gotten about town, spent time with Hasher friends, and done some great retail therapy.

Usually just spending money doesn't make me happy (unless it's on books; my shameful English-teacher secret is that buying books elates me a lot more than reading them.) But a couple of days ago I bought a terrific tiger-head winter hat. I was only going to wear it on the hash, to fit in with the silly hats and socks and such that are popular among the hashnoscenti, but  it makes me happy, so I'm wearing it around the 'hood (in lieu of a hood) too. And the locals don't seem to be laughing at me any more than usual.

It looks something like this.

New Year's Eve was a party in Itaewon with "my" Yongsan Kimchi group and the Osan Bulgogi group; New Year's Day was a walking-trail hash in the same place, where I also bought my "happy coat": a satiny short kimono-like robe with one's home hash group's logo on the back, on which one sews all the patches (which serve as sort of demerit badges) from the various runs. Yongsan Kimchi's happy coat is my favorite color combo, the Michigan Wolverines' midnight blue with maize trim. I'll go back to Itaewon in the next couple of days to get the ajumma (middle-aged lady) who embroiders them to embroider "Corndog Millionaire" on the lapels and sew on my patches. Psyched for that.

And then today, Sunday, the Southside hashers hosted a great run through the streets and over a snowy, slippery mountain...

\

It looked something like this.

 
, and then, since the hash was on the right subway line anyway, I went to Home Plus. Home Plus is much like E-Mart, but better, with a wider selection of groceries and some clothing that actually fits me. I don't go there often, as it's a bit of a journey, but today I hit the mother lode.

It's so hard for a veghead to find a variety of food here; 'most everything has meat or fish in it and you can't be sure what doesn't, because those dang Koreans insist on listing the ingredients in Korean. I end up eating the same few things, and not necessarily healthful things, over and over. And a lot of eggs, ova and ova.

But at Home Plus today I found vegetarian ramen (I bought a dozen packets), Italian-style diced tomatoes, vegetarian chili, and cheap but delicious pomegranite juice. I'm trying hard to eat better and more varied food. I had veggie burgers at both hash events in Itaewon this weekend, too!

Unless you're a vegetarian in a non-Western-alphabetted land (hint: you're not), you can't imagine how rare these items are and how stoked I am to have this cornucopia of good eats.

To paraphrase the mortal words of the Ohio Express, "Yummy yummy yummy, I got grub in my tummy."

Oh, and I registered for my first half-marathon, in April. And I expect to do another full marathon in the fall.

So, as the young'uns say, it's all good.

Rice/Czechs and ice cream

Oh, almost forgot to tell about this...

On New Year's Eve, Chris, Lauren, and I went to Gangnam, the ritzy shopping area three or four miles from home. They wanted to go to a Chinese restaurant, so we did; they shared a multicourse meal consisting mostly of strange and somewhat offputting sea creatures, totalling 100,000 Won (85 bucks); I searched for something, anything, I could eat and found "Rice with bean curd and beef". We had a nice waitress who seemed to speak English pretty well, so I asked for it "gogi upseoyo" (without beef). I figured rice and tofu would be fine. Well, when it came, I didn't find and tofu, but I did find a whole bunch of little shrimp. Since I was already about two courses behind Lauren and Chris, I gulped, tried not to worry about what was in the sauce, and gave my friends the shrimp, which ironically were the most normal-looking things they ate in the whole meal.

Then we went to a nice coffeehouse. I'd made my resolution to lay off sweets completely for the month of January, at least, so I had to back up and get a running start; I had Americano and "ice cream wapple". (Korean has no "f"s.) That was whipped cream, chocolate, two scoops of ice cream and a Belgian... um... wapple. But it's now the evening of January 4 and I've kept my resolution in 2010! Of course, that could be because I'm still not hungry after New Year's Eve.

Finally, we went to Castle Praha, a very neat old-world pub with their own in-house draft beers, made with equipment imported from the Czech Republic, with ingredients ditto. It's a little place paneled in dark wood, very much like the hofbrauhauses I remember from 40-plus years ago in Munich. (Yes, I know Munich is not in the Czech Republic.) The tv's were playing a K-pop concert, kind of the equivalent of Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve. K-pop music is like cotton candy; a little bit is fun, but too much and you get a bit queasy.

At about 11:58, the tv cut over to downtown Seoul, where they had a countdown to midnight (Yeol... aho.. yeodol... ilgo... yeoseot... daseot... sa.. SAM... EE... IL... HOPPY NEW YIEO!) They repeatedly swung the big battering ram into the huge bell , we all clinked glasses back in our little hof, and oddly, things looked about the same as they had a couple of minutes before. The house did treat us all to bottles of good Czech beer, which was nice.

A couple came over and was eager to talk with us; he's Chinese (his name is CheolGang Yoon, by the way; say hi for me if you see him) and she's Korean. They both work for IBM in someplace called Dalian in China. We didn't talk of anything important, but everyone was full of New Lang Syne and chatted amiably and animatedly for awhile and exchanged business cards.

And then we caught the last bus home. If we'd missed it, we would have had a 75-minute, cold, cold walk; the taxis won't take us home (barring a huge overcharge) because they'd rather wait for longer rides, bigger fares, and drunker passengers.

You know, it seems as if every year I can remember, on New Year's Eve we all think, "That was sure a crummy year; this one's got to be better." Well, my personal 2009 was fine, but as for the world... this one's got to be better.

Happy Year, everyone!

Cold and warmth

It's been really cold here every day, usually with a high in the low 20s Fahrenheit and a cutting, mean wind. Every night, I think of Tiki, probably half-frozen, half-starved, and always terrified, back in Daegu. And the cold accentuates the sometime loneliness, as Christmas draws nearer and family grows farther away, in distance and in time. I have good friends at work, but they belong more to the expat stay-out-very-late-and-drink culture that's so prevalent for Westerners working in Korea, and they can be hard to get ahold of on weekends. Yesterday I was so flat emotionally that I went out in the freezing night to get a quart of ice cream, then came back and ate it. All. Without a bowl. For that matter, I was considering not dirtying a spoon.

Christmas is hard, you guys. (The only source of amusement is hearing Korean singers trying to enunciate "Feliz Navidad" on the Muzak in every store and coffee shop.) It's not the most wonderful time of the year everywhere; in some places, it's the hardest.

Today was much better, though, as I went across the city to the Veggie Club's luncheon. There is a chain of restaurants, in many countries now, called Loving Hut. They have huge vegan buffet, with all kinds of fake meats, salad, soups, coffee, slushies, cookies. All of it's good... 'ceptin the cookies. Vegan cookies suck; always have, always will.

The Loving Huts are owned or inspired-- not sure which-- by a Vietnamese woman who has her own spiritual-religious community; there's a tv playing her talks silently in the background, with subtitles in literally 20 languages. She's called Supreme Master Ching Hai, but you don't have to pay attention to any dogma to enjoy the meal. It's just in the background.

It's clearly a tactical mistake to let me into any "all-you-can-eat" place. It's nearly eight hours since I stopped eating, and I'm still not hungry. I brought a whole bunch of frozen stuff back, too. (Fortunately, it didn't have a chance to thaw on the way home.) More importantly, I made new friends, American, Canadian, and Swedish. Carley from Florida told me that there was a Loving Hut in downtown Orlando, but all the time she lived there, between the name and the fact that it was in downtown Orlando, she always assumed it was just another sex shop.

It's striking how energized I am after a Veggie Club get-together; more than the food (though it's a great pick-me-up, too, to be able to fix veggie meats at home after all this time), it's being around people who look at the world the way I do. I've been told that there are 10,000 vegetarians in Korea, which isn't many out of a population of 50 million. But I saw a dozen of them today, and the warmth with them is stronger than the cold outside.

So now I know I'm not the Sexiest Vegetarian in Korea. I may, however, have Korea's Only Mustache. And that's something.

Like a vegan

I've been getting so tired of eating the same few things that after school today I took the long trip (a short bus ride and fourteen stops on the subway) to Insadong, the ten-block long area where last weekend's Veggie Society dinner was, to visit the other restaurant I saw, the one with the vegan "meat".

It was a perfect time to visit Insadong, with rain-slicked streets but no rain, unseasonably warm just after dark, and very few people out at dinnertime on a weeknight, so I could stroll around and really look at the courtyards, alleyways, and shops. The latter, hundreds of them, carry an amazing array of traditional Korean clothing and art, and innumerable ticky-tacky items. Insadong is a much higher-class area than Itaewon, which is right by the US Army base, and I only saw one instance of the double barber pole, which is the sign in Korea of an establishment of ladies whose pecuniary motives are strong and whose virtue is negotiable. The Christmas lights were on all around Insadong and it was very pretty.

I bought a half-dozen frozen vegan items, not actually having any idea how to prepare them, but upon arriving home I found the company's website, in English (more or less, like nearly everything translated into English by businesses and the government, and even by our "American" school), for example: "high quality vegetable hamsausage. Once try the favor, then twice will be surprise at the taste" and "soy protein processed to taste chicken... enjoy conveniently it with ketchup or honey mustard in one mouthful". Mostly, I had no idea whether to grill all this stuff, nuke it, or shove a stick in it and lick it like a Popsicle. The website says "warm in microwave or on fryer". So, basically, it just doesn't matter.

It's kind of pricy, about ten bucks a pound, it's a time-eating, often uncomfortable hassle getting to Insadong, and I don't know yet if the food is any good, but I am so ready for "vege soy meat" and "soy chicken ball". Maybe I can cut the eggs and hashbrowns down to three times a week; I've been eating the same stuff ova and ova.

A very cool Saturday

I was running on the treadmill at the hael-seu cleob yesterday morning when it started to snow (outside, fortunately). The treadmills face the windows and the street, and I was on the machine on the far left, so I could open the side windows and let some cool air into the overheated room. So I had windows two feet to my left and two feet in front of me.

The snow started tentatively, one big wet flake drifting aimlessly around, then another, and another, and soon I was running in a snow globe, the air just full of thousands of swirling flakes. It was magical.

It was possibly marginally less magical as I took the short walk home, all sweaty and virtuous, and the wind started blowing the heavy snow at 20 miles per hour into my face. Still, I felt invigorated and alive. By the time I got out of the shower, the air was still thick with enormous flakes, the little park across the street had a thin blanket of white, and the mountains were ready for yodelers.

 I was reminded of a 3 a.m. walk around the Addams Family house and Six-Mile Creek in Ithaca, nineteen years ago, and a Christmas Day cross-country skiing down Linn Street, ten years before that. Now we know exactly how long it takes, after four decades in the sub-Arctic, to find snow enchanting again. Fourteen years, nine months, twelve days. And three hours.

But it melted.

I had a long a rewarding Skype talk with an old friend from St. Augustine, which continued my cool day. (If any Sarah Palin fans are reading this entry, I'd be glad to explain my sophisticated use of the word "cool" in both the metaphorical and literal senses to describe my day.)

In the early afternoon, I met my friend and fellow member of the Most Righteously Marvelous Department at St. Paul Prep (tm) Zach at his apartment. He had a four-foot-high bookshelf he wanted to get rid of, and we carried it a third of a mile to my place. Of course, Zach is the only teacher who doesn't live within two minutes' walk of my place, but as frickin' frigid as the walk was (the snow had stopped, but the wind hadn't), as cumbersome as the bookcase was, and as parlous as it was dodging the traffic on the tiny sidewalk-bereft streets, it was worth it. I barely have room for another coffee mug in my apartment, but the shelves in effect increase my space. I can get a few things off my little table and finally unpack the last box I brought from Daegu.

The best part of the day, though, came when I took the long subway ride to Insadong for my first dinner with the Seoul Veggie Club. I got to the area early, so I had a little time to explore. I had walked through Insadong (a blocks-long pedestrian mall with alleys and courtyards, lined with restaurants and tiny shops) once before, with Zach and Chris, to get to Gyeongmokgung Palace. But that was on a lovely Saturday in fall, and the sheer mass of people made it impossible to actually see anything.

True trivial fact: Insadong has the only Starbucks in the world with a sign that reads "Starbucks" in the local language's writing system. By law, Insadong shop signs must be in Hangeul.


Now it was very very cold, very very windy, and just about to get dark. (Just reg'lar dark, not very very.) There was all the space in the world to look around at the art galleries and shops selling traditional Korean goods, wall hangings and Buddha statues and shamanist totems, ranging from the almost lovely to the truly tacky, caricature artists (one of whom I think drew my picture at the New York State Fair in 1982) and street carts, some protected from the winter by heavy plastic sheets, selling roasted chestnuts and little doughy custard-filled "walnuts".

And then it was time for the elite to meet, greet, and eat. I met a bunch of folks at a subway exit and we walked to a vegan restaurant a few blocks away. The place is like a church basement meeting room, just a big space with several rows of long, tables covered with white tablecloths, with more long tables laden with aluminum containers full of food. The get-together was a joint effort between the SVC and the Korean Vegan Society, and the room filled up with fifteen or twenty Westerners from the former and twice that many Koreans from the latter.

Please don't tell PETA, but vegan food doesn't thrill me; just not enough fat and sugar for my sophisticated palate. But the buffet was good, lots of greenery and brownery, identifiable and un. My favorite dishes were the pumpkin tempura and the Chinese noodles with... mushroom stroganoff?

It wasn't the food that was the best thing, though. It was meeting people in this tremendously carnivorous country who think like me; I had almost given up the thought that there were any. Our table looked like Ithaca, scruffy beards and flannel shirts on the men, adorable knit hats with tassels and long straight hair on the women, and I made some new friends, the first I've found in Seoul whom I don't work with. In particular, I had a really nice conversation with a couple of friendly guys named Zenas and Ray about Buddhism, Thich Nhat Hanh, Eckhart Tolle, and football. One of these things is not like the others...

I don't know if you can understand the "up" I get from all this unless you're a veghead living in a nation full to the brim with meatheads. (Note to self: edit this before posting.) But it's so good to be around people who exude positive energy and kindness.

What's almost as good is that they told me about other veg restaurants: two more in Insadong (one of which carries frozen prepared veggie "meat"-- oh frabjous day!) and a chain of vegan places called Loving Hut, one of which isn't too far from my neighborhood. I Facebook-friended Zenas and talked with Ray about meeting for lunch at Loving Hut sometime soon. And the next Veggie Group dinner, at a different location, is only two weeks away.

And my late Sunday morning is blindingly bright, and there's still a light confectioner's-sugar dusting of snow on the highest mountain outside my window.

Very cool.

Days of swine neurosis

...wasn't Jack Lemmon in that movie?

Anyway, this is my 200th blog post... where's my cake?

It's dinnertime Tuesday and we were supposed to be back at work at 1 today, with parent conferences tonight and classes resuming tomorrow after our short swinish break, but I just got email saying that we'll be closed all week, which will certainly muck up our vacation schedule. The last numbers I heard indicated that five of our students (out of a total enrollment of 80) have been confirmed with H1N1, as has the principal. Me? I feel fine. Too lazy to go to the effort of contracting the virus, I guess.

Speaking of health, last Monday I finally reupped my bp meds. In Daegu, I had a little clinic/hospital just a few blocks from my apartment with a friendly, English-proficient doctor. Here, I did a fair amount of research and finally got an appointment at the nearest hospital that promised English competence, St. Mary's Hospital, which is linked to the Catholic University of Korea, in the Gangnam area.

I got off work at 4 and theoretically had to be there by 4:15, which necessitated a hectic search for a taxi, an eight-buck, frustrating cab ride in rush-hour traffic, and an intimidating search through the massive hospital itself, where I only found one person besides the doctor who spoke English. The signs were all in Korean, and I can read the letters just dandy, but unless they spell a word that's basically English (such as the little Hershey's foil packet by my elbow, with Hangul letters reading "kee-sae-seu" but which sadly now has only empty wrappers and little discarded paper flags left to offer), it doesn't help much. Trying to follow the directions of a lot of staffers pointing in general directions across a huge lobby with lots of branching corridors is more frustrating than you might think.

My doctor was surprisingly young (I think I may have been her first patient ever) and, judging from the top half of her face, cute. However, the mask covering the bottom half of her face was quite ordinary. She was quite accommodating and, once I returned to that receptionist to point me to the machine to feed my ticket into to get my prescription to take across the street to the yakguk (pharmacy), it all worked well. Then I looked at my phrasebook and said "Where is the subway?" only to have the pharmacist point down. It turns out the hospital is right on top of a subway stop, just three stops away from our nearest one. So I'll schedule my next appointment, in three months, when I don't have to get there in a rush and ride in relaxed subterranean comfort.

The next night, the PTA had the faculty out to dinner. The family of one of our students owns a galbi (short ribs) restaurant a half-hour south of the city. The property is an amazing mix of lovely park and ticky-tack; the grandfather showed us a tree he planted fifty years ago, there were big pools full of koi the size of your forearm, and there were lotsa nekkid women statues. Apparently it's a big place for weddings. I didn't want to make a fuss or stand out in front of the PTA, so I decided to just eat the multitude of veggie side dishes. Unfortunately, Zach (half of the most awesome department at any prep school in Asia) tried to be nice and told them I'm veg; I tried to tell them don't bother, I'm fine, but they brought me a lovely "vegetarian" plate... tuna. With a side of oysters. Oy.


More successful gustatory endeavors... I found a place called Butterfinger Pancakes in Gangnam, and on Sunday Lauren and I had brunch there. Oh, lordy, lordy... a Village Inn garden skillet, if God were the short order cook! Pancakes with three choices of butter (reg'lar, honey-, and I Can't Believe It's Not) and syrup, a massive omelet subsuming a pound of roast veggies, and a Matterhorn of roasted hash browns redolant of rosemary and delight. And lots of coffee. And last night, I joined Lauren, Susan and Chris from work at a little Mexican restaurant in Gangnam. Dos Tacos is down a wide alley from the main street, hard to find, but worth the trip; I'm pretty sick of the two Korean dishes I know I can order, and a delicious veggie burrito, hot, fresh fries, and a lime margarita... muy, muy bueno, ajosshi! It's a bit of a trip to Gangnam, but my culinary horizons just got a lot wider. As did I.

I have no clue what to do with the next five days. I may chase down to Daegu one day to visit Emma (returning to New Zealand shortly) and Joanna (Alaska, ditto). I think Daegu will always have a bit of a pall for me because I lost Tiki, but I want to see both of them again, and see Heeduk to negotiate terms for me to tutor in January... if these autumn days off for H1N1 don't completely eat up our winter break like me engulfing pancakes.

The Otter Limits

I have a hard time, as a veghead, finding stuff for lunch. There's a little kimbap restaurant near the school, and it makes a quick, cheap takeout lunch...

but I can't get across to them that I want it with no meat, no fish, no crab. They have bibimbap (veggies with rice and hot paste) and ice noodles for eating in, but the place is always packed with LG employees at our lunchtime and we can't get a table.

A nice big restaurant has just opened around the corner from there, and, wonder of wonders, they speak English! But when my friends and I went there for dinner, our hosts were so flummoxed trying to find something for me to eat that they finally came up with a bowl of sticky white rice and a kind of tofu broth; they thought so little of their own creation that they gave it to me, apologetically, for free. Tony suggested I put the rice in the broth and bake it on the grill set in our table, and it wasn't bad, but still, it would be an awful hassle explaining what I want and having them figure out what to charge me.

I'm sick of walking home for eggs and I'm sick of taking pb and j's to work and I'm sick of Costco pizza, let alone the hassle of getting in there, fighting through the crowd to the basement, standing in a long line to order (twice, ajummas [aunties-- middle-aged ladies] have butted in line right in front of me as if I didn't exist), waiting in another line to pick up the pizza, and riding back up two escalators to the outside.

It all kind of came to a head the other day when I went to a coffee shop and was ready to pay six bucks for a veggie wrap; they don't have one, just chicken or ham or tuna, but I decided to order a chicken wrap without chicken, just the lettuce and tomatoes and such. With my pidgin Korean and the two girls' pidgin English (despite the fact that everyone their age has taken several years of English in school), it went something like this, in a mixture of Enrean, Konglish, and gestures:

(Me:) Chicken wrap, no chicken, please...      (Girl:) What?
No chicken. Chaesik (veggies)...      No chicken?
No chicken...      (girl points to menu) Ham?
No ham...      Menu changed: no ham, bacon.  
(At this point I'm willing to settle for a wrap without bacon instead of without ham; I'm easy.)
Bacon wrap, no bacon. Chaesik...      No bacon?
No bacon...     Tuna?
No tuna. Chaesik...     (silence)
Chicken wrap, no chicken. Bacon wrap, no bacon. Tuna wrap, no tuna, I don't care...     (silence) 

Chaesik wrap, please...    Oppseoyo. (We don't have that.)
:: sigh :: Thanks. Bye.

It's sometimes hard to stay true to my beliefs when I seem to be the only one in the country who believes them. Even most of my Western friends say either they've eaten dog (and it's delicious) or they'd like to, and sometimes at the grill-it-on-your-table restaurants, the pork sizzling under my nose is too much, even though most of the restaurants have these aluminum elephant-trunk things hanging from the ceiling to suck away the smoke from the grill. And I won't walk into a restaurant that has, as so many do, fish and eels and octopi on death row out front.

Speaking of our aquatic amigos, I did something a couple of weeks ago that I'm not proud of, though most of you will think I'm nuts for minding and one or two will be disappointed in me. I was at the huge underground COEX Mall, which looks like it was designed by moles with architectural training; it has tons of really upscale stores, and the corridors wind around and around, giving few clues as to whether they have three Adidas stores, or whether you've just passed the same one for the third time. COEX also has a Kimchi museum and a stage where they tape videogame championships, which constitute full-time programming for two tv channels. Be that as it may, they also have the biggest aquarium in Korea, and... I don't know why... I visited it.

Now, animal rights people, of whom I'm one, believe that animals are not our property to do with as we like, to kill, eat, imprison, wear... I haven't been to a zoo in twenty years, and for all the times I passed Marineland and Sea World in Florida, it never would have occurred to me to go inside. They need to buy all the imprisoned animals one-way tickets home. And yet, somehow... boredom, sightseeing frenzy, the idea that, hell, they're fish, they'd have been eaten by now if they were in the ocean, I don't know... I went in.

I'll admit that the gigantic tank where you walk through the tunnel and let the sharks and rays and all swim right by you and over your head is cool, and I don't quite know what to make of the "whimsical" room where they have live fish in mockup toilet bowls and bathtubs and the bases of lamps and the front of a Coke machine:

...but, though I was only theoretically opposed to their keeping the fish, however hypocritical or illogical that may be, I hadn't counted on the penguins, the lizards, the bats, the toads, and (my favorite animals in the world) the otters...

..all of which were in enclosures entirely too small and immeasurably smaller than their rightful enclosure, the planet.

I'm sorry I went, sorrier than I am for my troubles finding lunch in Korea. If I'm the only living veghead on this peninsula, then I guess that makes me Korea's Sexiest Vegetarian. Always look on the bright side of life.

Naengmyong, maekju, and 10,974 days down the drain

You know that invisible sign I have over my head that reads, "Hasn't been drunk in _____ days"? Yeah, well, reset it... from 10,974 to 4. I had said for thirty years that I hadn't been drunk since my friend George's and my bachelor party... oh, chill, we weren't marrying each other... on May 12, 1979. I guess once every thirty years is okay... isn't it?

On Friday after work, my new friends and colleagues Tony, Chris, Zach, and Lauren (as ordered in the photo below) and I took the bus over to Bundang, the area where the school used to be, and drank and ate. And drank. And drank. And drank. And I could keep going, but I don't want my laptop to run out of pixels. There were gallons of maekju (beer) and shots of soju (aviation fuel mixed with sugar) and baeksaeju (like soju, but gold-colored and with some actual flavor). And there was a lot of food, some of it identifiable, and more laughs (I think I told every off-color joke I've heard since I first understood what the terms in the jokes were talking about-- that would be 1985 or so), and just so much fun. I completely blew away my self-imposed temperance rules and we all had a wonderful time.

The meat issue aside, as I've written before, this is a wonderful way to share a meal. Ninety percent of the food is just out there on the table, communally available, you cook your own food right in front of you (pork and sprouts and hot peppers and onions and cloves of garlic), nobody pours his or her own drinks and nobody's glass goes empty for long. We each had a wonderful little dish of onions soaked in a piquant wasabi juice, and Tony was kind enough to order for me, the veghead, some scrambled-egg soup and something that sounds atrocious but is delicious, naengmyong: ice noodles. Frankly, I thought I'd taken a picture of it for you but apparently my concentration wavered for some reason, as I don't have one. It's a huge bowl with kind of rubbery, thin, greenish-gray noodles, a hardboiled egg, some miscellaneous beanish things, and a lot of ice cubes. Disgusting, right? Actually, against all odds, it's wonderful.

Finally, we were ready to move on and against all odds I managed to stand up. I suggested we all go to a noraebang, a private karaoke parlor, and we had a great hour, fortified with another libation or four, sitting under the little disco ball and belting out Jump and It's My Life and Panama and Born to Run and Sir Duke and, well, the first few bars of I Believe I Can Fly, until I gently remonstrated with Zach for mellowing my harsh, upon which he saw the error of his ways.

Well, by the end of our hour there we were all pretty much quarter past drunk and I was ready to head home, but I had no idea how to get there, and a couple of the guys wanted to go to this other bar where there were pool boards and dart tables... I may have gotten that mixed up, I was pretty far gone... and after that somebody or other had the bright idea of having a pitcher of beer at some seafood restaurant where Tony ordered me a big bowl of watermelon balls and tomato slices floating in skim milk and ice. I'm not kidding. But by this time, for the first time in my life, I was actually full. of. beer. Couldn't take another sip.

We had started at 5:00 and it was 2:15 when finally Tony headed back home and the rest of us oozed into a cab for the long ride home, while Chris and Lauren conked out in the back seat. I'd never before actually watched any of my colleagues sleep together; is Penthouse Forum still in business?

At any rate, I'd had more booze than I usually ingest in five years, but my stopping drinking at the seafood restaurant, the long ride home, and my natural resistance to all kinds of moral turpitude allowed me to go to bed nearly sober and wake up without a hangover. The Age of Miracles is not over.

...by my count I need to not get drunk again until February, 2040 in order to beat my old record.

--
On Saturday afternoon, Zach, Tony, Chris and I went to a expat pub/restaurant, Gecko's, in Itaewon, the notorious foreign bed of iniquity. The place was flowing with buzz-cut young American soldiers and testosterone, but I was temporarily in gastronomic heaven to find that they had veggie burgers on the menu! I say "temporarily" because the burger turned out to be one of those beige monstrosities with grains freckling its surface, not a nice juicy fake hamburger as God intended. But it came with lettuce, tomato, onion, and ketchup, so it'll do.

I also had one beer. One. Then I headed back home via subway while the guys went out for more liquid refreshment.
--
For Sunday, I'd asked around about who wanted to go to the ballgame between the two teams that share Jamsil Stadium, the Doosan Bears (huzzah!) and the LG Twins (meh.) Tony, Nikki, and Chris said sure, they'd go, but didn't. Lauren said she'd love to but couldn't, but did.

It was her first time at a Korean game, and it's fun to go with a newbie. I've posted quite often about the spectacle of Korean games, so I won't, but a KBO virgin is always wide-eyed and grinning,.at the noise, the enthusiasm, the sheer energy of the crowd.

I will say, though, that the games at Jamsil, which is so much bigger and louder than the ballpark in Daegu, are exhausting. KBO games tend to run really long, with a lot of time between pitches and a lot of full counts, and it isn't the 25,000 people constantly chanting and singing and thwapping thundersticks that wears you down, it's the little kid right behind you. We left in the fifth inning, with our newly beloved Bears up 5-0; We taxied home, I stopped at E-Mart, went back to school for a half hour, walked home, and the game was still on; I got home just in time to see the Twins win the game in the bottom of the ninth. Four and a quarter hours for a nine-inning game.

I had a Coke.

There's a sucker born every minute

...adjusting to Korea in a nutshell (to mix food metaphors, as you'll see):

I was in my schoolroom today, proofreading, when Heeduk, who can be very thoughtful, came in and handed me a frozen treat: Papico, it's called. He left, I opened one end of the wrapper, thought "mmm, chocolate" and popped it in my mouth. "Mmm, no taste whatsoever," I thought.

Then I realized that I was sucking on plastic; a Papico is... well, I'm not trying to gross you out, but this is the most accurate description I can think of... basically a condomesque plastic tube filled with a Wendy's Frosty. You let you hand heat melt the Frosty and suck the chocolatesque goodness out the end, which I did.

...but first I had to have the school secretary show me how to open it. I felt like I was about four years old.

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore...

The social ramble ain't restful

(Luke, me, Ray on Mt. Apsan.)

It's been a busy few days and I'm about socialized out. (As my long-term friends know, I can only manage about a half-dozen smiles a month.) I had Thursday through Saturday off, and as I posted recently-- hope you read it; there's going to be a pop quiz-- I went to the ballgame with Justin on Thursday night.

On Friday, I reprised my Apsan Park trip of the week before, but this time with Joanna, Ray, and Luke. First we went downtown to eat at Gulliver's Travels, whose owner, DJ, speaks the best of English of any Korean I've ever met and thus can make me good food that's actually vegetarian (no lard, no meat sauce, no fish broth) and that I haven't had a thousand times. (I had a delicious quesadilla, and you can have no idea how wonderful something different tastes unless you've eaten the same four or five things for nine months.)

We stopped in at the little Korean-War-and-anticommunist-museum at the base of Mt. Apsan, which isn't very interesting unless you're into black-and-white photos captioned in Korean, and took the cable car up the mountain. At the top, we sat for a libation as we looked out over the city, then took the long, steep, rocky climb down. (Envision the third hour of Return of the King, played backwards.) Then Luke returned home while Jo, Ray, and I took a long hike to Duryu Park and took the subway to a Home Plus store (my fourth... one more and I get a medal!) I'm trying desperately to cut down on cereals and bread and got some nice black beans and fixin's... I'm tryin' here, folks.

Then we went to Papa John's and I'd like to point out that the salad bar provides a delicious meal without high-fat ingredients or breads.

Memo
Re: Salad Bar

In the opinion of the crack SJCintheROK legal team, merely stating the fact that the Papa John's salad bar is healthful is not a legal warranty that the employer actually ingested anything from said salad bar. Precedent: Pop's Place v. Jughead, 1959.

Christopher Darden, Marcia Clark
SJCintheROK head counsels

I'd like to point out that Baskin-Robbins has no cereal in it, so stopping there afterward was perfectly okay as well.

On Saturday night, Luke, Joanna and I went to see Night at the Museum 2, which struck me as pretty funny, especially Hank Azaria's channeling of Boris Karloff. (I find Hank Azaria hilarious in just about everything he does; did you see his brilliant comedy turn in Tuesdays with Morrie?) I'm also deeply in love with Amelia Earhart, as played by Amy Adams. The movie stopped just about a millimeter short of way too frantic; at least in the mood I was in, I had a good time.

Joanna and I have evolved a semiregular dinner appointment on Sunday evenings. We just really enjoy each other's company, even though we're very different. I worked on Sunday morning and afternoon, and in the evening joined her to people-watch on this great burger place's patio. The management cobbled together a nice egg-salad sandwich for me, with some real, genuine, authentic American-style French fries. :: Heaven, I'm in Heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak... :: Then we sat in a park and talked for a bit and ended up at the Natuur ice-cream shop. (No, no, their ice cream also has no cereal, so that's fine, too. Really. What are you, a dietician?)

Anyway, as the days dwindle down to a precious few (Ray leaves in a couple of weeks, for missionary work in South Africa, and I have ten weeks left in Daegu), I'm trying to make the most of the time with my friends. This coming weekend, there's Justin's midnight trivia on Friday, a noraebang (karaoke parlor) trip for Justin's birthday on Saturday, and a ballgame with Joanna on Sunday... if I've recovered from this weekend by then.

As Satchel Paige said, "Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society— the social ramble ain't restful."

Yum!

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

This place is full of surprises.

Downtown Daegu is funny, a grid of major highways, little narrow streets with sidewalks where cars and pedestrians commingle, and little dark alleyways lined with teensy shops, or sometimes just bricks; you never know.

Luke, Ray, Joanna (teacher at our Samduk school) and I went down one of those alleyways today, to a nice little Mexican restaurant, very cozy, good food (I had nachos grande, as I knew that was one thing not cooked in lard). The cook speaks Korean, English and Spanish (as his grandfather is from Spain). And it just isn't a real Mexican restaurant without free side orders of Korean popcorn and vanilla-tasting herbal tea, is it?

The restaurant is called Yeon Chow, which I understand is a traditional Mexican name.

Just down the alley from Yeon Chow is a little restaurant with a round sign that depicts a cartoon cat head, out of which are sticking an apple stem and leaf. What is in the restaurant? I'm glad you asked. In the window, driftwood and cat condos, covered in a collection of cats (live, fluffy ones, that is). Further back? People having lunch with cats perched on the backs of their chairs. Considering that most Koreans apparently consider cats to be vermin, I thought that this was one of the most amazing and delightful scenes I've seen in this country.

Later, in my tenth quixotic attempt to find jeans that fit me, I went to the department store attached to the movie theater we frequent and actually found some that are close enough! I was about to give up and ask someone back in North America to just buy me some Wranglers and ship them; I've looked and looked, but hadn't found any that didn't have flowery stitching or "FUBU" or "Ask Enquired" writ large in swirly English letters across the ass, and that also were both big enough in the waist and short enough in the legs to fit. I finally did. (LEVI'S!) They fit fine, as long as I don't want to breathe and don't mind wearing platform shoes. I've already breathed many times during my life, so they'll do.

By the way, it's good to be able to ask (in Korean) "Men's jeans you have?" and be pointed to the correct floor. I even used the correct syntax.

I was waited on by a jolly middle-aged Korean woman; to try them on, I had to go behind the counter, which sits right out in the middle of the store, let her pull a curtain around me, and change really fast, as she wasn't all that patient before deciding I'd had enough time and she should open the curtain. (Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!) Then, after running my Visa, she motioned that I had to follow her up a floor on the escalator. Why? Credit card declined? Jeans warranty? Complimentary snapshot from behind the curtain? No; she picked up a scratch-off card and scratched it off for my magnificent surprise prize: a small tube of Vaseline hand lotion. Can't use it; I need some take-years-off-the-face lotion. Oil of Oy Vey, perhaps.

On this trip downtown, I also found a book I've been looking for ("Inkheart"; really liked the movie) and got Kyobo Books to order me a copy of the nationwide events magazine (in English) I've been looking for for months. And I see there's an exhibit in town: etchings and engravings by Picasso, Warhol, Matisse, and others I should know more about. Now I just have to figure out where the dang building is. Oh, and Luke gave me a half-dozen cans of tuna for the cats.

All in all, a pretty good Wednesday, though Hump Day has not thus far lived up to the promise that term implies...

Sorry. I'm so ashamed.

Nofurky Day

Hi, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is raw and wet in Daegu, just exactly the kind of family holiday not to spend alone in your dark apartment thinking of family and pumpkin pie. Fortunately, a teacher named Robert at the Samduk branch has a lot of money and is very generous; he hosted Thankgiving lunch for us at the newest, fanciest hotel downtown. There was a nice eighth-floor view of downtown, though the clouds and haze hid the mountains.

And, OMG, you guys, the food! He had ordered two whole turkeys for the ten of us, nine if you don't count me, the carnscientious objector. (Too big a stretch there?) A waiter came and carved the turkey at the table. But also there was a buffet with clams, oysters, mussels, escargot, shark steak in cream sauce, assorted roast beasts, green beans, salad, fresh fruit, and about a dozen fancy desserts, including a passable pumpkin pie. I never met a carb I didn't like, so I made out great, though I have to go to work shortly and the sugar high is wearing offfffffffffffzzzzzzzzzzzz

No smashed or sweet taters, no tofurky, but still, wow. It's probably the nicest hotel I've ever been in, and that includes both the New York Hilton and the Fredericksburg Red Roof Inn. Mostly, it was nice to be with friends on the holiday. (If Luke e's me a photo, I'll put it up here.)

We're starting to plan some sort of a Christmas get-together. Anna is so lucky; her mom and sister will be here for Christmas. I hope we can all join in and keep the 10,000-miles-from- home Christmas blues away. Stores here are selling and displaying tinsel and lights and angels and such, and there are lovely, decorated trees in the underground shopping areas downtown.

At Costco yesterday, I saw a young Buddhist nun, gray robed, shaved headed, picking out Christmas decorations.

On the home front, Tug and Tiki cry and moan much of the time. They look at me and yowl. I give them food, they eat and yowl. Milk: drink and yowl. I guess they're just still freaked out by being closed up inside. (For an urban cat in Korea, outside equals danger, hunger, and misery.) I'm trying to keep my attitude aligned to "It's okay, guys, I'll make sure nothing ever happens to you" and away from "Shut up, you furry little bastards." It's hard on the nerves, though.

They are letting me sit within three feet or so when they eat, and have both resentfully (but without hissing or swatting) let me pet them a little, so we are making progress. Faster would be better.

At any rate, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, or if you don't see this till afterward, Happy Yemeni Independence Day.

There's always something to celebrate.

We'll be back in a minute with more (clap) stuff

...if you've been keeping up with my obscure pop-culture-related titles, here's a challenge: where's this one from? Meanwhile, here's some (clap) stuff:

***
I've been working on picking up a little Korean, and I don't mean a short local girl. I can make out about ten characters and can spell "Kim" (the bosses' family name) in Korean characters. It's tricky; with Rosetta Stone, I've been trying to make out if "man", for example, is pronounced num-da or num-ta; according to the Korean Made Easy book (and Heeduk), it's num-ja. Things the books say are pronounced with a "j" are actually, to my ear, more like an "s", and so on.

I like the main streets, because they have road signs in both Korean and English. It's helping me learn, much the same way as (according to my parents) I learned to read at age 4 or 5 by reading chirons on tv commercials that matched what the voice-over was saying.
***
I don't know why, but it seems Heeduk has taken a real liking to me. In the last week, he's asked me to go to lunch with him three times-- once with a student, once with Luke on his first day off the plane, once with just him, though I asked if Ray could come along. Yesterday (Tuesday) I didn't have any duties till 8:15 and showed up before 4:00; he said he was going to Kyobo Books, and did I want to come along? I did, and then he took me back to the waffle house for another banana-split waffle. And, of course, I was the only teacher asked to the family home for the Chosuk ceremony.

He's said he enjoys my company, though I don't know why; I mostly just ask questions. I have made him laugh a few times. Maybe he just wants me to re-up next year. I know I'm young and pretty, but I have no reason to think that he's gay. We certainly don't have much in common; I'm twice his age. Maybe he just respects the hell out of Cornell. I dunno.


In Korea, the "senior" person always pays; as the boss, that's him. Monday, he paid for my lunch and ordered take-out for dinner; Tuesday, his parents paid for lunch and he bought the waffle. Later he brought an "American cheesecake" back to the office. Both my midsection and my wallet are staying pretty hefty.
***
He's shifting me very heavily to the high-level kids, especially coaching them on writing. This is great. Yesterday, I just had one student all day: 45 minutes of writing followed by 45 minutes of TOEFL speaking. Today, I have one small class doing "Lord of the Flies" and two one-on-one writing sessions. He's rearranged this week's schedule to give me Thursday off and have me come in for some SAT teaching on Sunday. I intend to always come through for him, which may be what he had in mind all along. In return, maybe he'll keep me out of the dorm.
***
I had lunch in a little storefront in the underground today (there's another huge underground shopping area in Banwoldang, a bit south of what I call downtown.) I seem to recall an SNL skit nearly thirty years ago about a toast restaurant. Maybe it was some other show. Anyway, that's this lady calls her little storefront a toast restaurant. Through gestures and trying to draw a cow and a chicken, both with slashed circles over them, and then drawing an egg, I tried to indicate I wanted a toasted egg sandwich. That didn't work.

What did work, however, was the laminated menu, a foot from my hand, that had "egg sandwich" written in English. I also had a kiwi smoothie and it all came to 3,000 Won (about $2.65). According to the lady, "egg" in Korean is "egguh" and "toast" is "toastuh". That ain't what the books say, but if it works... at any rate, my favorite things on the menu were "nude toast" and "sausage nude toast". Maybe I'll try them next time.
***
It's amazing what people sell in the street here: there are tables and trucks and people just plain sitting on sidewalks, selling produce, food, jewelry, clothing... yesterday my belt broke and I bought a new one from a guy on the street. Stupid Americano got ripped off... his little sign said his wares were 3,000 Won and 5,000 Won. The belts, however, didn't reach around me, except for one... He held out three fingers on one hand and five on the other, and I thought he wanted 3,500. Wrong. Eight. And I paid it, like a sap. I figured that's just over seven bucks, which seemed like a good deal anyway, and my new belt is way bigger than all the others he had... if I had a six-pound buckle, I could be Toby Keith.

Turns out, later I saw an almost identical belt on another sidewalk table, priced at 5,000, and Ray told me you can always, always haggle, and I probably could have gotten it for 3,000. Oh, and speaking of street vendors, there's a guy right outside our building who sells little pancakes stuffed with cinnamon, fresh and very hot off the grill, for 45 cents. People who have much less willpower than I say the pancakes are delicious. (Burp.)
***
I was all over town on bus, subway, and foot today, and noticed that all the subway platforms have locked cabinets with gas masks. I looked up "Daegu subway" on Wikipedia; right in the downtown station I always use, in 2003 a suicidal man set several trains on fire and 200 people died.

I also went through two major department stores, neither of which has clothes my size (and they were very expensive, anyway), Daegu Station, the main train depot, which is near the ballpark, and Dongdaegu Bus Station. I walked from the former to the latter, and to work, in ten minutes. I really am beginning to know my way around a bit better. I can be anywhere (that I know of) where I want to be within 40 minutes of home.
***
Okay, I'm going to post this. I'll be back sometime soon with more (clap) stuff.

You may want to skip this; it's not pleasant

This one is hard for me to write.

All of us with a few months’ experience or less were asked to go to the Samduk school this morning for a little training with Dr. Kim and his wife. There were five of us: Ray, who’s been here three months, Alex, Luke, and Nicole, who’ve all arrived in the last week, and me.

Afterward, Ray led Luke and me across downtown to one of the bigger outdoor markets. There were hundreds of shops and stalls. Vendors of similar items were grouped together: ten with tools, a dozen with dishes, and so on: herbs, clothing, kitchen items.

And then we came to it: a narrow aisle with dozens of, maybe a hundred or more, food vendors. I was a little put off by the piles of big dead octopi and tanks of living fish the size of my forearm, and more disturbed by the tubs of live turtles waiting for slaughter. I tried to look straight ahead and run the gauntlet as quickly as possible. Then we came to a couple of tables with skinned dog carcasses.

According to the ‘net, it’s illegal now to eat dog in Korea, but it might still be done in some of the rural villages. Two and a half million people do not constitute a rural village. This market is only a few blocks from shops selling Ralph Lauren and DKNY!

Logically, as an animal-rights person, I think that it shouldn’t be more horrifying to eat dead dogs any more than, say, dead pigs. But that’s not how it feels, even for me. It feels as if it's a step short of cannibalism.

I’m sad when I walk by a restaurant with a big tank full of doomed fish or I’m in the grocery department of E-Mart and see the aquarium with dozens of crabs, each with a leg span of twenty inches, piled on each other. I learned to turn my response off back home, going by the lobster tank at the grocery. The restaurants here have tanks out front, with squid or crabs or carp in them. Sometimes there will be one swimming, or floating (dead), upside down. And that bothers me, too.

I don’t believe in causing the suffering and death of sentient beings to serve our "needs". Kindness to all creatures is at the heart of my spirituality. (I’m sorry if I sound preachy.)

But the slaughtering of dogs is one step beyond; knowing it happens and seeing the results are two different things.

I still feel sick two hours later, and I expect to see it behind my eyelids when I close my eyes tonight.

The rain, the park, and other things

(You have just gained a pound by looking at these photos.)

After class on Saturday, which I’d taken on for overtime pay on the three-day holiday weekend, Heeduk asked me what plans I had for the day. I told him I was just going to head downtown and visit Kyobo Books, people-watch, maybe see a movie. He said he was going to Kyobo anyway, and I should go with him. He drove me and two women who were his relatives, and speak no English, downtown.

After the trip to the bookstore, where I bought nothing and he spent a couple hundred dollars on books and CDs, he asked if I’d like to go with them to the Waffle House. With visions of grits and maple syrup dancing in my head, I naturally agreed. The waffle house turned out to be a 30-by-30 foot, three-story restaurant with a view of the main pedestrian drag, and the waffle turned out to be the base for a huge mound of whipped cream, scoops of vanilla and green-tea-flavored ice cream, chocolate sauce, grapes, and a tomato wedge.

Afterward, I took my leave and went back to Kyobo; It’s customary to take a small gift when you visit someone’s house, and I’d been invited to the Kims’ for Cheosuh (sorta kinda Korean Thanksgiving) on Sunday morning. After much hawing and a bit of hemming, I settled on an English-language copy of Fahrenheit 451; I figured, what better for someone who'd been teaching English for 40 years than a classic about the value of books?

Upon emerging from the bookstore to the lobby, I found it was a) dark and b) raining like a son of a... well, it was Florida rain; the sky had just opened up and was letting all its water out at once. After a bit of vain (weather vain, ha ha! Sometimes I crack myself up) waiting, largely because I was clutching a paperback book in a paper bag, I made a mad dash outside for the stairs to the underground shopping area.

The subterranean mall must be a half-mile long, with hundreds of tiny shops, entrances to department stores, and an IMAX theater. It has dozens of stairways up to the surface and down to the subway. At the bottom of these stairs, a store had set out a table with dozens of umbrellas for sale. I bought a manly black one, and found out later that it was scalloped around the edges. That may not be quite so macho, but then there are people who might say I’m a little scalloped around the edges myself, so whatever.

I wandered among the shops, hoping the precipitation would abate, and came upon a Krispy Kreme outlet. The nice young lady behind the counter offered me a free sample; she had obviously deduced from my build that I’d never had a doughnut before. It was hot, it was good, and I didn’t think a bit about how I’d just watched a Niagara of sugary, calorific glazing pour down on the doughnuts. It did keep my sugar buzz from the waffle going very nicely.

I kept perambulating subterraneously until the rain slowed to a drizzle, stepped over the little sandbags somebody had arrayed at the bottom of the stairs, and squished back up to the surface. Then I walked to the Bell Park and took a bus home; I figured I should get there before it poured again. And I did, barely.

Oh, and kids: always close your windows before you leave home, or buy a Samsung tv; they hold up nicely when they get rained on.

I heart bibimbap

This is bibimbap. (It’s pronounced, more or less, as “bee-beem-bob”, all said within a half-second.) I know I've mentioned it often enough, so I thought I'd show it to you.

Specifically, it’s my bibimbap from yesterday, bought at a little restaurant across the street from E-Mart, a long block from work. Ray took me there the first time; it’s a couple of bucks cheaper than the other restaurants around, and the food is just as good. Some of the restaurants ask you to leave your shoes at the door and sit on a pillow; this one is western-style. Fortunately, their bibimbap is vegetarian; I still can’t explain that I don’t want any animals in my food.

This lunch cost 3500 Won, or about $3.10. The bibimbap comes with the items in separate little heaps in the bowl, and the customer stirs it up into the conglomeration you see here. I may be the only person alive for whom bibimbap has connotations of Huckleberry Finn, as Huck explained that the Widow Douglas made him keep his food items separate on the plate, but he liked to mix ‘em up so the flavors swap around and it all goes down better. I concur.

To the left, there’s a little dish of sprouts, kimchi (highly spiced cabbage, without which no meal is complete), and something else that seems to be mostly shredded bell pepper; to the right, a cup of vegetable broth.

No, I’ve never photographed my lunch before. Yes, I know there are many comments to be made about its appearance.

I heart it anyway.

Eanglish

In exactly a week here, I’ve never seen anyone wearing clothing with Korean characters on it. T-shirts with English writing, however, are wildly popular. As they are on storefront signs, the slogans may be perfectly correct, not quite there, or completely wacko. A lot of the time, it doesn’t seem to matter what the English words mean, although they often attempt to say something positive and happy. I guess the wearer may not know what the shirt is trying to say. I’m calling the botched attempts KorEanglish, or Eanglish.

Here are the first-week Eanglish t-shirt medals:

Bronze: “WISN IS CHARMINGLY DISORDERED” (Hard to argue with that.)

Silver: A picture of a cute teddy bear wearing round-rimmed glasses, a shirt with the name “Radar” on it, and a khaki watch cap that says “4077th MASK”. (Extra points for a Korean kid wearing a M*A*S*H shirt.)

Gold: “LEAVE OUT YOUR DEAD. BE HAPPY” (Okay.)

Oh, and I don’t have a good ending for this post, so I’ll just throw this in, because I keep forgetting to mention it: Pizza Bingo, the storefront I mentioned several days ago, makes really good pizza. Here are three things I didn’t expect: the pizza comes in a box tied with a white ribbon; the veggie pizza has corn on it; and the pizza comes with a little plastic tub like Papa John’s buttery sauce: you open it up and what do you find? Sweet pickle chips.

…and just to tie it into the Eanglish theme, the box has a picture of a sunflower and says “LIKE A FLOWER! Well-being Pizza Bingo”.