Korean Style

Friday we experienced life Korean style- fast and busy.  We had another seminar in a different city, Masan.  We had to get up before 7 am.  I know your thinking, oh wow hard life, but we have been sleeping Korean style, which is stay-up-late and get-up-late, especially since we don't work until 1 pm.  Our seminar was at 9 am and with traffic it was going to take us about an hour to get there.  We barely had time to eat breakfast as we ran out the door.  The seminar was what was expected, but went by quicker than usual.  We had  a good Korean lunch and then ran back to our school to start teaching.  Teaching always goes by fast, and right now we only have a few students and at most teach 3 classes in a row, but some day soon we will have 6-7 classes in a row, and that will for sure take a toll on us.  Andrew's only class was at 3 pm and I was done teaching by 6 pm, though we stay at the school till it closes at 8:20. 

After work we had our first Jinyeong foreigner interaction on our way to dinner. I was beyond gitty over discovering this person and may have put him in shock, for they seemed to forget how to have a normal conversation in English.  We asked his name and how long he had lived here - he said 3 years!  Andrew told him his name and the boy's responds was ,"oh cool".  Needless to say, as we bid farewell we ended the conversation with, "maybe we'll see you again". 

Glen took us to dinner with her husband, our friend Kang and his son Xavier - who is one of our students, and I gave him the awesome name Xavier. It was a traditional Korean restaurant where they bring out pork or beef and you cook it at the table on coals they give you.  This has been our favorite meal so far in Jinyeong.  They bring out about 6 little dishes for each person and more big bowls for everyone to share.  The little bowls are dipping sauces and vegetables, while the big bowls are salads and lettuce leaves to wrap your meat in.  There's Kimchi, soup, sweet potatoes, garlic, onions and wasabi.

Glen's husband, Luke, cooked the pork and everyone then individually pulls the pork off the coals as it gets done cooking.  I was quite sad because I haven't yet accomplished how to use metal chopsticks.  Me and the wood chopsticks are in like Flin, but those metal suckers and I don't have a good understanding yet.

Everything at the table was very good, and the pork was even better than back home.  They marinate it in some kind of maple sugar syrup, which makes it very sweet and savory when cooked over coals - not to mention juicy!

After this course they clear most of the things away and we had some cold noodle soup.  I'm not sure on what the names are for all the different foods we had, though.  This soup's noodles were long and elastic.  It came with a hard boiled egg and some shaved cabbage.  

We also tried our first Korean soju.  It's pretty much the only liquor I've seen here that doesn't cost a ridiculous amount, in fact you can get a bottle of it for just a dollar at any store. I had one sip and was done.  It reminded me too much of vodka.  It's 20% alcohol and is very smooth like water.  I took a better liking to the cider which tastes exactly like sierra mist.

After dinner we went and hung signs in the streets of Jinyeong.  Glen asked us to help, but we were more than happy too.  It was quite fun-funny mostly because we looked quite ridiculous doing it, and there was a fair amount of drunk adult men wandering the streets - by themselves - that kept us entertained.  It is illegal to hang banners from telephone poles and gates, etc. but apparently most businesses do it anyways on weekends.  Glen told us that it's because the cops don't work on weekends, and if we take them down Sunday night then it's like it never happened.  We did this for about an hour, hung 8 signs, until it was about 11:15  pm, when Glen and Luke dropped us off at home.  We were so exhausted we just brushed our teeth and went straight to bed.