J.T. vs. Korean Food

Well, this week has had a lot of ups and downs. In general, I'd have to say it's been a good week. As I was telling Mikey McG not too long ago, the difficulty in ordering food was starting to get to me. However, I've managed to make improvements there. I have learned places that speak just enough English to get by, so that's nice. There's a decent little sandwich shop where the owner speaks some English, and one of the regular workers at the local KFC speaks some English. That's right... KFC. One thing that I would have never expected is that the Koreans seem to love fried chicken! There must be six fried chicken restaurants on my ten minute walk from home to work. It's crazy. I have to say, though, the Colonel's original recipe has just never tasted so sweet. It's noticeably more expensive over here, and you get less food for your money, but I think the occasional trip back to those sweet Kentucky chicken farms is worth it.

On top of the love of KFC, I have learned that I will not die in Korea. The reason for this is that the Koreans also love pizza. Ah... pizza: heavenly dough with a layer of ambrosia sauce, covered with cheese prepared from milk of the teat of mother nature herself. Sorry, got a bit carried away there. Anyways, I like pizza. Ordering pizza in Korea, though, is not so easy. I decided to completely forego any attempts to order delivery and decided to walk down the corner to the local pizza place, "Pizza 2001." Koreans seem to like to load the toppings on their pizza, which I'm not a huge fan of, but it's actually not too bad. They like to use corn as a pizza topping as well, which, I must say, is pretty good. I wanted a plain pepperoni pizza, though, so I knew I was in for a challenge. In a miracle that I can only explain as sweet karmic reward, the word for "pepperoni" in Korean is "pepperoni." So, I pointed to a pizza, made some hand gestures while saying "pepperoni," and hoped for the best. The woman seemed to understand, so I knew that I had just successfully ordered a pizza with only pepperoni or a pizza with every possible topping on Earth, except pepperoni. Well, luckily for me, she did understand, and I enjoyed a dinner of fresh pizza and an equally enjoyable lunch of cold pizza the next day.

Don't let all this talk about American food make you think that I haven't been sampling the local cuisine. I've found that I'm actually a big fan of Korean food. Kim-chee, the national dish, is quite delicious. This is fortunate, since it's served at virtually every meal. Most of everything else I've had is quite good, as well. Today, the whole teaching staff went to lunch at a pretty nice little restaurant. We sat on the floor by a table with three square holes. As a side note, I really wish I had bought shoes that slip on and off more easily. Since you don't wear shoes inside of many buildings, especially homes or apartments, it can be annoying if you have to go inside and outside several times. Anyways, they brought out small cages with burning embers in them and put them in the holes. Then, they brought out skewers of duck meat and put them in special little rotating holes, causing them to be deliciously slow-cooked by the hot embers. Mmmmm... that's good cooking. The whole table was covered with food, as well. At this restaurant, as well as several others, what you do it you take a leaf of lettuce or some other such vegetabley substance, put a piece of meat and whatever else you want in it, fold it up, and eat it like a little sandwich. Another thing I should mention about Korean food is, as noted with the pizza, Korean food is all about mixing lots of different flavors together. The little sandwiches were good, but the duck was so delicious that I just started eating it by itself after a while. Making the sandwiches with the chopsticks was kind of difficult, anyways. In Korea, they use metal chopsticks, which are far more difficult to use. The wooden chopsticks we love so dearly back home have a nice texture to them which helps grab on to the food. Not so with the Korean chopsticks. They're nice and smooth, causing the untrained hand to drop food all over the place. They look nice, though.

Well, that's about it for now; I have yet another class to teach this evening, beginning in just a few minutes. Tonight, however, we're saying farewell to one of the Canadian English teachers, so we'll be having another night of Korean feasting. Most excellent! Talk to you folks later.