One of the things that I expected to be most difficult for me to adjust to in Korea is the difference in food. I like cheese and carbohydrates. I could literally live forever on tacos, dill pickles, ramen noodles, cheese, and bread. Eating things with faces, bones, veins and all that other good stuff has always been hard for me.
What I didn’t expect is that when I came here I would just never be hungry! I think that it is an effect of the jet lag, but in my first week in Korea I ate about one meal a day and was not been hungry at all. One day all I ate was a donut (It was national donut day in America apparently haha). The food that I have had has been quite good! Sometimes spicy enough to make my eyes water, but still good.
Last Saturday I took my first trip to the grocery store just a few blocks away. It’s called Lotte Mart and is like Walmart on steroids. I only ventured onto three floors, but there had to have been at least four or five stories of… stuff! Each floor was like it’s own department so I had to go down two walking sidewalks to find the food floor. I was entirely overwhelmed and I just sort of wandered around until I found the Korean version of ramen noodles. I also grabbed some Oreo-like cookies and a two liter of coke. That was all I got that trip! The necessities of life… : D
Sunday night I had a great cultural/social experience with my Korean Co-worker Kyle and some of his friends. We went to a restaurant where the center of your table is like a small grill and you are given plates of bite-sized pieces of meat to grill! It was really delicious and fun, though I am embarrassingly bad with chopsticks.
The main thing i have noticed with Korean food is the vast variety of ingredients! One day for lunch I had a ‘Korean salad.’ It did have some lettuce in it, but there was also rice, peppers, scrambled egg, onions, and probably a hundred other things I couldn’t name. Even when the dish is more simple there are at least ten things on the table that you can combine it with or eat separately. It is definitely a different experience and it’s kind of beautiful. My favorite Korean food right now is called Kimbap which is a delightful sushi roll filled with tons of stuff like rice, spam, carrots, cucumber, pickled radish, and egg.
My other expected difficult in living here is finding things. I am the first to admit I have an awful sense of direction. I have spent hours driving around Orlando just trying to get on I4. It’s not even that I am unwilling to ask for directions! What I get from a typical directions conversation is something like this:
Me: “How do I get to I4?”
Other Person, while gesturing and pointing in every direction: “Oh, you just need to get on the East Boulevard southbound by the 7-11!”
Even if what they are saying makes perfect sense to normal people, it goes to my brain like math. Then when I have gotten directions that I don’t understand I still nod and smile and thank the person for helping me. The struggles of a people-pleaser!
My first couple days of work I was able to share a taxi with a co-worker. This was great, but I realized the day he went on vacation that I had just been following him and had no idea what exactly our building looked like. So, I left really early and made it to the general area. Thankfully, it only took a few times around the block and going to the seventh floor of one strange building before I found the school I work in!
Coming home the next day I entered what I thought (and still sort of think) was my apartment building and I decided to walk the stairs to my sixth floor apartment. Well, it was definitely not the right stairwell and I ended up at a locked door.
Finally, I had an adventure taking the bus home by myself on night. I’ve had my share of bus adventures in America, but this was different in that I couldn’t read the bus map, much less ask someone for help. My co-worker told me where my stop was and said I needed to get on the 6-1 bus. So of course I got on the 6 bus. I don’t know why I decided just to get on the first bus that came. Anyway, I rode and rode looking out the window for landmarks I would recognize, since I had never been to the bus stop a few blocks from my apartment. Suddenly I realized that I was the only person left on the bus and the landscape was barren fields and abandoned cars. The driver pulled over on the side of the totally empty road and started yelling at me in Korean! At first I just sat there hoping he would magically decide to take me somewhere I knew, but no, he kept yelling until I left his bus, at what I assume was the end of the line. So I crossed the street to the bus stop for the other direction and this time I actually waited for the right bus! Overall, it was a nice little adventure in a string of nice little adventures, of which I’m sure there will be many more to come. : D
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