Culture in Korea

Eating my cake in the little box they wrapped it in.

       Well now that I've been here for three weeks it feels like it has gone by so fast. So far everything is still going really well. Last Friday we went to karaoke and I got a roomie.
       On Saturday morning I got to talk to my roommate more and she is really nice. She is Korean from about two hours away. She has been to school before for math and now is going for English Literature. She has also taught school for a few years in between there. We have so much fun hanging out and I'm really really glad she came. It is so much less lonely with her here. She is also really helpful with culture and language class and such. I told her she should come visit Iowa but that it's not that exciting. She also invited me to her home to have a home cooked meal with her family. After that H.U.G. (foreign exchange club) went out to see some sights. We saw Namdemun market which was really busy and has so many shops. There are a lot of small shops in Seoul and this was one of the areas. It seemed more for older women so we went to a department store and drank coffee. In the basement of the store there was a huge bakery/pastry/everything edible store with different venders all having many different treats. Katrina and I bought some cute little cakes which I couldn't fit in my bag so I just ate near the palace. The palace was so pretty and we even got to try lots of things. There was Chinese printing (Korea used the Chinese alphabet before Hangul) and we could try on clothes. We could also try a traditional alcohol which was very strong and not good. It tasted like the Korean beer soju which is very, very bad.

Koreans in western military clothing due to Japanese rule.

After that we went and ate a another pork place where you cook the meat yourself. These are everywhere and actually quite good. They have a spicy soup there that I really like called twenchanggike. It has vegetables, tofu, and red broth. I usually avoid the tofu but the rest is really good. After that we went to Namsan tower/Seoul tower. It was too cloudy and rainy to go to the top though so we just walked around it and went to the gift shop.
     On Sunday we went to Dongdemun. It was so hectic. There are literally shops wall to wall for seven floors all selling clothes, shoes, accessories and everything you can imagine. There were probably 20 of these buildings and they were all probably the size of a mall. Although this was an experience I don't think I would ever do again. It is way to overwhelming and they can tell I'm not Korean so haggling the price is really hard. They think, "oh foreigner lets try to get lots of money out of her." I only ended up getting one skirt which was plenty. We ended up just going to Edea to shop because there are plenty of shops for just as cheap and less overwhelming.
     This week was pretty uneventful other than having a friends birthday party on Wednesday. Dan, Caroline and I went to Dunken Donuts to get a cake. We have a community fridge that people have been stealing out of but we needed to put the cake in there so we wrote notes all over it.

No one stole the cake and he was very excited to get the cake and had a very good birthday.

Caroline, Dave (the birthday guy), and I

Also earlier that night I forgot to mention we did a Chusok (Korean Thanksgiving) educational session where we ate normal Chusok food (rice cakes, rice milk), tried on traditional clothing and played traditional games. The games were really fun with one of them hopping on one foot and knocking everyone else over.

In traditional Korean clothing

Then the weekend came again. On Friday night we just hung out with people and got lost finding the place even though we had already been there once. Saturday we went to Insa-dong to a tourist place with lots of shops. I bought a tea pot set there which we've been enjoying tea out of. It is so cute.

We ate at a place where we sat on the floor and Gina and Caroline had octopus. It was so spicy that they were sweating and turning red. Gina is even Korean so she should be used to spicy. I stuck to Bulgolgi soup which is not spicy at all and is just really tenderized beef with vegetables in a broth. For sides we had Kimshi (always never fail to have), seasoned broccoli, brown sugar seasoned something, vinegar radishes, and chung (cold ham covered in egg). This is common with every meal and we usually have soup. For the foreigners they usually get us seaweed soup because its not as spicy. Then afterwords we took Caroline home and then went to coffee with one of Gina's friends. I ate my first Dunken Donuts here, it was so delicious. After we got home we stayed up late talking. Today we just bummed around. We had fun attempting to study and then going to the store. I also got ready for Japan.....
    About Japan... I leave tomorrow and we are flying to Osaka. Then we're going to take the train to Kyoto. We have our hotel and everything booked. I'll keep everyone posted on how it goes!