So I've been neglecting my blog. It's partially because I haven't been doing anything too interesting, but mostly because I'm just lazy. But every once in a while I get the urge to post, so let's ignore my lethargy and follow the words.
Most of the time when I get to see my friends from home, it's when they're visiting. And that in and of itself is still crazy to me. But I also get to hang out with Michigan Alumni who are teaching in Korea. Some are alums who I'm meeting for the first time overseas (I mean, it's a really big school, right?) like Euna and Stephanie. And then there's people over here who I've known for years, like Andy, who's already been here for a year and my boy John Zhu who got here last month.
I met up with John to show him around a little bit. One of the coolest things about Korea is the street food stands that you find all over the place. They sell different traditional foods, fried foods and all kinds of other good stuff. While John and I were in Gangnam, we found a stand selling cheeseburgers. CHEESEBURGERS MAN!! And the crazy thing is that the burgers were made with this rice cake called ttuk inside of it. Amazing.
Then that weekend I met up with John and Andy in Sinchon. This was right around the Korean holiday, Chuseok. It's kind of like Thanksgiving, in the sense that it's based mainly around family and food. Most of the businesses shut down for like 3 days, and we even got a day off from school. The downside was that most of the restaurants closed down too, so it was hard to get food. Luckily, Andy came through with an alternative.
We met up with Andy's friend's Azusa and Reiko and some of their classmates from Yonsei University who were doing a project for school. They showed us the cultural elements of Chuseok and asked our opinions on the experience. It's always funny when Korean people see Americans using chopsticks and are SO astounded. Like it's just mind-blowing that anyone outside of Asia has ever eaten anything with something other than a fork. The funnies part was when John said he'd been using chopsticks his whole life. The girls were surprised and asked him why, so he matter-of-factly said "I'm Chinese".
But those girls were great. We had these really open conversations about our different cultures, the holidays, and also Korean popular culture. Yeah, Korean dramas, movies and music are pretty interesting. Even though I can't make heads or tails of anything they say. However, as much as I love having spirited discussions with intelligent students of varied backgrounds, the best part was the food.
We had this kind of Korean pizza, fried with vegetables. It was kind of hard to pull apart with chopsticks, but it was delicious. There was also this dish with ttuk (rice cake) and odeng (fish cake) in a spicy sauce.
So that was excellent. Cool group of people, great food and an engaging cultural experience. Then after that, we went to a bar. We actually found this bar that had beer pong tables. Of course, after experiencing all of that Korean culture we go for the most American act that we could find. Like being back in college...
Shout out to John Zhu and welcome to Korea, shout out to Andy for hooking all this up, shout out to Azusa and Reiko for some fun matches of beer pong and a big shout out to the girls from Yonsei for a great experience.
Good times
