Sabbatical Day 77 (7.24.16) - Attempting to stay a vegetarian

It's almost been a month in Korea and I feel like it's been a very challenging month eating-wise. Prior to coming to Seoul, I mentally prepared myself to integrate meat fully back into my diet. I would take bites of meat here and there and tell myself that I'd continue to eat more upon my arrival in Seoul.

What happened was just the opposite. I've been trying really hard. The fact is, I don't prefer the flavor of meat in most dishes and I definitely can't handle the smell. There are Korean dishes that I remembered loving (Kalbi Tang, Solung Tang, Spicy Pork) that I can't bring myself to eat. I have to try particularly hard around James' family and tried to eat Solung Tang when they took us to a restaurant that specialized in it. I ended up eating just the rice and soup and giving the meat to James. I did try to eat a piece or two but felt terrible that I just couldn't finish the meat. 

Most good restaurants here specialize in a dish and have a very limited menu. There was one time that we were looking for a place to eat a late lunch and James found a tonkatsu place. Unfortunately when we got there, they only served tonkatsu and we had to leave because there was nothing for me to eat. 

We've also walked in and out of a bunch of restaurants that only serve dishes with meat. Poor James reads the menu to me and always asks the waiter/waitress if they have dishes without meat. We've received one of two responses "What about chicken?" or "You can't eat Korean food without meat". We've considered ordering dishes and asking them to take out the meat but quickly realized that it doesn't work that way and makes us frustrated of this mentality people here have. I've summed it up to that they think the way they currently do it is the best and believe that's how a dish it should be served. So why would you want to change that? I'm applying this mentality to food but I think it can be applied in other ways as well.

Some people may say "Well Steph, why don't you just eat meat and stop being difficult?" I'm not trying to be. But I need to defend myself. I love food and really look forward to my meals. Why eat something and waste calories on something I won't enjoy and will make me feel bad? It's great that other people enjoy it. But it doesn't work with my body. I get my nutrients and know I don't need to eat meat for the protein my body needs. 

My saving grace is that I eat seafood but I've been considering eliminating that as well. I do eat a lot of bi bim bap and buy vegetable side dishes from the market to eat with rice. I know I had it very easy in SF because there were so many veggie friendly places and just more options in general. It's just been a hard adjustment coming from there to here. 

Sabbatical Day 75 (7.22.16) - It's weirdly safe here

Being from San Francisco, I was always paranoid of crazy bums and getting mugged. I would never have my phone in my hand while on the bus or walking and was constantly checking my purse to make sure my wallet and phone were still in there. On top of that, when I went to restaurants, I would never hang my purse on the back of my chair. I'd awkwardly keep it behind me and sit forward in the chair so no one would steal it.

Coming to Korea I am so surprised how safe it is. First of all, I see people at coffee shops and restaurants walk away to use the bathroom (when they're by themselves) and just leave their things at the table. Yesterday we saw a shoe shop owner leave her shop for a break. She locked the store, but left the entire display of shoes outside of the store on the street.

It's so interesting to me that people here will not take what's not theirs. It seriously boggles my mind but really gives me a sense of peace that I don't have to worry here.

Sabbatical Day 72 (7.19.16) - Frustrations with Learning Korean

Korean is the 6th language that I've started learning. My goal is to become conversational by the time we leave but the goal is looking very daunting. Before we came to Seoul, we did a lot of research on the university programs versus the institute programs and it all came down to timing. The date of our arrival was just barely past the start date of the summer university programs so I have to wait until the fall programs. The one institute we decided on has start dates at the beginning of each month and we thought it was too rushed since we arrived on the 27th of June and wanted some time to explore Seoul before I started classes.

So that left me with doing some self studying. We bought the book from the institute and decided that I would try to test out of the first month of class. I'm not sure if I can make that goal even though I've been studying everyday.

Maybe the book is not that good for self studying or I'm not picking it up fast enough, but I had a very frustrating day today. The book gives you several grammar points and lots of vocabulary in each section but not very many examples or good explanations. I am also getting very confused between Japanese pronunciation and Korean. I took Japanese in high school - over 15 years ago and yet I still retained enough of it to confuse me. Another problem is, my method of learning vocab words in other languages (Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese) was to think of another language that the word was similar to. Now I'm getting all sorts of confused when I try to relate Korean to another language.

My problem is that I never followed through with any language for long enough to become completely fluent. I think the closest is Spanish with Vietnamese a far second. I'm going to try very hard in Korean since I think I will be able to use it with James for the rest of my life.

I'm glad I'm not doing much else in Seoul. I couldn't imagine studying and working while trying to learn Korean! My brain hasn't worked so hard in a while!

Sabbatical Day 64 (7.11.16) - Grocery Shopping

While going out to eat is really cheap in Seoul, we like to eat some meals at home and try to go grocery shopping to get some essentials. The first time I went to the market, I was amazed by the presentation of everything and how clean the market was. The seafood and meat sections didn't smell, all the produce was packaged nicely, etc. Now that I've been to the market a few more times, I've noticed a few things that are very interesting:

1) They actually run out of produce. I guess this means their stuff is pretty fresh, but it was so frustrating because I have been craving raw veggies and they were sold out of salad mix and cucumbers!

2) They don't have frozen vegetables. What?!?! Yes. No frozen vegetables.

3) Produce is expensive!!! 

4) Fruit is even more expensive!

Another reason I like going to the markets is to get fresh produce. I swear, the only time Koreans eat a fresh vegetable is when they make lettuce wraps with BBQ meats. Any other time, the vegetables are pickled, made into some sort of kim chi, or used as a garnish. 

Sabbatical Day 59 (7.6.16) - Creatives Juices

Today James and I walked around the Sinchon area again. This is about 10 minutes from where we live and there is a subway station there. Since we live around several universities, there are a lot of students and therefore lots of cheap places to eat.

We decided to eat at a dak kalbi place which is something I've never had before. First of all, it is a meat dish and I've found it difficult to bring it back into my diet. I've found that I don't like the taste anymore so it's hard for me to eat something when I don't crave it!

They sat us at a table with a large pan in the middle - it looked like a paellera, or a pan to make paella. We ordered a rice dish with chicken and beef and they came out shortly with a plate of raw chicken, beef, cabbage and onions. They threw that all onto the pan and servers took turns coming by and cooking the goodies. At the end they threw on some rice, then flattened the whole concoction so that the rice would get crunchy.

It was a pretty good meal and I even tried a few pieces of the chicken and beef.

As James and I explore the city, we seem to be thinking of things we can bring from Korea to the US and vice versa. It's interesting how there are so many efficiencies here but at the same time there are so so many inefficiencies! It's exciting because James and I get to think of things together and get our creative juices flowing. Hopefully we can think of ways to bring a little bit of the US to Korea while we are here, and do the same when we come back to the US.

Sabbatical Day 58 (7.5.16) - Side projects and procrastinating

The forecast in Seoul is rain for the next week. We have stayed inside for the majority of the day so I started to work on some side projects.

The first one is a map of Seoul which tracks where we have visited and what we ate. We have floor to ceiling closets lined up on one wall of the bedroom. I put different colored post its on the closet to show where we have visited (pink) and what we have eaten (blue).

So far it doesn't look like much but I will post a photo once we've visited more places.

The second project is also using the closets which have 5 panels going vertically which I decided to make into a weekly calendar to help me organize my projects for the day (blogging, working through my Korean alphabet flashcards, etc.)

The third project is learning Korean vocabulary words. I put post its on the items in the apartment with the Korean name of each so I can learn them better. I learned this tip from a blog I read recently.

I wish it would stop raining soon so we can go out and explore more of the city. I guess I need to keep searching for tutoring clients and finish my TESOL certification too.....I'm not procrastinating I promise.

Sabbatical Day 57 (7.4.16) - One Week Down

Well, we've made it through our first week in Seoul. I feel like we've done a lot of walking around (met my 13K step goal everyday! yay!) and being tourists. Although there is a lot left to see, I feel more settled in. Along with that comes the pressure of taking classes and looking for work. I spent a good chunk of today researching tutoring websites and language exchanges. A part of me is terrified to actually get started. Of course all my insecurities resurface in this process. I know I need to just put myself out there and try it out or else I will never actually know.

Sabbatical Day 55 (7.2.16) - Soju and sweet shots

After the huge meal at the fish market and our glorious nap, we had to wake up because we were supposed to meet James' DSP friends in Itaewon. Luckily they both couldn't meet until late so James and I dragged ourselves out of bed and headed over to the party spot. 

In Seoul, the populated areas are around the subway stations which are usually on main streets. The back alleys behind the main streets are where restaurants, bars, etc. are located. We walked around the back alleys of Itaewon station and it reminded me so much of LKF in Hong Kong and New Orleans all combined into several blocks of loud, sensory overload! 

The first bar we chose was a casual bar where we grabbed a draught beer. Unfortunately for us we chose a table right under a speaker so when James' friends arrived, we were all screaming to be heard. The second bar we went to was much quieter and we were introduced to a delicious cheesy omelette and a not so delicious grapefruit flavored soju. Ugh soju....between 5 people we killed 4 bottles and we were just getting started.

We wanted to go to a club, but they apparently don't get poppin' until later on the night so we opted for a bar across the street. There we were introduced to a variety of sweet shots including something called an Agwa bomb. The Agwa liquor is made from coca leaves and it basically tasted like a jager bomb. I honestly haven't taken colored shots in so long I was scared. But they continued through the night until we went to the club. 

I remember dancing like a maniac and managing to get James into a cab at the wee hours of the morning. We managed to NOT eat which was great but not great. 

The am was a struggle but we got some delicious soup to cure our giant, sugary hangovers. 

It was the best first weekend we could have imagined!!

Sabbatical Day 54 (7.1.16) - Noryangin Fish Market

I've heard that the fish market in Seoul was awesome. James and I were skeptical because we've both been to Tsukiji in Tokyo and thought that experience was the best. I loved it because that was where I fell in love with uni. The seafood was so fresh and delicious! The seafood was definitely better in Japan but the experience was much better in Korea.

First of all, the Noryangin market was HUGE. The most impressive thing was that the market was unbelievably clean. There were rows of vendors selling seafood which were clean and the whole building barely smelled like seafood. I'm still not sure how that was possible. We walked around looking at the different options at each stall. We saw a lot of giant shrimp, crab, lobsters and fish. We finally decided on a rock fish which the vendor fished out of the tank and quickly sashimi'ed. We chose it because the vendor told us it was a good fish for stew. They then led us upstairs with the fish bones in a bag (they use the bones for a spicy stew).

Upstairs were a bunch of restaurants with folks happily dining on their purchases. We devoured our sashimi plate and patiently waited for our stew. While I love sashimi, I am more used to soft fish. The rock fish was very chewy but James told me that's the Korean style of sashimi. The stew they made was bomb. We even threw in some pieces of sashimi and that was delicious! James and I devoured the stew as well which turned out to be a bad idea. Once we made it home, we both passed out for several hours and really didn't want to get up!