end of week #1

William and I now live in an apartment on a little one lane road in Anjeong-ri, South Korea, near the city of Pyeongtaek, which is maybe 70km south of Seoul. Different websites show different distances between the two cities.

On my walks to and from the bus stop near our apartment, in addition to the rice and other crops on either side, I've come to realize that we seem to have more BIG spiders as neighbors than people. I mean BIG! One type that I've seen a lot is skinny and is yellow and black. It is actually quite pretty for a spider. Another one that I just saw yesterday for the first time is just way too big for my taste! I got 2 pictures of him that I think will give a good idea of his size. Luckily, we haven't seen any in the apartment yet.

Each day at school lunch is prepared for the teachers so I have the opportunity to try new things. Every meal consists of rice, some kind of soup, two or three kinds of kimchi (explanation below) and then maybe something sweet. For example, we had wine grapes one day for the sweet item. I guess I've never had wine grapes before. Their texture is completely different from green or red grapes and they're sweeter. They don't eat the skins here. I don't know if that's normal or not.

Anyway, some of the items prepared for lunch have been pretty good, some just okay although I don't always know what everything is. There was one soup this week that was just awful, it had a very fishy flavor to it. I don't even know what kind of animal was in it, but they looked like soft hollow vertebrae or something....very gross! I have tried some of the meat options, but the thing I've liked the best so far was a mixture of things that don't seem like they should go together. Here it is:

Chopped green apples, cherry tomatoes, sliced cucumber, sliced beets, and banana chunks all mixed with what I think was a strawberry yogurt. My co-teacher, Mrs. Kim, said she thought maybe it was mixed with some mayonnaise too. It was a thin liquid so I'm not sure if it was thinned out with some milk or maybe the water from the fruits and veggies thinned it out. It was good though. I'll try to replicate it some time to see if I can get close.

Kimchi (pronounced "kimchee") consists of pickled vegetables, like cabbage, radishes, and I don't even know what else, but apparently lots of things can be pickled. It's eaten at every meal and is sort of like appetizers, except it's eaten alongside, instead of before, the main dish. Many of the kimchi served at lunch have a hot red pepper paste on them, making them very spicy. Not spicy in the way Mexican food is spicy because it still has a pickled flavor, but it's a hot pickled flavor! I don't know how to describe it really. But by the time the meal is done my whole face is sweating profusely. Maybe that's why I liked the yogurt fruit thing. It helped tame the heat a little bit.

I'm starting to know a few Korean words, like hello, please, and thank you. But beyond that I'm pretty much lost. If I have my cheat sheet with me I can ask where something is. On Monday, the first day of class, I got off my bus too soon and had to walk the rest of the way to the school. So on the way I asked a few different people where the school was just to make sure I was headed in the right direction. I made it there okay so I guess they understood me :) William and I were talking about how our experiences will be very different even though we're living in the same country. I have more incentive to learn some of the language since I'm immersed in it each day. Even though there are Koreans on base and in William's unit, he's still surrounded mostly by Americans so he has less need to know any Korean.

I have Friday of next week off, as well as the following Mon. and Tues. for a holiday called Chuseok. It's a time when families and friends gather to share food and enjoy their time together, giving thanks to their ancestors for the year's bountiful harvests. I've also read that it's a time for families to visit the graves of their ancestors.