A Primer on South Korea

Trees wrapped in crochet

I've been living in Gwangju, South Korea for nearly two months (how time has flown!) and, while most of my time has been consumed with planning and teaching English and Drama to the entire middle school (which only has 18 students), I have had time to discover a few small pleasures.

1) In Korea, we walk or bike or bus.

Who needs to drive when there are wide sidewalks (sometimes festooned with crochet) for walking and biking, and an efficient and cheap bus that gets you downtown in the same amount of time as a taxi or a car? I am now walking 5 - 6 miles three days a week to do my errands and enjoy the neighborhood; this is up from one day a week of compulsory exercise in Mexico. This is a good thing, because...

teriyaki noodles that came with rice 

2) In Korea, we eat a lot of carbs.

There is rice (bap) with everything. I've even had a dish served to me that was both rice AND noodles. Rice is served at lunch at school everyday, and I usually have it with vegetables, pork, and kimchi. Rice is good with everything, especially BBQ...

3) In Korea, BBQ is king!

I've been out for Korean BBQ where there is a small open fire pit in the middle of your table (with your own, personal, extendable exhaust hood over top) and it was delicious. But, much better than that, was a trip to the Sassy Duck (I have no idea what it is actually called, but their logo is a sassy duck, so I'm sticking with it). The Sassy Duck only serves one dish: DUCK BACON! which you cook on a cast iron skillet (with holes for the fat to drain) in the middle of your table. The duck bacon comes with a vegetable that I call 'grass' (looks and tastes like grass when raw, but is oniony when cooked), garlic, and vegetables...

4) In Korea, there are at least a dozen sides with every meal!

So, you can't just eat duck bacon all by itself. Duck bacon becomes DUCK BACON SALAD TACOS (someday, I'm going to have a food truck in Park Slope and make a mint selling these things). All Korean BBQ comes with lettuce leaves for wrapping up the meat and sides so you can eat the BBQ with your hands. Typical sides include: daikon (giant radish), pickled daikon, kimchi (cabbage), kimchi (bok choi), bean sprouts, gochujang (Korean hot sauce), andandand...

You  layer these items in your lettuce leaf and shove the whole thing in your mouth and chase it with...

5) In Korea, we drink a lot of soju!

Soju is liquor. I don't know much about it. It's clear and sweet and about a billion proof. It goes down way too easy, which leads to...

6) In Korea, we sing karaoke!

I love karaoke. LOVE. So, slipping in to a lush basement room tricked out with fancy lights, a blaring sound system, two microphones, and a good assortment of English karaoke standards played over weird Korean pop videos and vacation package advertisements, and drinking more soju and beer WHILE singing is pretty much heaven. This is called noraebang and you pay by the hour for your room. Every hour, they bring you more snacks and you buy more beer and soju. NORAEBANG FOREVER!

swanky noraebang room

**In Korea, we also go to cat cafes and pet the cats that look like Little Man, go to a Canadian restaurant and eat poutine, and talk a lot about hiking that we plan to do but haven't gotten around to yet, but will as soon as it gets cooler and we aren't so worn out from all the carbs and walking.