Shopping (for the 'won')

After going to Dongdaemun Market on Election Day (12/19), we went back last Friday (12/21).

I bought a hoodie (~$28) and a wallet (~$9).


There's pockets behind the whiskers, and the hood has little ears on it. It also says "Bonjour Cat,"
which is probably the knock-off version of "Hello Kitty."



It's blue with darker blue bumps on it. It's thin enough that my bus card can be read while still in the wallet.
And best of all, my money can lay flat, and there are two pockets to separate the bigger bills (10000 and
5000 won) from the smaller ones (1000 won). There's also a zipped pocket on the outside for change.

Speaking of... a quick explanation of Korean money -- ₩ aka won, said similar to the "won" in "wonton" rather than like "we won the game". It comes in 50000, 10000, 5000, 1000, 500, 100, 50, and 10 denominations. The first 4 are bills, the last 4 are coins.



It's interesting that the bills are different sizes (as seen in the last picture).

It's about 1050-1100 won per US dollar. I usually just divide prices by 1000 to get a rough dollar amount, but on this blog, I've been dividing by ~1100. As mentioned before, there's a 10% tax on everything, but it's included in the sticker/list price, so you don't have weird prices on most things. I rarely see anything that isn't a multiple of 100 (so no need for 50 or 10 won coins). Korea also has a "check" system... where, when you get money from a bank or ATM, you can get a printed slip of paper like a money order that's basically a high-value bill. Until 3 or 4 years ago, this was the only way to get a "bill" greater than 10000 won. Then they released the 50000 won bill. Still, whenever I get money from the ATM, it asks if I want it in 50000 won checks, 50000 won bills, or 10000 won bills. (Though you can also print amounts >50000. I've seen 100,000 and 1,000,000... though not in my wallet, heh.)

Snacks

Updates are becoming less and less frequent. I just don't have anything exciting to talk about. It's hard to want to do things when it's so cold outside (and this is just the beginning of winter).. One thing I can still do, however, is eat. :)

So far, I haven't found any super exciting snacks here. There are no potato chips that I've seen... probably because that'd be difficult to individually wrap. From what I've seen, snacks in Korea generally come divided and wrapped by portion sizes. For example, I bought a box of cookies. I opened it, and found two dozen packs of two cookies each. The serving size for the cookies? Two. The same with Ritz-like crackers and saltines. I'm curious if this is part of why Koreans (to me) seem so skinny -- portion control. Or maybe it's got to do with their "go go go!" lifestyle... it's easier to carry a pack of cookies around, compared to a whole box. Regardless, it's given me a lot of trash to throw away... :\


Left: Pre-cheese'd crackers, cocopuffs cereal, corn flakes, chocolate-filled cookies. Right: Individual packaging.

Korea also has a ton of street vendors selling many, many different kinds of street food -- mostly (deep) fried. In Dongdaemun, we found a vendor selling a hotdog with wavy fries stuck to the outside of it. The most popular foods are probably odeng (fish cakes), mandu (dumplings), and ddeokbokki (spicy glutinous rice sticks). About 25m outside my building, there's a bread stand that sells banana bread, egg bread, and hoddeok (brown sugar pancakes), my personal favorite.


Green tea pancakes, filled with brown sugar, cinnamon, peanuts, and honey. It's about 90 cents for 2...
which is about all the glucose I can handle in one sitting.

Speaking of green tea (녹차, nok-cha), they have green tea lattes here. Some days, they're a nice alternative to espresso drinks. I actually bought a green tea mix, as well as some plain ground green tea powder (which is super bitter without sugar) used in the above pancakes, ice cream, etc.


Instant green tea latte packets, and the plain ground green tea powder.

And what post would be complete without mentioning alcohol? ^^


A Korean brand of beer (맥주, maek-ju) that's 4.5% ABV. I'm still not sold on its taste,
but it's 1600ml (a "54" if you will) of beer for ~$3.

We went to Dongdaemun again a week ago, and I have a few more pics I'll post in the next...post. :)

Election Day

Election Day in Korea comes every 5 years. The president isn't allowed a second term, so there was no incumbent. I actually didn't see any ads on TV for candidates (though I have no TV in my room and only watched while eating dinner at restaurants). There were lots of signs along the street, and I'm pretty sure every day at 11 (except Sundays when it was 12) a guy with a megaphone and a van would drive by and talk about them. And I hear there were rallies and stuff downtown (SNU is way, way south in Seoul, and I live 3-4 blocks off the main road). But overall, it wasn't nearly as much "in your face" as in the US.

South Korea has several different parties (4 big-ish ones, I think) -- but, again, like the US, it pretty much boils down to two -- the Saenuri (formerly Grand National Party) i.e. the Republicans, and the Democratic United Party i.e. the Democrats. A former software developer, Ahn Cheol-soo, running as an independent, actually had about 20% of the vote, but he bowed out in late November so the GUP party candidate (who also had about 20% of the vote) could actually compete w/ the Saenuri candidiate (who had 45%). The Saenuri candidate, Park Geun-hye, ended up winning, 52% to 48%. She was(is) pretty controversial, for being the daughter of a former 70s dictator, who brought South Korea out of the post-Korean War slump, to being (nearly) what it is today (the 4th strongest economy in Asia). North Koreans attempted to assassinate her father in 1974, and ended up killing her mother. Her father's intelligence chief successfully assassinated him in 1979. She's not married and has no kids.

Anyway - Election Day in South Korea is a national holiday, which, for me, meant no class. Iza, Ines, Joana and I decided to go to Namdaemun Market... though Joana was sick and ended up not going. Namdaemun literally means "South Great Gate" and it's one of eight in the city (4 "great" ones at each cardinal direction and 4 "small" ones at each ordinal direction), built during the Joseon Dynasty beginning in ~1400. Around Namdaemun is the biggest market in the country. Most of the stores are outdoors, but there are a few indoors now, too. They sell lots of things, but it's known mainly for clothing, eyeglasses, imported goods, traditional (Joseon-era) goods, and ginseng.


One of many shoe stands. And yes, there's more in the back (a 15x15 room).

Iza and Ines found some clothes there. I found a bookbag (lighter weight than my Swiss one). Because it was a holiday, it was packed (though I'm sure it's packed on most days).


A festive holiday store, and a view of one of two dozen similar streets.

After spending several hours at Namdaemun, we decided to go a few subway stops down to Dongdaemun ("East Great Gate"). And unlike Namdaemun, we actually walked past the "Great Gate" this time, which we took a few pictures in front of (er, well, along the side of it).


Me in front of (the side of) the gate.

Similar to Namdaemun, Dongdaemun has a huge market too, known for its clothing. There are a dozen+ shopping centers/malls with half a dozen+ floors each, filled with clothes and accessories. The wiki page says there are "26 shopping malls situated over 10 blocks, 30,000 speciality shops, and 50,000 manufacturers," but we only visited 3 malls/centers and a few smaller shops and stalls along the sidewalk.


Left: The Doota! (short for "Doosan Tower!") building during the daylight. Right: A $12
green tea waffle and 3 drinks for Iza, Ines, and I. The cafe that served it, Beans Bins,
is located along the first big wall of windows.

When we left Doota!, the pyramid was lit up!


The pyramid outside, and a view of the chandelier-thing inside.

As far as Christmas here, I've mainly only seen decorations at retailers/stores, like Doota!. Shinsegae (a food store similar to Wegmans) had a bunch of signs saying "Merry Shinsegae"... That generally seems to be pretty common, because I remember seeing "Merry X" (where X=store name) elsewhere, but I can't remember where.

Anyway, my purchases for the day:


Owl sweater for $9, somewhat-matching shorts* for $18, bookbag for $21.

*Shorts in winter?!?!? you say? Fear not.... Koreans wear leggings/tights. I bought a very blue pair, and a black pair as well. I was surprised that the "One size fits all" label was actually not a lie. :)

ID cards

On Wednesday, we received our SNU ID cards in class. They're better quality than I was expecting, but still... everyone's photos are... slightly off. Iza and I went to the same place to get the photos (so they're the same size), but hers is stretched horizontally, while mine is too short vertically. And they're all whited out.



Still, now we can eat at the student cafe (2-3$ for lunch), and get into the library, health center, fitness center, etc, plus get student discounts at other places off campus. Woo.

On Friday, I went to the immigration office to register for my Alien Registration Card (ARC). If you plan to stay in Korea for longer than 90 days, you're supposed to register within 90 days of arrival. After you get your ARC, you can buy a phone on contract, buy into health insurance ($35-45/mo), open a bank account, sign up for online IDs. It's interesting that Korea's equivalent of Google, Ticketmaster, anything with a forum, etc, require your Korean SSN...thus nothing is anonymous (there have actually been cases of online slander/libel prosecuted), and very few things are open to temporary foreigners.

Anyway, for others/the curious... the Immigration Office is located near Line 5's Omokgyo Station. From the station, if you come out Exit 7, walk ~100 meters, you'll see a bus stop (오목교역청학스포츠타운 - Omokgyo Station Sports Town). Take #6640 for 2 stops (to 목동중학교 - Mokdong Middle School). Across the road and to the left is the Immigration Office. For the ARC, I had to go into the Foreigner Services Division on the first floor. Take a number from the ticket machine in the middle of the room, and wait. There are 2 or 3 windows for ARC registration, so make sure you can see the screens if you can't understand the Korean numbers they're calling, cos they're not said in English too. For my ARC, as a student, I had to bring a certificate of enrollment (it cost me ~50 cents from the school office) and my passport (which they made a copy of and returned). There were plenty of application forms in the back, and plenty of time to fill it out while waiting, so don't worry about printing it out beforehand. They also don't take cash at the counter anymore, so I had to go to the Woori Bank on the 2nd floor (far to the left in the room at the top of the stairs... still not sure what the right half was, but it was a madhouse) and deposit the $9 into the ATM and bring the receipt back down to the lady at the counter (no new ticket required... just had to wait for some guy without all his paperwork to finish w/ her). The ATM was entirely in Korean, but luckily there were lots of English-speaking employees there to help. After giving her the receipt, she took my fingerprints, then printed out a paper saying to come back in 3 weeks -- on or after the 4th. Since there are 3 national holidays coming up (Election Day, Christmas Day, New Years Day), it's going to take a little longer than the 2 weeks I heard is the norm. Alas. To get back to the station, when you come out of the Immigration Office, go right, and take the diagonal crosswalk. Walk maybe 50 meters and there's a bus stop (양천공원 - Yangcheon Park). Take #6640 again for 3 stops, to 오목교역청학스포츠타운 (Omokgyo Station Sports Town). The subway Exit #6 is right there to the left.

Hopefully it's as easy to pick up the card as it was to drop it off. They offer a delivery service, but I'm still not sure if I can get mail at my address, so I just said I'd pick it up. There are several separate windows to pick up the ARC.. I don't even think you need to take a number... so it should be faster. Though, really, when I went at 10am on a Friday, there were only 6 people in front of me. I was in and out by 11:30 (the longest part was waiting for the guy that was helped after me to quit arguing with the lady at the counter so I could give her my ATM receipt).

Tomorrow is the first test in class. I'm not particularly nervous (yet). It's all been easy so far, but this is a speaking test... which is by far my worst skill (of reading, writing, speaking and listening). Ah well. The teacher said it's very rare for someone to not pass with the 70% cutoff. I'm pretty sure I won't be an exception. :)

Seoul Zoo

Someone suggested we go to the Seoul Zoo on Sunday (yesterday). Stupid me agreed. Seoul Zoo is technically outside of Seoul in Gyeonggi-do, the next province south. And it's part of a "Grand Park" that's got an amusement park, zoo, sky lift, and flower garden. Since we're the farthest district south, the Seoul Grand Park subway stop is only about 30-40 minutes away. From seoul.go.kr:


Seoul Grand Park

It wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't so cold. There was snow on the ground and the temperature at its highest was about 20*F. The animals had the right idea... several of them were hiding under rocks or bunched up in balls to keep warm. Still, we walked over 3 miles to see what we did:


We walked the red path. Sadly every thing here is in meters, but 1600 meters = 1 mile.

Several animals were housed in heated pavilions, which provided a nice break from the constant cold.


A baby chimp or two in a crib.

A few outdoor animals were out:


Brown bear chillin'. Black bear sleeping in a tree.

My favorite animal of the day:


They seemed like nice penguins to me....

Still, it was very pretty. There's a 4.7km nature path that we thankfully avoided this trip, but we walked along it for part of the way and took some pretty pictures:


Stream in the woods. Not frozen over, unlike me, at this point. Also, a picture of the mountains behind the zoo.


Me, all bundled up in front of the stream. My parts, to show just how many layers I was wearing and I was still cold.

Today a bunch of us from class went out to dinner. I'm glad I got a nice group of (English-speaking) people in my class... :) More of us are going out on Thursday, so I'm looking forward to that.

Korean food (and drink)

A (hopefully) quick post about some of the food I've had since I got here. I've already mentioned the barbeque meat (samgyeopsal and galmaegi) in other posts... so I'll skip those.

I guess I should start out by saying that restaurants here are a little different than at home. I haven't seen many with drink options other than water (or alcohol), and every restaurant has its own self-serve water purifier where you can get yourself either cold or hot water, or they put a big container of refrigerated water down.


This is the water purifier in my building, but you get the idea.

You also either place your order to someone waiting as you walk in, sit down first and yell it out really loudly, or press a buzzer on the table and wait til someone comes to your table... it depends on how nice and how busy the place is. You also almost always get your check as your food comes, or if it's a smaller shop, you just walk up to the register (or cash bowl, in some cases) and the person knows what you ordered. Tax is already included in the price (making almost everything a nice, even number) and there's also no tipping at all in Korea. :)

Another unique feature of a Korean meal is side dishes (ban-chan)! Every meal so far has had at least one, some have had over half a dozen. What you get kind of depends on what you ordered. Generally, it seems like they try to balance the meal -- if you ordered something spicy, you'll get a bland soup. If you ordered something mild, you'll get something spicy. Kimchi (fermented vegetables, usually cabbage) is served at almost every meal. My favorite kimchi is made from string-cut radishes. Sadly, I haven't had that yet in Korea.

The first week I had a lot of ramyeon. There's a shop about a block away that serves huge bowls of it (with other ingredients besides noodles -- like seafood, rice cakes, kimchi) for ~$2. Alternatively, there are aisles of cup-o-noodles in the convenience stores for about 75 cents each.


Beef-filled dumpling soup. You can see the spicy kimchi and metal water cup.

There's a Paris Baguette right down the road as well. They have tons of different kinds of breads and cakes. I wish I had an occasion to buy a delicious-looking cake, but I did buy some of their Banana Caramel Twists:



One night, Izza and I went to the nearby Mr. Pizza. They had all sorts of crazy pizzas that were really expensive, but we managed to find a "normal" pizza called New York Special that was only ~$12. The pepperoni was really orange, though. At first I thought they were tomatoes...


Far to the left, you can see the bonus cup of pickles that came with the meal..

Right below the Mr. Pizza is a Lotteria -- a burger place similar to McDonalds (which they also have around). Single-patty burgers are about ~$3, but I got a "set" -- burger, fries, drink -- for $5. It's interesting that they only offer one size "set," which to me, seemed like a small. You also are rationed only one ketchup packet.. and though while its size is bigger than one from McD's, it only contains about half as much ketchup. :(


This particular burger had bulgogi sauce -- a Korean marinade, making it a little different than other burgers.
Also, it had tons of mayo. After scooping most of it off, I definitely had more mayo than ketchup on my tray.

A classmate and I decided to try to find some Korean food near her place by the subway station. As I wasn't familiar with the area, we ended up in a basement bar ordering anju (basically, bar food).


The pictures are kind of dark due to the bar atmosphere, but... Left: Risse's tofu kimchi.
Right: My kimchi jjigae (stew) -- it was actually pretty tasty, though a huge portion we could've easily split.
Between the two pictures you can also see the side dishes -- radish cube kimchi, what looked like fish
patty kimchi (think sausage slices, only with fish), and some coleslaw-type thing that we couldn't figure out.

Tonight for dinner I had $4 dolsot bibimbap (literally "stone-bowl mixed-rice"). Look at all the side dishes!


Left: Before mixing. There's a sunny-side up egg in under the lettuce and laver. Right: After mixing.
From what I could tell, the side dishes clockwise from bottom left: Pickled squid, pickled something fishy,
ham slices with egg, anchovies, black beans, cabbage kimchi, bean sprout kimchi, broth with scallions.
I had trouble eating from the anchovies leftward, though I did try...

One final thing -- drinking is big in Korea. They have all kinds of liquor at the store. Soju (20-26% ABV) is probably the most popular... you can get it in Virginia for $5 for a 750ml bottle. Here, it's ~$1. It tastes similar to vodka... and it's made with rice, potatoes, or sweet potatoes. There's also maekju (beer, 3-5% ABV), but the few brands I've tasted have been awful (mostly because they're made from rice and barley malt). There's also makgeolli (takju), or Korean rice wine (6-8% ABV). I bought some "saeng" (fresh) makgeolli the other day (see previous blog post). It was carbonated and slightly sour. Last night, I found a bottle of black raspberry non-carbonated makgeolli.


Much better. :) Though in my Hello Kitty bowl, it looks a little like blood.

There are also tons and tons of bottled drinks at the convenience store. I think I could buy one every day and not repeat one for several months. So far, I found a carbonated plum drink (I thought it was a lime...), banana milk (delicious!!), corn tea (that I had last year... it tastes like you're drinking corn flakes), vitamin water... I have another couple in my fridge that I haven't tried yet. I probably won't buy the plum drink again, but the banana milk was so tasty. They have a strawberry variety I'll also have to try.

Guess that's it for now. A new classmate, Hera, arrives tomorrow night, so hopefully we'll do something worth blogging about.

First snow

Today was the first snow in Korea! I hear it was in the 70s back in VA..... sigh. But still, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. The sidewalks were very slippery (only a fraction were actually salted, and only in the morning before class), but I walked carefully and managed to not fall on my butt. Still, it was very pretty!


My walk to the bus stop in Daehakdong.



The view just on the other side of the SNU's Museum of Art (MoA), a bus accident, and the language buildings
(see previous post for a snow-free view).

The third day of class was more of the same. The final alphabet lesson. I'm already well beyond this, but it's good to have pronunciation practice.

It continued to snow all during class, finally letting up about 4:30pm. Class ends at 5:30pm, so at least we didn't have to walk home in the snow (like I had to walk to class while it was snowing, so I ended up covered in snow.... though that's still less wet than the rain we had on Tuesday 12/4).



By this point, the sun had set 30 minutes ago... but there was still some lingering sun to make these pictures pretty.

I went to dinner with Isabella (from Brazil) again. She lives a floor below me, so it's convenient, plus we seem to get along well. It turns out she's 28 as well -- her birthday is in January '84, so she's actually older than me! But still, as far as Korean rules, we're close enough in age to forgo the formalities and be "equals." Obviously, because we're foreigners, these rules don't necessarily apply anyway, but when in Rome..... so it's nice to have someone as old as I am, and yet the same age, so I can act comfortably.
Because it was cold out, we decided to go to Mapo Galmaegi on our street, that I went to with Rui over the weekend. You cook your own food over a charcoal fire (they bring in 3-5 pieces of hot charcoal to cook over... we were there for over an hour, and the pieces they brought us remained hot for the duration). We started with the go-to samgyeopsal (fatty but tasty), then we were still hungry, so we tried the namesake galmaegi (pork from between the diaphragm and midriff). I've heard about "service" for foreigners before, but this was my first time experiencing it! We got a free bottle of Coca-Cola, and a free half serving of some super-spicy meat. I wanted to ask what it was, but by the time the waiter came back, we'd eaten it all. ^^ (There was a buzzer to call the waiter at our table, but neither of us wanted to use it.) We also had 2 bottles of soju total, each of us pouring for the other. It almost felt like an actual Korean situation -- as that is how it's done here (you never pour a drink for yourself). But it's really, really nice to have a friend, especially a friend that's the same age as me. Sadly, she's only got plans to stay here for 4 months. Not sure what I'm going to do after that (for Korean Level 2). :( Our (free) "service" pictures:



Galmaegi we ordered and paid for cooking with garlic slices, free Coca-Cola, free spicy-meat.

I miss Rui and I hope we can hang out this weekend. I also hope I can see Jerry, a friend from PSU who's living in Seoul now. Generally, I'm very happy --- I have some friends, Korean class is going well (mostly because I already know the lessons), it's not unbearably cold or snowy.... Here's to most of the previous staying the same for a few more months. :)