Random Things We Hate About Korea

Although we love so many things about Korea, there are definitely some we could live without. Here is a random selection in no particular order:

1. Water: This is two fold. First, you can't drink water out of the tap; it is going to be really great to go back to a country where you can. Some people do it here, but we have been told by foreigners and Koreans alike that it is a bad idea and not even boiling it will solve the problem because it is a chemical/pollution issue. Second, and much more important, is the way you are served water with meals. Restaurants have these tiny little cups that fit about three swallows of water. Sometimes you can ask for "big water" and get a western-sized glass, but not always. We really miss having a full glass of water with a meal!

Tiny water cup :(

2. Soap on a stick: This is just what it sounds like. A bar of soap impaled on a metal stick in the school bathrooms and various public restrooms. You wet your hands, rub them on the soap, then continue washing. I guess this is more practical than a bar of soap sitting next to the sink, but for some reason this grosses us out, seems inappropriate and just plain weird, and we hate it.

3. The education system: This is a huge one! Although Korea does exceptionally well internationally in math, science, and reading, we really have a hard time accepting the way they do it. Korean students are put under so much pressure that is at a level American students could never begin to understand. They attend school literally all day, with their normal school day immediately being followed by various academies (hagwons) where they learn more intense science, math, English, music, etc. Olivia's first graders normally are going to bed in the 9-11pm range. Michelle's sixth graders were only getting around 4-5 hours of sleep in preparation for their middle school placement exam and even now that the exam is over (which the look of terror and despair on some of these students faces when they learned they were not accepted was one of the most horrible things Michelle has ever personally witnessed.. amplified by the fact they are 12 years old), they only sleep 6-7 hours a night. These kids are exceptionally smart and talented, all of them playing multiple instruments -not just hot cross buns on a recorder, but symphony orchestra style- in addition to their academic achievements, but there is a reason that suicide rates are quite high in Korean universities. The stress and pressure to do well are just too much. We would never want to subject our children to this type of education system.

4. Some health-related things: The Korean medical system is great for the most part. It is fast, inexpensive, and from what we hear the doctors tend to do a good job. However, we really hated that during our medical exams (mandated when getting an E-2 teaching visa) the people drawing our blood and handling our urine didn't wear gloves nor wash their hands after touching the urine samples before drawing our blood.

5. No knives: We love chopsticks and find them better for eating most things. However, some things are better eaten with a fork but there is rarely a knife available. And we miss butter knives, a steak knife spreading butter is just not the same.

6. Psycho drivers: We have decided that if we die in Korea it is going to be in some driving-related incident. Most likely crossing the street when the crossing sign in on and some crazy person decides to just go. Or maybe in a cab. We have definitely had one ride that was absolutely terrifying  In fact, Olivia had a cab driver tell her that when he got angry he liked to make accidents with the delivery men on scooters. Both of us have also been in a taxi behind a clearly drunk delivery man on a scooter who just out of no where decided to drive, hit the car in front of him, and fall off, only to be too drunk to get back on. It is also possible one of these delivery men will kill us when they are zipping down the streets filled with pedestrians.

7. Laundry: Going back to America and doing laundry is going to be amazing. The washing machines take forever for some reason, everything must be washed in a garment bag, they tear up your clothing regardless of the garment bag, dryers are uncommon, and your clothing just never feels as soft as it should - i.e. crunchy towels are fairly common regardless of fabric softener.

8. The lack of public garbage cans

9. Corn on pizza: We will eventually do a post just on food but for now we will just mention how much we dislike the tendency to put corn on everything. Especially pizza.

10. Sales people: The sales people here are really in your face all of the time. In grocery stores they will follow you around and try to point out everything you should buy and just won't leave you alone no matter what you try to say to them. In the downtown area, they stand outside their stores like cheerleaders with microphones and will literally grab you to try to pull you inside. It's a cultural personal space difference that we dislike.

11. Office supplies: American (western?) style folders and three-ring binders don't exist or they are hard to find. Instead they are binders with sheet protectors inside where you put all of your papers, this just feels inefficient to do ALL the time.

12. People going on and on in Korean when we clearly do not understand: We fully understand we live in Korea and don't speak the language, and don't expect anyone to speak English just for our benefit. We have also had great experiences where we have to explain ourselves fully with sound effects and gestures. However, we really hate it when someone just goes on and on in rapid Korean when we don't understand. It is stressful and frustrating. It is much better when someone is talking to us in Korean and relying primarily on gestures instead of words.

Random Things We Love About Korea

There is so much we love about living in Korea, but we thought we would give you a taste of 13 random things we really enjoy:

1. Ding-dong buttons: This is probably the number one best thing about Korea - they have ding-dong buttons on all the tables at most restaurants. These are buttons you ring when you are ready to order, need more to drink, etc. This means you don't have a waiter or waitress annoying you or ignoring you, it's PERFECT AND BRILLIANT AND SHOULD BE EVERYWHERE!

2. Umbrella Bags: So sometimes it rains a lot. Yes, it rains back home too, but ever thought it was annoying to carry around a wet umbrella through a store or didn't know where to put it at a restaurant? Well, Koreans have found a great solution. When you walk into a restaurant or sometimes a store, they have this contraption that you put your umbrella in, and pull it out, and it is wrapped very nicely in a plastic bag so you don't get water everywhere.

3. Doors with Keypads:So we both have problems keeping track of our important items, such as cellphone, keys, and money. Koreans have also found a solution to THAT problem. A lot of apartments don't use keys, they have an electronic keypad on the doors entering the building or entering your room. When you move in, someone comes to your room and you just choose a 4+ digit code that you use to get into your apartment, like a pin number. This alleviates the need to remember a key to get home, you can always get in! You just have to pay attention to the noises it makes so the batteries don't die and you get locked outside.

4. Stores' Common Approach to Attracting Customers: KPop/Dance music. No more needs to be said.

5. Cheap Tansportation: Neither of us have cars nor liscences, so we rely on public transportation a lot. It is really nice that you can basically get anywhere in Korea for 30$ on a bus or a train. Within Gwangju, there is also a very good bus system with tons of buses going everywhere for about $1 if you have a bus pass (which we do). Finally, the best part is the taxi rides. They start at a base prices of about $2, and we can get almost anywhere we need in town for around $5-$10, (but we usually pay on the lower end because we live in a really good location relative to the places we want to go). This is especially nice always being together and being able to pay only half of that.

6. Korean Socks: Korea and, from our limited experience, Japan, cutify everything. This is not excluding socks. They are extremely cheap, very comfortable, and just plain adorable. They usually have pictures of cute animals or something of the like, and sometimes even have animals farting or pooping (which somehow they make cute).

Pooping puppies and farting elephants

Angry birds and Gangnam style

7. Safety: This country is incredibly safe. Rest easy parents. Petty theft and crime rates are extremely low. If you leave your bag or wallet in a coffee shop, leave for 4 hours, it will still be sitting there when you get back. It's also kinda weird to see HOW safe because you will just see small children wandering around downtown by themselves. Obviously there is still crime so you still have to be aware and smart, but nonetheless, it puts the US to shame with safety.

8. Cab Rides: So we mentioned the cheap transportation earlier, but this doesn't account for the actual taxi ride itself. I would say, about 70% of the time they are incredibly entertaining. For example, we live near a gym which is our landmark to tell the taxi driver how to get home. Some understand this, others just laugh until they are almost in tears because they think we are leaving the bus station with suitcases to go work out at 10pm. One taxi driver even called his friend to share this fact. Other times they are really excited they have people who speak English in their cab, one time a taxi driver called his daughter and told Michelle to talk on the phone to her in English. This was then followed by him dancing and trying to get everyone else to dance too while making fun of our accents. But even if the taxi driver doesn't talk to us or behave strangely, the music they listen to is always interesting. We've heard Disney toons, 80s rock, Kpop, American pop.

9. Public Drinking: There is no "open intox" public drinking laws here, so you or whoever can just walk around with a bottle of Soju (a Korean alcohol that is similar to vodka with a lower alcohol content, but without the burn - very plentiful and very cheap here) without any legal consequences. This results in seeing some very interesting things at all hours of the day from people just being really drunk.

10. Service (pronounced Service-y): This means "free stuff." This comes in many forms from extra stuff that you happen to get when you buy something or just for being foreign. At restaurants or coffee shops, if you sit there for awhile or are with enough foreigners, sometimes they will just bring you an extra pastry or coke, just for being foreign. Kinda nice. But there are also lots of great times when you go to a store to buy something, and just happen to get a little present along with it.

11. Not understanding Korean: Yes, it would obviously be ideal for us to understand the language of the country we are living in. However, there are perks to being a foreigner with no Korean ability other than "thank-you" or "yes." For starters, you can almost always pull the "I'm a confused foreigner" card with just a look and a shrug and either get benefits or people to do things for you(like cook your galbi - Korean bbq - because they just don't think you can handle it). On a less shameful note, it is also really entertaining to watch Korean interactions without understanding what is happening. This is especially a thing at school. The way the Korean teachers act towards the students which makes no sense and the students hysterical laughter and chattering about what is happening is always a source of entertainment during the day. For example, Michelle's coteacher just got a cat. He has a picture of it on his phone and will show it to some student as a type of punishment, maybe, while everyone else laughs, but then walks immediately over to another kid who is cooing at the photo. This goes on for about 10 minutes. The final perk about not being able to understand Korean is that when we get back to the States, we will be unbeatable at charades.

12. Establishment Closing Times: Or more, lack there of. No matter what time of night, you can find something open with whatever you need: convenience stores, most restaurants, bars, etc.

13. Most Korean food: Delicious. Stay posted, we will have a blog post dedicated to this one.

So there you have it, our list of things we love about Korea. There are many more where that came from and I'm sure we will continue to discover more little things that we love as our time here continues.

Where Olivia and Michelle Eat Things Squirming All Over Their Plate...

Sannakji is a Korean dish (easy enough to find but not part of the standard Korean diet by any means) made of a small octopus that is cut up into pieces while it is still alive and then served immediately with a light sesame sauce so it is still squirming around on the plate. It is also possible to be exceptionally adventurous and eat the whole thing: they jam the top of the mini octopus on a chopstick, wrap the legs around it, shove the whole thing into your mouth and you start chewing. Youtube it. So far we have tried the cut up version (as you can see in the video) and I don't know that we will ever try the whole version, but we will see. 

If the video doesn't work for you, click here to watch it on youtube.

Korean School Lunch

Back in the states if you were to ask a student at most elementary schools what their favorite part of the day is many would probably say lunch and recess. Here at Samyook Elementary, most students would probably label lunch as their LEAST favorite part of the day. Why? The food. If you ask my first graders why they love field trip day the most common response is "I get to bring my own lunch." Why do they hate the food so much? As some of you may or may not know, we work at a Seventh Day Adventist school and therefore there is a "strict" vegetarian policy (more on that later...). Although vegetarian food can be delicious, a lot of what the school makes just isn't. In addition, for the most part students are required to eat everything on their plates. For the older kids this is always true, for the younger kids it is dependent on their Korean teacher. Luckily for us, the teachers don't have to clear their plates!

Most days we are served rice, soup, fruit, kimchi, and three other sides. One of these sides is a always kimchi and it is a lifesaver as it helps us finish the rice. Sometimes the other sides are great, other times we can't stand to finish them. For example, we have been served plain uncooked slabs of tofu, what can only be described as grass and twigs, and more or less flavorless jelly cubes made from acorns. And with the exception of a day here and there, the daily soup is basically intolerable. On Wednesdays we have something "special" like bibimbap, egg over the rice, curry, etc, and on Fridays we normally have some sort of noodle dish. Earlier, I said "strict" vegetarian policy loosely as there are days certain dishes taste quite fishy (kimchi is traditionally made with anchovy paste), non-synthetic meat flavorings have been used for the curries, and one of our fellow teachers that speaks Korean said he has seen spam listed on the menu before.

Without further ado, a week of school lunches:

MONDAY

Rice, tofu seaweed soup, yogurt, clementine (in season right now and delicious!). Sides (left to right): tofu potato thing; green plant with sesame oil maybe?;  raw cabbage and carrots covered with a sauce that can only be described as tasting like pureed sprinkles; kimchi. 

TUESDAY

Rice, tofu seaweed soup (a different one), apple, the plastic wrapped thing was some sort of pastry with an "apple" filling (at least that's what the kids said - it tasted nothing like apples). Sides (left to right): egg pancake; absolutely no idea what the second one was; sweet seaweed and apple slices that tasted more or less like you walked over to the nearest tide-pool, grabbed a handful of whatever was inside, and shoved it in your mouth; kimchi. 

WEDNESDAY

This was a great day! Curry over rice, chocolate cookie, chocolate soy milk, kimchi,  and korean pears which taste sort of like a mix between an apple and a pear. 

 THURSDAY

Rice, seaweed soup, persimmons. Sides (left to right): sweet potato/onion saucy thing; some sort of seaweed pancake; the dreaded acorn tofu in sauce; kimchi.

FRIDAY

Friday is pretty hit and miss, and this is the definition of a miss. Pumpkin porridge: the worst Friday meal. I can see how this could be good if it was pureed better and was lacking the rice cake balls and black beans. Also on the tray, banana soy milk, a banana, and the sides (from left to right): rice cakes with a sweet liquid filling, apple/persimmon/ clementine chunks covered in the sprinkle sauce, and kimchi.

So there you have it, a week of school lunch at Samyook Elementary School. We promise to post with some of our favorite non-school foods soon!

Boseong Tea Fields

One of the many things there is to do right near Gwangju is go to the Boseong Tea Fields. Boseong is a small town about an hour bus ride from Gwangju. We have heard there are only like 10 foreigners in the town, really different than the 20,000 in Gwangju. We didn't really get to check out town that much, as we got a late start to the day.

Once you get to Boseong, it is really easy to just jump on a city bus and get dropped off at the front entrance of a plantation. We just told the bus driver we wanted to go to the tea field, and he stopped the bus where everyone made it clear the stop was for us.

The tea fields in Boseong are massive and beautiful. And due to the mild temperatures and low humidity of the region, they produce some of the most high quality tea in Korea. If you ever see photos of tea fields from Korea, it is most likely the ones on Boseong.

There are many tea-related things you can enjoy like green tea ice cream (which was delicious) or green tea baths. While we wanted to check those out, our late start meant we didn't have the time. We ended up just hiking around and taking in the scenery. There has been discussions about returning in the Spring because one of our coworkers informed us that that was the most beautiful season to go.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Chuseok in Japan

Korea's Thanksgiving, Chuseok, is in the end of September so we had some vacation time. There also happened to be a National holiday 2 days later, so we were lucky and had 5 days off from school. We decided to take this vacation time and go to Kyoto, Japan.

We left our apartments bright and early Saturday morning at 4:30am to head to the airport. Not living near an airport like both of us are used to is really terrible; it takes 4 hours to get from Gwangju to the Inchon International Airport, sooo needless to say we had a long day of travelling ahead of us. We took an express train into Seoul, then flew to Osaka. The flight was amazing, an hour and a half and we got a full meal. This is so unusual, as Olivia flew from east to west coast USA and didn't even get peanuts.

When we arrived in Osaka, we tried to do some tourism in the city and go to the Osaka Castle, but we got in too late and it was closed. So we just walked around a park for a bit then headed to Kyoto to settle into our hostel. Our hostel was pretty nice, there was a really good common room to meet people and it also had extremely comfortable beds. After we settled in we found a little hole in the wall and got some dinner. No idea what it was, we just pointed at some pictures and a guy cooked for us. It was good though!

As close as we got to Osaka Castle. We got there too late, and it was
already closed for the evening.

Waiting for our first taste of Japanese food. See that door back there?
That wall behind us? Yeah, that was the size of the restaurant. 

Our food being cooked.

Our plan for Sunday was to walk around and look at some temples in the area. This was made rather difficult as the weather forecast called for a typhoon that afternoon. Since arriving in Asia, we have been through 4 typhoons, not very welcoming. Since the typhoon wasn't hitting until the afternoon, we woke up early and were able to walk around for a few hours and visit a few temples and shrines. Our hostel ended up being in a really great location, in the Gion District, and we were able to take a walking route to one of the more popular temples in Kyoto, Kiyomizu, which took us past several others. So we spent our day going in and out of various temples and even attending a Japanese Tea Ceremony, a very specific way to prepare and drink tea. But, but 3pm the rain and wind began picking up, so we grabbed an awesome ramen lunch then headed back to the hostel.

Our hostel's weather report.

At a temple we visited. We saw tons of these.

Olivia being Buddhist.

 Praying at the temple.

In a graveyard, downtown Kyoto behind us.

A giant stone Buddah we saw from afar.

More temples.

The room we went into for the tea ceremony.. . it was
a little bit of a struggle getting inside.

Around Kyoto there were many of these little statues to
rub for luck, wealth, health, etc.

At the Kiyumizo temple, our last stop before the typhoon hit.
The wind and rain started picking up quite a bit. 

Kiyumizo Temple

On Monday we checked out of our hostel and began the long trek to our next hostel. We decided to spend 2 nights in a hostel with beds and 2 nights in one that was more traditional Japanese where you slept on mats. However, finding this 2nd hostel proved to be a problem because our map left out some key streets. This caused us to walk around the area quite lost for quite some time. We finally found our hostel and were able to drop off our things before we headed to Nara. Nara is another little town about a half hour by train from Kyoto. We spent our day in Nara Park, a place with numerous temples and shrines, and a very large stone Buddha. Also in this park, and more importantly, were deer. These were not normal deer, they would bow to you, eat from your hand and let you pet or hug them. It was unbelievably entertaining, and definitely the highlight of the Nara excursion. Both of us now have an absurd number of pictures of deer.

Temple in Nara

Olivia getting ready to feed the baby deer.

A deer let Michelle hug it.

See, lots of deer. Many more where these came from.

Us in front of the temple with the big Buddha in Nara, Japan.

50ft stone Buddha in Nara

When we returned to our hostel, we asked a woman who worked there a good place to get sushi, and we were finally able to eat sushi in the homeland. We ate at a conveyor sushi restaurant, where there were plates of sushi on a conveyor belt going past all the tables, and if you saw one you wanted you would just take it. The plates were also only 100 yen, so about $1.20. It was nice to find a good restaurant to eat at without spending a ton of money, which is where you can end up spending a lot of your money in Japan.

The conveyor sushi restaurant we ate at a few times.

Our last day in Japan was spent slowly perusing our way around Kyoto. We went to the Imperial Park, which was where the emperor lived when the capital was in Kyoto. We were able to walk around the Imperial Palace with a tour group of what seemed like 1000 people and take pictures. All in all, not the best tour. After, we then went to the Nijo Castle. This was where the Samurais lived, it also looked way better protected than where the emperor lived. We then hopped on a bus over to Kinkaku, the Golden Pavilion, this is another Buddhist temple and is really made of gold. We weren't able to go inside, but it was a really beautiful place to walk around and take pictures. After this we still had a few hours of daylight so we went to a market where you can buy really interesting foods and pastries to try. Here we had octopus on a stick and some delicious doughnut holes. At this point, we were pretty exhausted and just biding our time until 8pm where we had heard that in the Gion District, where our first hostel was located, there was a street where you could see geishas walking around to their appointments. So while waiting, we went to another shrine (if you haven't noticed, temples and shrines were EVERYWHERE, it was great). Finally we went to see what all the geisha hype was about, and found it was over nothing. We did see 2 geisha's going into a building. There were about 100 tourists taking pictures of them, and they looked so uncomfortable.

Kinkaku - the Golden Pavilion

The main intersection of the Gion District.

A shrine we visited in Gion

A shrine we visited in Gion.

Wednesday we reached the end of our trip and headed home. We left our hostel (which was not that great and the other people staying with us kind of sucked) quite early again, and headed back to Gwangju. And again, got a full meal on our flight with delicious coffee and tea.

So, all in all this was a really fun trip. We did have some strange occurrences  like when an older Japanese man gave us presents on the bus (Olivia - air freshener, Michelle - an odd little chest of drawers) or the nice woman shop owner who was helping us find our hostel and gave us snacks while we waited for her to call around to try to find it. We also met some really nice foreigners like us, a lot were also teachers in Korea with the 5 days off for Chuseok.

Gwangju World Kimchi Culture Festival

Each fall Gwangju hosts the Kimchi Festival which celebrates Korea's national food, kimchi. At the festival you can taste quite a few varieties of kimchi and other foods, learn a little about the history of kimchi and the kimchi making process, and the best part: make your own kimchi to take home!

Starting the kimchi making process! This kimchi was slightly different than what Olivia made with her kids on their fieldtrip as a whole head of cabbage was used, but the spices were very similar. 

The finished product! We can eat our kimchi now, resulting in a crisper kimchi, or let it ferment for years.  Personally, we both prefer the newer, crisper kimchi.

Michelle making a kimchi wrap, one of the many kimchi-related foods available at the festival. 

Let's Make Some Kimchi!

Last Wednesday was field trip day and the first graders all went to the kimchi museum to make some kimchi. For those of you that don't know, kimchi is fermented veggies, most often cabbage, with a variety of seasonings. It is Korea's national dish and is served with almost every meal.

On our way to the Kimchi Museum!

Without further ado, here are my students making a big ol' mess:

Start by chopping the cabbage. I'm actually not sure exactly what vegetable we were using, although it definitely wasn't the traditional cabbage. Maybe the cabbage stalk? 

Mix the cabbage with salt. Obviously, don't use gloves because that just isn't any fun. 

Add scallions, fish sauce, some sort of red pepper sauce, garlic, etc.

Keep mixing! Take a bite or lick your fingers to see how it is going.  Put your hands right back in!

Attempt to clean. Note my coteacher in the back who knowingly wore all white to stand in a room with around 100 first graders throwing around a food that is notorious for permanently staining clothing. Somehow she didn't get a drop of kimchi on her regardless of all of the kids looking like Jack, the boy in the picture.

Take home your kimchi and enjoy!
"Teacher! So delicious!"