Episode 38: In Which DFM Gets Kicked Out Of A Restaurant, And Visits A Korean Doctor (Fish)

With less than a month to go, and essentially only the weekends to meet people, the race is on to try and see all of my friends one more time before I leave Seoul for Ulsan at the end of the month.

Back in September I leant Charles a couple of my favourite books and I wanted to get them back, so I figured I would start with him. Since I had planned to meet some friends in Gangnam at 6 PM, Charles suggested we have lunch there at 1:30 PM. Conveniently, he only lives a 5 minute walk away (I, on the other hand, live about an hour and twenty minutes away by subway).

(The Samsung corporate building in Gangnam. Or at least that's what Charles told me it was.)

I can't remember what Charles and I ate exactly, but it involved mixing a package of store bought ramyeun noodles into a stew of vegetables, ddeok, and some sort of mashed up meat scraps sausage that tastes a little bit like pepperoni.

Charles told me that back when Korea was poor (about 60 years ago), its people were forced to eat anything they could find. One of those "anythings" involved collecting leftovers from the American soldiers, and that's how this soup (I can tell you it's budae jjigae, now that I've looked it up) came about. Apparently, in one of the first budae jjigaes, or "ham and scraps stew" as its also known, there was even a used tissue from one of the soldiers. Funny story aside though, I'm continuously impressed with the resourcefulness of Koreans when it comes to making food.

As far as I can tell, the traditional Korean diet consists of little more than cabbage, pepper, seaweed and rice/ddeok. With these few ingredients, and some minor tweaks (like adding ramyeun noodles), there have grown unlimited combinations, tastes and textures. I will surely miss Korean food when I return to Canada.

After finishing the budae jjigae, we went to have ice cream at my favourite ice cream chain, The Cold Stone Creamery. I told Charles to order me a medium, but he came back with the large size. When I finished I was stuffed full, but then the girls working at the front brought us a couple of small sample cups each, and asked us to fill out a taste test questionnaire. If there's one phrase that summarizes my two visits to Korea most completely, it's "getting free food."

Stomachs overflowing with ice cream, we slowly waddled our way to the Kyobo book store nearby (can you tell I love books?). I bought about $50 in books, although I'm not sure why because I don't have time to read them right now, but I guess your DFM buys books like some women buy shoes.

More notable though, I also managed to get wrangled into getting a Kyobo book club card. I had been trying to avoid getting any "points cards" of any kind while I was here, but this one was free and would give me 10% off my first purchase (the one I just bought). I suppose now I'll have to come back to Korea a third time to redeem my points. "Darn!"

A couple of weeks ago I talked about meeting Seung-bok in Sillim and naming some of his friends. Last weekend, while I was waiting for Mitja to phone me, one of those friends, Elizabeth, called me to set up a date this week. When I showed up though, I was surprised to see Scarlett too.

(Scarlett, on the left, and Elizabeth.)

I was still full from the ice cream, but neither Scarlett or Elizabeth had eaten supper, so we set off in search of some dalkgalbi (sacrifices must be made I suppose).

In the past I have told people that I liked dalkgalbi, but I now realize what I meant was, dalkbokki (the barbecued chicken on a skewer). It wouldn't really matter either way, because both dalkgalbi and dalkbokki are Korean food dishes, so they are equally delicious.

While the food was delicious, the restaurant at which we were eating was very busy this night, and we were asked to leave shortly after finishing. So again we braved the wind that was blowing blustery to find another place to chat.

In Korean Cop's sister blog, Kindergarten Cop, I wrote about a cafe in Edmonton called Block 1912 Cafe. Actually I didn't write about it at all, I simply said that I went to a cafe. That cafe though is called Block 1912 Cafe, on Whyte Ave, but apart from Indigo Restaurant in Haeboncheon, nothing else in Seoul had come close to it. I had even been led to believe that Seoul exists entirely of Dunkin' Donuts, Paris Baguette bread shops, and expensive Starbuks-like cafe chains.

This night though, we stumbled upon a wonderfully large and bright cafe. I can't remember the name of it, but you could buy waffles and dangle your feet in a pool of doctor fish. I couldn't believe it! Waffles and hot chocolate, and doctor fish all in one place (you can see from the picture that the chairs are soft too). This could be the best cafe in the world. It's too bad I'll never be able to find it again on my own.

Episode 34: In Which DFM Wishes He Had A Book Of Baby Names, And Takes Another Step Towards Turning Into Pigs Blood Stuffed In Intestinal Wrappings

After a wild Friday 13th, in which all the students seemed to forget how to behave in school (this is probably due to two weeks of interrupted class schedules), I was hoping to get some extra sleep on Saturday. However, I would have no such luck, for Saturday was a full day.

Seong-bok had phoned me the week before to say he had some more friends who wanted to see me. Because he is studying English on the weekends in Gangnam, and I wanted to meet in Sinchon, we decided to split the difference and meet in Sillim again. So, back Sillim I went for the third time to eat sundae at the same restaurant. I'm not complaining mind you, as sundae is my favourite food (remember, it's pronounced "soon-day;" it's not ice cream).

In Korea, many English classes force the students to take English names. I think this is ridiculous since very few foreigners would think of taking up a Korean name, even though English names are really hard for Koreans to say (I'm Dee Epp Emm over here). If it is a Korean teacher telling the students to make an English name, that's one thing, but I have serious issues with foreign teachers telling Korean students to change their names (even if they've been told by their hagwon to do so).

The reason I mentioned the English names is because one of Sung-bok's friends did not yet have an English name, and his other friend wanted to change hers. So, for the third time this week I had to come up with an English name. It's tougher to do than you'd think, especially without those handy book of baby names, and without appearing a moron by misspelling an already existing, perfectly fine English word/name to make your baby sound unique. While I won't be sharing my choices here, since I disagree with the concept of an "English name" in general, I put a lot of effort into coming up with fitting names for my new friends, and so I'm pretty happy with my choices.

After lunch with Seong-bok and his friends, I went to Sinchon (that won't mean anything to you though unless you know where and what Sinchon is) to meet a teacher's assistant at my Thursday school who wanted to hire an English tutor who could speak Korean. While I'm not fluent by any means, I'm the best she's going to get for the price she's willing to pay. I shouldn't say that she was willing to pay my wage , because even though I cut the going rate in half, she still thought it was expensive (which it was, but I worked hard to learn that Korean, and I also worked hard to prepare her lesson).

After the lesson though, my coworker and I went to watch a movie. There were no interesting English movies playing, since 2012 was taking up three theatres, so I suggested we watch the movie "Good Morning President," a Korean film, because I wanted to test out my Korean listening skills. Well, I failed. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised though, since there's only so many times even the worst writer can use "hello" or "sorry" before they decide to put something else in the script.

I thought the movie would be a comedy, and while there were definitely funny moments, I think it was trying to say something else too. I couldn't really tell though, because I had almost no clue what anyone was saying at any time. Even so, it still beat watching 2012, and it gives me a good idea of where I need to be. It also affirmed my belief that watching Korean movies and dramas is not "a good way to learn Korean" (as many Koreans tell me) when you can't recognize any of the words being said. Book learning is the key!