I bet the last time you bought a bucket of fried chicken you didn't have to take it with you on a low-budget, knockoff version of The Amazing Race.
This post was supposed to cover yesterday, our third Saturday in South Korea, and our first trip into Seoul. It will, but for the moment yesterday's journey, and it was a journey, is too eclipsed by today's trip to the grocery store. Gone are the days when you can hop into your grandmother's corolla and drive 3 minutes to the 24/7 Harris Teeter. Come is the hour when you must navigate public transit, rely on kind strangers, get a workout, bear the smell of fried chicken that you can't eat for 2 hours. I guess I should start there.
Above is a picture of me leaving E-mart Traders grocery store, a place a bit like Sams back home. They deal in bulk, mostly. We got there via a bus (the stop is a ten minute walk from our apt). The ride is maybe 30 minutes. It's pretty wild in there (Emart). I guess we went on a Sunday afternoon, but still. Traffic jams of carts. 4 million people. There's also a pet shop, on the plus side. We picked up some essentials. All told, our bag was packed with 6 jars of sauce, a 10 lb bag of rice, pasta, a much cherished bottle of Tabasco sauce, and a few other things. The chicken we had to carry in hand. The shades are just for looks-- Korea's all about style.
We caught a little shade on the bus over. In Korea all the public transport is very accessible. Pretty cheap. Very easy. You just scan your transit card when you get on a bus, subway train, or taxi, and then scan it when you get off. The same card for any part of the transit system. It cost us roughly $4 USD yesterday to ride an hour on a subway into Seoul and an hour out, with maybe 4 connections in between. All that to say, we noticed that the funds on Maria's card were out on the bus. No sweat, she scanned mine twice and we were square with the powers that be (that be driving the bus, that is).
When we left Emart, laden with our 30 lbs of food, bucket o' chicken, and a big bag of bread (that in a moment of confusion, wandering through the basement level parking deck, we did upend and drop on to the ground. Thank God for the antibacterial qualities of olive oil.), we needed to make for the subway station to reload the cards and take a train home. No sweat. It's probably close by (not really). We learned from a dude who spoke a little English (and a fair number of dudes here do) that the station was a few miles down the road. We hiked it out, and found the station without too much guff, though we looked like an abbreviated version of the wise-men, carrying bread and fried chicken out before us as we hiked through the city.
Problem: The transit card reload stations don't take card, only cash (we're fresh out). No ATM's in the station. We're in a weird part of town, and anyway, with our foreign debit cards we need to find a Citi bank, specifically. Also, I'm still holding the 30 lbs of food and bucket o' chicken (fried and fragrant as a greasy field of meat flowers). And we're both pretty sweaty and tired. One guy actually laughed at me punching in commands on the subway console, my arm beading up with sweat and wrapped around the chicken bucket like a leviathan tentacle, Maria's girly backpack strapped up tight on my back. Sky's out thigh's out as usual with the short-shorts. The sweaty look of a man who's in a pickle on my face -- his laughter's forgivable, I guess.
We hit the "Attendant" button and a woman spoke out from the machine in Korean. I said, "English?" A woman, the same I'm assuming, then hustled out from behind a secret door in the subway wall and spoke Korean to me in person. I pointed to my cards and tried to mime out the problem. I asked her where there was an ATM I could use. She walked me to the city map and spoke some more Korean -- I guess it sounded just as futile when I spoke English to her. Ultimately, and amazingly, she close-lined a passing girl, about my age, spoke Korean to her, and the girl WALKED ME TO AN ATM! I felt like a kid lost in the supermarket and being handled by the staff, but she pointed me to the Citi bank (maybe 400 yards away through the city), and left me to it. I could't pronounce her name, but she's a microbiology major at a local college. Great English. I snagged the cash, and jogged back to the station to find the chicken (and Maria), waiting, and we loaded up on a train and sped home.
I ate a lot of chicken and passed out.
Now, it's storming, and I'm writing, and I feel able to tell you about the trip I wanted to begin with before today's trials.
Saturday. And it was a good one.
We've been wanting to get in to Seoul for a while. We went out to Gangnam, like from the song, on Friday night.
.
It was pretty wild. Lights everywhere. Street food. In Milledgeville, where I went to school, you'd see a big group of folk (maybe 10) walking downtown all done up, and it was something. Gangnam is a ritzy nightclub area in a top-ten capital city. There were HERDS of people, dressed to the 9's.People everywhere. Club music booming from doors uncounted and glaring in their florescence.
We went to Ranbow, with looks, incongruously, like it belongs in either Asheville or a fraternity house basement, or some combination of the two. Rugs, hookahs, an awesome live band that played rock songs in English and Korean. The host at the door had a New England accent. There was only one guy dancing between the tables, but we joined him for a bit. He was glad for the company, and the audience was glad for the change (but who isn't glad to see my stanky leg?)
Saturday we were up at the crack of 10. I went to a department store and bought some short sleeved work shirts. I was told coming over that I'd need to be in dress-shirts and slacks pretty much everyday, and have found that it's a lot more laid back. So on the upside I can wear jeans everyday, but on the downside, my closet is full of unused, and super hot, dress shirts.8 shirts for $110 USD!
Later, maybe around 1, we began the long string of connecting subway lines that would take us into old Seoul, the nexus of the capital is a walled city. Gyeongbukgung Palace was our aim. It took us one hour and a few connections, but getting there was very easy. Having only used the subway in Athens, Greece, and briefly, I was a little worried about going full public transit in Seoul, but it's been awesome! There's an app for your phone (works without Wifi or data) that will tell you when and where to get on/off, but even after using the subway three times now, I barely need it.
The palace was beautiful and shocking in its scale. The walls are thick, the buildings were, well, palatial. There was an armed changing of the guard (the guards were in replica armor and carrying bows, spears, swords and banners), similar to what you'd see at an old civil war fort in the states. There was a museum on the grounds that was full, and I mean full, of Koreans trying to escape the heat (and there was a bloody lot of it to escape). I don't mean to sound underwhelmed. The palace was interesting and, as I said, shocking in its way, but I've never really taken a lot of pleasure in heavily restored historical sites. MUCH of the palace had been reconstructed entirely, probably in the past 30 years, and that takes some of the magic out of it for me.
History doesn't wait. The place was built in 1620, destroyed a few times and rebuilt, made in to a school during the Japanese invasion (one of them), blown up, used for a few other things, scavenged. You name it. It was the same, to a lesser extent, when I saw the Acropolis in Greece, and some sites back home. It was wonderful, if overcrowded, all the same. My favorite part was the mountainscape in the background. THAT was when I really got a feel for the site. It was cool to see tapestries showing the old palace grounds in the backdrop of mountains that I could see plainly today, unchanged and untouched, but now with skyscrapers crowding together in their valley. The juxtaposition of the old and new architecture was very striking to see.
Maria and I were beat after the long subway ride and walking around the palace, but it was only 4. We had been told that Hamlet Globe to Globe was coming to town, and were playing in a park at 7:30. That was a good walk across town, but we had time. We kept wondering, as we crossed a 10 lane road through the Seoul amidst a crowd of a hundred or so, why it was so crowded. Are there always giant Korean flags hanging from the skyscrapers? Is there always a tent-city in the middle of this part of town? Why's that orchestra getting tuned up on a random Saturday? But it wasn't a random Saturday. It was the 70th anniversary of the end of Japan's most recently occupation of Korea. Korean Independence Day!
We walked through the tent-city, or trudged rather (very tired), past trees made of Korean flags, little kids with Korean flag hats, Korean flag umbrellas. At the head of a few hundred chairs was a stage with a small army of musicians. We sat somewhere in the middle and had a rest and an apple. It rained some, but we found it refreshing. And in the middle of the orchestra roaring out what might have been the Korean National Powerballad, we met one of the most direct and enthusiastically pro-American Korean's I've ever met.
"Hi, what's your name?" --Insert names
"Are you American?" --We are!
"Do you know who's on the American short-track team at the upcoming Olympic Games?" --Ugh.
"Do you know (some random MLB player)? --Um.
"Do you know Green Day?" --Yeah!
"I love Muse!" --Sweet! I saw them in concert once with Macklemore
"Oh, Macklemore! (sings Macklemore song at full volume) --Nervous laughter. We're becoming a spectacle.
"Do you know the American National Anthem?" --We do!
"(Sings 1/4th of our national anthem, over the wailing Korean Independence Day concert.)" --More nervous laughter. People are turning in their seats.
"Do you know what the American Flag looks like?" --We do!
At this point the guy, who was super nice if a little socially un-attuned, PULLS A FULL SIZE AMERICAN FLAG OUT OF HIS BACKPACK, STRETCHES IT OVER HIS HEAD AND YELLS OUT TO THE CROWD AT THE KOREAN INDEPENDENCE DAY FESTIVAL, "GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!" Damn.
Then, he carefully folded the flag up, put it in his backpack, bid us farewell and walked off through the crowd without another word. What?
After being pretty well outed for Americans, as if we'd been undercover, and feeling revived after our rest and conversation, we made for the park. It was a good 3 miles through the city, but we only got turned around once and made it without much fuss. Along the way we passed a HUGE parade of people, though they seemed far from the Shriners. More megaphones and picket signs than candy throwers. Turns out it was some kind of demonstration, though for what we wouldn't find out until later (something surprisingly innocuous and having to do with government benefits).
An old man shouting and watching the demonstration pass walked up to me and asked if I was American, though in a different tone than our friend in the park. I told him I was, and he told me through a mouthful of twisted brown teeth to "Go home, Yankee." I nodded at him, smiled, said, "Yes, sir," and we moved on. I've never gotten an anti-American vibe here at all. A lot of folk speak English. MANY Korean people have helped me out a lot in the few weeks I've been here (as you've seen and will see). Everyone wears American pop references on their clothing, American flags on hats, American sports teams (especially NBA) -- you name it. I chalked this up to an old kermugin who might have had a bad run-in with some Americans (he was well old enough to be around during the war), or maybe he was just letting me in on his political opinions, or maybe he just wanted me to get home safety. Whatever it was, I wasn't bothered.
The park was small, but that turned out to be perfect. We had been told it was free, which was almost too good to be true as these are the players from The Globe, you know, as in Shakespeare's Globe Theater, where Bill himself held down his day-job. The group is nearing the end of their 2-year world tour in an attempt to, get this, play Hamlet in every country on the planet! Wow.
Turns out you need tickets. Damn. We asked a woman where we could get in line for seats, and she pointed us to the back of what turned out to be a line (I thought it might have just been 1,000 people hanging out). She told us, and I remember this very clearly, to "go to the line there. And stay there." We laughed and went to the end of the comically long line, we could see the actors warming up on the stage, so we didn't think the wait would be too bad. Then, out of the blue, the information girl comes back and says she has free tickets for us. OK.
We follow her to the desk made-up for people who made prior reservations to pick up their tickets, and there's an older Korean woman there in an extravagant hat who tells us she came with a group of 5, and a few didn't show, so we can have her tickets. WOW! We thank her gratuitously, feeling ridiculously lucky to have been picked out of the river of people waiting for their tickets (the venue was very small. I don't know if they all got seats), for no reason other than, maybe, the small joke we passed with the information woman. I can't imagine why else she would have came and gotten us.
The tickets turned out to be Blue Tab VIP seats, and they gave us an up close and personal view of the show. Right in the spitfly. I've never seen Hamlet on stage, and have only seen a few plays in production. Gosh. So good. The actors were incredible. They also played all their own instruments during the intermission, and for dramatic effect in the play. It really, really felt like we were in The Globe, watching Shakespeare as it was intended. An amazing experience, no matter the context, but especially sweet given ours.
After the play, we took the long train back, this time with some conversation provided from our co-worker, Hannah, who told us about the play originally. We were both starved, and worried there wouldn't be anywhere open in our neighborhood at midnight.
Lucky for us, there were a good many places open and we went to a beer and chicken joint not far from our place. Unlucky for us, we don't speak Korean and did not order chicken with much success. Our ordering tactics, when there aren't pictures, are as follows:
1. Walk in the door and smile with two fingers raised (for peace or for a two-top table, both if possible)
2. We're seated and brought menus.
3. Hangul, hangul everywhere and not a lick to read.
4. If there's a line of hangul that has a star by it, or sometimes the word "best," we get that.
5. If there's no special denotation for dope fare, I pick a middle priced item and order it.
6. There's only one beer in Korea, so far as I can tell, and it's analogous to Bud Light, which is fine because the beer is cold and it's hot as all get out here. That much is easy to order. "Cass, please."
7. Maria has a small panic attack while we wait on what we hope will be chicken. She's a bit picky about "meat textures".
8. Whatever the mystery hangul item was arrives!
It turns out we did not order chicken. We ordered what appeared to be a plate of interestingly sliced hotdogs, in a assortment of colors. They were pretty good! Each color hotdog was a different flavor. Spicy, regular, tangy, what-have-you. It was midnight, we had walked all day and were starving. I was content with the rainbow-dog platter. I think Maria was too.
We made the short walk home, and promptly passed out. A great day, and full of twists and surprises. I think I'm warming to the city, though I can't believe I've only been here 3 weeks. It feels like much, much longer, and there's still so much to see and do, and so much longer to be here. Wild.
This post was supposed to cover yesterday, our third Saturday in South Korea, and our first trip into Seoul. It will, but for the moment yesterday's journey, and it was a journey, is too eclipsed by today's trip to the grocery store. Gone are the days when you can hop into your grandmother's corolla and drive 3 minutes to the 24/7 Harris Teeter. Come is the hour when you must navigate public transit, rely on kind strangers, get a workout, bear the smell of fried chicken that you can't eat for 2 hours. I guess I should start there.
Above is a picture of me leaving E-mart Traders grocery store, a place a bit like Sams back home. They deal in bulk, mostly. We got there via a bus (the stop is a ten minute walk from our apt). The ride is maybe 30 minutes. It's pretty wild in there (Emart). I guess we went on a Sunday afternoon, but still. Traffic jams of carts. 4 million people. There's also a pet shop, on the plus side. We picked up some essentials. All told, our bag was packed with 6 jars of sauce, a 10 lb bag of rice, pasta, a much cherished bottle of Tabasco sauce, and a few other things. The chicken we had to carry in hand. The shades are just for looks-- Korea's all about style.
We caught a little shade on the bus over. In Korea all the public transport is very accessible. Pretty cheap. Very easy. You just scan your transit card when you get on a bus, subway train, or taxi, and then scan it when you get off. The same card for any part of the transit system. It cost us roughly $4 USD yesterday to ride an hour on a subway into Seoul and an hour out, with maybe 4 connections in between. All that to say, we noticed that the funds on Maria's card were out on the bus. No sweat, she scanned mine twice and we were square with the powers that be (that be driving the bus, that is).
When we left Emart, laden with our 30 lbs of food, bucket o' chicken, and a big bag of bread (that in a moment of confusion, wandering through the basement level parking deck, we did upend and drop on to the ground. Thank God for the antibacterial qualities of olive oil.), we needed to make for the subway station to reload the cards and take a train home. No sweat. It's probably close by (not really). We learned from a dude who spoke a little English (and a fair number of dudes here do) that the station was a few miles down the road. We hiked it out, and found the station without too much guff, though we looked like an abbreviated version of the wise-men, carrying bread and fried chicken out before us as we hiked through the city.
Problem: The transit card reload stations don't take card, only cash (we're fresh out). No ATM's in the station. We're in a weird part of town, and anyway, with our foreign debit cards we need to find a Citi bank, specifically. Also, I'm still holding the 30 lbs of food and bucket o' chicken (fried and fragrant as a greasy field of meat flowers). And we're both pretty sweaty and tired. One guy actually laughed at me punching in commands on the subway console, my arm beading up with sweat and wrapped around the chicken bucket like a leviathan tentacle, Maria's girly backpack strapped up tight on my back. Sky's out thigh's out as usual with the short-shorts. The sweaty look of a man who's in a pickle on my face -- his laughter's forgivable, I guess.
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| Eyes on the prize |
We hit the "Attendant" button and a woman spoke out from the machine in Korean. I said, "English?" A woman, the same I'm assuming, then hustled out from behind a secret door in the subway wall and spoke Korean to me in person. I pointed to my cards and tried to mime out the problem. I asked her where there was an ATM I could use. She walked me to the city map and spoke some more Korean -- I guess it sounded just as futile when I spoke English to her. Ultimately, and amazingly, she close-lined a passing girl, about my age, spoke Korean to her, and the girl WALKED ME TO AN ATM! I felt like a kid lost in the supermarket and being handled by the staff, but she pointed me to the Citi bank (maybe 400 yards away through the city), and left me to it. I could't pronounce her name, but she's a microbiology major at a local college. Great English. I snagged the cash, and jogged back to the station to find the chicken (and Maria), waiting, and we loaded up on a train and sped home.
I ate a lot of chicken and passed out.
Now, it's storming, and I'm writing, and I feel able to tell you about the trip I wanted to begin with before today's trials.
Saturday. And it was a good one.
We've been wanting to get in to Seoul for a while. We went out to Gangnam, like from the song, on Friday night.
 |
| Harder than it looks |
It was pretty wild. Lights everywhere. Street food. In Milledgeville, where I went to school, you'd see a big group of folk (maybe 10) walking downtown all done up, and it was something. Gangnam is a ritzy nightclub area in a top-ten capital city. There were HERDS of people, dressed to the 9's.People everywhere. Club music booming from doors uncounted and glaring in their florescence.
We went to Ranbow, with looks, incongruously, like it belongs in either Asheville or a fraternity house basement, or some combination of the two. Rugs, hookahs, an awesome live band that played rock songs in English and Korean. The host at the door had a New England accent. There was only one guy dancing between the tables, but we joined him for a bit. He was glad for the company, and the audience was glad for the change (but who isn't glad to see my stanky leg?)
Saturday we were up at the crack of 10. I went to a department store and bought some short sleeved work shirts. I was told coming over that I'd need to be in dress-shirts and slacks pretty much everyday, and have found that it's a lot more laid back. So on the upside I can wear jeans everyday, but on the downside, my closet is full of unused, and super hot, dress shirts.8 shirts for $110 USD!
Later, maybe around 1, we began the long string of connecting subway lines that would take us into old Seoul, the nexus of the capital is a walled city. Gyeongbukgung Palace was our aim. It took us one hour and a few connections, but getting there was very easy. Having only used the subway in Athens, Greece, and briefly, I was a little worried about going full public transit in Seoul, but it's been awesome! There's an app for your phone (works without Wifi or data) that will tell you when and where to get on/off, but even after using the subway three times now, I barely need it.
The palace was beautiful and shocking in its scale. The walls are thick, the buildings were, well, palatial. There was an armed changing of the guard (the guards were in replica armor and carrying bows, spears, swords and banners), similar to what you'd see at an old civil war fort in the states. There was a museum on the grounds that was full, and I mean full, of Koreans trying to escape the heat (and there was a bloody lot of it to escape). I don't mean to sound underwhelmed. The palace was interesting and, as I said, shocking in its way, but I've never really taken a lot of pleasure in heavily restored historical sites. MUCH of the palace had been reconstructed entirely, probably in the past 30 years, and that takes some of the magic out of it for me.
History doesn't wait. The place was built in 1620, destroyed a few times and rebuilt, made in to a school during the Japanese invasion (one of them), blown up, used for a few other things, scavenged. You name it. It was the same, to a lesser extent, when I saw the Acropolis in Greece, and some sites back home. It was wonderful, if overcrowded, all the same. My favorite part was the mountainscape in the background. THAT was when I really got a feel for the site. It was cool to see tapestries showing the old palace grounds in the backdrop of mountains that I could see plainly today, unchanged and untouched, but now with skyscrapers crowding together in their valley. The juxtaposition of the old and new architecture was very striking to see.
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| Backup passport picture |
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| Inspirational right |
Maria and I were beat after the long subway ride and walking around the palace, but it was only 4. We had been told that Hamlet Globe to Globe was coming to town, and were playing in a park at 7:30. That was a good walk across town, but we had time. We kept wondering, as we crossed a 10 lane road through the Seoul amidst a crowd of a hundred or so, why it was so crowded. Are there always giant Korean flags hanging from the skyscrapers? Is there always a tent-city in the middle of this part of town? Why's that orchestra getting tuned up on a random Saturday? But it wasn't a random Saturday. It was the 70th anniversary of the end of Japan's most recently occupation of Korea. Korean Independence Day! |
| Favorite mountain in Korea |
We walked through the tent-city, or trudged rather (very tired), past trees made of Korean flags, little kids with Korean flag hats, Korean flag umbrellas. At the head of a few hundred chairs was a stage with a small army of musicians. We sat somewhere in the middle and had a rest and an apple. It rained some, but we found it refreshing. And in the middle of the orchestra roaring out what might have been the Korean National Powerballad, we met one of the most direct and enthusiastically pro-American Korean's I've ever met.
"Hi, what's your name?" --Insert names
"Are you American?" --We are!
"Do you know who's on the American short-track team at the upcoming Olympic Games?" --Ugh.
"Do you know (some random MLB player)? --Um.
"Do you know Green Day?" --Yeah!
"I love Muse!" --Sweet! I saw them in concert once with Macklemore
"Oh, Macklemore! (sings Macklemore song at full volume) --Nervous laughter. We're becoming a spectacle.
"Do you know the American National Anthem?" --We do!
"(Sings 1/4th of our national anthem, over the wailing Korean Independence Day concert.)" --More nervous laughter. People are turning in their seats.
"Do you know what the American Flag looks like?" --We do!
At this point the guy, who was super nice if a little socially un-attuned, PULLS A FULL SIZE AMERICAN FLAG OUT OF HIS BACKPACK, STRETCHES IT OVER HIS HEAD AND YELLS OUT TO THE CROWD AT THE KOREAN INDEPENDENCE DAY FESTIVAL, "GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!" Damn.
Then, he carefully folded the flag up, put it in his backpack, bid us farewell and walked off through the crowd without another word. What?
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| We were too shocked to take a picture of the flag guy, but here's me eating an apple! |
After being pretty well outed for Americans, as if we'd been undercover, and feeling revived after our rest and conversation, we made for the park. It was a good 3 miles through the city, but we only got turned around once and made it without much fuss. Along the way we passed a HUGE parade of people, though they seemed far from the Shriners. More megaphones and picket signs than candy throwers. Turns out it was some kind of demonstration, though for what we wouldn't find out until later (something surprisingly innocuous and having to do with government benefits).
An old man shouting and watching the demonstration pass walked up to me and asked if I was American, though in a different tone than our friend in the park. I told him I was, and he told me through a mouthful of twisted brown teeth to "Go home, Yankee." I nodded at him, smiled, said, "Yes, sir," and we moved on. I've never gotten an anti-American vibe here at all. A lot of folk speak English. MANY Korean people have helped me out a lot in the few weeks I've been here (as you've seen and will see). Everyone wears American pop references on their clothing, American flags on hats, American sports teams (especially NBA) -- you name it. I chalked this up to an old kermugin who might have had a bad run-in with some Americans (he was well old enough to be around during the war), or maybe he was just letting me in on his political opinions, or maybe he just wanted me to get home safety. Whatever it was, I wasn't bothered.
The park was small, but that turned out to be perfect. We had been told it was free, which was almost too good to be true as these are the players from The Globe, you know, as in Shakespeare's Globe Theater, where Bill himself held down his day-job. The group is nearing the end of their 2-year world tour in an attempt to, get this, play Hamlet in every country on the planet! Wow.
Turns out you need tickets. Damn. We asked a woman where we could get in line for seats, and she pointed us to the back of what turned out to be a line (I thought it might have just been 1,000 people hanging out). She told us, and I remember this very clearly, to "go to the line there. And stay there." We laughed and went to the end of the comically long line, we could see the actors warming up on the stage, so we didn't think the wait would be too bad. Then, out of the blue, the information girl comes back and says she has free tickets for us. OK.
We follow her to the desk made-up for people who made prior reservations to pick up their tickets, and there's an older Korean woman there in an extravagant hat who tells us she came with a group of 5, and a few didn't show, so we can have her tickets. WOW! We thank her gratuitously, feeling ridiculously lucky to have been picked out of the river of people waiting for their tickets (the venue was very small. I don't know if they all got seats), for no reason other than, maybe, the small joke we passed with the information woman. I can't imagine why else she would have came and gotten us.
The tickets turned out to be Blue Tab VIP seats, and they gave us an up close and personal view of the show. Right in the spitfly. I've never seen Hamlet on stage, and have only seen a few plays in production. Gosh. So good. The actors were incredible. They also played all their own instruments during the intermission, and for dramatic effect in the play. It really, really felt like we were in The Globe, watching Shakespeare as it was intended. An amazing experience, no matter the context, but especially sweet given ours.
After the play, we took the long train back, this time with some conversation provided from our co-worker, Hannah, who told us about the play originally. We were both starved, and worried there wouldn't be anywhere open in our neighborhood at midnight.
Lucky for us, there were a good many places open and we went to a beer and chicken joint not far from our place. Unlucky for us, we don't speak Korean and did not order chicken with much success. Our ordering tactics, when there aren't pictures, are as follows:
1. Walk in the door and smile with two fingers raised (for peace or for a two-top table, both if possible)
2. We're seated and brought menus.
3. Hangul, hangul everywhere and not a lick to read.
4. If there's a line of hangul that has a star by it, or sometimes the word "best," we get that.
5. If there's no special denotation for dope fare, I pick a middle priced item and order it.
6. There's only one beer in Korea, so far as I can tell, and it's analogous to Bud Light, which is fine because the beer is cold and it's hot as all get out here. That much is easy to order. "Cass, please."
7. Maria has a small panic attack while we wait on what we hope will be chicken. She's a bit picky about "meat textures".
8. Whatever the mystery hangul item was arrives!
It turns out we did not order chicken. We ordered what appeared to be a plate of interestingly sliced hotdogs, in a assortment of colors. They were pretty good! Each color hotdog was a different flavor. Spicy, regular, tangy, what-have-you. It was midnight, we had walked all day and were starving. I was content with the rainbow-dog platter. I think Maria was too.
We made the short walk home, and promptly passed out. A great day, and full of twists and surprises. I think I'm warming to the city, though I can't believe I've only been here 3 weeks. It feels like much, much longer, and there's still so much to see and do, and so much longer to be here. Wild.
Love the adventure of it all and thanks for sharing.
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