부대찌개

So, last night I was too tired to blog, so today I'm going to cover both today and yesterday.

Classes were the same as ever, sans a "field research" activity in Korean Mass Media and Popular Culture class which required us to go around campus and ask Korea U students about gender perception in Korea. It was pretty interesting. For lunch four of us went to a tiny little restaurant with a sliding door, I ordered 해물파전 (Korean seafood pancake), which was tasty. It was weird to see little suction cup laden tentacles poking up through the batter, but I'm getting used to strange things here. We made a quick stop at a pharmacy afterwards, where I found out that everything is kept behind the counter in Korea, so that Anna could get mosquito bite medicine, and then hung out in the library coffee shop until we realized it was four minutes before our next class started and we were about a five minute walk away and booked it out of there.

After classes, I met up with about 8 other people for dinner. We decided to go to a 부대찌개 restaurant. 부대찌개, "Budaejjigae" or, literally, Army Base Stew, is a stew made with hot pepper paste, noodles, vegetables, cheese, hotdogs, and spam. It got its name from the fact that it's made mostly with things found in American army bases and brought to Korea through the American military. The tables all had gas burners on top, and they brought out the Budaejjigae covered and uncooked,and placed in on the burners to simmer, eventually removing the lids and stirring it around for us to eat over bowls of rice. While we were waiting for the Budaejjigae to cook, we were brought out smalls plates of tater-tots with ketchup and mustard. I was pretty confused, and asked if that was a normal thing in Korea (every meal usually comes with sides, but Korean ones like Kimchi and radishes), and the Koreans at our table confirmed it was not. I ate them anyways, and they did, in fact, remind me of home. Which is strange, because I don't really like tater-tots and never eat them at home, but alas, it was my first exposure to "real" American food since being here. Not that I'm complaining, because Korean food is incredible. The Budaejjigae finished cooking and we all dug in, and it was delicious. While eating, conversation flowed easily. We compared our languages' tongue twisters (our table consisted of me, the sole American, two Canadians, three Koreans, a Swede, three people from Japan, one from Hong Kong, and one from the Netherlands), which left us all laughing hysterically. Polly, who is from Hong Kong, showed us a trick where one person closes their eyes, and another walks two of their fingers back and forth up their forearm, asking them to say stop when their fingers touch the crease of the other's elbow. She told us it was impossible for anyone to guess correctly, and if our table is an example, she's right because we all failed. We also talked about differences between men and women, a topic that seems to be pretty popular cross-culturally. Peter, from the Netherlands, was convinced that there are subconscious movements women make if they're attracted to a man, like playing with their hair and batting their eyes, which gave me a good laugh. It was still cool to hear everyone's opinions on how men and women act and think. I think the highlight of the conversation, and the one that left me in stitches, was when one male member of the group explained urinal etiquette to us. Afterwards, we went to Caffe Bene, a Korean coffeeshop chain, and four of us split a gigantic Green Tea Bing Soo, while the rest drank some coffee or tea or just stayed and chatted. It was a very fun school-night out.

Today, I went with Anna and Lily for lunch. We ate at a place called "Rice Story", where I had spicy rice noodles, which were pretty tasty. Rice Story was on the second floor of a building, and the wall was a giant window. While soaking up the Anam-Dong street scenery, I saw a bubble tea shop down the street and made it my mission to go, which we did. I had a Kiwi Yogurt bubble tea, which was really good. Classes went well as usual.


Oh, and for some reason, 4 (yes, literally, FOUR) Korean Jehovah's Witnesses stopped me today to try to have me go to their church or whatever. Not just on campus; one in a back alley on my way to my dorm, one while waiting at a crosswalk by the Anam station, one while sitting with Anna and Lily outside of Woodong hall, and one on my way to the Uni store building to grab a quick dinner after classes. I don't know what was going on with that.

The menu where we got lunch on monday

Seafood pancake

Korean pharmacy. So clean!

Back street of Anam by day

Budaejjigae still cooking, not yet stirred

Tater-tots?

Just waiting for the Ramyeon to cook

The aftermath

Poorly taken shot of part of our table

Green Tea Bing Soo! So good.

Anam at night, less crowded area.

Lily and the view from Rice Story

The Bubble Tea shop. So pink!