Wherein Sarah Plays Adventurer

Yesterday was a pretty crazy day. I was puttering around my apartment, working on unpacking and settling in and trying to come up with a game plan for the day. The expat community in Seoul is fairly active on MeetUp.com, so I was looking around on there to see if there was anything interesting happening in my area.

About this time, someone knocks on my door. Well, they don't really knock. I have this cool video doorbell thing that I haven't figured out how to work yet. I opened the door and it was someone from KBU. She said that she was here to take me shopping. Her husband was downstairs with their car and we were going to go to Lotte Mart and get the things that I still needed for my apartment.

Lotte Mart is like Wal Mart meets the dollar store. We bought clothes hangers and pots and pans and dishes and dish soap and all sorts of other really boring but really essential things. She wanted to get me some food for the next few days, so she took me to the noodle section. For those of you who love ramen noodles, you should definitely come to Korea! There were like three whole aisles dedicated to instant noodles. Everything was in Korean, and I had no clue what I was looking for. I eventually found some that looked innocuous enough. They are called "후루룩국수" or "Hururuk noodles" and from what I can tell, they are a little bit like spicy chicken noodle soup without the chicken.

After we went shopping, she took me to eat at a place called "Shabu Shabu". It is a variation on hot pot. You are given a plate of raw meat, sliced very thinly and assorted vegetables. Each seat at the table has a mini stove installed and you cook all of your food right there at the table. There was a really good spicy sauce to dip things in, and also a peanut sauce.

Korean meals come with banchan, or side dishes. It doesn't matter where you are, or what you are eating. There will always be side dishes. At nicer restaurants, there can be up to 20 different banchan. We were also served pumpkin soup, kimchi, spicy carrots, pickled onions and jalapeños, and rice balls wrapped in sesame leaves topped with caviar and red pepper sauce. It was all really good! I'm definitely going to have to practice with Korean chopsticks though. They are much longer and heavier than I'm used to, made of metal, and shaped differently. At least I have plenty of time to learn ;-)

After lunch, we went on a whirlwind tour of the university. I think I was also recruited to accompany a small womens choir, so we'll see what happens with that. I met one of the other American teachers, and I will meet the other two in just a few hours. I cam back home and decided to take a nap.

When I was looking around on MeetUp, I had discovered a group of Christians who were going to see a concert in the heart of Seoul that night. The concert was cinematic music, with an orchestra, an operatic baritone, and a Korean broadway start. I was pretty excited about the program! After a short nap, I decided to start exploring a little bit. I live very close to a subway stop on line 7, but I needed to take line 1 to the concert. I knew that the two lines connected, but there was also a stop for line 1 that didn't look like it was too far from my apartment. So, I decided to see if I could find this stop and avoid the need to transfer lines.

I walked across a river that was about the size of the Wabash running through Lafayette. It was so funny. There were a lot of older Korean men who were fishing in the river right in the middle of the city. I wandered around for about 35 minutes in 95 degree heat and 80% humidity and didn't find the subway stop, so I came back home, cranked the AC and decided that I'd learn how to transfer on the subway ;-)

I made it to the concert without any trouble. All of the subway signs are in Korean and English, so that helped a lot. It was really nice to hear some good music and to be around other native English speakers. I hit it off pretty well with one girl, but she is going back home in a few months :-(

After the concert I came home. All was going well on the subway until at one stop, absolutely everyone got off of the train. Someone motioned for me to come too, so I did. It turned out that there was a mechanical problem with the train, and we had to walk to another part of the station to catch the new train. There was one girl who looked to be about my age, and she was very sweet and helpful. She didn't speak very much English, but she was determined to make sure that I got back on the right train. That whole fiasco took about 20 minutes and the subway ride was already about 50 minutes. It was close to 10:45 by the time that I got back to my apartment, and I was pretty tired. However, I was able to sleep until almost 7 this morning, so maybe I'm almost adjusted to the new time!!!

All in all, it was a day full of adventures. I think that I might actually be able to survive this year!!