Korea

 

I made it to Seoul very healthy and happy Sunday morning ready to gorge myself on Korean food. I left Tuesday morning completely drained of all energy and on a completely empty stomach. Overall I really enjoyed my trip to Korea, but the last day was possibly the worst day I have had since leaving the US, definitely the sickest I have been.

My coworker Elizabeth is from Korea. She went to high school and college in the US but her parents are Korean natives, and are currently living in Seoul. A while ago I mentioned that I was interested in going to Korea sometime, and she offered to take me with her next time she went home, and show me around. Obviously, I took her up on the offer. I had a friend who was living in Korea for 2 years, but went home to the US a few months ago. So I missed the opportunity to visit him, but I was thankful that this opportunity came up.

We had a three day weekend this past weekend, and Elizabeth had planned to go home to visit her family while her sister was home from the US on winter break. I had been hoping to do something on this long weekend, so Korea seemed like the perfect plan.

After work on Saturday we went to a party with a few students intending on only staying for an hour or so and then going home to get our things prepared for our trip, instead we ended up staying at the party for 3 hours and making it home by last train to pack and then get a few hours of sleep before heading to catch our bus to the airport at 430am.

We made it to the bus without any issue. I had hoped to sleep on the bus, but was unable to. Our flight left at 750am and landed in Seoul around 10am. I did get to sleep a little bit on the plane, and then a bit more on the 1.5 hour bus ride from the airport to Elizabeth’s family’s place. In total I got a solid 6 or 7 hours of sleep so I was good to go.

Elizabeth’s family lives in an apartment on the 20th floor of an apartment building. There were 5-10 identical buildings in the same “neighborhood”. Elizabeth’s family’s apartment was on the side of the neighborhood closest to the river and had a great view of some of the city and one of the many mountains which perforate the dense city landscape.

The apartment was pretty nice inside as well. There was a big kitchen and a living room with nice couches. As soon as we arrived we spent a few minutes sprawled out on the couches as we waited for Elizabeth’s sister to come home and join us for lunch. The apartment was very nice and cozy, but I think the fact that It has been over 9 months since I have been in a proper home, and sat in a proper living room on a proper couch really helped to make it much better.

Aside from the freezing temperatures, Seoul reminded me a lot of Santiago, Chile. The mountains everywhere, the river running through the middle of the city, and the different wards at times reminded me of certain places in Santiago.

On Sunday, we went out for lunch with Elizabeth’s younger sister Becca. She had been home for a few days and suggested that we go to a restaurant nearby for some lunch. This was my first experience with food in Korea. When we walked in, I could see little cartoon characters on the walls who seemed to be sweating and even crying with their mouths on fire. I was a bit intimidated. Elizabeth’s sister ordered. As we waited, Becxa filled us in on some of the house gossip. Apparently her family had been thinking that I was Elizabeth’s boyfriend which has been becoming a common assumption recently. Becca said she set her parents straight for us and told them that we were not dating. Even after this I still had a hunch that we would be questioned about this matter again.

 

The waiter brought a huge pot of red soup with different things floating in it. The soup didn’t have a real taste to it. Just spicy. Kind of like kim-chi, but warm. Submerged in the spicy elixir were some fish cakes, small eggs, and some gummy things made from rice which reminded me of Mochi in Japan (sorry I cannot offer any western food to compare this to). Basically, none of the ingredients had enough flavor to be distinguished from the red spice. I was impressed with myself for eating so much of it. Especially after Elizabeth’s warnings about spicy Korean food, I was prepared for much worse. She actually tapped out before I did, but eating has always been one thing I have been good at.

After lunch we went back to the apartment and put on some warmer clothes before heading out to do some sightseeing. It was a bit windy and a few degrees below freezing, so I was very happy I brought my long underwear and wool socks. I ended up buying a scarf at a roadside table along our journey as well. It wasn’t much colder than winter around home, but compared to the weather in Nara, Japan, Seoul might as well have been Siberia.

We went to the national palace and saw the changing of the gate gaurds. It was pretty anticlimactic, but the guards did have some pretty funny outfits, and they all had glued on beards which looked completely fake.

After the palace we headed to a shopping street to try and find some souvenirs. They had some things but it was mostly key chains, magnets, and what my mother and aunt would call “Chatchky type stuff”.

It had snowed a few times over the previous few days so a lot of the buildings and courtyards were covered in white, and the sidewalks were surprisingly icy. We were in heavy tourist areas, which were also home to several government buildings and there was ice on nearly every sidewalk. Elizabeth and I were both slipping and sliding around. Mostly just having fun and joking around, but we each had a few missteps which came close to taking us down.

After walking through a few shops we decided to stop and get something hot to drink, and kill some time before we headed to meet up with some High School friends of Elizabeth’s.

We met up with Jun, and Hoeng-ben around 7 at a station which was close to the national university. Elizabeth had made reservations at a restaurant which offered all you can eat clams. It sounded amazing, and the first half hour was great, but as time went on I began to realize why there was always a few side dishes whenever I had clams or mussels. The deal was for 3 hours of all you can eat, but we decided to head out after two hours, which was plenty of time for all of us to get our clam fix. As soon as we walked out of the restaurant, my stomach began yelling at me. It was difficult to walk even. We all were feeling awkwardly full but we decided to go play some darts at a pub near by.

When I heard that we would be hanging out with some of Elizabeth’s Korean friends I was a bit intimidated. I thought I would be the odd man out and unable to understand any of the conversation. However, all of the friends I met were very fluent in English. Most of them had gone to High School and University in America. They had no problem sticking to English all night. They did say a few sentences in Korean, but I felt involved in all conversation. It was a fun time. It was nice to hear them sharing stories about themselves. I heard some unexpected stories about Elizabeth and her younger days. It was kind of funny.

We stayed at the darts pub for only a bit then headed home. We got home around 1130 and went to bed soon after. I had yet to meet Elizabeth’s parents, who were in bed at this point.

When I woke up on Monday it was about 930. It seemed that everyone had already left for work. I lounged on the couch and read a bit. After Elizabeth got up we chilled out for a bit more nursed our clam induced stomach pains and watched some Korean variety shows, and a show were Korean male celebrities are left alone with their children for a few days without mothers as cameras follow them around. Even though I had trouble understanding the dialogue, the show was pretty funny.

We left the apartment around noon and walked to Elizabeth’s dad’s office. He works in a church about a 15 minutes walk from the apartment. He was a very nice man. He tried to show me some embarrassing pictures of Elizabeth from her high school days. He spoke with her in Korean about some things as I tried to not be too awkward. He gave me a book with pictures from his first ever 250km desert marathon through the sahara desert. It seemed extremely tough and the pictures made me never want to run again.

We left the church and headed to Gangnam to meet another on of Elizabeth’s friends for lunch. We got there a bit early, so I was able to get the picture I most wanted.

We met Sara, after a few minutes and went to lunch. Lunch was another pot of stew, but this one was not AS spicy and it had beef in it. As well as some mushrooms and some other veggies. It was really tasty. We couldn’t eat it all though.

Elizabeth had made plans to meet some other college friends for dinner and Sara was also part of that group, so we ended up hanging out together for the rest of the day. We got some coffee and tried to walk around a bit but it was a bit too cold to go anywhere far.

We met the rest of the Davidson Korean Culture Club for dinner at an izakaya around 7. There were about 7 people all together, including myself, the honorary white boy. These conversations involved a bit more Korean banter and I was a bit more lost. Luckily I had made good friends with Sara throughout the day so she kept me filled in and feeling welcome.

Elizabeth made the wise move of not eating much at this dinner party since her stomach was still feeling a bit off. I however decided to power through the discomfort and fulfill my goal of gorging myself on Korean food. We had Korean pizza/pancake type things, fried noodles. More mussels, chicken, and a few other things. Everything had at least a bit of a kick to it, if it wasn’t full on spicy. It seems the default spice level for food in Korea is about the level of a hot wing in hooters. Not too spicy, but still too much for some people. I enjoyed it…. as I ate.

The next morning I woke up around 7 with my stomach rolling. I tried to go back to sleep and hope it would pass. It didn’t pass. I got out of bed around 9 and took a shower. That made me feel a little bit better, but not entirely. I decided to eat a banana and have some tea.

About 5 minutes after finishing the banana, I was running to the bathroom to throw up. I tried to eat a little something after that, and was unable to keep it down. I realized that this was going to be a long day. I ended up spending the next 6 hours going back and forth from the couch to the bathroom. Elizabeth tried to help me out but she couldn’t really do much besides going to buy me some crackers and a sprite. I told her to go do whatever she had planned and I would just sleep. She went shopping for about an hour. When she got back I was feeling a little bit better but still couldn’t eat.

Our flight was scheduled to take off at 850pm. We left the house around 530. The fresh air made me feel a little better but I hadn’t eaten anything all day and I was feeling pretty weak and sore all over. We made it to the airport though. Our flight was delayed by about 45 minutes so we realized early on that we would not be landing in time to make the short window to get on our last train back home, which only added to my misery, but I managed to force down a smoothie and some crackers as we waited for the plane so I was feeling a bit better.

After landing at the airport in Japan, we barely made it to the last train to downtown Osaka, only because we didn’t have to wait for any checked bags. I headed to Koichi’s to crash on the couch for the night.

This morning I woke up still feeling pretty bad. I made it home by 10 and took a quick shower and napped for a few minutes before work.

When I got to work my manager’s forst words to me were “You look so tired” i explained to her how wonderful the last 24 hours of my life had been. I had 3 classes for the day. I limped through them all and was able to go home a couple of hours early after I finished everything. Since getting home I unpacked some things and have been in bed typing this on my phone listening to some Christmas music. I am feeling a lot better, but my stomach is still a little messed up. I don’t know if it was the spiciness overload or if it was something in particular I ate. Either way, it was the sickest I have been in a long time. I am glad it is getting better. I hope I can manage to have a nice Christmas tomorrow. We have a party for the kids at work, and then hopefully I will be able to have a decent sinner or something to celebrate. This is my first Christmas spent away from home and my first christmas spent working. It will be a new experience. But I don’t think it will become a routine at all.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas. I wish I was able to celebrate with you all. Obviously I will be thinking of my friends and family back home a lot tomorrow, but I will be just fine over here celebrating on my own. Tanks for reading everyone!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!