Korean food is delicious and quite healthy – plenty of vegetables, soup, tofu and fish. Sashimi (what we call sushi in America... raw fish on rice), kimbap (rice and vegetables rolled in seaweed) and kimchi jiggae are my favourites.
The only times I eat fat meat is when we go for kalbi (beef ribs), bulgogi (marinated beef with vegetables) or samgyeopsal (BBQ thick bacon). They’re all cooked at your table… something to experience once in your life!
Anyway, the point is that last night we went to an Italian restaurant where we all shared tomatoes-basil-mozzarella, seafood spaghetti with cream, and proscuitto pizza… it was gooooood!
We ended up at my place enjoying a French Bordeaux while watching Woody Allen’s “Match Point” – a great movie, which led us to discuss human nature and love until 3am.
And today, Twyla and I went shopping for our Christmas gifts!
For some reason, I was up at 9:30 so I cleaned (hardcore! it was a mess... I had a busy week). Then we met for lunch and headed to Insadong (nice neighbourhood, a lot of arts and craft, traditional Korean stuff and crowded as hell on week-ends).
I bought A LOT of stuff for my family and friends and we had a great time shopping together.
But it was crazy. We did not go to a shopping mall; Insadong is an area full of boutiques and you walk through a huge crowd while there’s people begging, playing music, putting out Korean traditional shows. It’s a lot of fun.
Christmas is not really big here in Korea. Unless you go to department stores, you won’t see the big trees, the lights and Santa Claus. Feels nice. I’m not a Christmas kinda person anymore, although I understand that some people are. I sort of resent the big commercial scam behind it, the illusions, artificiality, hypocrisy and “love obligations”
Anyway. There was a cool parade of Korean traditional dance and music. The drum part was pretty good and you can actually check out the video I made with my crappy camera. It’s pretty nice. Just click here
There's also another one, longer and pretty cool too here
We spent a lot of time and money there. It was fun to realize that now I can talk to people in Korean… or, at least, make myself understood… well, for the most part ;)
We came back to drop all our stuff and go grocery shopping at Costco since, apparently, they have avocados, cheese and delicious salmon.
The subway was PACKED with people, I could barely breathe. That's Seoul during the week-end; everybody's out. See for yourselves.
So we met in front of the school and got into a cab. He drove in traffic for 40 minutes, to finally bring us back to school where we gave him 20 bucks and went back home.
Funny. Wondering what happened?
The asshole was gonna take us to Gangnam – which is one hour from Mok-Dong. Costco is 10 mins from our place. The driver was trying to screw us over.
When we realized that, we called a Korean friend who spoke to him. He yelled at her on the phone, said it was our entire fault, made a big fat u-turn on the highway, and drove back to Mok-Dong as mad as in “the fast and the furious”. I feared for my life. And I was pissed.
But what kills me the most is that he asked for the cab fare. 20 bucks and we had gone nowhere. On my way out I slammed the door so hard it hurt my ears (yeah yeah, I work out baby ;)
The sad thing is that it was now 7pm and we were both pretty tired.
I ended up grocery shopping alone at “Homever” – this brand new department store replacing “Carrefour”. It’s the summum of consumerist societies… and I LOVE IT there! It’s shopping paradise. And 10 minutes walk from my place.
It was nice coming home to a clean apartment and spreading all the gifts on my bed! Now I oughta find out how to mail stuff. And make sure it gets home BEFORE Christmas!
Tomorrow I’ll probably go for a hike and just love the view of Seoul from afar. Autumn here feels nice. Today was sunny and the air was just cool enough.
I really need a break. I’ve been crazed all week, giving out final exams, grading them, giving speaking tests (ooooh my head hurts just thinking about it), filling the students assessment charts, etc. There’s only a week and half left before the next term.
I think I want to go to the beach, where it’s hot and sunny. I’m not going to Deokjeokdo this week-end because we had to do Xmas shopping but maybe I will next week-end. Oh no, it’s Emma’s farewell party. The one after that I guess. I’ve never been to the beach when there’s snow. It must be romantic.
