Age

I (Margaret) am 27 years old.  No, you have not forgotten my birthday.  In Korean age I gained two years.  My international age (everywhere but Korea) is still 25.  This is very confusing, but I'll see if I can explain why.  In Korea, everyone is born at age 1.  That is the easy part, you just add one to your age, and its your Korean age.  However, after the new year, people started saying their age was two years older than their international age.  So, everyone's birthday is the new year, even if your actual birthday is later.  So, in March I will turn 26 international age, but my Korean age will still be 27. 

If you visit Korea, the conversation when you meet someone will go"Hello, What is your name? Where are you from? How old are you?"  If you are sensitive about your age, this may not be the best place for you.  In Korea, the words you use to talk to a person is determined by how much older or younger they are to you.  If you are Korean you con only be friends with people your age, or at the most 2 years older or younger than you.  Otherwise, if they are older, you have to call them older brother or older sister (which are different if you yourself are a girl or boy) and use a more polite language.  Luckily, foreigners don't count!  Koreans like foreigners regardless of age to practice English on.  Riley and I are novelties here.  As we learn Korean, we will probably have to start paying more attention to what words we use when we talk to people older than us (you can be very informal to people younger than you).  Its nice being a foreigner, if you mess up and say the wrong words you are excused from being rude because you are expected not to know better!

Dok

There is a food here called "dok" that I am going to try to explain.  When I mentioned it to my family this Christmas I confused everyone trying to explain its like really chewy pasta.

The pronunciation is closer to "doc" with a really short "k" sound.  We ran into trouble the first time we told our Korean friends we had some.  They thought we said we had tried "duck" or "dog" (both of which are possible to eat here, we have only tried the duck).  Anyways, people say that dok is a rice cake, but that doesn't really explain it well.  There is a way you can make it so it looks like cake, but it is nothing like cake.  You make it from just rice flour and water, and the outcome is this really really chewy substance.

Its used here in a  similarly to pasta in sauce or soups, or it can have sugar and beans (beans are mostly used here in dessert) in it to make sweeter, chewy substance.  Its very filling.  The main point is that it is very very chewy.  Someone has described it as a Korean marshmallow minus the sugar.  When its in soups, it reminds me of a dumpling.  They can even make it in fun shapes like stars and hearts. 

The famous street food "dokboki" is mainly a spicy sauce with dok in it.  You can find dok in your local Asian supermarket, so if you feel adventurous next time you make soup, you can drop some in.

Snow and Chinese Food

It has been snowing a lot over here in South Korea.  It makes me very glad that we do not own a car here.  Its strange to have the world change color regularly.  I do not hate snow yet, but I have been assured that I will be very tired of it before winter is over.  I do admit, the icy roads haven't been fun.  What has been fun is seeing the pack of adjumas at work.  The term "adjuma" refers to women who are married and middle aged.  They have a reputation for acting very much in charge and having strong opinions.  Its mainly because they are the ones in charge of the family, and they extend that to the world.  We have heard stories of adjumas forcing people to take their seats in subways, for pushing their way through crowds, and in general being very feisty.  Our school employees about 10 adjumas to do various landscaping around campus.  We have seen them in the summer on the ground weeding, in the fall with tiny rakes getting the leaves, and now they are armed with twig brooms to get the snow off the sidewalks.  We saw them yesterday attacking a deck outside our building.

On another note, yesterday I went to a Chinese restaurant with some of my friends.  I have this theory that ethnic foods gt better the closer you are to the original country.  Indian food tastes better here than back in the US.  I had Korean-Chinese food before, but this time we went with a couple of our Chinese friends, and Chinese-American/British friends.  They all assured us that the restaurant tasted like real Chinese food.

The first few dishes were really good.  They tasted nothing like American-Chinese food.  The sauce was delicious, and we had eggplant and some type of roasted lamb on a skewer.  There was also a dish that contained cow intestine.  It really was not near as bad as I thought it would be.  The flavor was good, even if the texture was a little weird.  I think I like it better than tentacles. 

The best dish by far was the sweet and sour pork.  It was sooooo much better than the over-breaded pork with red sauce that I was used to.  This had a vinegary-sweet sauce that was normal colored and tasted amazing! None of the dishes were greasy like Chinese take out, not even the noodles. 

So, two new experiences I didn't expect to have in South Korea, authentic Chinese food, and regular snowfall.