General Update

I have been writing up all the things that we see different between the US and Korea, but its getting harder and harder as we get used to everything.  I'm even almost used the the hocking of lugies that happens very loudly here whenever you walk down the road.  I was trying to think of something to write about this week, and I realized you may want to know how Riley and I are actually doing.  Here is an update of our work lives:

Riley: He is starting his second semester as a graduate student.  Lately he has been having more fun because he is building a lab from scratch and now has "toys" (a glove box, electrical equipment, a tool box) to play with.  He is mostly trying to get everything organized and set up so that he can start actually doing his experiments (someday maybe he will write them up, they are a little complicated and require diagrams).  His furnace will arrive Monday, and he will put that in his glovebox.  His work has been slow due to his many responsibilities and his one class takes up about 1/5 of his working time.  The other quarter of his time is spent working on his computer code, and for the past two weeks, he has gone to many meetings, so the time he actually devotes to his experimental work is minimal.  At least its not the real world.  He often jokes about how someday he'll skip the meetings.  But he is generally happy.

Margaret: I am involved in 3 very different projects ranging from ecological restoration to economics to water spray dust capture.  I have realized that some people really do use differential equations in their work (which I have never learned).  I consider my time at work an opportunity to try to figure out the best way to get engineers and non-engineers to understand each other.  It mostly comes down to: engineers think everyone knows some things that only engineers know, and non-engineers think engineers should know everything about something they only know a part of.  I miss trees, but at least the weather is getting a little warmer.

Both: We have been here long enough that we now have commitments to things during the week.  We lead an english talking club once a week, and we also lead a bible study thorough our church where we cook supper.  We cook for a potluck once a week as well.  We are learning to cook lots of interesting things (not a lot of baking, but we have made a lot of friends with people who have ovens!). 

Life is becoming normal for us here in Korea, but we still can't eat kimchi for breakfast!

Valentine's Day

Last week we had Valentine's Day.  They have it in Korea too.  Riley gave me a box of peanut butter candy (with the restriction that he got half), and I gave him half a box of donuts.  You may be wondering why I gave Riley something?  In Korea, Valentine's Day is the day girls give the guy presents only (Riley just wanted candy).  One of our Korean friends told us it was the first time he got anything from his girlfriend. 
Korea makes things fair, though.  One month later, on March 14, they have White Day.  This is when the guys have to give the girl's a present.  (We will see if Riley thinks about it)
And to be really fair, one month after that, on April 14, they have Black Day.  This is the day to celebrate being single.  So, if you didn't have a good Valentine's or White Day, this is the holiday to make up for it.  I'm not exactly sure what they do to celebrate it, but if its interesting I will let you know.

Tofu

I wanted to write a quick note about tofu in Korea.  Here it is called "dubu."  Koreans have found an extremely delicious method of cooking tofu here, the secret is simply adding meat.  Even in tofu soup, there are bits of meat mixed into it.  Its not a vegetarian food in Korea, its just food.  We even had bacon wrapped tofu once, which I highly recommend.  Deep fried tofu is also very tasty.  I have always thought of tofu and something you use instead of meat, but I think tofu flavored with meat is much tastier.

Trains in Korea and Japan

I am sure that some people have wondered about the trains in East Asia.  We have taken two trips since we’ve gotten to Korea.  The first was to Tokyo for a conference, and the second was to Gyeonju, Korea for vacation.  On both trips we wound up using the trains.  First, east Asian trains are way way nicer than any American train.  Because of the high population density in Asia (think 50 million people stuffed in an area the size of North Carolina), the fact that cars are not as common, and the $8/gallon gas, and trains become a very attractive option.  In all cases the trains are electric ($8/gal gas).  There are several types of trains generally, and about 7 types in Japan.  Don’t ask me to name them, I just remember that they had many classifications of trains in Japan ranging from super express, to local express to commuter.  Generally we have seen 3 types.

The first type of train that we have encountered is the commuter train.  In Daejeon, it is the single subway line, and people use busses, bikes and cars for all other travel.  But in Seoul, the subway map looks like a plate of spaghetti, and I’ve no idea about the busses because I’ve never been to Seoul. 

Tokyo’s commuter rail system is much more developed, to the point where I wondered if they spent too much on it.  There is a train stop near every place of interest, and the trains ride on elevated tracks so that they do not interfere with traffic.  However, I must note that the Tokyo’s trains are used a lot.  When we rode to downtown during rush hour, we were squashed up against people.  I’ve never been in such a crowded place in my life.  I was wondering if one of us would get crushed, or if a door would bust open from the pressure, so I guess the Japanese got their money’s worth out of it since their gas is probably $8/gallon too.

The second train is a local train.  These trains run at about 50mph and take people between cities.  In some cases you can sit in unreserved seats (like a bus or subway), but the one I am on now, there are only reserved seats (like Amtrak or an airplane).  It goes between cities in a slow way.  They are very similar to the Amtrak lines in NC. 

The fastest trains in east Asia are the KTX (Korea) and the Shinkansen (Japan).  Neither is Mag-Lev, but they both go fast.  In Japan it took 3 hours (with one stop included) to get from Tokyo to Tsuruga (300 miles).  It would have been faster if we didn't switch to a slow train for the last 30 minutes of the trip.  It was also very expensive (130 each one way).  Japan was expensive generally, and we felt very poor when we left.  We were happy to smell the Kimchi as soon as we got back to Korea.  The ride was very pretty though.   Tsuruga is a beautiful place.

Korea’s KTX is a bit nicer than the Shinkansen, and much less expensive.  We paid $20 each to go a shorter distance to Daegu—the next city over.  It had televisions-which the Shinkansen did not, and they told how fast we were going.  Our speed maxed out at 304 kph (188 mph).  The trip took 50 minutes, and it was 85 miles long.   The scenery was hard to look at because you only had about 5 seconds to look at a vista before something else.  It was very nice, and there were lots of tunnels.  Korea is a very mouantanous place, so Koreans have no qualms about making tunnels.  Only very tiny roads don’t get tunnels.  Even 2 lane country roads get tunnels.  My opinion is that it is also part of Korea’s culture to not mess around on projects.  The bad side of that is that Koreans often go too far on projects. 

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.