Riley's Beard Experiment

The "grad student/living in the woods" look

Last month, we had a discussion with some of our foreigner and Korean friends about why Koreans do not grow beards.  This came up because our Korean-American friend grew a massive beard and gets strange looks from other people.  People say Koreans don't have beards because they can't grow them, but we know this isn't true because every Korean drama set in the ancient times, as well as the famous Koreans on their money, all have beards.  The Koreans dressed up in historical clothes "guarding" the palace in Seoul even put on fake facial hair to look the part!

See, Koreans used to have nice beards! (and cool hats)

So why is it Koreans today rarely have beards?  We have heard two reasons:

1) Communists wear beards.  This was from an older Korean that said during the war, any North Korean left in South Korea had to live in the mountains to hide.  As everybody knows, living in the mountains causes you to grow a beard.  Thus, anyone with a beard was assumed to have come from the mountains and be a communist.

2) Girls think beards are dirty.  This may have come from the above reason originally, but the bottom line is Korean girls think guys with beards are dirty.

In light of this discovery, Riley decided to grow a beard to see people's reactions.  It so happened we attended a dinner where many of our friends we hadn't seen in a while gathered and saw Riley's beard for the first time.  The Koreans said "wow" and most at least said they liked it (some were being polite I think, but a couple of them watch too much American tv).  The foreigners didn't seem to notice much, except for one group.  All of our Chinese friends told him to shave.  One of our friend's first reaction was "have you not left the house all week?" 
In short, the experiment was a success!  We also discovered that Riley cannot pull off an Asian beard.  Alas, the beard and long hair had to come off due to a presentation this week, so Riley is back to normal.

Yummy stuff

Before I get into the delicious food we have found in Korea, I want to note some of the foods that did not get on either list.  This past week we had raw salmon, sea cucumber, jellyfish, and raw beef.  It wasn't horrible, so it doesn't make the nasty list.  However, they don't quite make the yummy list either.  Now for the yummy stuff...

Kimchi김치

The national food here is kimchi (fermented cabbage), and it is eaten at every meal, and Koreans love it about 3x as much as North Carolinians love their barbecue.   But when I first tasted it, it tasted rotten (probably because its fermented.)  But now I love it almost as much as NC barbecue.

Sam-gyahp-sal 삼겹살=Giant bacon stuff of paradise

This is probably my favorite food in Korea.  It is part food and part experience.  Because it is hard to sue people in Korea (both a good thing and a bad thing), resturaunts have little grills at the tables, so you can grill your own food just the way you like it.  It's like giant bacon!!!  I love bacon, but as an American I think bigger is better, so giant bacon is awesome.  It's also a balanced meal, so it's delicious and nutritious.  You grill it with onions and garlic, and when you are done grilling it, you cut it into little squares, and you take a square, and dip it in sauce, and put it inside a piece of lettuce, and add onion bean sprout and/or kimchi, and pop it in your mouth, and it is gooood.

Someone's pictures from a Samgyeopsal resturaunt 

I love you giant bacon!!!

Bibimbap 비빔밥 (Boiled rice) /Dolsotbab 돌솥밥 (StoneBowlRice) /Things with lots of side dishes

Rice with mixed vegitables is another one of our favorite Korean foods.  We don't eat it as much as Samgyapsal (giant bacon) or kimchi stew, but we do like it.   The first time we had this stuff, we were given a raw egg in a little bowl.  We were eating with Dr Yim (our boss), and we were wondering if we had come to Korea with a crazy man who eats raw eggs straight, but he and his wife showed us that you mix the egg with the rice, and the rice is so hot that it cooks the egg on the spot.  A traditional thing to do after the meal is to scrape the burnt rice out of the bottom of the stone bowl and eat it because it is crunchy and delicious.  I know it sounds strange, but don't knock it until you try it!

A resturaunt in Gongju

Mandu 만두 (Dumplings)

These are dumplings and they are delicious!  You can have them steamed or fried, and they can be filled with Kimchi or meat and onions, and they can be bite-sized or huge!  They are hard to make from scratch, but if we buy the wrapping at the store they're not hard to make at home--but the mandu lady makes the best ones, so we always get ours from her dumpling shop.  We found the shop during our first month in Korea, and the dumpling lady was always very gracious with all of Margaret's pointing and squeaking.  (Ironically all that pointing and squeaking that Margaret does, has come in very handy here in Korea when we don't know how to put things into words.)

The red ones are Kimchi and the green ones are onion.  Yum!

Kimbab--김밥--Literally translated as RiceSeaweed

This is one of the cheapest meals you can get in Korea.  In America, you'd probably call it a California Roll, but its not sushi here!  And if you call it Japanese, you will lose your talking privileges!  Its basically the Asian version of a ham sandwich with rice and seaweed wrapped around ham, cheese, egg, and random vegetables.  On field trips with Koreans we always eat it for breakfast.  Our favorite type is the triangle kimbab, which we buy at the convenience store for 80 cents a bab.

The Kim in kimbab is the green seaweed.  The bab in kimbab means rice.

Gross stuff

Food in  Korea is interesting.  Just like American food, some is awesome and some is disgusting.  I'll start with the gross stuff first.  Next week, we will have the delicious foods.

Our parents brought us up right.  Eat all the food on your plate--no questions asked.  Also, when someone gives us food, we feel obligated to eat all of it.  If it's gross, may be we'll come to like it in the end.  Other times, we wonder if we have some sort of psycological problem becasues we find our selves eating stuff that is totally gross--that we knew was gross to start with--and will continue to be gross after we are finished.  After all, insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly expecting a different result eventually.  Here are some gross foods we've encountered, and the sometimes awkward social situations that always accompany gross food.

Fermented crab

 Our landlady is a wonderful person.  She is always very kind and gracious, and she always has extra food to get rid of.  We have gotten many yummy things from her when we pay rent.  Once she even fed us dinner! But normally it is just some yummy fruit such as persimmons, apples or jujubes (yes they are a type of fruit, they taste kind of like tiny apples).

But one day we got some fermented crab (A Korean delicacy).  They said to eat it with rice, so we did, but it had a strong smell of ammonia and it was hard to eat and hard to breathe because of the smell.  It was squishy, and hard to crack open.   When we got done, we smelled like ammonia for the next several hours.  Incidentally, when we asked our Korean friends about this food, they said that they loved it.  Some times I really wonder about this country.

DARE Just say no.  Even though it is on a fancy plate and all the Koreans are eating it, stay away!

Raw sea squirt

Once we went out to eat with our lab group for a bonding experience.  We had lots of fun, and played kick volleyball (it's hard but its popular here.)  You lower the net so that the ball can actually make it over.  Anyway, since we were at the beach, we had to eat seafood.  So far, our seafood experiences hadn't been very positive, but this time we had roasted shellfish which wasn't that bad.  Of course, it being a special trip, we also had to have delicacies.  This means raw seafood.  We had raw fish and raw shrimp, but the weirdest one was the raw sea squirt.  It tasted like snot.

Squishy persimmon (감)

 Persimmons here are much bigger than in the US.  They taste like an pear, but with the texture and structure of a tomato.  They are very yummy.  One month our landlord gave us some to take with us, and we were happy.

The next month after paying rent, we got some older looking, squishy persimons.  Not wanting to be rude, we took them and thanked our kind landlord who is always good to us.  We wondered if we should eat them, and we decided we should because our ancestors didn't have refrigerators, and this is how they ate, and they probably survived on squishy fruit.  After all, jelly and jam are really just squishy fruit.  So we ate the squishy fruit, and despite being grossed out, it was good and sweet, and it was good to spread on toast--like jam.

But the next month after we paid rent, we got even older looking persimmons.  This time, they were even more shriveled, and they had white stuff on them!  Now we were thinking of how our ancestors had short lives--probably due to all that squishy fruit.  We decided that it was probably unhealthy to eat, and regretfully threw the squish fruit in the compost can.  Incidentally, a few months later, we saw some shriveled up fruit with white stuff on it in high-end packaging at the Seoul Train Station. 

Top: The yummy fresh persimmon
Bottom: The scary dried persimmon.  It may be
good for all we know, but we are too afraid to try

Boiled Seafood

On a trip with our chruch, we went to this island (SapShiDo), and while we were there, all of the a-joo-ma-s (Korean word for aunt) cooked us yummy food, and gave us the best stuff becasue we were foreigners who had never eaten it before.  It was all delicious, and we definately gained some weight.  But, on the way back everyone went to a seafood restaurant.  We did not know what we were getting, and we trusted that the food would be equally as delicious as what the a-joo-ma-s had cooked for us.  But...  we got boiled seafood.  It consists of all the yummy sea creatures that we normally eat along with some squid etc.  But what anyone who cooks seafood should know is that you should NEVER NEVER NEVER boil entire sea creatures.  The problem with boiled seafood is that all the gross stuff that is included in a sea creature gets dissolved and goes everywhere, and your tongue know this, and it is not pleasant to eat at all.  I (Riley) normally get a little sea sick on buses, and on the bus back, I was sea sick--but luckily nothing bad happened.

A Korean's Pictures of Yummy--Not boiled--Seafood

번데기 (bohn-dae-gee)

 One day we went to a spring festival to hang out with our friends and eat the street vendor food--which was delicious.  But we saw something that looked out of place--insects, so I got half a cup of them to try.  The first few tasted alright, but after about five of them Margaret decided to stop helping me eat them, and after about 10 of them, I started getting a stomach ache.  I finished the cup, and decided never to eat this type of insect again.

 Stay tuned!  

       Next week, we will tell you about our favorite foods!

"Gangnam Style" Explained

Since I have had this song stuck in my head most of today, I thought it would be a good time to finally explain what this South Korean piece of pop culture that made it across the world is all about.

If you do not already know, "Gangnam Style" is a song by Psy that is extremely catchy and comes with a new dance move where you pretend to be a cowboy.  However popular it became in the US, it is much more popular here.  You hear it in stores and on tv all the time, and every single child knows how to do the dance.

First of all, its pronounced "gahng-nahm" with the "a" from "father."  It has nothing whatsoever to do with gangs.  "Gangnam" or "Kangnam" is a neighborhood in Seoul where rich people live and work.  Its known for having lots of high-end expensive stores.  The name actually literally means "river south" or "south of the river" since it is located south of the Han River.  I have a Korean friend who told me that you know when you are in Gangnam because all the women look the same.  Apparently when you are rich you always get "the one most beautiful" kind of plastic surgery. 

 The actual content of the song is pretty basic.  Its a guy singing about what kind of girl (yo-jah) he likes and what kind of guy (nam-jah) he is.  There isn't anything bad or profane in it, and the chorus "oppan Gangnam style" just refers to himself (oppa = literally older brother, but usually its what girls call any guy older than her) acting like a person who lives in Gangnam (i.e. professional during the day and partying at night)

Maybe I should also explain "style."  This is a konglish (Korean + English) word that Koreans use to describe more than just a person's clothes.  It can also be a person's attitude or personality.  For example, if you met someone you would like to date instead of "they're my type" you would say "they're my style."

Gangnam Style is one of the better k-pop (Korean pop) songs that exists.  Riley and I aren't a big fan of most k-pop because to us it all sounds the same.  Its usually a group of girls or guys in weird outfits singing and dancing to a song about a girl or guy with random English phrases thrown in, like "shiny boy" or "I'm yours nobody." 

We do like Gangnam Style, though, and even though the craze is mostly over, I hope you now understand what its all about.

Oh yeah, I'm in a foreign country

Riley and I have been over here in South Korea for about about a year and a half.  We are used to the food, the tiny apartment (that feels big now), and can understand Korean enough to get around.  We have lots of friends from all over the world, and if English is their native language, we feel that we are almost from the same culture. 
This week I had an experience that made me realize how much I still don't know about the world.  I was discussing cooking breakfast for supper with a fiend of ours from Ghana (West Africa).  English is his native language and we watch the same television shows, so we assumed we were talking about the same food.  I asked him what he would cook for breakfast and he said it was probably the same as what I cook, eggs, toast, tuna fish salad...
It was then I realized we were not quite on the same page.  It turns out Ghanian breakfast is very different from American.  Yes, we both can eat pancakes and eggs, but they also eat sweet fried dough, yam and cassava dishes, and spicy porridge (with the occasional tuna salad sandwich).  The porridge part was interesting to me, since I picture porridge as oatmeal, but the pictures of their porridge was very different.  I found a way to make it using flour and had my friend taste it.  It was close enough to give me the idea of what porridge is to a Ghanian, its like pudding more than oatmeal.  Its very very smooth and not very thick.
Another interesting part was that Ghana has spring rolls, and my friend didn't know that China has them too.  We always assumed they were a Chinese food (we don't have them in Korea), but now we aren't so sure.  We are not really sure how they got to Ghana in the first place either.  We made some anyway, and they turned out delicious, wherever they are from.

Tea

Last weekend we had the opportunity to visit a tea house and have tea in the traditional style.  It was even more surprising when you hear we were in a modern apartment in a giant apartment building.  We had been invited to have dinner with a family from church, and after dinner he took us to a room in the house (between the kitchen and the library), where you go in and are immediately transported to a rural traditional tea house.  It was wood-paneled (even the ceiling) with the traditional doors and decorated with various tea cups, pots, and tea-related objects.  We sat on the floor and had the traditional 5 cups of green tea.  The tea was put in warmed cups and made new each cup (though the water was from an electric hot water heater).  The room was also decorated with traditional paintings by the wife's mother, and by sayings in Hanja (Korean written in Chinese).  We ate traditional Korean food you eat while drinking tea, sugary cheese doodles without the cheese and sweet potato bites covered in sugar.  It was nice and relaxing.
Leaving the room back to the hallway was like stepping forward in time to modern Korea.

We finally went to Jeju-do!

The week after New Year's our boss told us to take a much needed vacation.  So, where do you go in winter on a short schedule? Jeju Island!  This little island is south of Korea.  They like to call it the Hawaii of Korea, but its more like the Florida and South Georgia of Korea.  It does have lots of volcanic rocks, but its not quite tropical.  We decided to take the ferry there to add more to our trip.  Riley had never been on a boat that long.  It was called the Pink Dolphin.  It was a small ferry with only passengers, so it went really fast.  This was nice to get there, but we both got a little seasick on the way.

This is supposed to be a dragon that was turned to stone for stealing something from the mountain god

Jeju has palmettos and volcanic rock everywhere.  Also, there is fish everywhere.  In front of every seafood restaurant there are usually fish or octopus, but in Jeju they were much bigger than I was used to.  The first evening we wandered down the waterfront past the restaurants and Ramada Inn Casino to see a lava rock in the ocean that is supposed to look like a dragon.

Lava Tube!

We traveled on the bus the next day to explore lava tubes.  The bus let us off about a mile from the lava tubes and we got to walk though a rural country side with woods and birds.  It was really nice.  The tubes were neat, and we ran into the one touristy place we went, a giant maze of hedges.  We even got lost!  I kept expecting to run into a spinx.

Riley lost in the maze

Then we headed off to one of the most photographed places on the island.  Its a volcanic crater off the coast.  Its almost an island,but its eroded its way back to the mainland.  You can climb up the side and watch the sunrise on the stands on the edge (its called Sunrise Peak).  It was really beautiful, but it seems smaller the closer you get to it.

Sunrise Mountain.  Believe it or not, the trail to the top is only 1km.

 The next day we headed off across the island past the Teddy Bear Museum, the Citrus Museum, the Glass Castle, horseback riding, Riply's Believe it or Not, and various other tourist traps.  This is one of the most popular vacation places for Koreans, so there are many places that cost lots of money.  We decided to go to our own tourist spot, McDonald's breakfast!  It was right next to our hotel, and real sausage was amazing!

Look!  Hashbrowns!  Real creamer!

The south side of the island was really nice.  It had a lazy feel to it with little islands of the coast and nice cliffs with a few waterfalls into the ocean.  We traveled to some cliffs that looked like french fries.  Somehow, cooling lava forms the shapes as it cools.

French fry cliffs

The next day we climbed the highest mountain in Korea, the dormant volcano that created Jeju Island in the first place.  Luckily, the bus drops you off halfway up.  We got up early and started as the sun came up.  It was covered in snow.  A beautiful 9.6 km trek through the woods.  There were lots of people with us, but the only animals I could see were these large crows that would sit in trees near the trails and stare at you, waiting to see if you would make it.  You had to make it mostly up the mountain by 12pm or they wouldn't let you up that last 2 km to the rim of the crater.  We did make it, and we ate lunch at the top.  You could see the edge of the whole island from the top.  The crater was huge and had a frozen lake in the middle.  Then we hiked the 9.6 km back.  There was a little mountain with a crater on the way down.  It had the best view of what we had just climbed.

Flat woods!  Don't be fooled, there were a lot of people on this trail.

Riley above the tree line

We made it to the crater!  I'm glad its dormant, its huge!

Where we just climbed.  Going down was a lot faster than going up.

Our last day we had a little more time.  So, we decided to go to a 800 year old forest to pass the time.  This is the only forest of its kind in the world.  The tree is called nutmeg, but its related to the yews.  The forest was really old and peaceful.  The trees were used for oil from their nuts, and the wood is very beautiful.  The wood was used to make a board for a game as a present for the king.  The king liked this wood so much, he declared this forest to be preserved.  Thus, the very old forest.

Old trees!

Then we hopped on the ferry and headed back.  We knew the ferry would be bigger because it held cars, but we didn't expect the seven eleven, cafeteria, bakery, coffee shop, concert, and arcade.  It was like being on a cruise.  We couldn't hardly feel the waves.  The dining room even had chandeliers on the ceiling.  We didn't get seat, but were assigned to a small room with about 10 other people to sit on the floor (or sleep as several of our fellow passengers did).  It was a very nice way to finish off our trip to Jeju!

The dining room on the ferry boat.

 Our trip to Jeju was a nice refresher to many of the things we miss here in Korea: flat woods, old woods, and sausage for breakfast!