Coffee Helps

So, a girl can sit in and feel miserable about her lingering (but no longer contagious!) Swine Flu symptoms and her multiple horrendously itchy and painful mosquito bites…

Damn the mosquitos. Damn all the mosquitos.

…or she can go out to a local restaurant in her fab new country of choice, spend hours eating amazing food and drinking soju, go to a bar and befriend the locals, and generally have a great Saturday night.

Say kimchi!

What would you do?

The guy in the hat was so cool. Alex and I came into the bar after a very long dinner (as sems to be the style here – and I mean both the long dinner and the going to a bar afterwards), just to have a few beers and wind down the evening. The barman saw us singing along to a current Korean pop classic, and promptly made it his mission to entertain the Westerners – even going so far as to bring us pens and paper, gesturing that we should write down our song requests. I was mightily impressed when he played Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, and the obligatory American Pie for us. The night then became a game of trying to find obscure songs, and laughing at the delighted expression on his face when he found them and watched for our slightly drunken, happy reactions.

And so I had to complete No. 18 from my 101 Things list as we were leaving – get my photo taken with a stranger. When you get your photo taken in Korea, you must make the peace/victory sign. It’s, like, the law. I have yet to see someone refrain from doing so in a photo, and although I think it must be slightly weird to have your entire family photo album full of hippy poses, I have embraced this cultural phenomenon wholeheartedly.

Oh, and also, they really do say “kimchi!” like we would say “cheese!” when they’re taking pictures.

Yesterday’s post was about how pizza in Korea differs from “our” pizza. A few people have mentioned this post to me, intrigued by the popularity of potato pizza, and have urged me to share a few other interesting flavours.

So, this is a bit of a cheat post, because it’s just a short list. However, it also contains videos… of the adverts for specific Pizza Hut Korea pizzas.

The first one is my favourite advert. I won’t tell you the topping combo, because I want you to watch the ad, and you’ll have to do that to find out. Right to the end, please. I watched this ad three times, and laughed hysterically each time. Maybe it’s just me.

Hotdog Pizza: where a whole hotdog is baked right into the inside of the crust.

Shrimp Roll Pizza: where whole shrimps are baked into individual rolls, which are then set side-by-side to form the pizza crust. Then you can just break off one at a time – how fabulous (and incredibly posh) is this?!

Other popular pizzas include:

Kimchi Pizza (of course!)

Bulgogi Pizza

Squid and Mayonnaise Pizza

Shrimp Nude Pizza (shrimp and cream cheese)

Chilli Dog Pizza (hotdogs and chilli sauce – on a pizza)

I can’t wait to try all of these!

Although it seems a bit of a cop-out to move to a completely different country/culture and still eat the kinds of food you’re used to, I now have a new way of looking at this. Just because you order a pizza doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not trying Korean food. In fact, I think that seeing the Korean take on foods we’re used to eating can be almost as interesting (if not more so!) as trying the traditional Korean foods.

Although the cuisine here is completely different from anything I’ve ever experienced before, I hadn’t realised that even foods that are familiar to me would be so different! Pizza jumps out as the most fun one yet.

First of all, you’ve got to remember that you’re not ordering “pizza”, you’re ordering “pija”. It’s still spelt the same way, but the Korean language doesn’t have a “z” sound, so most of them find it difficult to say something like “pizza”. Pija it is!

And the most popular pizza topping in Korea?

Potato. Yes, potato. That’s slices of boiled or roast potato, or big dollops of mashed potato, or wedges of sweet potato.  Crusts stuffed with sweet potato paste (bloomin’ amazin’, BTW). Other toppings include nachos and tortilla chips. Then there are all sorts of interesting seafood toppings, of course, and you’ve also got to factor in the “hot” equation. I am a fan of spicy food. When there’s an option – mild, hot, very hot – I’ll generally opt for “very hot”. Please note: do not do this in Korea!! I have quickly learned that food in general here tends to translate to what we would categorise as spicy food. This means that what we would probably label “hot” or even “very hot” would here be called “mild” or (most likely) have no such label at all. So be warned that if your packet of ramen or sauce or soup or whatever actually goes to the trouble of saying “hot!” on the front, it really means that. Like, really really. The sort of “hot” that makes your eyes sting and your nose run and your tongue sizzle when you pour cold water on it.

In other words, assume that your Korean pizza will be spicy. Do not ask for it to be extra hot like you would at home unless it’s some kind of dare, or you’ve tried that pizza before and know for a fact that it’s not already smothered in crazy pepper sauces.

So, different pronunciation, different toppings, different levels of spiciness. Oh, and not only those, but also your pizza can’t be eaten on its own. That just wouldn’t be Korean! Meal times in this country always involve a table spread with lots of dishes, and even takeaway pizza has to have banchan. You won’t be given a pizza without a side of pickles (which I would never have thought of, but it’s a surprisingly good combination!), some hot sauce, and another sauce of some kind (sometimes garlic, sometimes cheese).

And here’s the final twist: they tie your pizza box with a ribbon and present it to you like a gift, bowing politely to you as you accept your prize. This is my favourite difference. Really, you feel pretty special and excited as you walk home with your giftwrapped pizza!

Pija!

Ugh, I want to feel better. Although the worst of the dreaded swine flu is over, I’ve been left with a cough that rattles not only my ribcage, but also my doors and windows. And simply going downstairs for a ten-minute chat with Clare leaves me completely exhausted, trembling, and soaking with sweat by the time I crawl back into my apartment, as if I’ve just been running for miles. I have no energy to do anything more than lay in my bed with Eeyore, hot drinks, and more American TV shows than can be good for anyone. My creativity has been zapped. Even writing this paragraph has been draining.

Which is why I’m pleased to remember that I have several pre-written posts here, from the pre-sickness days when I was full of energy and enthusiasm and excitement for the world around me. So, until I recover and am fit to live and write once more, I’ll fill time with some of those posts that got left behind in the surge of activity that was rudely interrupted by that nasty little H1N1 virus. Here’s number one…

This is probably a bad thing for a teacher to admit, but some of my pupils really give me the creeps.

My main classes are absolutely fine. For the most part, even when their spoken English isn’t great, they can understand what I’m saying. But when I take the really little ones for gym, the difference in ability levels becomes clear. One class really doesn’t seem to have any knowledge of English whatsoever – I think they only recently started the school. Anyway, they haven’t a clue what I’m saying. Even basic instructions like “stand up”, “sit down”, “be quiet”, “listen” – they don’t show any sign of having understood unless I use an accompanying mime gesture, and repeat several times.

And so they just stare at me. Wide, dark eyes, staring vacantly at me. Saying “stand up!” and receiving a blank gaze from them is similar to the eerie feeling you’d get if you waved your hand in front of a spaced-out person’s eyes and they didn’t so much as blink. Like they’re staring right through you, unseeing. Where do you go with that? I don’t speak their language, they don’t speak mine. Where do you start?

Well, with songs, that’s where. Even if they don’t understand you when you explain that you’re going to teach them a song with actions, they’ll catch on soon enough if you just start doing it. Sing, do the actions, and repeat several times until they start to join in. Then once they know the words by heart, you can start to explain what those words mean, through mime. That’s why exercise songs and “body parts” songs are some of my favourite (and most hated) things in the world at the moment. If I sing “heads, shoulders, knees and toes” one more time, my mind will die.

And yet sing I must! Because as soon as we stop singing, they recommence the creepy staring. They also like to stroke my arms. Clare explained to me that they’re fascinated by the fact that we have light, soft hairs on our arms, because Koreans do not. Poor Alex is a somewhat hairy man, so the dark, thick hair on his arms means that he either has to wear long sleeves or put up with having his arms constantly stroked and patted all day. They’ve never seen anything like it. One little girl in particular freaked me out today by stroking my arms with a glazed look in her staring eyes; another kept wrapping her arms around my neck and kissing my cheek with a really awed look on her face.

I much prefer “my” classes. They might be louder and harder to entertain, but at least they don’t look at me as if I am God, or an act in a freak show. And in all honesty, I’d much rather be cheeked, or become frustrated with a deliberately obtuse child, than stand before those creepy, unwavering stares…

I have been sitting in the doctor’s waiting room for 17 and a half hours.

It’s probably more like three quarters of an hour, but I’m going with feelings rather than facts here. I am dying. I am wearing a mask (it is Halloween after all) and dying. Let me tell you, being a sick white girl in a doctor’s waiting room full of Koreans is not exactly the most comfortable experience. Everyone is staring disapprovingly as I cough the wheezing, rasping, rattling cough of a person at death’s door, and sweat is pouring down my face, soaking my hair and my clothes. People are actually getting up and walking away to wait outside the door.

Poor Jennifer is beside me with her phone, dealing with the catastrophe of 2 out of her 3 foreign teachers being absent on the day of the Halloween party that we were in charge of running. She fires off rapid instructions in Korean to one person after another as I sway miserably beside her. Then she switches to English and covers the phone, motioning to me.

How do you play mummy game? she asks, anxiously. I groan, trying to get my brain to work. Two pairs of children at a time, I say with an effort, and one child in each pair wraps their partner in toilet roll. Then the two mummies have to race to the finish line.

Jennifer nods, and switches back to Korean, at which point everyone who has remained in the waiting room begins to grin. I realise that it is probably not the most normal thing in the world for someone in a doctor’s waiting room to be issuing instructions about wrapping small children in toilet roll and then racing them.

And here I am with a mountain of Tamiflu and various other pills which could be poison for all I know, having slept all day and woken up in a pool of sweat again. Funny. Koreans were reluctant to let me into their country in case I brought disease and infected them all. And I arrived in their country perfectly healthy, and they infected me!

I really hope I don’t get fired. Or, y’know, die.

This just in: Clare has just come up to see me, and we sat in our pyjamas and coughed miserably at each other. The good news, however, is that they’re closing the school until at least the end of next week, as about half the kids and several of the teachers are now off sick. One little boy from one of my classes (the one from yesterday’s post, who sneezed on me) is actually in hospital, poor thing. The school was just a breeding ground for germs, disinfectant man or no disinfectant man! So at least I now have the best part of a week to try to recover without feeling guilty about not being at work…

Child (in a lesson about the difference between “a” and “the”): Teacha is the pineapple!

Me: No, Teacher is *a* pineapple.

Class dissolves into giggles.

Me: Hang on, what?! I am not a pineapple! (confused) Why are you calling me a pineapple?

Delighted laughter.

Me (roaring): Teacher is not a pineapple!

Obviously this is the point where you turn around and there’s a confused colleague standing in the doorway. And it’s even worse when they just leave immediately without even speaking, as this one did.

——————————————–

Angry, sulky child: babbles in Korean.

Me: English!

Child: more Korean, glaring defiantly.

Me: English!!

Child: more Korean.

Me: Two can participate in such an activity as this, my young protégé. And please bear in mind that at some point in the foreseeable future I will, through application and determination, be able to understand at least a modicum of your language, but an infant with an attitude as repugnant as yours shall surely never progress to even the most basic level of comprehension of my native tongue. Bearing this in mind, it would be advisable for you to stop your whinging right this instant. If you fail to comply, I will write you a terrible report card and your parents will lock you in the basement, where you will no doubt be nibbled upon by rats and crawled over by roaches. Capiche?

Child (lost after “two”): stunned silence.

Me: Now, everybody, page 5…

—————————————————-

Me: Please don’t sneeze on me.

Child: What?

Me: Please – don’t – sneeze – on – me.

Child (genuinely confused): But Teacha, I not on you. On chair! I sneeze on chair.

—————————————————–

Me (teaching about telling the time): Now, the big hand is at 12 and the little hand is at 9. What time is it?

Child: 45 o’clock.

—————————————————–

Child: I don’t like hospital.

Me: Why not?

Child: Because I don’t like noodles.

Me: Do they give you noodles to eat at the hospital?

Child (perplexed): What? No, *noodles*!

Me: Noodles?

Child: Noodles! In hospital, doctor put noodles in my arms! Hurt!

Me: Ah. I think you mean needles…

—————————————————

Child: Teacha, why you smell?

Me: What?!

Child: You smell, Teacha! Why you smell?

Me (offended and a little paranoid): I don’t smell! Do I?

Child (watching me sniff my clothes): No, no, you *smell*, Teacha! Why you smell?

Me (starting to get annoyed): It’s rude to call someone smelly! Stop it!

All children joining in: No, Teacha, *smell*! Smell!! You were smelling!

They all pull big, wide smiles and point at their faces.

Me: Oh, *smile*…

Korea is, as I have mentioned previously, unhealthily obsessed with Swine Flu.

Apparently a Canadian teacher in Seoul was recently fired when he caught Swine Flu. He didn’t go into school when he started feeling ill. He went to the hospital to be tested. When he tested positive, he stayed home until he was completely better and no longer contagious. Parental paranoia being what it is in Korea, however, meant that the matter didn’t end there, as it should have done. Apparently unable to understand the phrase “no longer contagious”, the parents didn’t want the poor guy near their kids any more. Once a Swine Flu victim, always a Swine Flu threat, it would seem. The school told him not to come back yet, even though he was perfectly healthy – and when he (quite rightly) asked to be paid for this forced absence, they fired him!

This is worrying.

All across the country, more schools are closing every day as children and teachers fall ill with alleged “Swine Flu”. Today, it finally hit our school. Six children from one class were absent, five from another, four from another. Clare fell ill during the day and went home sick. The director is coughing and sneezing and wearing a mask. Every day for the past week, every child has had his or her temperature taken to check for fever as they enter the school (after zapping their hands under the high-tech UV hand cleanser thingy, of course). The Korean teachers and staff look harrassed and highly-strung. It is a wee bit chaotic.

Trying to provide a presence of calm in the midst of mass hysteria, I collected my first class from their homeroom and took them down to the gym, away from their homeroom teacher who was refusing to emerge from behind the safety of a large, folded bathtowel pressed over her (masked) mouth and nose. Today, I began, getting them seated around me on the floor, we’re going to…

And with that, the principal marched in with another class. They were followed by every single class in the school. Suddenly, I was surrounded by far more children than I’d expected to be when I started my class. Bemused, I stuck my head out into the corridor. What on earth is going on? I asked Alex, who looked just as confused as me, a Korean teacher having swept his class out from under his nose and brought them down to the gym. We found Jennifer, the director, and demanded an explantion.

Whole school is being disinfected, she informed us. Oh, for the love of patience and sanity.

And so the men in masks and white coats came in with spray tanks and doused the entire place. It was kind of spooky. Oh, and did I mention ridiculous? I mean, come on! If the sick people in the school really are suffering from Swine Flu, won’t they have been just as likely to pass it on by sneezing all over each other? And isn’t it likely that even if all the Swine Flu-infected people have been sent home, they’ve already passed it on to several others, who just aren’t showing symptoms yet, and who will happily go around contaminating everything again within seconds of it being disinfected?

We’re meant to be taking the children trick-or-treating on Friday, but now it might not be happening because the parents are making noises about the danger of letting us take the kids outside into that nasty, Swine Flu-infected world. Permit me a: WTF?!!! Surely the open air would be much safer than a classroom crowded with snottery infants and potentially lethal foreign teachers?

I don’t get it.

I. Do. Not. Get. It.

Alex and I went out for dinner tonight to a Korean Grill restaurant down the road.

This was my first real Korean restaurant experience, and experience is certainly the right word. I’ve been too intimidated by what I’ve seen from peering through open doors to go to one all by myself – and certainly, I don’t know nearly enough Korean words yet to be able to do so without some difficulty. Alex has been here longer than me, and has mastered reading Hangul, so even though he might not know what most things are, at least he can say them! And he took me to a restaurant where he’s gone on his own several times, so I just left all the ordering to him.

It was a warm, cosy place with a friendly and laid back atmosphere, and no menus – only a board on the wall with a short list. That’s because it was a grill restaurant, so you basically just pick one of the few meat options and everything else automatically comes with it.

No sooner had we sat down than a waitress appeared with two huge trays of stuff. She proceeded to cover the table with banchan (side dishes), from shiitake mushrooms sizzling on a little hotplate, to kimchi, to dipping sauces, soup, and raw vegetables like spring onions, whole garlic cloves, beansprouts, and various lettuce and cabbage leaves. This picture was taken after just the first of the two trays. We sat there, our table laden with food, and then the waitress came to take our order! I like this country.

Before ordering

We got what I think was samgyeopsal. It consisted of small, thick chunks of pork belly meat, and it was brought to the table raw, in a bowl. We watched as a waiter filled the hole in the centre of our table with red hot coals, and then fitted a grill over it. Then we threw on the raw meat and grilled it ourselves. It smelt (and sounded!) fantastic. And it all felt very relaxed and fun, too. We added some things from our banchan dishes to the grill, like huge pieces of raw onion, kimchi, and some garlic cloves.

Samgyeopsal (and a lone kimchi leaf)

Eating it has the kind of “ritual” experience that I enjoy so much about Japanese sushi (soy sauce, wasabi, ginger…) and Chinese pancakes with crispy duck (duck, vegetables, hoisin sauce…). You grab one of the many available leaves (I don’t know what any of them were other than some kind of lettuce and cabbage), and hold it in one hand. Then with your chopsticks in the other hand, you take a piece of the meat, dip it in various sauces, and place it on the leaf. You can add whatever vegetables take your fancy, and then you wrap it up into a little parcel, dip it in soy sauce or one of the oily mixtures, and eat. I am not a professional food critic, so I will simply conclude by saying: yum yum!

We shared a bottle of soju, the Korean national drink (tastes a bit like vodka), as well, and on our way out we stopped to grab ourselves a free ice cream cone each from the self service freezer and stand at the door.

It was a really fun night. I think I may want to eat out all the time, now! And what’s more, I can probably afford to. If you choose the right places, it’s really about the same price as cooking for yourself every night…

Korean pop music is great. Not in a “this is quality music” sort of way, but in a cheesy, feel-good pop sort of way, in the manner of Steps, S Club 7, Hanson, and that kind of thing. Clare absolutely hates it, and I think she may think less of me as a person since I accidentally started dancing when we walked past a shop that was blaring a typically cringeworthy yet chirpy number the other night.

The kids here have their crazes re: pop music just as they do back home. I remember the Saturday Night epidemic that spread around the country when a certain Whigfield topped the charts. I remember doing the Macarena time and time again with my friends. Gina G, Ooh, Ah, Just A Little Bit, anyone? And right now, in Korea, everybody’s talking about BEG’s Dirty.

The song is actually a piss-take of a fairly ordinary, standard pop song (you can watch the original by clicking on this link, if you wish). I didn’t realise that it was a parody the first time I saw the video, so I was slightly bemused by lyrics such as “I’ll clean my armpit hair”, initially believing this to be standard Korean songwriting. All children under the age of 10 are in love with this song. School corridors are filled with small girls doing very funny dance routines. I walk into a classroom and find them rehearsing the lyrics and practising their moves. They can’t get enough of it. And call me immature, but I’m loving it too!

Here’s a version with English subtitles so you can enjoy the (seriously ridiculous) lyrics:

And just so you can get a flavour of what this epidemic feels like in my daily life, here’s the reaction of a couple of my elementary students to finding that they’re being filmed. It’s like they just can’t control it…

I eat Korean food much more often than anything else, partly because it’s what I am served every day for lunch in school, and partly because it’s much more widely available than real food Western food.

Sitting down to lunch at school.

Lunches at school can be hit and miss. I’ve only had one so far that I absolutely could not bring myself to finish, and I really did have a fair attempt at it before my stomach started heaving. Mind you, I was feeling ill with my head cold to start with. But when I poked curiously at my soup with my spoon as I do every day (it’s basically water with a variety of unpredictable “things” in it, which mostly settle at the bottom until you disturb them), I found myself confronted by random fish body parts, including a spookily staring eye. This was not good. But I was hungry, and I was shivery, and the soup is the only warm part of the meal… so, bravely, I ate as much of it as I could, careful not to redisturb the mutilated fish carcasses. Sadly, the side dishes that day involved the original type of kimchi (which I do not like) and some really unpleasant spice-soaked tofu. So I basically ate my rice and the water from my soup for lunch that day.

Usually, however, I’ll finish my soup and fill up on a few banchan (side dishes). And some of these are pretty delicious! My favorite so far is Gim, which is the seaweed stuff you’d roll sushi in – but it’s been roasted in sesame oil, and is lovely and light and flakey. It’s kinda complicated to eat it like the Koreans do, as you’re meant to place it in your rice bowl, then do a difficult chopsticks manoeuvre to scoop up some rice inside the Gim, and eat it all at once. It’s addictive – I could live on this stuff.

As for table etiquette, I’m slowly but surely mastering the chopsticks, although it’ll be a while yet before I’m absolutely confident that whatever I’ve just picked up is not going to drop on to the table as soon as I try to transfer it to my mouth. But in general, I’m beginning to fit in a bit better at the lunch table – with the exception of one thing I’ve noticed. I’d read in an article somewhere that it’s OK to make noises when you’re eating “messy” food. So slurp your soup or your noodles, basically. However, I have now realised that it’s not just OK – it’s the way Koreans (at least the ones I know!) eat everything. Not only do they slurp messy foods, but they do something we Westerners would consider very bad table manners indeed: they smack their lips as they eat. Actually, the noise really comes from the tongue rather than the lips, but I don’t know if you can say “smacking your tongue”. Anyway, what I mean is, they keep their mouths open and chew noisily. It really, really bothered me at first, but I’m starting to get used to it. I haven’t asked anyone about it as I don’t want to appear rude and offend anyone, but I’m interested to know whether it’s just that it’s not considered rude and that’s just how they naturally eat, or if it’s something significant, like a sign of appreciation to the cook, as I have encountered a few different kinds of these in various countries.

Honestly, absolutely everything is different. It’s like having to relearn everything you were taught as a child. Fascinating, but a daunting task!