Coffee Helps

It may not come as a surprise that so-called “hangover cures” are big business in Korea. My friends and I have often marvelled at the businessmen who go out and drink into the early hours of the morning as part of their job (it’s the only way to get to know colleagues and potential business partners well enough to trust them with plans and deals, apparently), and then get on the train at 5am to go back into the office. How do they do it? When I have a hangover, it’s as much as I can do to crawl to the fridge for another bottle of water, and that activity alone has been known to take me up to 6 hours of lying semi-awake with a raging thirst, willing myself to stand up.

Enter the Korean hangover cure market.

Every single convenience store carries a selection of small (usually around 100ml) glass bottles or cans, each promising to make you feel like you’ve never touched a drop of soju in your life. One of them, 모닝 케어 (that name is actually English, and is pronounced ‘Morning Care’!) has commercials that make it look as if you will in fact feel even better after a night’s drinking than you would if you’d stayed in and read a book. None of them have ever worked particularly well for me, but that’s apparently because I’ve been doing it wrong, as I was informed only last weekend. I assumed you were supposed to drink the ‘cures’ the morning after drinking, but I’ve now been informed that you’re supposed to take them either before drinking alcohol, or immediately after, before going to sleep. Gah. Perhaps “hangover prevention” would be a more accurate label.

I must admit, having discovered in a most unpleasant way last weekend that gin is not my friend, I was grateful for the bottle of 컨디션 파워 (‘Condition Power’!) given to me by a bartender friend as I sat there dolefully wishing the world would just end already. I drank it, and felt almost back to my normal self the next morning. (Rest assured, I will never drink gin again) Perhaps there’s something in these things after all.

However, the ultimate Korean hangover cure is not a drink, but a soup. 해장국, pronounced ‘hay-jang-gook’, really does literally mean ‘hangover soup‘. That just sums up Korean life better than I ever could.

The first time I had this miracle soup was shortly after I arrived here back in 2009, when I’d just experienced the first of many compulsory eating and drinking nights with my boss and colleagues.

I’m not kidding about this cultural work-bonding-through-alcohol thing, by the way – you really would cause offence if you refused to go, or refused to drink. If you really can’t take any more, you’re advised to accept the soju and then secretly get rid of it when no one’s looking, like by pouring it into your water cup under the table, or subtly passing it to a less sensible friend. Anyway, thrown into this confusing world of shots and elbow-touching and never-ending food and cries of “one shot!”, I meekly drank when I was told to and poured when I was asked to, and the next morning I woke up with my very first soju hangover. That’s not a lot of fun, let me tell you.

Nor is it fun when your new boss arrives at your door, also hungover, announcing that you are going to go and eat hangover soup together now.

All I can say is this: that stuff works. It is delicious, spicy, tasty, hot, and full of goodness that does something to settle your dodgy stomach and even dispels the nasty headache. There are several different varieties, but the broth is generally prepared by simmering ox bones in water for a long time. Then the other ingredients are added. Look, it tastes so good and works so well that I almost don’t want to tell you what’s in it, OK?

Lots of spices and herbs, of course. Nice beefy broth. Plenty of vegetables, primarily the Nappa cabbage that’s used for everything here. And congealed ox blood, natch. All served bubbling away in an earthenware bowl, whereupon the server cracks a raw egg into it, just for fun.

In Korea, I’ve learned to unhear things like “coagulated ox blood” and focus on the flavour. What’s in this soup?, a friend asked me recently as we slurped it down.

Beef and cabbage, I replied firmly.

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I’ve written before about shabu shabu, the Japanese hotpot that’s very popular here in Korea.

Of course, the Korean version has its own twists. Traditionally, Japanese shabu shabu is cooked by swishing thin slices of beef in a pot of boiling water, but that would be a little too bland for people used to the Korean diet of fire and spice. Here, the pot in the centre of the table is filled with soup rather than water, and there are lots of other extras that vary from one restaurant to the next.

My absolute favourite shabu shabu place is a little sit-on-the-floor restaurant in downtown Daejeon. I thought it might be interesting (you decide!) to talk you through the meal, as it’s so different from anything I’d ever experienced before I came here – and it’s a great illustration of the way the food just keeps coming at Korean restaurants. Seriously, I still don’t understand how my petite colleagues remain so svelte.

So, the specialty of this fabulous little restaurant is duck. Duck! One of my favourites, and not all that common around here. When you sit down, your table is almost instantly covered with the usual banchan (side dishes), like kimchi and corn and leafy things. Each person is also presented with a plate divided into compartments for various tasty sauces, and a cute little serving spoon.

Then come the huge plates laden with raw veggies such as bean sprouts, mushrooms, onions, carrots, and cucumber.

Last but not least, two separate platefuls of raw meat. One is the thinly sliced beef to go in the shabu shabu pot; the other is the delicious duck for the grill.

Yes, grill! You chuck your meat into the central pot of broth, and then while it’s bubbling away there you arrange your duck slices on the grill that runs around it.

Soon they’re sizzling away, and there’s an ajumma pouring hot red water into the circular pans sticking out of the grill. This was mildly confusing to me the first time I experienced it, as were the odd plastic discs sitting in their little holders on the table.

As it turned out, the discs were in fact rice paper pancakes. Oh, it’s about to get so frickin’ good! As the shabu shabu boils and the duck cooks (there’s a little rack on the side of the grill to pile up the cook pieces so they stay warm but don’t burn), you start preparing your first pancake. The pancakes really do feel like plastic, but that’s where the red water comes in. You dip the hard, flat disc into it, and when you bring it back out… ta-daa!

It has miraculously transformed into a wafer-thin, transparent pancake, which you spread out on your plate and proceed to heap high with your favourite vegetables and sauces. The finishing touch: a slice or two of the sizzling duck.

Then you just wrap it all up, and eat with a series of mmmmmm noises (and sauce all over your fingers, if you’re like me). It is one of my all-time favourite meals, possibly even better than my original favourite, the Chinese-style crispy shredded duck with hoisin sauce version. And that’s saying a lot.

So anyway, eventually all the duck has been devoured and it’s time to get bate intae the soup, as they’d say back home. A ladle and bowls are provided, and they will regularly come round with a broth-filled kettle to check that your shabu shabu pot doesn’t need a top-up.

But that’s not all! When most of the meat and vegetables have been transferred from pot to tummies, that’s when an ajumma will appear with a huge plateful of noodles, which she will cheerfully (or not… you know ajummas) throw into the remaining broth. A few minutes later, you’re sitting with a big bowl of brothy noodles, despite having basically had two dinners by this stage.

They’re delicious, though, so you slurp them down and then sit back to rest.

But wait! What’s this?! The ajumma is returning with more food?!! You can only watch in amazement, clutching your swollen belly, as she proceeds to make a sort of savoury porridge with the tiny remainder of the broth. Nothing must be wasted! In go some finely-chopped vegetables mixed with rice, and I think I saw an egg being cracked in there for good measure last time, too, and it all gets briskly stirred and pounded into a gloopy yellow mixture that looks decidedly unappealing, but tastes great.

Meanwhile, of course, throughout this dinner that seems to have been going on for a week and a half, your soju glass has been constantly refilled and your legs have cramped from sitting on the floor. By the time you stagger to your feet you’ve got pins and needles and a boozy glow on your cheeks, and you weigh about 10 pounds more than you did when you sat down.

And that, my dears, is my kind of meal.

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Approximately once every two years, I start seeing photos of myself that make me want to sob uncontrollably.

It’s not that, in between times, I’m perfectly happy with all the photos I see of myself. It’s more a case of blocking out the awful truth because I’m far too lazy to get off my arse and do something about it. Then, perhaps due to a combination of factors, I start to feel worse and worse about the size of my arms and the extra belly and the twenty chins, and the fact that I’m too lazy to walk down to the corner shop for a bottle of water. When this happens, it just takes one photo to make me freeze in horror, go into mourning, then dry the self-pitiful tears and become determined to do something about it.

Originally, I had included the photo that did it this time, but honestly, I am far too horrified by it to post it here. Let it fade away, hastily untagged in a hopefully-soon-to-be-forgotten Facebook album, never to depress me again. I have cut out all the unnecessary crap from my diet, cut my ridiculous portion sizes in half, and started exercising like a madwoman. It has now been two weeks and my body does not have a clue what’s hit it – mwahahahaha!

My problem with exercise has always been my short attention span and low boredom threshold. I threw myself into swimming in a big way when I was a student, lost loads of weight, got fit, and then got bored with the routine of going to the pool every day, and gave up. A couple of years ago, I bought a Wii Fit and launched into that with great gusto. That lasted for a couple of weeks, then my mind started to die a little bit every time I switched it on to do the same old routine. I gave up.

This time, I am mixing it up in the hope that I can convince my brain that exercise is not mind-numbingly boring (which it is). I work out on my Wii Fit, but if I come home bored at the very thought of it, I pull on my trainers, switch on the pedometer app on my phone, stick in my earphones, and power-walk to (and along) the river, not coming home until I’ve covered at least 5km. My boss has invited me to come along to her gym with her to play a Korean ball game she showed me last summer, which is a lot of fun, good for toning, and will get a post of its own once I figure out what the heck it’s called. And tonight, I started the Jillian Michaels 30-Day Shred exercise video.

Holy jumping catfish, as my granny might rightfully remark.

My (much thinner, much fitter) friend recommended it to me as a fast but effective workout, and for that reason I am now sitting here unable to walk.

You’re not allowed to take any breaks in this rapid-fire, circuit training-style punishment from the fiery pits of hell. She puts you down on the floor for painful stretchy exercises, then forces you right back up on to your trembling legs for cardio stuff, then has you lunging in all directions with weights in your aching arms. And then you do it again. And again.

“OK, now, back up on your feet, quickly!” she snapped at me as I lay like a sweaty beached whale on the floor after something called ‘abs crunches’. “I can’t!!” I moaned in genuine distress as I tried to pull myself up and realised that my legs were shaking too much to hold me. Towards the end, I threw down my weights (bottles of water!) to get down on the floor for more painful stretchy things, and descended with more of a desperate, wobbly crash than a sprightly bound. I actually had to hold on to the wall when I was showering afterwards, since my legs had apparently turned to useless pillars of jelly.

These events transpired over an hour ago, and I swear my face is still an alarming shade of red. This exercise thing is Not Fun At All.

And yet, strangely, I feel amazing after every single exercise session. Not physically – physically, let’s face it, I want to die – but emotionally. I feel alert and happy and positive, no matter how rubbish or tired I might have been feeling earlier in the day. So, for now, that’s going to keep me at it.

It’d better bloody work, though!

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No, no, no.

No more.

I am not sure why or how it is, exactly, that I am in Korea for yet another summer, but as the weather becomes increasingly painful for me, I am firmly resolving that this shall not happen again. During my time in Korea, I have come to detest, loathe, fear and resent the summertime. Sweat, fatigue, perpetual dehydration, sweat, wet clothes, mosquitoes, sweat, monsoons, humidity, sweat, bugs the size of your hand, steam rising from the ground, sweat, sunburn, heatstroke, sweat, sweat, everywhere SWEAT.

Enough. I am over this. I am Northern Irish, and we were not designed for such a place as this. There are those who chase the sun, travelling around as the seasons change so that they never have to wave goodbye to summer. This sounds like absolute insanity to me. I have decided, therefore, to become the exact opposite of a sun-chaser. I am going to seek to live my life in a permanent state of winter.

When my contract ends at the start of next spring, I shall flee the country before the gradual inevitable descent into humid hell begins.

I will be going from a place where I spend a considerable chunk of the year like this…

Aircon + paper fan + electric fan = still not enough in the Korean summer.

To one where you can socialise in a bar like this…

Ice bar serving ice cocktails in an ice hotel in Quebec.

I am going to move to Canada. Yes.

Did you know that in parts of Quebec, it is winter for approximately half the year?! Even summer struggles to be as warm as a Norn Irish summer. I almost cried with joy when I realised that such a heavenly place exists right here on Earth. Not only that, but they’re really fussy about you speaking French when you’re there, so the government throws you into an intensive full-time language immersion course when you arrive. For FREE. This is my kind of place. Generous. Helpful. French. Cold.

Now I just have to figure out what I’m going to do when I get there. More teaching… have another crack at the whole writing thing… or now for something completely different? Decisions, decisions.

And in the meantime, with less than a year left in the country that has (in an odd sort of way) become home to me, it’s time to start blogging about the remaining everyday oddities that now seem commonplace to me, lest I ever forget how totally, utterly surreal my life here has been at times – or how completely, wonderfully life-changing the experience has been. Thanks, Korea, you crazy monkey, you. I’m not done with you just yet!

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Two little things happened today that reminded me yet again why I love teaching young children.

I was herding my unruly first graders down the stairs to get their bus, trying to zip up backpacks and remind them about homework and wondering why I even bother shouting “don’t run!”, when Allie, the school secretary, came towards me leading a little girl in an unfamiliar school uniform by the hand. I did a double take and then found myself emitting an uncharacteristic girly scream. It was Jennifer – my favourite child from kindergarten, who I taught for two years and then broke my heart saying goodbye to when she graduated in February.

Jennifer is the girl who made me a snowflake when I was sick, and wrote me a poem in a Valentine’s card. She was my little star, and so friendly, hardworking, kind-hearted and thoughtful that I often lost sight of the fact that she was only 6 years old. Saying goodbye to her was extremely sad for me.

“What are you doing here?!” I squealed, forgetting all about my howling first graders and rushing over to her. She didn’t answer. Instead, she broke away from the secretary and ran towards me, jumping up into my arms for a bear hug. She wouldn’t let go. I looked at Allie over her shoulder, and she laughed. “She has been asking her mother every day if she can come see you. She finally gave in and dropped her off here while she goes to pick up her other child from school.”

Well, that was the nicest thing I’d heard in a long time. We sat in the entrance hall surrounded by the usual yelling chaos that is the kindergarteners going home and the elementary students arriving, and Jennifer climbed on to my lap and held my hand tightly as she told me all about her new school and teachers and subjects. Her mother arrived to pick her up and looked apologetically at me, as if she had somehow inconvenienced me and not in fact made my day. What a lovely little surprise!

I went back upstairs to prepare for my next class, and greeted my second group of seven-year-olds, who were playing with some kind of elaborate Lego robot on the floor. I stepped over them and groaned as the fan swooshed a wave of humid air around me. “How is it this hot already, at the start of May?” I grumbled crossly to myself, reaching for the air con remote and then collapsing at my desk with a bottle of water.

One of the boys suddenly popped his head up over my desk like a little jack-in-the-box. “Well, teacher,” he began very seriously, “you know the Earth?”. I looked suspiciously at him, hoping he wasn’t about to start telling me it was really called Korea. “I do know the Earth, yes,” I replied warily. He nodded, satisfied. “Around the Earth there is a… a… cover?” He made some gestures with his hands, looking expectantly at me for the vocabulary he didn’t know. “What is this? Earth, then sky, then…?”. I gazed at him, mildly surprised. “Are you talking about the ozone layer?”. He nodded confidently. “Yes, yes. Ozone layer. Ozone layer has a hole. The sun is spilling in the hole and getting on to the Earth. That is why it is hot so early. April and May, it is spring, but it is hot. Ozone layer is broken. The Earth is getting warmer.”

He looked intently at me to check that I now understood global warming, and for a moment I could only nod speechlessly. “Um… thank you, Andy. Thanks for explaining that.”

“No problem, teacher!” says he, going back to play with his Lego on the floor. I sat back and watched him playing like any other 7-year-old, my mind completely blown.

Days like today make it all worthwhile.

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Aside from the horrifying amount of yellow dust floating around these parts (we are all gasping and coughing like a deadly plague has descended upon us), it’s quite pleasant to be outside at the moment. Sunny, breezy, bright and cheerful.

I’ve spent a glorious afternoon in the park with friends, and several lovely evenings sitting at the picnic tables with cold drinks outside a convenience store downtown, watching the Korean world go by. Wandering through the streets as the sun is setting is still one of my favourite things to do here, perhaps stopping at a tiny mini-bar-in-a-tent to buy a refreshing cocktail in a bag – the novelty of that has yet to wear off! My favourite is the French Kiss, partly because it’s sweet and has a fruity and summery flavour, and partly because it’s fun to ask for from the cute ‘bartenders’ at the stalls.

And of course, there’s the street food. Good grief, I do go on about it a lot, but I absolutely love it! I’ve blogged about various kinds before, from fresh fruit or fried potato slices on sticks, to heavenly sweet syrup-filled pancakes, to spicy tteokbokki and hot roasted chestnuts. But I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned the one that’s the most ubiquitous of all: twigim.

Twigim is the broad, general term for the huge variety of deep-fried foods you can find stacked high on at least a couple of stalls on any given street in Korea. Similar to tempura (but miles better, if you ask me), twigim is addictive, deeply satisfying, and probably extremely unhealthy. I haven’t even come close to trying all the different kinds, mainly because I tend to find one I love and then order it every single time until I take a bite of whatever a friend is eating and decide that that’s my new favourite.

I’m not entirely sure what the exact definition of this street food is, but it seems to me that you can batter and deep fry pretty much anything and declare it to be twigim. Just about any vegetable, on its own or chopped and mixed with others, or stuffed… mandu (dumplings)… glass noodles wrapped in seaweed… squid… whole shrimps…

The pre-cooked snacks are piled on the table and usually sold in portions of 3-5. When you order, the vendor tosses your selection into the frier, and by the time you’ve paid and gotten your chopsticks (or toothpick!) ready, you’re being served a steaming plateful of Yum. You can take it away with you, but it’s really one of those foods that’s best eaten immediately, either standing right there at the cart or squashing around a rickety table under the canopy.

Brushing deep-fried mandu with sauce at a food cart in Seoul.

Some of my friends eating deep-fried stuffed peppers at one of our local food tents in Daejeon.

The battered snacks are usually chopped up into bite-sized pieces for you, and served with a soy sauce based dip.

Dipping sauce

Stuffed peppers: “고추전” (gochujeon)

I haven’t tried one that I didn’t like. My favourite for a long time was the shrimp  - golden and crispy on the outside, tender and succulent on the inside – but a few weekends ago Irish Friend One introduced me to the peppers and I cannot seem to move on from them. Whole green chilli peppers, stuffed with a mix that varies from vendor to vendor but usually includes other vegetables, egg, beef, spices, and noodles, all finely chopped and mixed together. The crispiness of the batter combined with the heat of the pepper and the flavour of the stuffing is out of this world.

No, this country has not been very good at all for my figure…

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My fifth grade class, the ones I’ve taught since my first day (when they were about 8 years old) are getting bored. It’s that horrible time when they’re about to morph into teenagers and go all Kevin on me, and I have no idea how to deal with it, having only taught young, smiley, happy kiddos up until now.

The thing is, they’re still children. The devastation of puberty has yet to hit, so for the most part they’re still sweet and polite and enthusiastic. But you can sort of… sense it. In the air. Hovering, circling, creeping up stealthily like a lioness on a wildebeest. The signs are growing.The chorus of excited chattering about their day’s adventures when they arrive each afternoon is still there, but is increasingly punctuated by the odd sigh of “I’m in a bad mood”, “I’m tired”, “I don’t want to study”. Most of them still work hard and try their hardest to join in with conversations, but there’s always someone intent on maintaining a listless, too-cool-for-school expression, or slumping over the desk looking perpetually bored. There are groans at everything: get out your books, sit down, let’s start, homework, spelling test, listening practice, roleplay time, speaking class… groan, groan, groan. It’s starting to panic me. I mean, I’m a kindergarten teacher. My 5-year-olds would cheer excitedly if I told them they were going to spend an hour picking specks of dust off the floor.

The problem is magnified by the fact that our school has never had students above the age of about 9 before. Mine are now 11. For one reason or another, the elementary kids drop out over the three or so years after kindergarten, some due to lack of interest or ability, some (far too many, in fact) due to stress, some due to changes of address, etc, etc. Our reputation and experience are therefore solely connected to little children – beginners. This little class is the only one that has kept coming year after year, and the powers that be don’t have a clue what to do with them. They present me with books that are far too easy, and then offer me replacements that a native-speaking university student would struggle with. There’s no curriculum in place, and no structure. We are flailing around cluelessly, and the kids – as I started to say at the beginning of this typically rambly post – are getting bored.

I realised today that I was starting to dread that final class of the day, the one that used to be my favourite, full of laughter and jokes and conversation. The glassy stares, the long silences, and the groans and complaining are getting me down and taking away my own enthusiasm along with theirs. Then it hit me that I didn’t have to keep fighting them like I have been doing. I could do whatever the hell I liked. I’d probably get permission to take them all on a field trip by myself, if I wanted (but my nerves would not survive the experience). So why was I still ploughing away through this book that they didn’t want to study?

I sometimes need to remind myself that I finally have a job where I really can do it my way. And all I really wanted to do when I was their age was… well, watch Friends. So… we watched Friends. Oh, sure, I spent time selecting the right scenes, making a previewing vocabulary list, writing a few discussion questions and suchlike. But basically, we watched Friends. We watched the same scene over and over and over, with new discussion points and exercises between each viewing.

For 50 minutes they worked harder than they have in ages, listening, concentrating, thinking in English. The beauty of it is that they genuinely didn’t think they were working. Bahahahaha! They thought they were having the afternoon off. To them, we were hanging out and watching a funny TV show. As far as I was concerned, they learned a couple of dozen new words, expressions, and contractions, practiced listening to normal-paced conversation until they understood it, and got a grasp of the concept of sarcasm for the first time.

For the first time in weeks, I left work buzzing with job satisfaction instead of feeling tired and defeated. I love how my job is all about staying on my toes, adapting to change, rolling with the punches, and being creative. I’m still relatively new to it, and I’m constantly learning.

That’s why, every time I get an email from a reader considering moving abroad to teach English, I always respond with a whole-hearted “Go for it!” – because I can think of no more valuable and rewarding experience than this one.

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See this post for an explanation. And here are some things I love beginning with E…

1. Eeyore.

“Good morning, Pooh Bear,” said Eeyore gloomily. “If it is a good morning,” he said. “Which I doubt,” said he.

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.”

“Can’t all what?” said Pooh, rubbing his nose.

“Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush.”

Not only is Eeyore my favourite Winnie the Pooh character, and not only is he drop dead gorgeous (What? He is.), but he’s a wise old sod, and the sort anguished, tormented soul that I am for some reason particularly drawn to in real life. Sad people don’t make me happy, but they bring out something in me that wants to take care of them, love them back to themselves, take the pain away even when it’s obviously impossible. I think that’s why I’ve loved Eeyore since I was a little girl reading about his missing tail for the first time:

“That Accounts for a Good Deal,” said Eeyore gloomily. “It Explains Everything. No Wonder.”

“You must have left it somewhere,” said Winnie the Pooh.

“Somebody must have taken it,” said Eeyore.

“How Like Them,” he added, after a long silence.

Poor Eeyore! My 8-year-old heart was broken on his behalf, and therefore I went on to spend much of my childhood feeling sorry for a fictional toy donkey. Which really tells you quite a lot about the person I am today, and all the donkeys I fall for.

2. English.

The longer I spend in parts of the world where English isn’t the primary language, the more grateful I feel to have been born and raised somewhere where it is. Only through travel have I realised what a complex language it is, and how insanely difficult it is to learn. And yet learn it you must, if you want to travel outside of your own country. Being a native English speaker cuts out a lot of hard work! Oh, and plus, it’s a wonderful language, full of quirks and eccentricities. Much like myself.

3. Eastern Europe

Well, Europe in general, I suppose, but there’s something about the East. I really, truly loved Estonia, and I’m now at the point where I know I can go back without being haunted by memories of what went before. Tallinn is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been in my life.

But as well as all the old, pastel-coloured buildings and cobbled streets that characterise the Baltic states in my mind, there’s so much more. It’s the history, I think. The grey Soviet architecture and monuments that remain amongst the picturesque towers and turrets. The intermingling of the cultures and languages of the now independent nations with those of Russia. The struggles and sadness of the past remembered in the determination and progress of the present. I will probably live in Eastern Europe again, if only to indulge my strange fascination with Soviet history once more.

Hails and Stalin in Tallinn

4. Eggs

Boiled, the yolk still runny, with hot buttered toast, for the perfect breakfast. Fried, served atop a plate of kimchi bokkeumbap, the yolk breaking and seeping through the rice in a delicious gooey mess. Scrambled, for the ultimate hangover food. Hard-boiled and dipped in a little salt at a picnic. Poached or Benedict, with smoked salmon and cream cheese. Stuffed/deviled at a buffet table, the first thing I’ll go for.

I love eggs so much that I had to stop writing at this point and go make deviled eggs at 11pm. 

5. Emotional reunions

Not my own… I’m not very good at them. But one of the things that makes spending time in airports more bearable for me is watching people come and go. The loved ones they can’t bear to say goodbye to. The frantic searching of the crowd at arrivals until they see the one face that matters to them, and break into a run. The hugs, the tears, the kisses. The stories I write in my head to explain the brief moments I witness before the characters are lost in a sea of faces. The goodbyes provide much better material for me as a writer… but I friggin’ hate goodbyes, so it’s the reunions that bring me the most pleasure.

6. Equality

Something has been bugging me lately, and it’s getting to the point where I’m either going to have to accept it as a cultural difference, or accept that I can’t accept it, and move on. I’ve been aware since I first got here that women don’t have quite the same status as in the West. I always took equality for granted, and can’t think of a single incident in my life where I lost out or received ‘unfair’ treatment simply because I’m female – at least, not that I was aware of. In Korea, women appear to have equal rights, and no one could deny that there are plenty of successful, independent women here, but it doesn’t quite filter down to the core of society. If a woman pays the taxi driver, for example, he will often ignore her outstretched hand and pass the change to a male passenger instead. In restaurants, I’ve asked questions about the menu, only to have the waiter turn to look at Irish Friend One as he replies.

We mostly laugh it off, of course. That’s just the way they are, here. We joke about it. Why are you asking me? I’m just a woman, what would I know?! What I do find hugely upsetting, though, is the way it plays out in my workplace. My male colleague (the only male teacher in the school) arrived when I had already been here for a year and a half. Within a few weeks, he was the golden boy. He practically has a fan club, and I struggle to keep my head held high and know that I am still valuable in my own way. The appreciation shown to me for the work I do and the hours I put in is minimal at best, but I try to remind myself that it comes in a different form – being given more responsibilities, being  trusted with designing my own curriculum, being asked for my input and advice. I know I’m doing a good job, and I know my employers see it. But the one who gets all the recognition and praise, and who is always the first to receive information (and has recently been delegating work to me as if he is now my superior – which you couldn’t really blame him for thinking), is my male colleague, who has been here for a third of the time that I have. It makes me want to scream “It’s not fairrrrrrrrr!!!” but I tend to just kick things occasionally, when it all gets to be too much, and then get on quietly with doing my job. For that is the Korean way… if you’re a woman.

7. Evenings

Mornings are really the bane of my existence, and I would have them banned if I could. They make me angry with the world, and I want to kill everyone when my alarm goes off. There’s a wee mobile shop thing that goes around our neighbourhood approximately 2 minutes after my alarm sounds (for the first of many times between hitting snooze), every single day. It plays a voice recording in a robotic and distorted-sounding man’s voice, through an echoing megaphone. Blah-blah-blah it goes. Then: Odeng. Ddeokbokki. Kongnamul. The only three words I can pick out. Over, and over, and over. Every. Fecking. Morning. I do not know the man who recorded this spiel, nor the person who drives the van past my window at 2mph, nor the one who cooks the foods on sale.  It does not matter. I want them all dead.

Evenings, though, are wonderful things. The sun setting, the city lighting up in a sea of neon, the people heading out for dinner, the steady drone of crickets outside my window. Evenings are when I have achieved things with my day, and am ready to wind down and relax. Evenings are for cooking, writing, reading, relaxing, thinking, talking to friends, savouring a cocktail or a nice meal. Evening is my time, and it kicks morning’s ass!

8. Elton John

I can’t help it, I am a slave to Elton’s ballads. It may be that they are just so much fun to sing, either alone as I do the housework (because I never, never grab a hairbrush as a microphone and strut around the apartment like a pop star), or at an actual karaoke night. Your Song, Sacrifice, I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues, Daniel… all much-repeated favourite karaoke songs of mine. Thank you, Elton. I love you.

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For the past three years, I’ve taken a trip to the city of Gyeongju as soon as Spring arrives. And yet for some reason, I don’t seem to have written much about it… I wrote about the traditional accommodation and the ancient burial mounds, but that’s about it.  So, third time being a charm and all, here we go.

I have visited a pretty large number of places in Korea during my time here, from huge, bustling cities, to quaint little traditional towns, to seaside towns and cities, to green tea fields and farms, to tiny islands and isolated mountain villages. I can honestly say that of all of these, Gyeongju is the most beautiful, and the one that will always stick in my mind as a tranquil, picturesque getaway spot.

It was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Silla, and as such contains several UNESCO world heritage sites, including Bulguksa Temple (apparently the most impressive temple in Korea, and they make you work for it – it’s quite a trek up into the mountains to reach it!).

Having visited pretty much all of the sites during my first trip in 2010, the past two have been more about relaxing in the beautiful surroundings. Last year, we timed our visit perfectly for a rather hippyish day of picnics and cherry blossoms:

This year, we were a little early (or the flowers were a little late), but had a lovely weekend all the same. The best way to enjoy Gyeongju is to rent bicycles (very cheap at 10,000 won for the whole day) and just take off down a random street.

Or, as we did on Saturday night, just go for a walk and soak up the late evening sunshine and the atmosphere of the busy street markets.

Of course, I ended up sunburnt as it was the first hot weekend of the year, and I have no sense and no memory of all the other times I said “never again”. But other than that, it was a lovely trip!

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See this post for an explanation. And here are some things I love beginning with ‘R’…

1. Reading As an adult, I don’t read nearly enough – especially when you consider that, as a child, I was the biggest bookworm you can imagine. I always had my nose in a book. Usually an Enid Blyton one. Her tales of ordinary children having exciting escapades and discovering magical far-off lands appealed to my curiosity about the huge, unknown world, and my desire for adventure. As soon as I learned how to read, I was hooked. From the age of maybe 6 or 7, I read at least a book a day, holed up in my room, or sitting in the sun when forced outside for some fresh air, or in the car (explaining why I suffered from car sickness!). I perfected the skill of propping up a book on the edge of my cereal bowl with the rim holding it open at the right page, unable to put down my book for long enough to eat. Once, I finished a book and found myself struggling with a physical sensation I couldn’t quite identify. It was like hunger – I suppose, looking back as an adult, I’d call it what I know (from far too many kinds of experience!) to be a craving. I ate a snack and felt no better. Then I picked up another book, and instantly felt sated.  I later told my mother: “Sometimes, I feel hungry, and I don’t know whether it’s because I want to eat something or read something.”

Nowadays, there are too many distractions. The internet is a huge one for me, as it takes some serious willpower for me to switch off the computer, ignore Facebook and my email, put my phone on silent, and focus for long enough to get started on a book. If I force myself to do it, though, I’m just that same, addicted book lover that I was as a little girl. Nothing can drag me out of the world I’m holding in my hands. Well, until sleep finally gets the better of me, and I wake up with the lights still on and an open book on my head. This has happened more than once over the past week.

2. Restaurants There are some restaurants I love simply because they hold fond memories for me, and because they are chilled-out, relaxing places to sit and linger over a meal and lots of wine with friends for hours on end. But in general, I love trying new restaurants. The downside of this in Korea is that more often than not, this involves sitting on the floor – such a fun, novelty thing to do at first, but my legs really do not cope very well with it! Women are supposed to sit on their knees, but sod that, I’d be screaming with leg cramps after five minutes. Even cross-legged, I have to shift position constantly to avoid seizing up.

I endure the discomfort, however, for the food. Korean restaurants are my favourite that I’ve experienced thus far in my travels. So cheap, so basic, but so, so good. The food is packed full of flavour, and there’s more of it than you could possibly eat in one sitting. Copious side dishes (banchan) cover every inch of the table – and they’re all free, with as many refills as you want. Many types of Korean restaurant involve sharing one meal that is cooked in the centre of the table – barbecued beef (galbi) or pork (samgyeopsal), spicy chicken in a pan (dak galbi), various soups and stews bubbling in a huge pot. They just keep bringing you more and more extras until you can eat no more.

I eat in restaurants far more often in Korea than I ever have before, mainly because here, I can easily afford to. It’s by no means a luxury – usually, it works out cheaper than cooking. Whether with friends as part of our socialising, or alone at little diners and ‘hole-in-the-wall’ places, I dine out at least 2 or 3 times a week. I’ll probably never be able to live like this again, so I’m making the most of it!

3. Robert Downey Jr. ‘Nuff said.

4. Ruins My favourite sites to visit when I’m travelling. Thousands of years old, like the ruined amphitheater in the mesmerising ancient Italian town of Aosta, or just a few decades, like the abandoned cottage that used to sit near my granny’s house, a rusty old teapot still on the stove. Ruins feed my imagination and stir my desire to seek out the stories behind what I can see. Who was here? What did they do? What happened to them?

5. Rice Despite where I come from, I’ve always preferred what my grandparents would call “foreign food” over the traditional staples of my own country – that is to say, the potatoes, the casseroles and the stews. My mum is a great cook, and she was always trying new recipes when I was a child, so I grew up with a pretty varied diet and taste buds that like a lot of different things. I would eat my bangers and mash, my shepherd’s pie, and my baked beans cheerfully enough, but they were never my favourites. It was the pasta and rice dishes that had me scraping my plate clean and asking for more. Spaghetti bolognese, chilli con carne, pasta bakes, stirfries, curries… anything with a bit of spice and sauce, nothing dry and bland. When I taught myself to cook, after moving away to university, it was first by following my mother’s carefully-written recipes for my favourite meals. After a while, I began cautiously creating my own pasta dishes and Chinese-style stirfries, and then – finally, in my tiny Korean kitchen – following and tweaking recipes for Korean food using totally unfamiliar ingredients. Just about every meal I cook or buy involves either pasta or rice. And it’s fortunate that I love rice, because in Korea, rice IS your meal. Everything else is just for flavour, really. The rice here is fabulous – sticky and soft rather than thin, hard grains like other varieties. I love it!

6. Roast Beef Monster Munch This follows on from “Crisps” in the previous post, so you’re probably getting an idea of how much I love these various unhealthy snacks. Monster Munch have been around since before I was born, and even the sight of the packet takes me back to my childhood. The roast beef ones beat the other flavours hands down.

The generally accepted method for eating Monster Munch is to bite off one toe at a time from each monster paw, and then eat the rest. I used to be quite particular about following this procedure. Nowadays, in my crisp-deprived life, I tend to go a bit crazy when I come face-to-face with a packet of Monster Munch, and only manage to eat a maximum of three paws in this controlled, restrained manner before tearing into them and eating them more like the name would suggest.

7. Rain I think I may be a little unusual in this one, but I love a good rainy day. I love the heavy, dark clouds threatening to burst, and the dramatic, gloomy feel that the world has when it’s overcast like that. I love the tapping sound of the first few drops of rain as they start to fall, the tapping becoming soft pattering, then pounding as the downpour gets underway. I love the sound of torrential rain pelting against my window, and I love watching the streets become roaring rapids as people scatter for cover. I even love walking in the rain, providing I’m going home for a shower afterwards and don’t have to be anywhere looking presentable. I love the feeling of the cool rain on my skin, running down my face, particularly in the Korean summer when it comes as a blissful relief from the heat that torments me. And although I’ve only done it once in my life, I love dancing in the rain. That’s something I fully intend to do again!

I love the expression of the passer-by in this picture. The rain really was coming down in torrents!

8. Renting People always told me it was foolish, a waste, risky, money down the drain. You might as well buy, and be paying off your mortgage instead of your landlord’s mortgage. At least you’ll own something at the end of it! But they didn’t want the same things as me, I later discovered. Buying a house with my then fiancé was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. Instantly my life was transformed into something I had never wanted it to be. Possessions. Accumulation of stuff. Financial pressure and responsibilities. And above all, confinement. This house, this thing I had purchased in order to fill it with yet more things, this was my world now. This was where I belonged. And unlike most people, I was devastated at this realisation. No freedom, no chance to explore the huge world of possibilities, no adventures, no travel. Just a life of bills, restrictions, and suffocation under the mountains of “stuff” that I would gather over the years.

I won’t say I’ll never buy again, but for now, renting suits me down to the ground. I don’t need a fancy home full of proud possessions. I need a place to sleep, cook, shower, rest, write, and store my clothes, books, and laptop. That’s all. If there are any problems with plumbing or maintenance  or whatever, they’re not mine to worry about – I tell the landlord and it magically gets fixed for me. If I decide to move to the other side of the world on a whim, I simply pack up my clothes and laptop, give away the books, and leave the rented apartment behind. I’m free.

9. Rest And I really could do with some of that right now.

10. Reminiscing There are some stories that I have heard, told, and shared with my family and friends dozens of times, if not hundreds. Some of them, I know word for word – my mother’s story of how she met my father, the funny stories my lifelong friend and I share about the things we got up to in Sixth Form, South African Friend Four’s regular retelling of tales about various nights out we’ve had. I never tire of them. I will listen to (and tell) the same stories again and again, because, for me, they are what I have to show for my life. Not possessions, not a house filled with stuff (see point 8). It’s about people and experiences and adventures and laughter. I don’t have a house, but I have the time I leapt in front of a moving bus in Korea to stop a crazy driver “kidnapping” my friend. I don’t have a car, but I have the Saturday afternoons I spent in the Blues Club with my parents and friends. I don’t have any furniture, collections, or ornaments, but I have the time I did vodka rituals in Mongolia, and the time I tried to calm down Irish Friend Two as she raged at a bus driver in Japan, and the time I dressed up for the Rocky Horror Picture Show with my university friends, and the time Becs and I got told off at the age of 16 for “playing with dollies” (!) in class, and the time I practiced my French with Le Flatmate in Lyon by watching dubbed X Files episodes with him, and the time I lived in a grand house with my own swimming pool and spa and drove my temporary Mercedes around Switzerland and beyond and learned (in French) how to take care of an entire roomful of parrots. I might not buy things, and it might look like I have nothing… but when I reminisce? I feel like I couldn’t possibly want anything more.

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