Squid, Scooters, and Suicidal Cabbies

Having been in Korea for almost a month, one thing I can definitely say is that—at least at this point—nothing is boring. Even tasks and events that would be mundane in the States can become full-blown adventures in the “Land of the Morning Calm”

Grocery shopping here is way more fun than back home. It’s kind of like a treasure hunt where the map is in a different language. I’ve been to two different grocery stores since I’ve been here, and what we take for granted in the US is that groceries are kind of the same anywhere. It’s a little bit of a shock to walk into the grocery store and find octopi, vegetables you’ve never heard of, and a million packages you can’t even read. The first couple of times I went in I had to walk through the entire store to find what I was looking for (since all the signs are in Korean) and just praying that it was actually here. There are some signs in English, but they’re not always right. Guess what I found under the sign labeled “Sports.”

That’s right, you guessed it, dog food. Of course. If you do manage to find what you’re looking for, who knows whether it’s really what you think it is. I got a bag of Cheetos in a convenience store the first day I was here, and was rather surprised when I opened it up. They were the shape of Cheetos, but instead of being cheese-flavored, they were part barbeque, part kimchi-flavored and not at all appetizing. Though when I did first manage to find what I was looking for, the sense of accomplishment was greater than I could possibly have imagined after grocery shopping in the States.

Though grocery shopping is exciting and fun, it’s not as necessary as in the US. Most of the time here it’s cheaper to eat out than to make your own food, especially if you’re trying to eat healthily. Meat and vegetables are not cheap raw. However, I’ve been to at least ten different restaurants since I’ve been here, and have seen at least forty more, all within three blocks of my apartment. There are places called Kimbop Shops where you can get a very substantial Korean meal for 3-4 dollars. Although eating out is not without its excitement either. Some places have picture menus, and a few even have English menus, but most have only Korean menus, if they have menus at all. And ordering unknown items here is not quite as safe as in the US. When Derek and Claire were here last week we went to a Shabu Shabu restaurant (Shabu Shabu involves putting meat, lettuce and other vegetables into a pot of boiling water or broth that is cooking on your table, and pulling them back out with your chopsticks and eating them). I was looking at the menu (because I had been there before) and had narrowed down what we wanted to one of two options. Having no idea which one was what we wanted, I decided to choose the one that had a green ribbon printed next to the name. When the woman brought us our food, we were slightly surprised to see a plate of raw seafood. And this was not your average seafood: there were octopi, squid, shrimp (completely unpeeled, including heads), crabs that had been cut in half that were about the size of a sand dollar, about 4 different types of mussels, and two or three things we couldn’t identify and didn’t resemble anything I’d ever seen before. So we managed to convince the waitress to bring us an order of beef to go with our seafood. We ate all the seafood (which we were pretty proud of) as well as the beef. The whole thing only cost us $21.

Even crossing the street here can be a bit of an adventure. One of the first things you learn when crossing the street is that red lights are more of a suggestion than a rule. Anyone here that’s been in a cab after midnight has noticed that the only reason the cab drivers slow down is if there is a 75% chance of death or better. Anything less isn’t worth their time. The cab drivers here are kind of crazy. I’m actually really surprised that I haven’t seen or been in any accidents since I’ve been here. I’m pretty sure no one here has heard of “blindspots” or “rear view mirrors.” Hell, some of the people here don’t even turn their lights on at night.

The other roadway hazard is motorized scooters. They’re everywhere, and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one stop at a stoplight. They weave in and out of traffic and rarely travel below 50 miles an hour. The most exciting part about the scooters is that they drive on the sidewalk (at about the same speed as when they’re on the road). I’ve only been actually bumped once, but they’ve definitely gotten my adrenaline going more than a couple of times.

You can’t even go into a bar here without the possibility for adventure arising. I went out with my friend Dave and some of his friends for his birthday last week. We went to Sumyeon, which is kind of a big downtown area. We went to a couple of different bars and eventually ended up at this bar called the Fuzzy Navel. Now when we got there, a couple of Korean women started pulling Dave and me towards the dance floor. We politely declined if for no other reason than we hadn’t even gotten drinks yet. Then two Korean men started being really friendly with us and inquiring about our female friends. We politely tried to skirt any questions about our current relationships with said girls (since if we said they weren’t our girlfriends there was a good chance they would hit on them, and if we said they were, they would want us to kiss them). So later, when we ran into these fellows again, it came out that these guys had been married to the women who had tried to get us to dance earlier. For EIGHT years. It sounded like a very healthy relationship on both sides. Well, it either didn’t bother them that their wives seemed interested in us, or they didn’t notice, because they kept pouring us drinks for most of the night.

So while a lot of things here are still pretty foreign to me, there are a lot of things that are just a lot more fun, if for no other reason than that it takes considerably more brainpower to complete most tasks here. I’m sure some of the shine will wear off in a month or two, but for now, I’m just going to keep enjoying my exciting life.