Work in Progress

I’m back! I sincerely apologize for my lack of posting. These past two weeks have been a whirlwind of trying new food (as per usual), going to my first MT, a splash of sickness, and lots of studying. The title is referring to some challenges I had, but it's mostly because I couldn't think of anything better to replace the default title with. Keep reading to hear what I learned, what I failed to learn, and some fun experiences.

September 26th

On Monday night, my friend and I wandered around Anam until we settled on a place to eat dinner. We decided on this restaurant that is always bustling with people when we walk by called Ttaeng Korean Pancake. The entrance is this big concrete wall with a wooden door and what looks like an egg sign. We ordered assorted jeon (pancakes) and the maeun deung galbijjim, which is basically braised spicy pork ribs. First, they brought out a little heater for the table and set a metal bowl filled with red broth and piled high with bean sprouts, cabbage, pork ribs, and rice cakes on top of it. At this point, we hadn’t realized that we had even ordered the pancakes, so we began mixing the food. We also weren’t sure if we needed to cook the food in the bowl, so we spent what was probably too long mixing it, until a random older lady walking past gestured that we could go ahead and eat it. The pork ribs were so tender and delicious, whatever they had marinated them in was immaculate. We were satisfied with our order, and then we were brought two new plates with jeon. I’m not sure what was in all of them, but one had squid, another was basically fried zucchini, and the other was probably sweet pumpkin. It was way more food than we intended to order, even though the menu indicated it was meant for two people. Regardless, all of it was good and, as always, we felt bad leaving so much uneaten.

September 27th

Tuesday I had classes as usual. In my Korean speaking class, we began learning one of the Korean number systems. Although memorizing numbers 1-10 was easy enough, it gets immensely more complicated once you reach the 1,000s. After stumbling through the lesson, my friend and I quickly ate a hotdog and coffee outside before heading to our next class. This week in my Korean diplomacy class, we were able to hear from one of the former Korean ambassadors to the United Nations. It was especially interesting his work during one of the North Korean missile crises. According to him, North Korea would test missiles every Sunday, and by the end of the day, he would have had to meet with a number of other ambassadors in the UN to calculate their response. Eventually, with his equivalents in the U.S., Russia, and China missions, they were able to develop four UN Security Council resolutions that imposed sanctions on the DPRK.

After our classes, my friends and I had dinner across the street at a place called Darling Steak, which serves cubed steak, pasta, and pizza. I ordered the cream bacon pasta and a glass of red wine, both of which were delicious. We then wrapped up our night in the dorm lounge messing around with a slime kit we bought in a convenience store. If you’ve never done this, it is a must-try. It may seem silly or childish, but it is extremely satisfying.

September 28th

Wednesday was another day full of classes. For lunch, I ate at a place called Issac Toast, similar to the Egg Drop place I’ve talked about before. I got the potato, egg, cheese, and bacon sandwich, and I’m happy to report they do not coat their bread with sugar. For dinner, my friend and I tried Thunder Chicken. When they’re open, they have a little glass display that sticks out of the restaurant where they put their fresh chicken. We got a combo plate with regular fried chicken and sweet and sour chicken, and like four different types of potato fries. I also got a draft beer, the typical Korean way to enjoy fried chicken. It wasn’t anything crazy, but it was still pretty enjoyable.

September 29th

On Thursday after wrapping up my first two classes (where I’m still struggling with numbers but am getting the hang of making sentences), my friend and I met up at Burger King. I’ve never had Burger King back in the states, and I’ve never had the desire to. However, according to my friend, it was actually pretty good here. So, maybe a little reluctantly, I attempted the bacon burger meal and a cheese stick (that was only 1,000 won??). I was pleasantly surprised, it was actually really good.

Later that night, I met up with some people from my KUBA group to have dinner at a restaurant called Biya that serves budae jjigae, also known as army stew. This originates from the period after the Korean war when Korea was struggling with widespread poverty and food shortages. People would often use surpluses from U.S. military bases in the area to make up for this. The stew was typically made with spam, ham, hotdogs, baked beans, kimchi, and garlic among other things- an interesting fusion between Korean and American food. Although the dish originates out of need, it has become an extremely popular dish in Korea and today is made with more high-quality ingredients. The one we ordered had bean sprouts, garlic, cabbage, ramen, spam, sausage, tteok (rice cakes), pepper flakes, and ramen. I absolutely loved it. It obviously has a really interesting backstory, but it also tastes amazing. Besides the great food, I also had great company. I am still learning so much about what it is like to grow up in Korea. It’s especially interesting to hear about the differences in high schools. From my experience, most people in the states were involved in clubs, worked part-time somewhere, and usually still had time to socialize with friends. But I’ve heard from many Koreans at KU that they basically study all day, every day to ensure they could get into a good university. So for some, college is kind of the first time they actually have the time to join different organizations or date.

September 30th

Friday was an exciting day- it was my KUBA group’s MT. MT, or Membership Training, is a big deal for university students in Korea. Most clubs or groups host an MT every year to encourage bonding between their members. It’s basically a two-day retreat somewhere remote with a variety of ice-breaking games to help everyone get to know each other.

So, at 11:30 AM, my group met up at the Korea University entrance, piled into three buses, and made the two-hour drive to Chuncheon. The drive was absolutely gorgeous, we drove through mountains and eventually into a valley with a beautiful river winding through it. We all agreed it was good to get out of Seoul and the city smog. After the buses miraculously made it through the tight, twisty roads up the mountain, we made it to our destination. We were staying at a complex that had several buildings for us to sleep in and a soccer field, right by peaceful farm fields, a village, and a mountainous backdrop. After we got settled in, we spent the next couple of hours exploring the surrounding area, playing card games, or watching people play soccer. At around 6:30 PM we gathered around the picnic tables for a delicious meal of Korean BBQ. Although we didn’t cook it ourselves this time, we were able to grab it fresh from the grill. We had a beautiful view of the sunset against the surrounding mountaintops and a shining crescent moon. We then proceeded to stay up way too late playing various games, like truth or dare, a Korean name game, and mafia.

October 1st

The MT was a blast, but waking up the next day to leave was absolutely brutal. After sleeping through the bus ride back, my friends and I slowly made our way back to the dorms to continue sleeping the day away.

That night, I met up with some of my other friends at Cafe Ann, a popular 24/7 cafe in Anam. We went there with strong intentions of studying, but the loud (and very interesting) music playing dissuaded us. Surprisingly, they were playing a lot of 2000s hits, so of course, we were distracted.

October 2nd

On Sunday, my friend and I made our way to Gangnam to try to find a cute cafe to study at. We ended up at Alver, which is a three-story, rustic coffee shop that smelt of delicious tiramisu. I was actually able to get most of my reading for International Politics in Northeast Asia done (reading theories on why wars start is actually fascinating). However, we discovered that this place was very popular in Gangnam, and soon the place was packed and impossible to focus in. We wandered around the area determined to find a quiet place to study, but realized that Gangnam cafes on a Sunday afternoon are not about that. We attempted to study at a place called Paulin Pancake, where we all had to buy something to stay (which is very common in Korea). Here too, the volume proved to be too loud. What we did find though was an Austin Texas BBQ restaurant, which smelt delicious from outside. We weren’t hungry enough for dinner, but I added it to my list to try. Although I love Korean BBQ, I miss my Texas BBQ.

For dinner, after a quick trip to Home Plus (can you tell we love it there?), we returned to our favorite corndog shop near Wolgok Station. This time I got the regular panko-crusted cheese corndog and then a skewer with fried rice cakes and sausage. My friend also got cheese sticks that we hoped would be like mozzarella sticks back home. My friend enjoyed hers, so she offered me one. I bit into it, and it was SO sweet. Like there was honey or some sweet paste inside of it. Imagine biting into a cheese stick, thinking it’s going to be salty, savory, and delicious, and instead getting straight sugar. It was traumatizing. Okay, I may be being a tad dramatic, but it threw me off big time. Come to realize there were two types of cheese sticks in the bag, one did in fact taste like mozzarella sticks back home, but the other was evidently something else entirely.

October 3rd-8th

I know I know, this time range summary is a huge divergence from the rest of my blogs. I promise it’s mostly not because I’m lazy, but I somehow came down with tonsillitis. Thankfully it’s not contagious and the nearby clinic was incredibly efficient, so I was still able to go to classes, but I still took it easy the next couple of days. I’ll quickly give you some of the minimal highlights:

Tuesday night I went to a KU hockey scrimmage against Yonsei University- our biggest and oldest rival in literally everything. I grew up watching my older brother play hockey so I was excited. I’m not sure if it was because it was a rivalry game or if it’s just how hockey is played in Korea, but it was so intense. I’m used to seeing lots of checking and fights, but this was one body-crushing check after the next. I saw elbows, tripping, slashing- the whole works- and only the occasional penalty called. I loved it. Unfortunately, KU lost by three points to Yonsei, but nevertheless, it was extremely exciting to watch.

Friday was actually a pretty full day. In the morning we returned to our favorite brunch place, Planty, with the delicious fluffy pancakes and jam. We then traveled to Seobinggo to visit the National Museum of Korea. First, it is free to enter, and second, even just the outside of the museum is beautiful. The first thing you encounter when walking up to the entrance is the mirror pool, which, as the name would suggest, almost perfectly reflects the sky and its surroundings. In between a roof that connects the two buildings, steps lead up to a beautiful view of Northern Seoul. Inside the museum was arguably just as pretty. The main hall is a symmetrical, light, open hallway that extends through the entirety of the museum. At the end of the hall stands a ten-story pagoda from Gyeongcheonsa Temple- a national treasure of Korea. The museum apparently holds over 420,000 artifacts documenting the history of Korea. We wandered the Prehistory, Ancient History, Medieval and Early Modern History, and the Calligraphy and Painting galleries. There was a lot. There was this pristine wooden table that was 450 years old. They also had a fifth-century Silla gold crown on display which is another national treasure of Korea. It was amazing just how much history there was to see, and I felt like I was only getting the slightest glimpse.

We then walked the surrounding grounds, called the Pagodo Garden, which had lots of cats and various statues along the path. Eventually, we happened upon Dragon Falls, which was a pond situated in a clearing of the surrounding forest. In the background, you could hear the gentle hiss of the waterfall, and steam rose from behind some rocks. It was truly a beautiful sight. We ended our stroll in the Yongsan Family Park, which was also gorgeous. As always, everything was so green and the weather was amazing. There was even a little bridge that stretched across a pond full of lily pads and koi fish.

We then headed to a Jimin cafe across the river. For those of you who need an explanation (like I did), Jimin is a member of the K-pop band BTS whose birthday is coming up. In celebration, a bunch of cafes are decorated with everything Jimin related- posters, cups, video screens, you name it. I felt a bit like a poser being there since I don’t really listen to K-pop, but my friend was pumped. After she got her Jimin postcard and cup, we grabbed a quick dinner at The Paper Plate, a New York City-style pizza place that was tasty (they even gave us free ranch). To finish on the right note, on our ride home, we got on this completely empty subway. As soon as we sat down, the lights dimmed and started flashing until a worker ushered us off. We still have no idea why it was empty or flashing, but some things are meant to stay mysteries.

So What Am I Learning?

If you can’t tell, I have (mostly) failed to learn Korean numbers, how to order the right portion sizes, and to expect sweet food all the time. I did learn that tonsillitis sucks though! Overall, the past two weeks have been very exciting and very exhausting. I loved getting the opportunity to get to know more international students at MT, something I have felt I wasn’t excelling in. I do feel like I am being challenged in most areas of life here- whether it’s viewing things from different perspectives in international relations, learning a new number system, trying new food almost daily, or consistently meeting new people. All this to say, I am loving it, and I know each challenge is just another chance for me to grow.