Best of Korea

THE PEOPLE It was wonderful reuniting with former students, colleagues, and friends and seeing how well everyone is doing. The Korean people are warm and friendly and welcoming, and they were absolutely the best part of the trip. (And I didn’t have time to spend with everyone, alas.) THE FOOD You’ve seen the photos. Enough said. SOMETHING NEW If your exposure to Korea is limited to Incheon (international airport) and Seoul, it’s easy to get the impression that the country is all concrete and skyscrapers. This time I went to the Korean National Museum of Contemporary Art, which is in a park-like setting outside of Seoul. The drive and museum grounds provided views of the mountains and countryside that are much more typical of the Korea. Then on Thursday afternoon a colleague treated me to a walking tour of a quaint neighborhood in downtown Seoul. The scale changes completely there—I’m talking narrow alleyways and small buildings with old tiled rooves—and I completely fell in love. After catching the sunset from a neighborhood lookout, we rushed to a tea house for warming drinks and a treat. Thank you, Sae-Jun, for completely changing my impression of your city!

Last Night

A lavish banquet followed our all-day conference. Even after much toasting and stuffing, two former students were reluctant to drop me at my hotel. “Let’s go for drinks and night view!” Well, okay. We headed to a tall building I had seen from my hotel room (second photo), slipping and sliding past Christmas light displays (up through the lunar new year) and a temple illuminated with lanterns. We sipped kir royales—my first since I had defended my dissertation!—and had a wonderful talk as we admired the city, old and new, from the 33rd floor. It was a perfect ending to my short visit to Korea.

Eating Korean

Set-up in many Korean restaurants is a do-it-yourself matter. Locals look for a box or drawer in the table and begin to lay out the necessities: metal chopsticks and long-handled soup spoons and napkins that more closely resemble U.S. facial tissues. There are also scissors to snip food into bite-sized chunks, which is helpful in chopstick land. Then they grab the jug of water and fill glasses. The table itself may have chairs or may be a low one where diners sit on cushions on a heated floor. For traditional dining, you choose your protein source, which arrives with a seemingly endless supply of side dishes. Seriously, these spreads can make Thanksgiving look like a light snack, and emptied dishes are promptly replaced. It’s a bit of a nightmare for someone like me who doesn’t like overeating or wasting food. (One of the conference speakers, a dancer, arrived early and went to a Korean restaurant on his own. He stayed there for hours trying to clean his plate before giving up in dismay!) I asked a Korean professor about the waste. She said that the government had tried to address it by mandating charges for every item brought to the table—fifty cents for kimchi, for example—but the people rebelled. I also asked what a typical dinner in a Korean home might comprise. The minimum requirements are soup, protein dish, rice, and the national staple, kimchi. Dessert is another soup or fruit or both. These days Koreans are importing pineapple because they think it helps digest meat. Koreans are thoughtful eaters, but which I mean that they are concerned about their health and diet and carefully teach their children which foods to eat and in what combination. In the photos, notice the sashimi with goldleaf, the unusual presentation of kimchi (red inside green), and the kebob appetizers at the Indian restaurant. (The array in the second photo is lunch for six people!) Who’s hungry?!

Never Prepped for Class like that Before...

Thursday dawned bright and cold (11*F/-11C). I was scheduled to teach at 10am, and another former student had spent the night in my apartment so she could attend the class. Hai-Kyung picked us up at 8:00 for a "humble breakfast" at a small locals place. She explained that she was ordering us a traditional hangover breakfast--although we didn't have hangovers! In Seoul, it's a beansprout soup served with a raw egg and other mix-in's, including seaweed, kimchi, red pepper paste, and briny shrimp. It's served at a nuclear temperature and is accompanied with moju. "What's that?" "Oh, it's a fermented rice wine, but it's heated so most of the alcohol is gone." OMG! I took a small sip to get relief from the soup. My moju was definitely not heated, and I felt its warmth spread through my body. The other student looked at me and giggled, and I hoped we would be closer to relaxed than goofy by the time I needed to teach! When in Rome... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haejangguk

Italian in Korea?!!!

Turns out it's the locals' favorite non-Korean food. I asked why and was mostly surprised by the answers: Korean and Italian people share the same temperaments (?!), both countries are peninsulas (!!!), and everyone loves garlic (well, duh). On my first full day in the country, I had the wicked good luck of having Italian for both lunch and dinner--much to the embarrassment of my poor host (who simply couldn't believe that I really love the stuff). A shared lunch for three included caesar salad, garlic bread, pizza, risotto, and three pastas. The salad and pastas were excellent and mostly traditional. The pizza options, though, gave me a flashback to England where they top their baked potatoes with the likes of tuna and corn. The host chose sweet potato--thinly sliced, fortunately--and avoided more, uh, "interesting" combos like gorgonzola with honey dipping sauce. For dinner it was caprese salad and more risotto. Funny thing is that the lunch planned for Friday's conference was also to be Italian, but my host was so horrified at the prospect of three Italian meals for me that she switched it to the best Indian restaurant in Seoul. Yum all around!

First Night

TUESDAY, 8 JANUARY 2013 - Korea is COLD, as promised, and I've already lost my gloves! (Why did I bring two caps, two scarves, and only one pair of gloves?!) My first Korean student picked me up at the airport and brought me to my campus accommodations. It's a three-bedroom apartment with beds that are hard, hard, and hard. There is a small entrance area where you kick off your shoes before stepping up on to the heated floor. Aaaah! As you see in the photo, there are plastic shoes provided for use in the bathroom or outside hallway, but otherwise the apartment is a no-shoe zone. Hai-Kyung took me to a nearby traditional restaurant for dinner. As you walk in, it looks like a meat market, with cases of beef and pork to choose from. You pick your raw material and go sit at a table with a fire pit in the middle. A guy with big mitts promptly delivers a pot of glowing coals. Then you start grilling your own meat as the first-course sides arrive: garlic, chili paste, kimchi, onions and vinegar, etc. Hai-Kyung did the grilling honors as I cuddled up to the embers. When the meat is ready, you grab it with a leaf of lettuce and wrap a little package with the sides of your choice. To finish off the meal, we had my fave, COLD noodle soup. It actually comes out with crushed ice in the bowl. Koreans believe that it is the perfect complement to the meat and think that it helps warm you in winter by moving the warmth to the outside of your body. I was back at the apartment by 8pm, settling in and trying to use the computer. (Everything comes up in Korean.) I hopped in to a hot shower before realizing the towel supply consisted of eight tea towels. After swabbing off in installments, I took a melatonin to help with jetlag and crawled into my hard, hard bed. Maybe I'll sleep on the heated floor tomorrow night.

Long-Haul Air Travel is not for the Impatient

If you'd like to get a taste of it at home, take an armchair and place it close to a wall so you won't have too much leg room. Then sit there for 14 hours. In the event you fall asleep, arrange to have someone turn on all the lights and bring you some bad food. Then realize that you still have 5.5 hours to go. Ugh! Although my never-ending flight reminded me at times of the movie Groundhog Day, I enjoyed some spectacular sights from my window seat. Our direct course to Incheon took us on a far northerly route, and I spotted my summer place just before we entered Canadian airspace. "Hellooo, Door Peninsula and Washington Island!" Hours later I caught a red dawn glow over the Arctic ice cap--there's no full sunrise up there at this time of the year. A proper sunrise came at 11:11am over Siberia. What a sight! Nothing but mounds and drifts and piles and mountains of snow under a vivid blue sky. I took countless pictures, but I doubt they will do justice to the austere landscape. (I'm now pretending that I've viewed Antarctica, which has been on my life list for a long time.)

Countdown to Korea

I'm packing lots of warm clothes as all reports indicate Korea is having a colder-than-usual winter. Good news is that I won't be doing deep-knee bends there. That said, I'll almost certainly be dining on the floor so I'm practicing another kind of ups and downs. I can sit cross-legged under a low table (thank you, yoga), but getting there and back up again isn't too pretty. I may also decide to sleep on the heated floor, which I did during my first trip. Very warm and cozy.