Korea: thoughts, musings, and et cetera.

Just some thoughts, from the trivial to the serious, about Korea in general that I gathered during my stay.


Food:

Korean bakeries seem the tastiest to me. The desserts are both extremely tasty and aesthetically pleasing. I also like the fact that most cakes still use whipped cream, as I happen to dislike icing or other overly sugary/buttery cream-type things.

Speaking of desserts, oh my god I love Asian cheesecake. The cake is deliciously moist, the cheese infused between the bread is distinct without being overpowering, and it is SO SOFT - it just melts into your mouth before you realize it.

Korea is not the place to look for actual plain bread, though. Since bread is not a staple but a "Western thing", you can commonly find it in chain bakeries, and it ends up being kind of sweet and soft as well.

Things like yogurt and chocolate seem more "light" - probably less fat and sugar and what have you. However, they still taste natural, not like the clearly artificial-tasting Hershey bars and weird mushy "yogurt".

떡볶이 (spicy rice cakes) in Korea are murderously spicy. Oh god my tounge I can't feel.

Style

Korean people do care a lot about style and personal appearance. I have mixed feelings about this - while I do appreciate that people care in general, sometimes it can be a bit too much.

Circle lenses are freaking creepy. They might look okay on television screen, but in real life it just makes the wearer look like a zombie doll. GAH.

Etude House is the devil.

The interior looks like this, seriously.

Theoretically, this should be everything I hate; everything is pink and sparkly and cute,the staff are dressed in pink frilly dresses and call you "princess". The entire existence of this brand should make me want to run away screaming.

But despite it all, I cannot take my eyes off its pink interior and its cute, shiny products. It's too... cute. Guilty pleasure? Yes, very much so. (Also, it's kind of cheap and has nice lip makeup selections.)

Holt and translations:

The more I translated letters and actually translated for people, the more I realized it was not easy; there are so many nuances, connotations and implications contained in a single word, so precision becomes key. Even with my high standards and pickiness with translation in general, I have not been perfect in my own word choice at times, but it's something I definitely am trying to improve.

There are also people who say things that are potentially misleading due to cultural differences, or those who say things that are just plain rude in any culture. You realize how much power you hold over those people when you choose to either stay silent or translate those difficult words. And when you do, you realize how easily you can affect their feelings - I try to soften and subdue the meaning the words I've heard when I have to translate difficult things, but I am constantly worrying whether I'm doing it right.

All in all, it was a worthwhile experience. And even with everything I said above, it's still pretty easy to undermine just how much of an influence you had over people who are meeting their long lost family members and are going through emotional times, and when they thank you and seem genuinely happy that you helped them, you feel like you've done at least something right in this world, and you feel worthwhile, like someone who has some purpose of existing. It's a very satisfying feeling.

Lifestyle

Life as a student in Korea definitely seems hectic and without a lot of free time. During my stay, my middle school cousin, who was about to go to high school, was busy all the time with cram schools, studying, and trying to figure out which high school to enroll. I wished I could give my middle school cousin some free nap times, if I could.

There are lots of food easily available for purchase in Korea. This results in some people just buying all their food instead of cooking. I prefer homemade food, though, since it's healthier and tastier (although it takes more work). I totally want to make my own kimchi in the future.

Life in Korea seems hectic with little time for leisure in general, especially if your children are younger than college age. I guess this may be why people just buy all their food. I wished that sometimes, society could learn to just take a chill pill at times.

Identity (?)
Even after all this time, some people seemed to think that because my family lived so long overseas, we'd somehow become, to put it bluntly, whitewashed. I don't mean ways of thinking or worldview. I mean that some thought we'd actually live like Western people at all times, as in eat steak and salad with a fork and knife, speak English at home, and all that crazy stuff.

Despite the freakishly long time we've stayed outside of Korea, we're still expats, not immigrants. If we immigrated somewhere and intended to live as foreign citizens, I can see where they're coming from. But we're expats who always have the idea that some day, in some distant future, we may be moving back to Korea again. I don't know why some people think it's so amazing that a Korean person with Korean citizenship is eating Korean food. If they were amazed at us having a slightly more Western mode of thought or something, I'd understand. But being so amazed that we do NOT eat bread three times a day and know how to use chopsticks? That's... kind of silly.

But then again, that one third generation jaebeol (corporate millionaires like Samsung, LG, etc) I met literally did not know how to use chopsticks, and yes, actually ate Western food with a fork and knife at all times, so maybe I shouldn't blame people for thinking like that. If some Korean billionaires can pretend they're pretentiously Western, people may think I'd do that, too.

***

Sometimes, I wonder who the hell reads my blog entries, especially when I write college-essay level entries like this. Are there enough people in the world who gives a damn whether I write a drabble or a Master's thesis on what I do and what I think? Writing way too much has always been a bad habit of mine.

Last days in Korea

I got cut off from the blogging a little earlier than I have hoped to; and before I knew it, here I am, back in Prague. It had been a crazy few days running around, meeting people, and doing stuff, so things like chilling or sleeping were usually on top of the list rather than blogging.

Day 20 (Monday):
Translated for a family from America meeting with the adoptee's birth mother. Since the family was from the States, they were by far the easiest to talk to. We went to Cheongyechon after lunch.

 (Stock photo)

In the evening, my uncle (the vet) asked us to come over to his clinic, where he showed us his awards and talked about family honor and success and all the fun stuff, nothing new. And then we had dinner, where he talked more about family honor and success.


Day 21 (Tuesday):
Met with my cousin Hyeonji. She is so sweet and adorable and cute and argh her mere presence causes mental diabetes. Usually, girls talking and acting cute makes me want to punch them, but I strangely didn't mind her being cute. Perhaps it's because she's always talked like that and I know she's not trying to sound cute on purpose. Perhaps it's because she's my cousin.

Where we had dinner.

We walked round Daehakno, ate, watched a mediocre play (that she was kinda duped into purchasing tickets, but eh, no hard feelings), took sticker photos, looked at cute things, and ran around tring to avoid the extreme rain. Yes, the signs of flood-chaos were just beginning.

 Esaping the rain in a chocolate cafe - DESSERT!!!

Day 22 (Wednesday):
See FLOOD EDITION.


Day 23 (Thursday):
More rain. Cancelled the meeting with my friend Tae Yong because it was raining way too much. More or less stayed in the house doing nothing because you had to be crazy to go out in that weather.


Day 24 (Friday):

Suddenly, there was no rain. Because our place was not flooded (and was in high ground), the ground dried up almost instantly. We went to watch Captain America (which was good) and chilled again.

Day 25 (Saturday):
We FINALLY met up with Tae Yong after two cancellations. Gangnam, although flooded a few days ago, looked like nothing happened when the rain dried up, compared to Namtaeryeong, where landslide occured and people died and still looked like a mess even when we passed by it on the bus (everyone was looking out the window apprehensively). There were police cars everywhere, and soldiers were recruited to try to clear up the mess as much as possible. Gangnam only had some places where the ground was lightly caked with mud, as if someone dropped sand on the floor. Sigh, rich people sure have it well.

Tae Yong lost a lot of weight (damn, your arms are like twigs!), but otherwise he was the very same Tae Yong from the ISP days. Not extremely talkative, kind of silly, kind of brusque at times, but actually a nice guy at the core and a pretty good friend. We caught up on each other's lives during lunch and dessert (matcha shaved ice is dangerously delicious), and then went to the karaoke, where we sang to our hearts' content with our pretty crappy vocals. There needs to be more karaoke in my life. Singing (albeit crappily) is lots of fun. Too bad there are only a handful of people who I would feel brave enough to karaoke together.

In the evening, we headed over to our aunt's, which was not too far away, and we stayed, conversed a bit, and then had Samgyetang for dinner, which is a chicken stew with glutinous rice, jujubes, ginseng, chestnuts, gingko, and all that healthy herbal stuff stuffed inside a whole (small) chicken. The broth could have been a bit more flavorful, but all in all it was pretty good.

(Stock photo)

 
Day 26 (Sunday):
~Packing~

Day 27 (Monday):
Left for Prague. Despite being four hours early, all the errands we had to run made us barely catch the flight (which then left an hour late, grr). The plane gave us spicy squid rice for lunch and general Western beef/chicken/fish meals for dinner (which was still good), as well as snacks. I have a feeling that the plane that leaves FROM Korea gives you more stuff, since they're able to procure things from Korea when they leave.

We arrived in the evening, had pizza because everyone was too busy to move more than necessary, and lounged about a bit before falling asleep.

So that was the last week of my stay in Korea. It was a hell of a lot busier compared to last year since there were three of us instead of one of me, and Holt decided to use me a lot more often than compared to last year. Also, the atmosphere was either very rainy or sickeningly hot. But even with all that, I still kind of liked my stay.

Overall thoughts and other things coming up in the next entry.