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.
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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.
