China and South Korea: Revisited

Another adventure complete and tucked away in the memory books.  I love that feeling.

Patrick, Mikala, and I spent ~4 days touring around Beijing, China and then ~8-9 days in Incheon City, South Korea where we spent Korean Thanksgiving (aka Chuseok) with the birth family.  Though I've been to both of these countries several times now (more so than most cities I've visited in the U.S. I'm realizing now), it never ceases to be an adventure in some way.  Maybe because you can never fully grasp a culture that's not entirely your own no matter how many times you encounter it.  So there is always a unique custom or new discovery that forces you out of your comfort zone and widens your perspective a bit more.  

Allow me to elaborate on my top ten favorite experiences while abroad this time.

10.  Unfamiliar Food.

Let's start with the obvious.  It wouldn't be a foreign country without tasting new food.  There were a lot of foreign dishes I had tried before, but there were also some new ones.  Take this squirrel fish, for example, which was the specialty of one of the first restaurants we ate at in Beijing:

 

It was deep fried and covered with some sweet and sour sauce.  Not bad!  Patrick recommended it as he had already had it once when his parents visited him in Beijing.  The poor thing looks to be in agony though... it's not unusual for Asians to leave the head on their seafood when serving it.  I think in America (or at least in my case) we like to disassociate ourselves with what we're eating but in Asia, you definitely know what it is.

These dumplings arrived at the end of the meal when I was already stuffed.  I still have no idea what was inside of them, but they tasted good... that's all that matters, right?

Of course you can't leave Beijing without eating Beijing Duck.  It was Mikala's first time.  I like how it's served on a platter in the shape of a duck.  You can definitely tell the carver has done this before.  He actually wheeled the duck out to our table on a cart and carved it in front of us in a matter of seconds.  

This street food is everywhere in South Korea.  I call them fried potatoes on a stick but don't really know their official name.  To be honest, they taste a little like cardboard but you can't resist buying them when you see them.  You can choose between 3 different flavored powders to dip them in, but Patrick and I chose to keep ours plain and simple.

A trip to Korea would not be complete without Kimchi.  Sadly I did not take one good picture of kimchi while I was there though we ate it with every meal.  This one will have to do.

9.  Familiar Food, New Flavors.  

After a long three hour cab ride to the Great Wall (long story as to why it took 3 hours), we were all starving and headed straight for this Subway.

But just when you think you've reached a place of complete familiarity, you realize that  foods you're used to back home can take on completely different tastes abroad.  After studying their chip selection, we were thinking, "Hey, wait  a minute..."  

Mikala and I tried their "Cucumber" flavor but I couldn't get past the first chip.  It tasted too much like cucumber.  Go figure.  I don't know what I expected.  Thankfully Patrick was less adventurous and went for the "American Classic Flavor" which did not disappoint.

In Korea, we ate at the popular establishment "Mr. Pizza" with a bunch of our cousins.  

What's the most popular ingredient on pizzas in Korea?  Sweet potato puree.  A lot of times they stuff it in the crust (much like cheese stuffed crust in the US).  We ordered 3 pizzas total -- a potato wedge pizza, a shrimp pizza, and the combination pizza which featured 1o different ingredients, including corn (pictured below).

We also ordered these fried potato wrapped shrimp which I thought were cute.

Mikala sure liked it all.

What's also popular in Korea  are waffles.  But instead of eating them at breakfast, they appear in coffee shops everywhere and are eaten as a dessert.  We stopped at Beans Bins for a snack while wandering around Seoul.

Between the five of us, we split 2 waffles (they were huge).  We ordered the triple chocolate waffle...

And the combination waffle...

And yes, they tasted as good as they look!

8.  Lost in Translation.  
You've all seen those chain e-mails and websites of funny English phrases found in foreign countries, right?  What's great about Asia is that those images are around every corner.  You know those popular "I <3 New York" and "I <3 DC" t-shirts that are everywhere in America?  

Somehow someone thought it would be a good idea to put "I <3 BJ" on a T-shirt in Beijing and sell them across stands everywhere.  We found this stand outside the entrance to the Great Wall.

7.  Sharing is caring.  

A big cultural difference between the United States and Korea is the concept of sharing food.  You get your own bowl of rice, but all other food is sat equally amongst everyone at the table as a free for all to grab with your chopsticks.  The same goes for beverages.  When you order a bottle of coke at a restaurant, for example, it will likely arrive with a bunch of little cups.  For a group of five people, you would order ~2 bottles and split it among everyone, like what happened here at this restaurant.

Don't worry though.  Patrick's cup was always brimming and he usually got his own bottle.

At this "American" restaurant we went to, Omma and Appa were told we get free refills so naturally we got one glass with 5 straws.

6.  Movies.
We somehow managed to watch plenty of movies while staying in Korea.  Altogether we watched Hitch, The Prince of Persia, Shutter Island, Ponyo, and Knight and Day.  The first four were watched at the apartment from the On Demand menu.  Knight and Day was a different story.


Jihoon had downloaded the movie on the internet.  But there were six of us total who wanted to watch it.  We had no way of hooking it up to their TV, and we could not all fit comfortably in their computer room.


The solution?  We took the movie file to their church and hooked it up to their main projector (the perks of your birth father being a pastor).  We sat in the middle seats on the balcony with a ton of snack food (Kimbap, sandwiches from Paris Baguette, chips, yogurt, sodas, fruit...) and watched it there.  I was concerned at first that the seats would be uncomfortable, but it actually turned out to be an extremely pleasant experience.  Apparently they do this from time to time, especially when watching soccer games with church members.  


Unfortunately I took zero pictures of this.  But here is one of Patrick all ready to watch Shutter Island.  

5.  Games!  

When you don't speak the same language as someone else, it can be difficult to find ways to "bond" especially when those people happen to be your family.  One way we've found to overcome this is by playing games.  And this trip was no exception.

South Korea has game board cafes where you can go with your friends, pay a small hourly fee, and choose among a "menu" of board games to play (and a beverage of choice is included in the price).  There are some familiar ones like Monopoly and Jenga, but a majority are games that I've never heard of which I find to be more interesting.  Here is a glimpse of the selection at the board game cafe we went to:

The workers there are somehow trained to know the rules to every game so once you choose one, they spend about 5 minutes teaching you the game if you don't know the rules already.  We went with Jihye, Jihoon, and their church friend, Teddy.  Thankfully we had them around to teach us.

 We ended up playing 3 different games:  Halle Galle, Cha Cha Chicken, and our favorite of the day - Pig Pile - which we continued to play throughout the remainder of the trip by converting a deck of Skipbo cards.  Here we are deep in the heart of a game of Cha Cha Chicken.

And this little chicken (my chicken) somehow managed to win although I fully admit he probably didn't deserve to as he was behind the whole game.

Another funny thing about Korea is their love of "Punishment" which means anytime you lose a game, you have to endure some sort of punishment, usually physical.  So the game board cafe had its share of punishment items.  Here's Mikala modeling some.

You either have to wear something embarrassing (they also have wigs and different kinds of masks) or endure some sort of physical pain like a slap on the wrist, a flick on the forehead, or in this case, a mallet with which each team member takes turns hitting the loser.  I like how this one mallet dons the Korean flag.

Awhile back, I taught Appa how to play the card game Speed and it's been his favorite ever since.  During Chuseok, he made all of our family members take a turn.  Here, Patrick and Appa went head to head.  Patrick ended up winning this game.  Appa wasn't very happy because I had assured him ahead of time that Patrick wasn't very good.  

Then later that night, Omma's family taught us a traditional Korean board game which turned out to be one of our favorite memories of the trip.  We split up into 3 teams:  the American team (guess who was on that team), the Seoul team (my relatives who lived in Seoul), and the Incheon team.  Unfortunately the Americans were terrible at throwing the strange Korean dice and kept losing turns.  Eventually we played for money and NASA stickers...

4.  Typhoon.  

On our way to meet some of my friends in Seoul, we got stuck in a typhoon and had to turn back.  It took us over 2 hours to get home but I actually think we got lucky.  By coincidence, we had taken the church van instead of Jihoon's little red car.  I don't think we would have made it home in that little thing.  Here are some videos and images we took.

We somehow got lucky.  We avoided the worst traffic jams...

...  and passed a number of stranded cars.

3.  General Tourism. 

What can I say, we hit up a lot of the obvious spots like the Great Wall,  

The Forbidden City,

Tianamen Square,

and the traditional snack street in China...

...where the served the likes of seahorses, starfish, and scorpions on sticks.

Mikala took some video of the scorpions still squirming around on the sticks.  Watch at your own risk.

In Korea, we spent some time in Seoul, walking around the traditional housing area where people still live.

I found a door that's almost my size!

We also passed by one of the palace gates:

... and strolled along one of my favorite places in Seoul: Cheonggyecheon, a manmade stream that was built in the heart of the city to replace a highway.

2.  The Little Things.

In the end, it's always the little things that tend to be the most memorable for me.  Like this random guy we saw outside a store in Beijing making a lot of racket.

It was right next to this tea shop where we bought these Jasmine tea balls that blossomed into flowers while they steeped.  Here's a video of us buying some (and Patrick utilizing his masters degree in Chinese).

I also love how scissors are the most widely used utensil in Korea (next to chopsticks)...

... and how exercise machines can be found in almost every park/playground.

This little pillow has an interesting story as well.  

It was made by my cousin for Appa (a little on the girly side).  I guess it's customary for people to put pillows displaying your cell phone number on the dashboard of your car.  That way if you're blocking somebody (common when parking in Korea), they can call you and ask you to move.  Some people just put up signs but I think pillows are considered more stylish.  

1.  Family and Friends.

I love how these days it's not uncommon to have friends living in all parts of the world at any given time.  We were lucky to have the opportunity to meet up with a number of friends while we were traveling.  In China, we met up with Matt (aka Ma Teng) who is currently working in Shanghai.  He flew to Beijing to spend the week with us.  

Also here he is pictured arguing with some Chinese ladies in a market as he sometimes does.

We also got to meet up with Mai -my first time seeing her since graduation.  She is living in Beijing right now.  We went to this great dumpling restaurant that had about every dumpling imaginable.

In Korea, I met up with Alison and Tara - fellow English teachers who taught in Incheon the same time I did in 2007.  They are both living and teaching in Seoul right now.  We met up in Kangnam and ate at this (Koreanized) Japanese restaurant.

And of course, our main reason for traveling was to spend some QT with the birth family.  We got to see our grandmothers and all of the extended family during Chuseok.  We spent the morning with Appa's family...

And the evening with Omma's family...

Patrick had the distinct honor of sitting next to the grandmothers during both meals, both of which kept a sharp eye on how much food he was eating and made sure his dishes stayed full.  At one point, Omma had to intervene and take his dish away from one of the grandmothers, telling her that he had had enough to eat already and to leave him alone.  Haha.


And thus concludes my top ten highlights from the trip.

oo,