The yellow circle painted onto the hot blacktop of my church parking lot/school playground served multiple purposes to the creative child-- dodgeball, of course, was one, but another turned its two-dimensional, pothole riddled surface into a game of adventure. We would spin around, arms and ponytails perpendicular to our wobbly legs, until we nearly toppled with dizziness, finally calling out the names of the places where our homemade tornados had dropped us.
I never really thought about that game until I realized, mid-trans-Pacific flight, that I was playing it again; traveling one half-spin of the Earth and landing in South Korea, unexplored territory, where adventure abounds!
So where the hell am I?
Korea is split up into provinces and special cities, in a system I have not adequately researched to be able to explain, but I can provide a map!
I live (and work) in the Gyeonggi Province (that's the yellow one around Seoul), in the city area of Yongin (to the right of Suwon, because I got sick of looking for a decent picture).
Anyway, I arrived yesterday, and today was my first work day. Details to follow in a subsequent post, but I wanted to toss up a couple pictures of what I've seen and, more importantly, what I've eaten!
This was a cold (!) noodle dish I ate at a Korean BBQ restaurant. Ice cubes of red broth floated around spaghetti-like noodles and some green veggies, with sesame seeds and a boiled egg as a garnish. On recommendation, I added a little yellow mustard and white vinegar to the broth, which surprisingly complimented and somewhat cut the spice. Cold noodles are WEIRD (which is probably what you were thinking, right?) but delicious so long as you are not expecting them to be hot. It seems most things are like that...
Here's James Teacher washing down anchovy soup with a slice and a stubby coke! What did we learn today? Trying new foods is fun. Anchovies are (usually) not.
