Sam's Adventures in South Korea: Training Week Day Four

Once again, more food pictures. These ones are courtesy of the resident Scot, Amy, who has been gracious enough to give me her pictures because she "can't be bothered to start her own blog".

Today was the second day of mocking the main lessons. Everyone's doing much better today after the initial dash of the first half the week, mostly because its almost over, and mostly because we have a much better idea of how to teach now. I myself feel confident going in that I'll be able to teach a class and handle misbehaving children, keep their attention, and prepare each lesson every week.

Now, some of you may remember from my last entry that I was running short on money. When I first tried getting money out this morning, however, I was having a lot of problems. I am now happy to announce that this problem is now fixed. I tried several ATMs today, and most said card not valid, and then one said the card was locked and to contact my bank. This of course induced panic, because if one card was locked, was the other? How could I reach my bank since that involved international calling, and I had no international calling card? Who could I contact at that hour to work things out? After several frantic skype calls and attempts to get through on my Korean cell phone and the one I've brought from the U.S. (says its roaming over here, so apparently it's piggy-backing service from somewhere -- sorry Mum if you have to pay a bigger bill; I will pay you back), I eventually managed to buy some Skype credit using my credit card (this was my last resort for money), and used it to contact my bank, which then checked and said there was no hold on my atm card, it's not locked, and "it must have something wrong with the atm machine". Someone tell that woman the 'm' in ATM stands for machine.

Anyway, after that I went out and found a citibank atm in the subway station, and that ended up after a few times working. There is a really low limit on the amount you can get out because it's a subway station, but even so, I can survive with $100 for awhile, especially since our dinner today was wonderfully cheap.

And that brings me to the fun topic for the day: my dinner.

Since we were all feeling much better at the end of the day today, we decided to go out. Amy and I ran into Jill, a teacher headed for Daegu south of Seoul, coming back from the ATM at the subway, and we convinced her to come along. So Amy, Rebekah, Jill, and I headed out down Gangnam-daero (the main street of Gangnam) to find ourselves something cheap and delicious.

Rebekah found a cart that was selling pancake-things for approximately $0.70 each. We each got one of these because it smelled amazing and because In-Jee, our trainer, had said the street food is perfectly safe in Korea and in fact the best way to eat on the cheap. Most Koreans themselves eat the street food over restaurant food. These pancakes were a bit like Indian Naan bread with cinnamon in the middle. They were fresh-cooked, and lovely and warm while we ate them.

We then headed on down the road in search of a more filling meal, and Jill recommended a dumpling place she'd seen. Though technically Chinese, the food style remained Korean, so we got a big plate of dumplings (Mandoo) to share and a Bibimbap (that stone-cooked rice bowl we had with the barbecue).

A lot of Korean foods come with little dishes of simple sides, like Kimchi or pickled vegetables (parsnips yesterday, radishes today - though today they tasted like pickled pineapple). The pickled stuff is definitely my favorite.

The Bibimbap was really good yet again, and the dumplings was something like a sampler tray, so we had several different types to try. A lot of the things were really spicy, or they started out bland and grew to be spicy, and they were all spicy in different ways. Some burned in your tummy, others at the tip of your tongue, some along the back of the throat. Either way it was all amazingly delicious and we left really happy and mostly full.

So then we made our way back looking for street vendor fish. By this I don't mean the Kimbap, which is Korean seafood. Instead, there are pastries filled with red bean paste and some sort of nuts (maybe peanuts?) that are always shaped into molds like fish. We found some, and the man said it was 3 for 1000 won, or $1, which was a brilliant deal, so we all ate more than we needed to and felt quite happy and full.

We're now packing, because it's our last night in Gangnam. Tomorrow, Amy, Rebekah, and I will go straight from training to Bucheon and more adventures. But never fear, lovely readers, we'll be back. After all, Bucheon's not so far away by subway, and it's been really fun living it up Gangnam Style.