Day 12

I arrived at the end of my school's semester, and today was the last day.  It was a lovely easy day of playing Uno with little kids and 'partying,' which means eating tons of snacks.  My older kids brought a full meal to my 7:30pm class, and generously gave me a pair of chopsticks and invited me to eat with them.  My family has been bugging me for photos, so today I offer food pictures.  You might not enjoy.

My 7:30pm class, minus one student who is out of frame.   They actually brought TWO full meals.

This was one part of the meal they brought.

This is a plastic tray of gross animal bits.

This round mess is called sundae, which you've probably gathered is somewhat different than American sundae.  This is a blood sausage.  It's made by boiling pig intestines and stuffing them with 'cellophane noodles' (whatever those are) and pig blood.  This is not the first time I've eaten sundae, and I didn't like it last time either.  The taste isn't bad, but you know how sometimes you take a bite of something and, even though it tastes okay, you know it will make you sick?  Like spoiled meat.

Sundae.  Roughly the size of a piece of sushi.  (Which is to say, it fills up your entire mouth.)

You put salt on it.  This makes it taste slightly better, but you will still want to gag.

 Up next is a rice cake in a spicy sauce.  Again, this is different from an American rice cake, which is generally popped crispy rice in a pancake shape and flavored with caramel or something yummy.  In Korea, rice cakes are called "tteok," which sounds like "duck" pronounced with a hard T sound.  Rice cakes are long circular eel-looking tubes made of glutinous rice flour, cut into bite-size pieces (usually).  Koreans put rice cake in EVERYTHING.  There's hundreds of kinds.  They're a bit gummy and odd at first, but once you get used to the texture they're often very yummy.

Spicy rice cake!

 These are deep fried squid or octopus or some kind of cephalopod.  I don't like them very much because they're so chewy.

No clue what this is called.  It's noodles in something (maybe seaweed?) and deep-fried.  Pretty good.

Let's face it, everything tastes good deep-fried.

 Now this is where things start to get REALLY bad.  Compared to this stuff, sundae is merely unpleasant.  First we have liver.

I guess it's not that weird, but still gross.

Right, liver is normal, I get it.  But this next picture is lung.  I like the no-waste mindset here, but pig lungs?  Really?

Yes, I put this into my mouth.  A very small piece.  It didn't stay there long because thankfully I had a napkin handy.

Looks like a screeching eagle, right?  Still gross lung.

Overall a good meal, but that lung... well, I tried it and now I can say I have tried lung and never put it in my mouth again.

I teach an elementary class at 4:30pm, and mastery classes at 6:00pm and 7:30pm.  I get out at 9:00pm and usually go grab some food with the other foreign teachers.  Today I was stuffed from our in-class meal though, so I went to Lotte.

There are two main stores here: Lotte (pronounced "low-tay") and Emart.  Both are in the spirit of the Walmart supercenter.  Everything you could possibly want is here: groceries, bedding, bath, furniture, electronics, kitchen items, clothes, shoes, office supplies, pets, etc.  These stores are big, and have a lot of stuff, but there isn't nearly as much variety as you find in America.  The shelves are just as full, but there's more of the same stuff on each shelf here.  Anyway, I like the pets best.

Tortoise!

Lizard!  Maybe a very small iguana?

Also, some shockingly quiet birds.

I kinda want this bird.  It's cute!  But I've had birds before and learned my lesson.

And last but not least, a semi-accurate photo of my room.  It's so small that I had to stand on the far corner of my bed and take three photos, which I stitched together.  The door on the right goes out, the middle door is the bathroom, and the left door is the kitchen.  Yes, there is a window that looks into my kitchen, not outside.  Yes, there is a blanket strung up, because I washed it and they don't have dryers here, and that's the only place to hang it.  Yes, it makes getting into the bathroom difficult.

This is a 180-degree view of my room.

Fun Korean plumber story: my bathroom smelled ungodly awful for the past two weeks, most likely from sewer air coming up from my drains.  (Yes.  My bathroom smelled like a sewer.  Very, very strongly.)  So the plumber came and installed special things into my drains, and it doesn't smell anymore.  Good, yes?  But after he came, the sink drain suddenly started leaking.  It quickly became apparent that he had removed the drain pipe to put the special drain thing in, but had failed to actually reattach it.  It was hanging and when I poked it, the whole thing fell off.  I am currently remedying the situation with a well-placed bucket (actually a cut-off half of a milk bottle) and a rubber band, the best-kept secret of DIY home-fixers like myself.  Seriously, rubber bands are awesome.

It's currently after midnight and I want to be at the train station by 6:30am, so I guess I had better get to bed!  I'm looking for postcards to send everyone but Chuncheon isn't much of a tourist town.  You'll get them as soon as I find them--and also find the post office.  :)

Cheers,
Ashton