Week 3: featuring fish who ate my feet...

Woo hoo! Sunday means blog day!




Last Monday to Thursday were fairly uneventful. I drank some more coffee. Worked full time. I had to do report cards for students who I’d only taught once. I went out for Chinese food on Wednesday night. Chinese food here is not the same as in Canada. Seafood here is not the same as in Canada. This has been an important revelation. I think seafood, I think crab, shrimp, oysters, mussels, maybe salmon. Seafood to me is not cuttlefish, squid, or other strange textured things that I don’t recognize. It’s probably the latter that I like the least. Note to self: don’t order seafood dishes. Other note: don’t worry, there will likely still be seafood in dishes that say vegetable or Kimchi.



Friday night I went out with a couple coworkers to see 2012. Tickets here for a nice, good size theatre are 9000 won, or about 8 dollars. The movies themselves are the original English version. The only thing that’s in Korean are the subtitles. This isn’t a problem, except when there are scenes in other languages. Luckily, 2012 only has a few of those, and it’s a dramatic enough movie that it’s easy to figure out what’s going on. The movie is also predictable, but in the most awesome way. In order to predict what will happen, just think of the most ridiculous that could happen and still move the plot forward, then backward, than forward again. As a result, if one can guess what’s going to happen next, the movie is incredibly satisfying. Even if you aren’t adept at guessing formulaic plots, the epic story and amazing graphics make the movie fun and entertaining. The final step to enjoying this movie, however, is to not think about it too much. And hope that you don’t live on the western seaboard.

After the movie we went to a foreigner bar for a beer, which we enjoyed on the slightly cold patio. Just as we were leaving though, I ran into another teacher who was inside drinking with a few friends. I stayed and joined them and we ended up playing Hearts until 2:30 in the morning. I ended up successfully ‘shooting for the moon’ in the last round, and came from behind to win the game. What with my correctly guessing the movie plot, and winning the card game, I went to bed feeling pretty great.



Saturday I had plans to meet with the same card playing friends to go into Seoul. So in the early afternoon we took the 1 hour bus ride to Gangnam, an up and coming area of the city. Gangnam is home of Seoul’s world trade center, lots of money, and our destination: the Co-Ex mall. This giant underground mall is filled with many western and Korean stores, restaurants and a conference hall. I don’t know if it is bigger than West-Ed, but it was definitely shinier. We made our way towards the conference all where there was supposed to be a Makali exhibition, which was part of the much bigger “Food Week” show. Unfortunately, when we got there we saw registration booths and it became apparent that this exhibition had a much more commercial focus than we were expecting. Combine that with the fact that it was already late in the day and they were going to be closing soon, we changed our direction and instead headed towards the Kimchi Museum.



Kimchi is, as I now understand, any fermented vegetable. The ingredients of Kimchi have changed over it’s 1000 years of tradition, but now most Kimchi is seasoned with hot red pepper. Interestingly enough, that red pepper was only added to Kimchi after Columbus had found the new world and peppers were brought back from Mexico.



After the museum, we sat down for some Korean food before heading back to Gangnam proper, in search of our goal of the day: the Dr. Fish Café. This was a very popular café where in addition to coffee, you can pay 2000 won ($1.75) for Fish. After your drinks, you wait your turn to go put your feet in a fish tank. The fish then proceed to eat the dead skin off your feet, leaving your feet and ankles feeling soft, smooth and refreshed. It’s weird at first, and it made me realise that my feet are tickle-ish, at least to fish. After 15 minutes a guy rinses off your feet in a wooden sink, and the next group takes their turn to get their feet eaten.

Next, we went on the search for restaurant which would serve Makali and Panchong, also known as fermented rice wine and vegetable pancakes. It took a few tries, but we finally found a place that served the traditional drink, so we spent a few hours there, eating panchong and drinking makali.



It was still early, so we then went to a western bar that features various international beers. The one Canadian brew that they served was Moosehead Lager. We ended up drinking the Korean Cass beer because it was cheaper.



And finally, the best part of the night: We went to a Noraebong! It cost 20000 won ($18 ish?) for an hour in the private karaoke room. Our group had grown to 8 people, and there were enough singers that is was really fun. We then caught a Cab back to our respective homes, and the night ended.