Poop bread. Are you interested yet?

So. I'm in South Korea. Nothing to get excited about, right? NOT!

Like a bird...

I had a great flight over... no hitches, no delays, no close cuts, no luggage problems, no running to get to my gate, no getting lost... It was wonderful! God was definitely behind me, the poor girl travelling to East Asia alone...
There's something rather exciting about travelling alone. No one knows who you are, and they don't really care, either. You can be yourself, or you can be anyone you want to be. Just like I met a woman who said she owned a tea business and was flying to Taipei to expand it, but she could have been lying! Maybe she was a Canadian spy, sent to infiltrate Japan (unlikely, but who knows?).
All in all, without problems, it was quite boring. I know, I know, I shouldn't be disappointed that things went well! It's just that... problems often stave off boredom! At least they make good stories, right? But I am very thankful that I had no issues that would make a good story, because usually those issues are quite painful at the time. At least Canada was pretty!

But, I'm here! I met my friend's sister and her daughter at Incheon airport and she drove me to her apartment. I hadn't slept in 24 hours. Yay!

I love food

Well, the next morning was pretty low-key and relaxing. I ate a breakfast of rice, 국 (gook, a type of soup), eggs, tofu, and salad. As you can see from that menu, Koreans don't have separate food for breakfast, which I understand, really. Who decided we should only eat certain things for breakfast? And why?
Later, we went and ate lunch at a very large building near 신도림역 (Sindorim Station), which is the closest subway station to the apartment I'm staying at. We had traditional Korean food, which means there were lots of side dishes on the table to try. I didn't like everything, but I liked quite a bit!

And may I interject something here? I LOVE THE INTERNET HERE! It's so fast! I never knew you could upload pictures in less than 5 minutes...
But the food was great.
I'm really enjoying being with little Si Yeon (She-yuhn) and her mother. They're both so sweet! It's fun conversing with them; Si Yeon's mother doesn't know a lot of English but that just makes it more interesting! I think we're both learning, for sure. Si Yeon actually knows quite a bit of English, despite being only 7 years old.
After lunch we went to Emart (the Korean Walmart, pretty much) and bought ingredients for 김밥 (kimbap) that we later made for dinner.
Now that was cool. We had big sheets of 김 (black seaweed, I believe) that we spread black rice over, then we added the vegetables, then we rolled it up and cut it! It was quite fun.
What do you think? Points for presentation at least? ㅋㅋㅋ, it tasted good too!

Thankfully, I never really had full on jetlag, though I have been waking up at 6 AM every morning... it just means that I get tired at 10 PM, which I can deal with. And it also means I get to see prettiness like this! This is the view from the apartment I'm staying at:

Insadong (인사동)

On Friday, Si Yeon had to go to kindergarten, so after she left her mother and I went to see Insadong. Insadong is a shopping street in the Jongo neighborhood (종로구) filled with souvenirs and Korean restaurants. It's definitely directed towards tourists, but it has its charm! We went into Ssamziegil (쌈지길), a building with many cute little shops in it. It had a walkway wrapping through the inside of it... and rather than explaining it further, I'll just show you!

There's a bit too much that happened that day to include everything in this post, but I'll leave you with this treat:

This, my friends, is Ddongbbang. And if you can't tell what it is by looking at it, then I'll tell you what it's direct translation is: poop bread! And before you ask, no, I did not have any...

Well, until next time! Annyeong! 안녕!










And here's a music video for free! Maybe it's an acquired taste. . . but I love it!




-레이첼