Anthony in Korea, Day 5, Sunday, April 26, 2009

Another interesting day in Seoul…

I woke up late today, and as I was having breakfast, my “Korean mother” made me some dumplings for brunch…and, they were amazingly delicious!

I had planned to visit Geyongbokgung alone, but Olivia and her mom were nice enough to drive me there and accompany me on the English tour.

Geyongbokgung is the palace where the Korean ‘king’ lived with his wife and concubines for many centuries prior to the Japanese occupation before and during World War II. It has been built and rebuilt over the centuries, and the current palace dates back to about 1865. The architecture is the most ‘oriental’ of anything I’ve seen so far in Seoul. It’s probably the #1 historical tourist attraction in Seoul, sort of equivalent to visiting Independence Hall in Philadelphia in the States. It was very interesting and pretty [please see the photos above].

After that Olivia and her mom and I went to a traditional Korean restaurant where, as usual, more than a dozen of small dishes are shared on a large pabsang (a table on the floor). The food was very good, and it reminded me of how bad the typical American diet is. While bread and meat are staples of the American diet, Koreans actually do not eat much bread, and they only eat meat as a small part of everything else. Their starch is rice, and rice, for those of you who don’t know, is a pure, complex, healthy starch, unlike almost any kind of bread in the US. Accompanying the rice, as mentioned were over a dozen different small dishes, everything from kimchi to tofu soup to fish. Korean cuisine is quite balanced. In America it is not uncommon for a person to have several slices of pizza as a meal; or a typical meat and potatoes dinner. Koreans, on the other hand, believe strongly in having a well-balanced meal, and most traditional meals contain a large variety of vegetables, kimchi, fish, and other things. Considering the huge amount of spry elderly Koreans walking around this city, and the relatively low rates of cancer and diabetes in the country, I think it is safe to say that Westerners have a lot to learn from this diet.

Olivia and her mom went home and I stayed in the area of the restaurant, which is so far my favorite part of Seoul. It’s a neighborhood called Insadong and it is filled with shops and restaurants, and antique stores and so many other places, most of which are located on small, winding streets off the main drag. I bought a few souvenirs and headed toward a large boulevard where tons of people were gathering on each side, as if preparing to watch a parade. As it turned out, they were there to watch a parade, the lantern festival, which is part of the celebration of Buddha’s birthday which occurs in early May. So there I was, standing amidst thousand so people, watching this amazing and beautiful parade. I recorded some of it on video, and I encourage you to watch. At the parade I met a few American English teachers living in Seoul. They told me how great life was there, and made me think about my own future as an English teacher…

I was on my way back the subway when I finally decided to but some ‘duk.’ Duk is one of the more popular street foods here in Seoul. Unlike crappy hot dogs in NY, duk is actually a real food, and people line up to get this stuff. Street vendors all over Seoul have these rice cakes constantly boiling in a spicy sauce…[please see the photos]. The duk was served to me in a glass bowl lined with saran wrap (so the bowl could be reused), and accompanying it was a cup of fish broth (yum!). The duk was actually pretty damn good, and I can see why people like it so much. It is 1000x healthier than a hot dog and, again, it reminds me how bad the Western diet is as opposed to the Korean diet…even Korean street food is reltively healthy.

I was about to get on the subway when two Korean guys approached me and said, “We are college students taking an English conversation class. We have to interview an English speaker for our midterm assignment. Can we buy you some coffee and interview you?” I said “no—not coffee, but let’s have some beer instead.” They happily agreed, and we went to a bar in Insadong and enjoyed a few pints of Hite lager. They were so gracious and nice; they asked me simple questions like ‘what is your job?’ and ‘what is your favorite TV show?’ They were intrigued, as I was, by the irony that they were assigned to interview an English speaker by their teacher, and here I was, an English teacher in Seoul, and they just happened to stumble across me. We hung out for over an hour and enjoyed conversing about politics, the economy, and, more importantly, life. We parted ways at the subway station, and they asked if I can show them around the USA or NYC if they ever visited. We exchanged email addresses, of course, and I am confident that I will see them again someday.