Eatin' ROK

Ravenous Reader,

I'm certain that, as you sit there at your computer box, sipping your caffeinated beverage of choice (yes, Diet Coke counts, Mormons...)you are wondering (as you often do) about how my life is going, because, let's face it, if you're reading this tripe you've nothing better to think about.

Well, I'm fine. I'm also somehow lighter, thanks in part to the cuisine in the ROK but mostly thanks to the insane amount of stair climbage one encounters here on a daily, nay, hourly basis. Much to my chagrin though, my thighs are bigger than ever. I've been issued a citation for disturbance of the peace due to the decibel level my thighs reach as they rub together in their fleshy, rhythmic way.

Okay, I haven't been issued a citation yet but it's only a matter of time before my femoral friction begins emitting sound waves loud enough to crack the pavement and I become the world's largest bespectacled grasshopper.

Thighs aside (don't read into this too much, innuendous reader) I would like to have a sit-down chat with you about food here.



Are we comfy? Then let's begin.

I had my first taste of Korean cuisine back when I was working at Todai: Portland's premier overpriced sushi buffet. The company's name and theme are Japanese but the management and ownership is exclusively Korean. Thus, my boss James made certain that the Korean staple below was included on the buffet daily.



The above is known throughout the land of ROK as kimchi (pronounced Kim, like Kim Fields AKA Tootie from "The Facts of Life" and chee, like "cheap pile of cabbage"). I instantly loved the pickley, spicy, crunchy, chewiness of the dish. Don't ask why. I was really into hot sauce at that point in life. So here I am, ages and ages later, faced with the beloved side dish (or "banchan" as they're known here) and let me tell you: it's still pretty good. Admittedly, there's a different taste here than there was in the US. I think the stuff at Todai must've been made nearly daily ('cause...ya know...it's cheaper to make the crap yourself than import it from Korea. That and Todai, like my mother, loves a bargain). The kimchi here, ironically, tastes like chemicals and cayenne pepper. That's about all you can taste/smell for the next couple of hours so make sure you sample some of what's on your plate prior to partaking in this dragon-breath-inducing veggie dish. It'll be nice to just get a feel for the real flavor of the food before kimchi sets up permanent residence in both your taste buds and the space in between your second and third molars.



Most of whatever else I eat comes from school or home. School lunch is always an adventure and nearly always edible. Actually, the cook is quite good and I'm pretty sure the school is lucky to have her. The soups are always fish-based and top-notch (and well-hyphenated). There's always some kind of meat portion which you know, Worcestershire-addicted reader, pleases this hefty carnivore greatly. There's always rice and, of course, kimchi. If cook is feeling extra sassy, she'll do a fish as well as beef and then top the whole thing off with a gentle parcel of salt-cured, roasted seaweed which really turns my epicurean crank, most especially when coupled with the aforementioned rice.

I have to eat with the four year olds but...what the hell. I'll do anything for free food.


Anything.


On the whole, I have been eating fairly well although there are ways to get into trouble even here in the land of the trim waist and the slim hip. America, while she gave ROK capitalism, also gave her nutritional advice. Considering all our beloved country has done for my pantsize and the size of knickers and bloomers across the globe, it's a fairly dim prospect for the dear old Republic. For instance, I run into Koreans almost daily who proclaim that items like cookies and cake are "too sweet".



Too sweet indeed...

HOWEVER! They have no problem (nor shame) in shoveling in Dunkin' Donuts and Cold Stone Creamery ice cream every chance they get. Sure, they're joyous, well-lit, fun-loving places now but in a few years this same race, the race of 6% bodyfat and even less percent patience for anything that doesn't have a blinking neon sign on it, will not be able to see its own ample buttocks without the help of some specially placed mirrors and flood lighting. I see them starting to traipse merrily down the same road we did: deep frying everything in sight after coating it in panko bread crumbs and then dipping it in ranch dressing.


One of their more monstrous abominations: the french fry coated hot dog on a stick.

Now why didn't WE think of that? I'll tell you why: the fat from our dimpled glutes has finally clogged our arteries and our minds.

Be forewarned Korea. I have seen your future. It isn't pretty...

...and it has a daughter named Darleen.

Other than the above foods, Korea has a lot of really strange things to offer up, but I'll try anything once and, of course, twice if it's dessert or is misspelled on the menu. I've only had the food poisoning once since I've been here and that was only because I got impatient at a shabu-shabu restaurant and ate undercooked chicken (this is a restaurant where you do your own cooking, so...I had to curse my own name as I retched my "Welcome To Korea" meal into my blessedly western-style turrlet at home).


Fish heads, fish heads, roly-poly fish heads...

The weirdest thing I've managed to sink my teeth into thusfar has to be the fish egg sac soup and fish-with-the-heads-still-on I had during my weekend training last month. The sac was one of those things where you just close your eyes and hope it tastes more like salt than anything else.

No, it didn't taste only like salt, but I ate the suckers without blinking. We don't want to be thought uncultured, do we, squirmish reader?

I thought not.

The adventures in asian cuisine continue as I eat my way through the remaining 10 months of my stay here. I can't believe the time has gone by so quickly.

Keep in touch!

Lurve,
Geoffwah

The Plastics

Yearning Reader-

I am doing fine. I know you were worrying that I'd been overtaken and eaten alive by the 5 year olds or that I'd accidentally wandered into the DMZ, as I am apt to drift gently into generally hazardous areas of this, our wide world. These are not the cases...

Wait. These are not the case? This is not the cases? This is not a case? I cannot fit into that case? This case is too small. This case is not tall...

I am now absolutely certain that, by the end of this year, I will no longer be able to speak English with careless abandon like in the olden days of my reckless, nonstop verbal diarrhea. No, petrified reader. I am sure that I will have no choice but to carefully select each and every phrase so that I don't end up spewing word salad. And for those who don't know what word salad is, it's the one salad you probably won't find at a major Mormon function.


THIS IS NOT WORD SALAD
(Come to think of it, what the hell is this?)

Okay, now down to what this post is actually about [shockingly, it is not about salad].

For a reference of who The Plastics are, please review the image below at your gentle leisure.



The above group of four girls appear in the film "Mean Girls". There, as you can see, are four girls. One of them is actually an infiltrator who conspires to bring the REAL Plastics down but becomes one of them along the way (kind of). The infiltrator, Kady, is actually quite a nice girl but becomes nasty as she starts to hang around with The Plastics more and more.

Now for the real life Plastics. It took me two weeks of teaching these girls before I understood just what was going on. There are four girls in the class. To protect the names of the actual girls, I will be using the names of the corelating characters from the film.

Regina -



Regina is the ring leader of the group. With a few well-chosen glances and muttered (I'm assuming) profanity, she can cut down a girl in the group and turn friend to enemy in seconds. In school terms, she's a frienemy: a person who pretends to be your best friend but who, in all actuality hates you just as much as you hate them. You just stay close so that you don't turn on each other because, hey, peace is like, a lot easier than having to wage an all-out social battle. She's cunning and smart, which makes calling her on the carpet extremely difficult.

The other problem is that she works her evils in Korean and behind my back. I can turn to the whiteboard, blissfully expounding on the benefits, nay the necessity, of actually putting an "ts" sound at the end of the word "pants", and when I turn back around, one of the girls will be in tears and Regina will look me straight in the eye and pronounce pants with a proper "ts".

Evil. Genius.

Evil genius.


Gretchen-



So Gretchen is just mean, really. She's very sweet when she's getting her way but you had better not cross her or...well...let's just say that Regina isn't the only one who can cause tears. She's a prodigy, speaking of tears, at fake crying and can really work herself up into a dither over someone touching her eraser.

Oh, by the way, if you come to Korea, don't touch other people's things. Seriously. Not even an eraser. 'Cause they may cry and then their evil best friend will come over and dry their tears while comforting them in a language you don't understand, saying things that probably mean "don't worry about that Humpty-Dumpty-lookin' palooka, I'll make sure he never touches your eraser with his pudgy, pasty, American sausage fingers again, see?". It's just a wild guess, but I'm sure that it's eerily accurate, even down to the 'Jersey accent.

PS Does the word "eerily" look really strange to you?

Karen-



Okay so Karen is actually a sweet girl and has been victimized by Regina and Gretchen in the past but does gang up against the fourth girl. She obviously sides with Regina and Gretchen so that they won't pick on her. And, get this, she brings them snacks. Snacks. Just for Gretchen and Regina. The two of them sit there eating the stuff like they invented gold and smugness all in one fell swoop. It makes me want to pull their hair out.

But I don't.

No, really. I don't.


Stop looking at me like that!


Kady-



Okay, well Kady is really sweet. She's a nice girl who spends the majority of her time trying to make the rest of The Plastics laugh, which disrupts class. I guess I'm getting my comeuppance. For years I spent class time making people laugh so they didn't kick my tubby action down a grassy knoll, or worse, a well-chosen stairwell. Usually, like Regina, if the teacher called on me whilst causing a mirth or a merriment, I could come up with the answer he or she was looking for while I was shimmying or doing a Carol Channing impersonation. Sadly, Kady does not have this ability (apparently, Carol impersonations don't translate very well). She is really not a bad student but she is so insecure about her own knowledge that she will actually change a correct answer if The Plastics whisper an incorrect answer in her ear. Intentionally. Which they do. All the time.

Ah, Kady. I wonder how she'd do in a normal class. Probably very well. I have seen her team up with the other Plastics against Karen from time to time, but only during really bad fights.

I see these girls every day.

They are 7 and 8 but I'm already having Middle School flashbacks.

They do EVERYTHING earlier over here.

Strangely enough, the one thing they don't do earlier over here is bedtime, which is sometime after 10 for these kids. This probably prepares them for a life filled with late meetings and even later drinking, riding the subway, puking on the stairs, wobbling into the elevator, tripping over their own stoop on the way into their apartment and knocking themselves unconscious until 5 am, which is most likely an hour late for their first meeting.

Yum.