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Winter Vacation, Day 2
The perfect vacation: Start with a breakfast made by the hostel owner; the owner, Korean-New Zealand woman, and I have a talk for 2 hours Visit 오죽헌, the birthplace of the woman painter who is on the 50,000 won note and her Confucian scholar son who is on the 5,000 won note; find one small boy staring at me even though the only foreign part of me showing over a mask (I would say coronavirus but really it was due to pollution) was my eyes so I stared back and said 안녕! His mom and I laughed then a delayed minute later a tiny 안녕하세요 came from behind me; another…
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Seollal Pyeongchang Trout Festival
*For context: I joined a four day foreigner ski trip to the home of the 2018 Winter Olympics, Pyeongchang. A good trip overall but I’ve learned that going forward tour groups are not and have never been my forte. I had a few odd moments this weekend where I was thrust back into my early college days when not socially drinking amongst strangers marked me as a weirdo. “Am I still an extrovert? Am I bad at making friends now? Why isn’t this fun?” I thought to myself, watching strangers get cozy playing drinking games. Today I said good morning to two of the men and they looked at me…
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Chicken Wings in Itaewon
Long overdue trip to Itaewon. My American taste buds have missed spicy wings that aren’t also secretly sweet. These chicken wings pass the 🇺🇸 taste test 👍 (My Korean friend: it’s my first time trying buffalo sauce. It’s… sour.)
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Nogari Alley
Near Euljiro-3 station there is a tiny hidden alley full of pubs. These pubs all sell fried fish called “Nogari” for about 1000 won each. They also have fried chicken, tofu, fried rice, and octopus. News articles quote the restaurants as saying “it’s like Oktoberfest” but my friend and I were the only non Koreans there. That didn’t stop us from cruising through several dishes. I highly recommend.