Food and Friends

So my first night as I was standing with my luggage scattered around me in my new apartment which smelled a bit funny and did not feel like home at all, there was a knock at my door. You can imagine my surprise as I do not know a soul in Korea (no pun intended). My apartment has this nifty little screen that I can push a button and it shows me who is outside my door. There were two people, a woman and a man and the woman was holding something.

I opened the door and they introduced themselves as Amy and James. They are engaged and they live 4 floors above me. They were SO nice. They both teach at my school and they wanted to welcome me and let me know that if I needed anything I could stop by. They had also brought me something to eat. Mandoo. Mandoo is dumplings stuffed with...I'm not sure. I think there was pork and rice but it tasted...different. Not bad but nothing like the chinese dumplings I have had before. I drowned them in the soy sauce that came with them and that taste was more familiar.

Amy and James invited me to go food shopping with them the next day which I readily accepted since I did not have ANY food. So the next morning they came by around 9:30 and asked if I was ready for a cab ride. My stomach lurched. I recalled the brush with death I had had on the ride from the airport. But this is food we are talking about. So I overcame my uneasy feeling and we headed down to the street to catch a cab.

This ride was either much better or I have already gotten used to the crazy driving. Seriously there was one point where we were on a one lane road and as we drove, cars came toward us and just before we hit the oncoming vehicle our driver would swerve into an open parking space and then swerve back onto the road. This happened several times.

About 10 minutes later we arrived at a place which in English is called "Home Plus". It was in a high rise but the store itself was 3 floors, like a department store. The first floor was clothes and jewelry, the second floor was a grocery store and the third floor was electronics and appliances. In some ways it was a lot like an American grocery store except everything was in Korean and I saw a LOT of strange things. For example, live squid swimming in a tank. I didnt buy any of those. Also there was an entire aisle devoted to Kochujang (Korean red pepper paste).

I was still experiencing culture shock and homesickness and all kinds of emotions so I was not quite ready to branch out and buy a bunch of Korean food. So I bought chicken, cereal, milk, yogurt, spaghetti, and tomato sauce. The spaghetti and sauce were significantly overpriced since they are Western products. And there was not much selection. Only one kind of tomato sauce (Ragu) and one kind of spagetti (Barilla!!!). The sauce was $5 and the spaghetti was $3. But I needed them. Another observation: Kimchi (fermented cabbage in a very spicy sauce) looks just as unappetizing in real life as it does in pictures. I have not tried it yet but I am told I will grow to like it...