The silverware here is pretty awesome! Knives and forks are pretty hard to come by; Koreans eat with a pair of chopsticks and a long handled spoon...all of which are metal. That means that the chopsticks are much more slippery than the wooden ones I used before crossing the Pacific. Had I not had a spoon, my first meal here would have consisted of...water. That's how bad my chopsticking was, but since there was a spoon, I was able to 'enjoy' my first bibimbap experience. [Enjoy is in quotes because the raw egg in the middle of the bowl was rather intimidating...at the time I might have preferred Korea not use spoons in addition to chopsticks. Since then, bibimbap has become one of my favorite foods!]
The typical Korean diet is slightly very different than the typical North American diet. Most foods leave the kitchen in bite size[ish] pieces, so there really is no need for a knife. There is one exception though: fish. It is served still very much in fish form, and chopsticks are used to de-bone/pick apart/eat the fish - they seem to work much better than a knife and fork would.
When eating with a group, Korean style is family style. There is usually a main [meat] dish in the middle and then many different side dishes around the table. Then, chopsticks are great 'grabbers.' Rather than scooping up a whole lot of mushrooms, one can just grab a couple now and then a couple more later. Haejung 이모 also explained how Koreans want to figure out what people like to eat, not just ask. Somehow the family style and the bite size pieces and the chopsticks help accomplish this.
[In case you are wondering: everybody double dips with their chopsticks...and spoons.]
Since the last time I blogged? Really?? I am so very sorry!
Time flies when you're having fun, right?
I used to blog on Wednesdays…then my Wednesdays got busy…then I…well…stopped. Whoops...
Pretty much every Friday I leave language class at 1:00 thinking, "Yeessss!! It's finally FRIDAY!!!!" Then, all of a sudden, I think, "Wait, how is it already Friday!?" My time in Korea has been the weirdest combination of slow and fast that I have ever experienced. My days are full and sometimes seem to disappear. [Disclaimer: In no way do I want to wish my time in Korea away!] But...there are other times that minutes creep by and I just want to move on to the next thing or just get something over with or for it to be the weekend. Recently though, everything seems to be going by rather quickly!
빨리빨리
!!!! 빨리
[bbal-li] means fast or quickly or HURRY UP and is a very common word in Korea. Koreans love [the idea of] being fast.
I guess that's how life usually is...a slow/fast combo that seems to somehow speed up as time passes
Last week, Thomas did an excellent job explaining his weekly schedule. While mine is not quite the same, it is similar: school every morning [Monday-Friday], meeting with my 도우미 twice a week [my Korean buddy who is so very patient in helping me along in my Korean language learning process], preparing for and teaching English to elementary and middle schoolers, washing dishes, serving some rice, studying and doing Korean homework, preparing for and leading Bible studies, going to an English reading and conversation group at a nearby library [with a group of great women+one man], running, analyzing and processing things with my fellow K-YAVs [Anna and Thomas], taekwondo [longer post later!], Firefly, [thinking about, praying about, anxietying over, thinking about, praying about, writing, and finally delivering] Time for Young Disciples [it only happens about once a month, and I should probably definitely relax but…maybe next time], church, and a few other fun activities thrown in that vary from week to week [which I will blog about]. Run-on sentence? Probably. Also, I eat.
