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Part 4...Getting used to Korean food

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I was never a fussy eater but some of the Korean food was literally hard to swallow.  There was a cook and a 'kitchen' in the basement of my building and when the teachers ate there it was free.  If there was a company with a lot of staff or clients there was a kitchen and in large buildings and factories there was a cafeteria. Their food was a big part of 'culture shock for me.  It was vastly different from my European-descent experience. Cabbage kimchi First of all, every Korean ate cabbage kimchi with all meals.  Kimchi is an acquired taste.  Once you can get used to it, sometimes you crave it in a way, like they do, because of the spicy hot pepper flakes in it.   It's addictive in the same way chocolate or hot peppers are, because endorphins (cause you to feel pleasure) are increased in your body after eating it. The process of making it sounds gross though, because Korean cabbage or Chinese lettuce is cut up and mixed with fish sauce and g...
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First teaching job in Seoul...Part 3

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For a long time, I struggled with my new surroundings:  the horrible smell, the heat and humidity, the jet lag, awful fellow teachers and my worries about money.  On my first morning in Korea I started a new teaching job, and it was outside of my building.  I had to take a bus there and back.  A Korean 'secretary' took me there for the first time.  There were 3 female 'secretaries' helping the teachers at my institute and working for Mr. Kim.  Miss Park helped me and was so nice and always did such a good job for Mr. Kim every day.  So many times she would come up to the 4th floor where we lived and say, "...Cobec...!!!..." when she had to tell me I had a new class.  Korean language has no V's or Z's and their R's can be L's and their K's can be G's.  My last name is Corvec so it's hard for them to know how to pronounce it, since they don't have V's and they say R's differently from us.  She never used my first name. Mi...
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'Karak'-Dong in Seoul...Part 2

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There were other huge new surprises when I first arrived in Seoul.  The extreme humidity hit me like a ton of bricks as soon as I reached the end of the 'tunnel' while exiting the plane.  Canada would have been a lot cooler.  Now, Canadian weather has gotten warmer recently, but back then September and sometimes August were cooler and never would have reached a steady 28 degrees Celcius in daytime like I experienced in Seoul that September.  My roommate from Alberta had gotten Mr. Kim(the 'boss') to put an air conditioner in the room I shared at first with her.  We put it on for the first month during the night.  The nights are like tropical zones in Seoul, even in September. I had never had to sleep in an air-conditioned room before.  The whole time I was in Korea it was like I had been transported to another planet in many ways.  It made everything scary and fascinating at the same time. The main old downtown.  North Korea is beyond ...
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Part 1, September 1997

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