Exploring Seoul - Samcheongdong

After an hour or so on the bus, my friend and I step off, stretch our legs and shoulders, and both just gape at the view around us. I'm a little surprised, because she seems just as taken aback as I am by the large size and unfamiliarity of everything. She remarks that she is a "country girl" and I laugh. The statement seems funny yet true at the same time. This is Seoul, and it does have a different feeling than our home back in Suwon.

Suwon is no country town, not anymore at least. A few weekends ago Isaac and I rode the city bus from our home to a large shopping area that is also in Suwon. Usually we take the underground subway when travelling to this area, but we decided to change things up. Looking out the window during the 15-20 minute ride, I remember muttering "It just never ends." The development - high apartment buildings, retail stores and restaurants stacked one on top of another leaning over the roads, tall office buildings. The widest breaks I saw were the sports field of some school or university, and the brown water of a wide river bisecting the main road. Glimpsing the scenes sliding past the scratchy bus window, it was just a blur of newer and less new buildings.

It seems unbelievable, and I have to remind myself that in terms of modern development, South Korea is a very young country, as many veterans well know. Isaac's father told us before that he remembers when Suwon was just country and farmland. Within his lifetime he's seen it grow from the countryside into the city it is now, larger that Charlotte and twice the size of Atlanta.

Considering that the origins of our current hometown still blow my mind, it comes as no surprise that South Korea's capital city is a bit overwhelming also. Exploring Seoul seems like a never-ending task. Looking at the figures, Seoul is physically half the size of New York City but with a larger population. It's home to more than half of all South Koreans.

I have heard of big cities being compared to living things, with old bits sloughing off like dead skin and new pieces always sprouting up. So even if you visit the same place many times, the location itself has changed.

I found this true of Samcheongdong, a charming part of Seoul I grew to love last December when visiting Korea. It's been just over a year since I've been there, but this past week I noticed many changes - a cheap accessories store I piddled in while Isaac patiently waited was closed, being packed up as I walked by; a new spaghetti restaurant had giant teddy bears posing outside of their front doors, celebrating their grand opening.

Samcheongdong is in the heart of Seoul, squished up against the palace walls of Gyeongbokgung. This large, old style palace has beautiful architecture, a rich history and it's quite a work out to explore the whole place. I still haven't properly done it although I've walked around it twice. Behind it to the North is the Blue House, where South Korea's president lives. Beyond both, competing against the glory of man-made structures just by existing and remaining, stand mountains.

This shot below was taken from the wide walkway that splits the main road in front of Gyeongbokgung. What we can see here is the outer wall, and the famous gate called Gwanghwamun.

Once you walk through Gwanghwamun, you are in a wide courtyard. Here you can just wander around and buy tickets to enter the palace, which you enter by walking through this gate (I don't remember its name).

Something that makes Seoul such a stunning city is the contrast of traditional architecture against the shapes of modern buildings. Below is just some corner of the palace, but set against the background of Seoul, how beautiful.

So on the east side of this giant palace lies the area known as Samcheongdong. And similar to the photo above, it is a stunning mixture of old neighborhoods with traditional architecture and spanking new storefronts.

Overflowing with dessert cafes, apparel and jewelry stores, it's no surprise that most of the passersby are women, or men accompanying women. Above you can see an orange car - Seoul taxis are all this vibrant color with the logo of the iconic lion sculptures that sit outside of Gyongbokgung.

The neighborhood embraces the charm and grunge of these older buildings, similar to Charleston or Savannah. There are small sidewalks being taken over by trees and congested streets that sometimes make walking quicker than driving.

This shot is looking back Northwest, towards the mountains which lie behind the palace. Although you can only see people, this is also a road, so you have to stay alert for the occasional car or moped puddling through.

Last week my friend and I spent the day in Samcheongdong. The impetus for this visit was a recent discovery that the last Wednesday of each month is culture day in Korea; meaning many museums have free or reduced admission. We decided to devote our time to just one destination, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, and we cushioned our visit with delicious food and drinks.

First, we split a hojicha latte at a cafe with old style architecture, to escape the shadowy morning and freezing temperatures. Hojicha is a roasted green tea, although it looks brown in the picture below. By the time the cafe worker added steamed milk and sugar, it was a much needed burst of energy for all of the walking around to come.

Then we were off to the large art museum, also stopping by a few shops and independent art galleries en route.

The artist Ahn Kyuchul had a large exhibition of performance art which was the highlight of our visit. Performance art is a fun (and sometimes odd) genre that is, well, performed in some manner and that lets visitors interact with each idea/piece.

For example, there was what looked like a tall dark blue cube of hanging curtains. It was an 8x8 grid of small square, telephone booth sized rooms, each sectioned off by high, thick velvet curtains. You could step into the grid, and then move from room to room, having the feeling of being in a dark and repetitive maze. It was disorienting and thrilling. Outside of this space there were signs warning parents not to let children go in alone, for they might get scared or lost.

Another piece was a pool of nine concentric circles, each ring home to one gold fish. From your perspective standing to one side, you can only see a few of the goldfish. You have to walk around the pool in order to find all nine. The giant plaster sphere below was my favorite, called the sphere of silence. You enter alone (or with your friend) and there is a sign outside telling you to wait your turn in line. Standing in the middle of the sphere is a magical treat for your ears. Stay still and the silence is heavy and presses in on you. Tap your foot, or just breath, and you hear the sound echo countless times one after another. I sang four notes of a major chord and after finishing the fourth note, I could hear all four sounds resonating in the sphere, surrounding me. I told Isaac I want one of these in our house, or backyard.

Walking up the staircase (shown above) I was filled with this eagerness and curiosity of what I would see at the top and couldn't help hopping up. I never could have guessed what I saw, this bleak, voyeuristic sight of a man sitting at a desk, working away. The piece was about the lost art of writing. People had volunteered for hour long shifts of transcribing words onto paper, and videos and speakers let you see and hear the action of writing.

A giant wall of sticky notes was entitled "memory" and visitors were invited to write one word on a blue sticky note of what they most miss. Reading the wall made you feel reflective and melancholy, many of the sticky notes featuring things like "family", "grandma", "dad's shoulder", of course a few silly ones were sprinkled in as well.

We lost track of time and when we finally exited the museum, we were quite hungry. But we worked up the gusto to travel to a restaurant famous for its sujebi, a traditional Korean soup with pieces of rice dough and veggies. There was a jar of kimchi on the table, the perfect tangy compliment to this soothing soup.

I love the woman's face leaving the sujebi restaurant. I think this is how we looked walking out of the door too.

Are you getting tired of reading yet? It was quite a full day. Afterwards we wandered around some more, into and out of shops. A smoky smell caught our attention, the scent of coffee beans roasting, and we followed it up a small, cute alley. I instantly recognized the place, from my own visit last December and from the media. This alley is pretty famous - it has been in magazines as the background of fashion shoots and on television providing romantic scenery for a love story

So to fast forward, we had to try the coffee at this small place. The building was a traditional style home, several small rooms that open upon an inner courtyard. The largest room, of course, is the coffee shop, other rooms housing roasting equipment and a bathroom. The man at this cafe is known for his minute portraits which he does with a sharpie and a few strokes of a traditional brush and ink. He's a gruff man, and there's even a caricature of him on the napkins. So we sipped delicious lattes and splurged 1000 won each for the one minute portraits.

Can you tell which one of the pictures below is me? I left the paper on the dining table after returning home. When Isaac came in, he said "What's this? Is this supposed to be you? My angel is way prettier than this."

So that was my most recent exploration of Seoul. I hope you enjoyed seeing a bit of it too just like I did. There are still many more places to visit, including the huge Namdaemun market whose entrance is in the first picture of this post. But that will have to wait for another day. For now, this country girl needs a rest from the big city.

Modified Food Cravings

Are you tired of seeing and reading about food yet? It seems like one of the funnest differences about visiting new places, and it's one of our hobbies, so I guess it makes sense that the topic comes up so often.

A month from today, I will be travelling home to South Carolina for a visit. As I look forward to this trip, once again food is a subject that pops up in conversations and thoughts. Which comfort foods will I want to gobble up first? How many jars of Jif peanut butter can I cram in my suitcase for the trip back to Korea?

But I think my stomach has changed its tastes a bit. For the most part, I'm no longer pining for those familiar foods like English muffins and macaroni and cheese. There are several munchies I crave now, but I realize that they are rather different than eight months ago.

So here are the foods I find myself craving now, which I guess could also be seen as my favorite eating out meals.

Soups

Maeuntang, the incredibly fresh fish soup usually served as the finale of a large meal. It's cooked right there on your table, and the spicy broth is sure to clean out your sinuses.










The smell of fishcake soup often wafts across sidewalks - from small restaurants with open doors and street vendors. At first I wasn't a fan of the scent or drinking the liquid, but now I've grown addicted. The simple, salty, fishy broth is perfect to warm you up. And there are several fun textures of spongy fishcake to chew. This particular place serves Busan fishcake, which Isaac says have a reputation for being the tastiest in Korea.

Stone Pot Mixed Rice

Served in a super hot stone pot, this dish is sizzling and steaming when it arrives before you. It's rice topped with various vegetables and some protein - commonly beef and egg. For my craving, it's fish eggs or salmon. The ingredients are laid out prettily, and then you use a spoon and chopsticks to mix everything together. You can also stir in gochujang, red pepper paste, which some say is the Korean equivalent of ketchup. Bits of the rice stick to the hot pot and become chewy and crunchy, and it's always fun to scrape the bowl clean with your spoon at the end.

Just below is fish egg rice (albap) from the Home Plus food court near our house. It's 6,000 won, a little under $5, for this meal. The mixed rice has many ingredients like cabbage, kimchi, sprouts, pickled radish, mushrooms and seaweed.

This is a similar dish except with a blob of salmon sushi on top. I would definitely eat this every day if I could. This is 6000 won as well, the cost of a fast food meal. Before mixing:

After mixing:

Side Dishes

Like I've mentioned before, one of the best things about Korean food is the plethora of side dishes that accompany each meal. Kimchi is one of the most common, but I continue to encounter new side dishes rather often. I find myself especially craving side dishes that have the taste of Korean red pepper flakes (gochukaru).

Here are two of my favorites. Cucumber kimchi still has the sweet, fresh crunch of a fresh cuke, with a fun added tang. And the plain looking salad is the stuff of dreams. It's dribbled with nutty sesame oil and has a zing from the red pepper flakes. It also has the most delicious kkaenip leaves, which are shaped like hearts, super fragrant and tasty (a bit like licorice as I've mentioned before).

Fried Chicken

This craving is not totally new or foreign, just modified. Fried chicken culture in South Korea is a big deal. I hesitate to try and write a short blurb about it because I know it won't do it justice. It seems to me many Koreans love fried chicken at least as much as people back home in the South do.

Isaac told me that it's not uncommon for people to eat dinner, and afterwards go to a chicken restaurant and eat again. It's like dessert chicken. There are many different varieties and chicken jibs (restaurants devoted to serving only chicken) often guard their sauce and breading recipes. Sounds similar to barbecue or fried chicken recipes back home, huh?

There's bone in or out, original crispy or drenched in some sweet and spicy sauce.

The white things below are fried rice cake.

Of course, one of the benefits of living in a city is that you don't even have to leave your house to eat such food. It still feels like a novelty to me that we can have food delivered to our door. Although it usually an unhealthy option, like below.

This super fried meal comes in what looks like a pizza box, its insides divided into neat sections. This restaurant was a little special for having kkaenip fried chicken. They put the fragrant tasty leaves in the fried chicken batter itself and give more for you to sprinkle on top yourself. It also comes with a soda, french fries, kimmari (noodles and veggies wrapped in seaweed, fried) and pickled radish to contrast all of that grease.

Maybe it's coincidence, but after thinking and writing about fried chicken for the past while, I've got a stomach ache. I hope you enjoyed seeing a few of these foods, and that it wasn't too painful.

Once again, we are guilty of taking way more pictures of food over the past week than each other. But last Sunday was Valentine's Day, and while we were walking around there were some surprise snow flurries, which inspired me to try to take a picture of us. It's not one for the scrapbook, but you can see that we are alive and (eating) well, even if a little pale after the long winter.

Our Korean Lunar New Year

This week was atypical and awesome thanks to the Lunar New Year. This is the same holiday, that I always thought of as Chinese New Year, which is celebrated by many countries in East Asia. As one of the most celebrated holidays here, Korean New Year possessed much of the build up and excitement of a typical December holiday season. The first day of the new Lunar New Year, called 설날 (seol-nal), was Monday, but most people had time off through Wednesday.

It was my first time celebrating this holiday, and it seems like I experienced a lot of new things. Of course I still don't know everything special about this holiday, but I'll do my best just to share what our Korean New Year was like. For our Lunar New Year, we went to visit Isaac's father and stayed with him for a couple of days.

The past several weeks, monkeys have been popping up everywhere. Not live monkeys, but monkey faced donuts, special banana flavored ice cream, stuffed animals, that kind of thing. This lunar year is the year of the monkey, so in anticipation of that, stores and restaurants have been putting monkey faces on all sorts of products. And because everyone was off of work, and the stores and streets all have special decorations, there was that giddy atmosphere just like during the December holiday season. So even as an outsider with no prior attachments to the Korean New Year, I felt excited too.

When I think of New Year's Day, as in the usual American January 1st edition, all I can think of is eating food with family. Collards and black-eyed peas are the traditional foods you're supposed to eat, representing dollars and pennies you will get in the coming year. Although picky me doesn't remember eating either of these foods, (I do remember dreading the smell of cooked collard greens) this food tradition seems cute to me.

On Korean New Year, you are supposed to eat 떡국 (ddeok-guk) for breakfast. It's a hearty and simple soup with meaty broth, chewy rice cake and beef. Endlessly chewing the white pieces of rice cake, which have no taste of their own, is like a fresh clean start to the new year.

I first encountered this dish last year, when I visited Isaac in Korea over my winter break. We ate ddeokguk with his father on January 1st. Back then this dish was surprising and very strange to me, and to my stomach which is not used to eating meat soup for breakfast. But this time I anticipated this special meal, and was able to really enjoy it. I also gobbled up a chocolate chip cookie an hour before, waking up my stomach with something more familiar.

It seems like gifts are very important for Korean holidays. When special days approach like Korean Thanksgiving or New Year, the stores start stocking gift sets. Travelling on subways and buses, we saw many people carrying the special fabric bags that are given out with the gift sets, usually proudly bearing the product's name or brand. I really enjoyed walking through the stores over the past month or so and seeing these special products.

Here are two examples of the essential Spam gift set. We saw more displays of potted meat gift sets than any other type. I thought these particular ones were nice because they also include cooking oils. I'm pretty sure my brother would enjoy receiving one of these, and he would probably happily tote around the reusable bag with a giant SPAM logo.

Here's a few more. Shampoo and toothpaste decorated with Audrey Hepburn's face and Vincent Van Gogh's paintings.

Traditional Korean drinks like rice liquor with ginseng or berries looked very nice too, packaged in pretty pottery with tiny cups.

Dried fish and shrimp. I like to imagine giving this gift to my sister. Her facial expression would certainly be way different than what this company expected when they made such a nice looking gift set. Actually I can think of a few family members who would have funny responses to this.

Other sets I saw: apples, Asian pears and oranges - all perfect specimens and carefully packed as if they were delicate glass orbs, ginseng roots resting on beds of soft green moss, mushrooms of shapes and colors that I never knew existed. These kinds can be quite pricy, and sadly they were harder to find by the time I got up the nerve to go around a store taking pictures.

Probably I dedicated too much time to describing those awesome gift sets. There really is more to Korean New Year. A big part of it is about family -  spending time with those here and honoring those who are not.

Eating meals with family and calling relatives far away are the familiar ways to share time with those loved ones still around you.

One way to honor family members who are no longer here is through a gift of traditional fruits and nuts. I like to think of it as the original and ultimate holiday gift set: Asian pears, apples, persimmons, chestnuts and dried jujubes along with dried fish and soju, the traditional Korean rice liquor. To the right are these foods stacked up as Isaac's father prepared them. They are presented at a special place - like an altar within the home or a grave - by family members to deceased relatives. For our Korean New Year, we honored Isaac's grandparents with this ultimate gift set.

In order to do that, we needed to take a bit of a drive. Although it is a densely populated country, travelling through the countryside of South Korea you will see countless mountains covered in trees, unscathed by roads and buildings. People tend to live in the valleys, looking like puddles of civilization gathered in the land's cracks and crevices.

But there are some exceptions to this, like cemeteries. Isaac's grandparents are at a stunning location high on a mountain's side, overlooking a wide valley and surrounded by many other soft peaks. We have visited a few times before, and I was blown away with the place's special feeling and beauty.

Here are two pictures of the cemetery from one of our previous visits. Notice the empty mountains all around, and the neat rows of landscaping and granite stones. It feels more like a garden then a graveside.

This Lunar New Year was my first time visiting Isaac's grandparents on a major Korean holiday. As we left Isaac's father's place in the morning, the wide city streets were deserted. But on the countryside's two lane roads winding up to the cemetery, there was heavy traffic. Many families were travelling together to visit the resting place of their loved ones.

Here was our view this time from the graveside. In the valley you can see the rectangles of different types of farms. I remember passing orchards, ducks, cattle and all sorts of vegetable farms.

Here is the place honoring Isaac's grandparents. I took this photo when we were about to leave; Isaac's father had already taken some of the food to throw into the woods nearby for the animals. From what I've heard, his grandparents were animal lovers and would appreciate the gesture, and I think we all know that Isaac inherited this trait as well.

So you bring all of these foods, pick up some fresh (fake, of course) flowers, light incense (it's stuck in the ground to the left below the flowers) and pour glasses of soju for the Grandparents. It's like preparing a feast them. Then you bow to each as a way of honoring and remembering them. We eat a bit of the food, this time crunching on the chestnuts. Then we poured the soju on grave, the left side for Isaac's grandfather and right side for grandmother.

Even high up on the mountain, we saw several other families gathered around the granite monuments of their relatives. Below you can get a vague picture of a family with many different foods spread out, a mat on the ground for bowing and sprinkling soju over the grave. I saw many young children in puffy jackets participating, a cute sight as they bowed or toted the food to and from cars.

Before experiencing it myself, this tradition seemed a little scary to me. Bowing before a grave seemed strange, like ancestor worship. But after talking with Isaac and now having the opportunity to participate myself, I think it is a beautiful way to honor and remember family. In the western world, it seems like bowing is only used as a means of expressing servitude, like bowing before royalty or a god. Yet it is so much more in eastern countries - it's used everyday to meet and greet others; it can show respect, gratitude, apology and humility. I feel so much gratitude towards the grandparents of my husband. Participating in this tradition, even if I am very much a child of the language and culture, feels special and satisfying.

I often think of deceased loved ones, and my family is always sharing stories or memories with and about them. We all surely agree that we still feel their presence - whether it's through a familiar facial feature like a lopsided smile, voice intonations or memories. But there isn't a set time or day that we dedicate so clearly to remembering them and everything they've done for us. It's a neat idea.

Our Korean New Year ended with more family and food. Isaac's aunt invited us to eat dinner at her place. She met us at the elevator of her apartment, and as soon as we walked in, she insisted we sit down and start enjoying the food. I took this picture of what was already waiting on the table; she was still cooking more. Even though I can not speak or understand Korean very well, sharing food and time together made me feel so welcome and like part of the family. I feel inspired to learn how to make more Korean cuisine too, so that next time maybe I can chip in with the cooking.

Once we arrived home from our holiday festivities, I looked back through the photos I had taken from this time. Other than a few landscape photos like this one below with a white egret standing frozen in an icy river, all of the pictures include food of one sort or another. I didn't even take any pictures of us, just the food we shared and ate together.

And so that led me to my current summary about this special time of year. My big takeaway from Korean New Years is that it's all about preparing, sharing and enjoying food with family. Whether it's giving a spam set, cooking lunch or presenting food to honor ancestors, it's the warm combination of family and food.