It’s hard to believe I have been in South Korea for nearly two weeks already. Time has really flown by very quickly and yet it feels like I have done so much. This can probably be attributed to the day to day challenges I face because of the language barrier and difference in lifestyle.
Rice
Rice is an essential part of the diet here and Mrs. Lee was kind enough to give me a rice cooker. It looked really easy when she showed me and I thought I had committed all of the steps to memory. Unfortunately all of the “buttons” were in Korean so that was an obstacle by itself. I thought I remembered which button meant “cooking” and “warming” so I was confused when I plugged it in because the wrong light lit up. There was a lever in front that you had to push down to get the light to go from warming to cooking. I worked this out pretty quickly though.
I remembered to rinse the rice and I measured two cups of rice and filled the water up to the line that said two. Pretty easy right? I thought so until I went on the internet and started reading about the “two to one” ratio and second guessed myself, (and added more water). Needless to say google was not my friend in this case, the rice cooker was already calibrated. I should have trusted my memory. So I had a little bit of overflow – live and learn. It worked perfectly the second time. more…
Josh and I took the Subway into Seoul again to meet up with Mr. Lee’s nephew. We were not sure exactly what the itinerary would be, possibly a trip to the “Underground Mall”. 
The subway ride is pretty long, approximately and hour and a half. Josh and I brought our Kindles along for the ride, it really makes the time go by fast. Seoul is only twenty miles away but there is no express train like there is in NYC, the train stops very frequently. On the plus side the subway seats are heated which is very nice (if you are lucky enough to get a seat).
We met Mr. Lee’s nephew at the Yeoksam subway stop and got into a cab to find a restaurant. We tried a French restaurant. The food was OK. I finally tried quail eggs – I didn’t really care for them. Josh had some Mussels and I had Escargot, (I like snail). more…
Josh and I did some more “exploring” in the neighborhood and stumbled upon a karaoke place by accident.
This weekend is “Lunar New Year” so a lot of bars and restaurants close for the weekend. We wanted to check out the “night life” around town but we definitely picked a bad time to do this. We thought we heard music coming from a bar on the 6th floor of one of the buildings so we went inside to see if we could find it.
Once we were inside the building we saw a big sign that had a picture of a girl with a microphone and some musical notes coming from her mouth. We thought it might be karaoke so we decided to go to the second floor to check it out.
It wasn’t a karaoke bar but more of a hallway of rooms. You rent the room by the hour. There were all different rates, I wasn’t sure what the difference was. I told the man behind the counter that it was our first time and he gave us a rate of $27.00/ hr. I wasn’t trying to get a deal, just trying to figure out the pricing, (I think $30.00 /hr.was the actual rate). more…
