stumbling through south korea: Dongsambaji!

SO! These past two weekends are going to share an entry this time. Why, you ask? Well its because for the first time it seems like, we didn’t have as much excitement and adventure as in the past weekends.

Weekend 1: We hadn’t made any plans all week so it looked like it was going to be a quiet time in good ol’Pohang. Courtney was really set on going somewhere, anywhere, and I was teased with the rumor that there was an ice skating rink in Pohang. So, we pulled a Cheusok, and we split up! She took a trip to visit a few of our friends in a neighboring city, and I recruited our friend Brandon for a day of exploring.

Sam’s Saturday: I woke up to a phone call from Courtney in the early hours of Saturday (3amish) for she was calling to tell me that she was going to Ulsan at 11 am, and if I wanted to come then I should meet her at the bus station around that time. I told her I wasn’t thrilled about the idea, and that I was devising a plan of my own for Saturday that included staying in town. So Saturday day came around and I definitely did not call Courtney. For all I knew, she was headed to Ulsan, and I was thinking of how to go about finding this mysterious skating rink!

I met up with Brandon for some amazing Sujebi, which is the tastiest Korean soup I’ve ever had! It’s a very simple soup with veggies and the coolest hang made noodles ever. That’s why we really come, its for the noodles. So after noodles we headed to Bukbo Beach to meet some other friends that were already there. By the time we took all the buses necessary and finally got to the beach, it had already gotten dark and our friends had set off to their next destination. So Brandon and I had some coffee and waffles, and started plotting our hunt for the rumored skating rink.

The only thing we had to go on was the address and phone number – which – back home would have been all you DO need. But here in Korea where we are little dumber than the average citizen, it was as helpful as a far away photo for us. I was told by someone that it was near Bukbo beach so we knew we were close! All we could really do was walk around, which we did for a while along the beach shops until we decided that we were losing time and we should ask someone. So we asked the coffee barista if the rink was walking distance, or if we had to take a bus to get there. She was very nice but ended up just telling us we should just take a taxi and show the guy the address. This answer was a little bitter sweet for me because – hey that’s great, we can just show the driver and get there in no time- but that method just takes the fun out of exploring and searching. It was good in the end though because the taxi took us there in no time and we FOUND IT! It was great to see that it actually existed and it was a big legit skating rink. It was about 7:30 at this point and when we went inside we saw that the public skate hours were from 10-7. It wasn’t a terrible blow though, because it was getting late and we had evening plans, so just the fact that we found it was awesome!

When we were heading back we decided to just take the bus back because we were familiar with the buses around the area. At one point while we were walking to the bus stop, we had to trek through some construction and, now, I’m not sure how I managed to do this with Brandon’s voice in the background saying “Is that wet concrete?” but somehow my foot took a swim in this said concrete. Luckily the shoe was saved and my foot did not turn into stone, but after I got my foot out, I must have zoned Brandon out even more as I reached out for something to hold on to while Brandon was acknowledging the mass amounts of barbed wire right next to me. This time he actually stopped me from destroying my hand on what I was about to hold on to for support while I checked out my shoe.

The rest of the night continued with a “wrong bus” realization, a nice long walk back, and then a final bus ride to down town to meet with friends for dinner and drinks.

My first clothing purchase in Korea. It does wonders when its windy. Just not so good when i need to see things.

Sunday was a nice calm day for all of us. Courtney, Dong Hoon and I went ice skating at the newly discovered skating rink. It was really fun, but we did feel a little silly with the helmets we HAD to wear, and the 50 cent gloves we had to buy. After skating we made a few calls and arranged our Sunday night dinner with a few friends at Dan’s suggestion of shabu shabu. The place that we went was amazing! Not only was it shabu shabu, but there was also rice paper and hot pink water! It was great, we took the rice paper and dipped it in the pink water to make it flexible, then we wrapped all the foods from the shabu shabu pot, into the rice paper and pretty much made spring roll looking burrito things!

Its nothing, I'm just really good at skating.

No one say anything about Dong Hoon's hair.

He was really worried the helmet made him look like a mushroom.

Sam racing a couple of kids. She has no mercy.

Week 2: We have officially missed 2 of my favorite American holidays now, being in Korea for 4 months. Halloween was the first and now Thanksgiving has been missed by Sam and Courtney. But we were not going to just take this laying down! We invited our friends from Yeongcheon and Gyeongju to come to Pohang for our own foreigners Thanksgiving on the Saturday after the official holiday. It was going to be potluck style and set in Courtney house. Courtney already knew she was making mashed potatoes, but I was completely stumped on what I was making. I told everyone that I invited that they could bring something from their home country ( Ireland, Canada, Korea, South Africa etc.) so it would be a really cool fusion event! I had such a hard time thinking of what I wanted to make though, that I finally just decided to learn how to make something new and bring it. I’m not sure how or why I chose this dish, but I ended up making Korean Sujebi (the awesome soup from week 1) for the dinner. I laugh because I was so excited about people bringing things from their homes, and here I was with a traditional Korean dish.

Sujebi

The potluck was a huge success with tons of people eating way too much food. Just like Thanksgiving should be. People brought awesome foods like tuna in lemons, milk tart and egg nog! It was really great!

Courtney didn't clean her house before people came over.

Thanksgiving goodness.

The little chocolate coffee cup was impossible to pick up with chopsticks.

No one could do it.

After eating, the far away people headed back home and the Pohangers all went ice skating! Two weeks in a row was so amazing! The second time there were more foreigners there than there were Koreans, so we boycotted and refused to wear the helmets! Really, we just didn’t grab any, but no one got mad.