So Jessica and survived our first full day in South Korea (though maybe just barely). We have no idea where anything is and no way of asking directions because we can't speak Korean. Because of this we decided to be brave and eat something random for lunch at a random restaurant. For those of you thinking about trying this method of decision making I would ask you to reconsider your choice.
We found a nice little restaurant with pictures of food choices on the sign out front. Inside we took our shoes off and sat on the floor at a low table. A nice lady that didn't speak a word of english came to take our order. She handed us a menu with lots of choices written in Korean. I turned the menu over expecting to see pictures of our food options and to my dismay the otherside was blank. We were forced to point at random to a dish and hope for the best. Jessica had seen a picture of a dish on the window that looked like chicken and noodles so we were hoping that would be our choice.
As it turns out we did not get chicken and noodles. In fact I don't think the pictures on the window was chicken at all. We got a very large pan filled with what we later found out was an entire squid on noodles with a very spicey sauce. We also were served a bunch of little side items that ranged from slightly tasty to overpoweringly nasty. I tried a piece of squid that looked like chicken (found out later that it was an intestine that you're not supposed to eat) and it exploded in my mouth with squid juice going everywhere. It was not an experience I would care to repeat although I tried to get Jessica to try it :-)
In the end we didn't eat very much of our lunch and it ended up costing almost $30. I guess this is motivation for us to start learning how to speak/read Korean.
After lunch we went to our school where we were able to shadow the other English teachers and get a feel for what we will be doing next week. Our school also took us to a hospital to get our health check done. By the end of the day we were pretty hungry and ready to eat something a little more American. Thankfully the other American teachers took us to a Korean BBQ place that was delicious. We ate all kinds of things that I'm not really sure what they were but they were very tasty. I think we will have to start eating with other people until we can learn enough Korean to read a menu :-)
Today we will be visiting the new campus that half of us will be teaching at. I'm looking forward to getting started :-)
-Seth