A plate of Thanksgiving food from Bull and Barrel.
A delicious slice of pumpkin pie.
After a long day of class on Friday, I headed to a New Zealand bar that a guy from my Korean class works at (he's from New Zealand), the Cheeky Kiwi. I decided to indulge myself in the kiwi burger which ended up being a very delicious decision. This burger consisted of a toasted bagel as the bun and then inside was beef, cheese, a beet slice, a slice of pineapple, an egg, lettuce, tomato, bacon, and aioli sauce. It was incredibly messy to eat but I enjoyed every bite. The kiwi burger was definitely the most unique burger I've had but all the ingredients worked together. I look forward to having it again in the future.
Eating at Cheeky Kiwi with friends from my Korean class.
The infamous kiwi burger.
Those two days were just the start to the rest of my weekend as far as consuming good food goes. A couple of weeks ago a sign-up sheet went around in my Korean class for a trip to the countryside. The only things I knew about it were the dates of the trip, that we were going to visit villages and make kimchi and alcohol, and that the trip was free. Everyone else in my class was hesitant to sign up but I signed up right away (who doesn't love free trips?) and two other classmates finally signed up with me as well. This trip ended up being the biggest jackpot of all time and you'll know why as I explain.
The trip started when me and around 25 other KLI students loaded onto a tour bus at 8 a.m. in front of the KLI building on Saturday. A KLI teacher and two guys from the company sponsoring the trip accompanied us. After receiving bread, milk, and name tags, we headed about 4 and a half hours outside of Seoul to Yeongyang county. I did a quick Wikipedia search about the county before we left and I found out that it's so isolated that it's like an inland island and that it's pretty much the countryside of the countryside, so I was going to get a feel for the real Korea. After stopping once and making our way through mountains and incredibly windy roads, we arrived at 두들마을 (Dudeul village), the home of Lady Jang Gye-hyang, the first woman to write a Korean cookbook and to do so in Korean instead of using Chinese characters. The cookbook is called 음식디미방 (eumshikdimibang), which literally means "ways to discern tastes of food." We stopped for lunch after we arrived and then took a tour of the village. We visited the Lady's tombstone, walked around the traditional houses, and went into a museum dedicated to the cookbook she wrote which included 146 recipes on all types of food and drinks consumed in the 17th century.
Lunch we had at Dudeul village.
A map of the village.
One of the traditional houses in the village.
Another traditional house.
We then headed to a building to make a traditional alcohol, 칠일수 (chililsu), which is made entirely from rice. The experience was unique and actually pretty tiring. After watching how it's made downstairs we headed back upstairs to make our own. A lot of the work was already done for us so all we had to do was take the rice and crumble it up into pieces, pour the starter liquid (I don't know the actual name for it), and then for 15 minutes press the rice down with the palms of our hands. We all let out a collective groan when found out that we had to do it for 15 minutes. By the time we were done my wrists were quite sore. We then put the mixture into a jar and were told the directions for the next month of how to keep the mixture so it'll turn into alcohol. So in one month I'll be able to drink my chililsu! Hopefully it'll turn out decent, haha. Also, throughout this whole trip everything was in Korean and we would occasionally have things translated for us if we really didn't understand what was going on. It was a good test of my Korean listening skills and luckily we were in a group so if I didn't completely catch all that was said I would just follow what the group was doing.
Before the alcohol-making process: the starter on the left and the rice on the right.
The finished product. In one month this will turn into alcohol!
We then headed to dinner which was my favorite part of this trip. The dinner was a traditional royal dinner using the recipes from 음식디미방. Even though I've had plenty of Korean food since I've been here, I ate things I never had before and many things I couldn't recognize. Even the Koreans who were with us didn't know some of the foods because the recipes were so old. The meal consisted of four courses: the appetizers before the appetizers (I don't have a name for those), the appetizers, main course, and dessert. It was such a struggle to make it through the entire meal because there was so much food. But, I was determined to at least try everything. It was kind of fun looking at the dish, not knowing at all what it could be, and putting in your mouth and not expecting the flavor you were about to get. I also want to emphasize that this entire trip was free. This dinner alone was 50,000 won a person. The phrase "this is too good to be true" kept ringing in my head the entire weekend because it really was too good to be true.
The appetizers before the appetizers. What was interesting about these dishes was the "pudding" to the top left. It's basically a pudding of chililsul, something I never had before. I couldn't finish it though because the alcohol was so strong.
One of the appetizers among many. On the right is lotus root and on the left is some sort of bean patty.
The main course. So much food!
Dessert. On the left was a honey rice pancake and on the right was rice cake. Korean dessert is traditionally not very sweet but it was delicious nonetheless!
After a very filling dinner everyone headed to their assigned traditional house (hanok) that they were to stay in for the night. We also got snacks to take with us (more free food, which I couldn't believe we kept getting). I lucked out though and instead of staying in an empty house, I stayed in the same house that the descendants of Lady Jang lived in. They were incredibly hospitable and the room was stayed in was AWESOME! It was big, had a giant TV, it was clean, and the pads and blankets we used to sleep with were so comfortable. Meanwhile the rooms that other people stayed in were much smaller and didn't have a TV (which we didn't end up using but it was nice nonetheless). I was also happy to find out that the bathroom (which was detached from the house) had warm water so the quick shower I took in the morning was bearable. Overall I really enjoyed my stay in the hanok house. It was cozy, warm, and made leaving the next morning that much harder.
One end of the room we stayed in.
The other end.
Unfortunately, all day on Sunday the weather was awful: it was cold and consistently rainy. The weather made everything gloomy and it was not fun walking around with wet shoes all day, especially since in East Asia you have to take off your shoes every time you walk inside a building so my socks ended up getting pretty dirty and wet. That's one I look forward to coming back to the U.S.: not having to always take your shoes off. After awhile it becomes quite annoying. After waking up and getting ready, we headed to breakfast and then got on the bus to head to another village, the home of the famous Korean poet Cho Ji-hun. We toured the village and entered a museum about his life and his work.
Cho Ji-hun's house.
Photos of Cho Ji-hun in the museum.
We then hopped back on the bus and headed to the nearby kimchi festival. This part of the trip was super overwhelming. There were cameras everywhere that were shooting us and we even met the mayor of Yeongyang county. Of course we met him on the day that I looked like crap and same with everyone else because it was the second day of the trip and it had been raining all day so everyone's hair was crazy. But like I said, it was very overwhelming. They were people pulling us in different directions, asking us questions, taking photos of us, asking us to say things, taking videos of us. It was all such a blur. And we were the only foreigners there so we got all the attention. The "making" kimchi part was kind of fun. I was expecting to actually completely make kimchi, from making the sauce to cutting the cabbage, but instead all we did was take the sauce and put it in the layers of the cabbage. I now have a ton of kimchi though (two heads of cabbage worth), enough to probably last me the whole year, haha.
Outside the kimchi festival tent.
Making kimchi: before with the sauce and cabbage.
Making kimchi: the final product.
We then headed on the bus again (I'm probably forgetting stuff we did because we packed so much into one day) and headed to a museum area about mountain village life. The museum was actually really nice and I enjoyed learning about all aspects of mountain life in Korea, from the foods eaten to the way people dressed to how they farmed. After the museum we walked in this trail for about 10 minutes which ran through a mountainside. If it wasn't raining I would've actually really enjoyed that walk. We went up and down hills, over bridges, through the woods, and over a river until we finally reached the place we were to have lunch. This area of Yeongyang is known for gochujang, a sauce made from fermented red peppers. We had bibimbap for lunch with the sauce and then after taking a short break we hopped on the bus yet again for our final stop.
The museum area of the mountain village life.
Part of our walk to lunch.
The bibimbap lunch we had.
Our final stop was in another village but we stopped there mainly to take our last group photo and to fill out a questionnaire about how we felt about the trip. That was it: all we had to do was fill out one page of paper to get this whole trip for free. I am still shocked that I got everything we did for free and I barely had to do anything for it. Now you can understand why this was a major jackpot and it was indeed too good to be true.
We headed back on the bus for 5 hours and finally arrived in Seoul. At this point I was exhausted so when I came back I unpacked, went on the internet, talked to Henrik, and then went to sleep.
This will probably be my last blog post for awhile. I have finals in two weeks and then Henrik comes here for four weeks. I want to concentrate on studying and my time spent with him so I don't expect to write another blog post until he leaves, which will be in January. Until then I will keep everyone updated through social media and I highly recommend browsing through the other photos I posted on Facebook because I barely scratched the surface of my trip by posting them here.
I will see you all in January!
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