Reconnecting with Friends and Family

This weekend I spent a lot of my time catching up with friends. On Friday night I had a delicious dinner with the Kyeong family. They are the family I lived with in Chuncheon in February. It was really nice reconnecting with them. I also really liked hearing about how my friends from my spinning class are doing and how some of the mother’s friends are doing. During February I saw some of my unni’s friends everyday and I’ve really missed their presence these past few weeks. The family also took me to my favorite 닭갈비 restaurant, which was really nice of them.

On Saturday I headed to Seoul to meet up with some Fulbright friends. There was a big K-Pop concert on Saturday night and a lot of my friends were in Seoul for the concert. I have yet to catch the K-Pop bug and therefore wasn’t going to the concert but it was great to be able to meet friends for lunch. Six of us went to Vatos for lunch, which is a Korean-Mexican fusion restaurant in Itaewon (the foreigner district). The restaurant was started by a few ex-pats and is extremely popular. The menu has your typical Mexican offerings and then some Korean-Mexican items like Kimchi Carnita Fries. We tried the fries and they were delicious! Some of the tacos and burritos also have kalbi beef or other Korean add-ins. All in all it was a great meal and I loved seeing my friends for the first time since Thanksgiving.

On Saturday night when many of my friends headed to the concert I went to my friend Rachel’s Aunt and Uncle’s house in Gangnam. Her aunt and uncle invited the two of us to sleep over. The sleepover at their house was a lot of fun. We first went to a sushi buffet that was humorously named Muscus. Apparently, Koreans don’t realize how awkwardly similar the name Muscus is to the word mucus. The buffet was delicious and we all left stuffed to the brim. When we arrived home her uncle insisted that we drink with him because he bought special beer for us. He bought a really dark German lager and then a lighter Belgian beer. Korean beer is pretty terrible, which he admitted openly, so it was nice to have some good beer and he really enjoyed treating us to foreign beer.

The next morning was Easter and Rachel’s aunt prepared delicious omelettes for the four of us. She was incredibly proud of her omelettes, which was good because she struggled a little more making us coffee. Koreans don’t really drink coffee like Americans or Europeans.Rather, most of them drink canned coffee which is basically a cup of sugar with a slight coffee flavoring. It’s like the bottled Starbucks Frappuccino drinks we have in the states. Therefore, although Rachel’s aunt has a coffee maker she never really uses it. She knew we both liked coffee though and tried her best. Unfortunately, something went wrong and the coffee maker ended up spilling the grinds and water all over her counter. We helped her clean it up but I also couldn’t help but giggle a little bit because making coffee is such an easy endeavor for most Americans.

Unfortunately, Rachel's uncle was too shy to be photographed with us. 

After breakfast Rachel and her aunt went to church and her uncle and I set out on a run. Her uncle was so excited to run with me. Apparently he hadn’t run in a few years because of a knee injury but he was excited at the chance to run with me. He actually was so excited to run with me he left the house without me and I had to meet him downstairs to start our run. He took me on a really scenic route to the Han River and it was really enjoyable except that both of us were in a little pain after the buffet. It’s never really a good idea to run the morning after an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet... We ended our run a little early, after 40 minutes, and decided to walk through Olympic Park for a while. He then showed me all the Olympic stadiums while we walked up and over numerous hills, that were actually ancient tombs. It was really neat. I was also just impressed at our ability to communicate and converse for the two hours given my limited Korean and his lack of English. It’s always encouraging seeing how much people can share and communicate despite language limitations.

All in all my weekend was wonderful, and I’m looking forward to my coming weekend in Jeju. On Friday I will fly to Jeju Island, “the Hawaii of South Korea”,  for a conference with all the other Fulbright ETAs. It will be a wonderful weekend of catching up with friends, sight-seeing and improving my teaching.