Party in the ROK

Sunday, June 26, 2011

An Updated Tour of My Apartment

Well, it looks like I'll be spending another year in my apartment. I would have liked someplace closer to a subway station, but it's OK. I've recently been reorganizing my cabinets and closets and changing around the position of the furniture in my room and stuff in my kitchen, and I'm enjoying living in my apartment a lot more 'these days.' Plus, although I have some awkward encounters with my neighbors who own my apartment (one of them is my student,) it's nice having people who are super-helpful and speak a little English next door. One time my toilet was broken, and the father personally fixed it for free. When I first moved in, I asked the mother where the "air con" was and the next day, I came home from work to find her and a maintenance guy installing it in my room, free of charge. Sometimes she gives me tomatoes and oranges.

The main room. I hate that yellow floor.

The corner with my bed. It is adjacent to the boarded-up door which leads to my neighbors' apartment.

Desk corner. Looks junky. The furniture doesn't match but i'm not going to spend money buying new stuff, or a new TV. I have free cable and internet, thanks neighbors!

The kitchen.

The foyer room, where I keep my shoes, stuff I need to grab for work in the morning (like my Tokyo Pokemon Center Pokemon travel mug) and my children's vitamin gummy bears (for those of us who are too afraid to swallow real medicine.)

Bathroom. Same as before, although I recently bought a nice fluffy blue towel at Costco. No separate shower room- the whole bathroom is the shower. This is an Asian thing. I have to clean it very frequently because of all the mold that builds up.

I have 3.5 closets in my apartment, which I think is my favorite feature of this place. This is 1 closet. It is bigger than lots of my friends' closets, and I have more than 3 of them!

Cute kitchen mat from Daiso, a Korean and Japanese dollar store

Cute Rabbit Dog trash can, also from Daiso

My refrigerator... not sure what is going on here.

My desk chair cushion.

Stuff on top of my bookcase: Big Bang calendar, Big Bang concert lightstick, "You're Beautiful" Korean TV show rabbit bear, a keychain of some guy from 2PM a student made and gave me, a ton of earrings, Pokemon stuff from Tokyo, an old Rilakkuma jingle bell cell phone charm, and pressed pennies from the Pokemon Center in Tokyo and the 63 Building in Seoul. IS IT JUST ME OR IS MY BEDROOM LIKE A 7-YEAR-OLD'S??? Why do I have so much Pokemon stuff?!

Some DVDs my family sent me, some books I brought from home and some Kurt Vonnegut books I bought from another foreign teacher here, a book on Korean culture which Jae Hyun informs me is full of lies, a YG Family notebook, and assorted CDs I bought (2NE1, GD&TOP, Big Bang Special Edition and Seungri's mini album)

Pencil cup, overflowing with Big Bang.

Above my desk: pictures with family and friends, pictures students drew of me, a subway map, and assorted Polaroids (me at Lotte World and Insadong in Seoul and the Meiji Shrine and Akihabara in Tokyo; me and Jae Hyun in Hongdae; and me and some people at a Ho Bar)

The ugly, dirty corner of my kitchen, which has an unreachable thick layer of black mold on the walls. I love having my own washer and dryer. Please appreciate the makeshift table I made out of an upside-down box of Cheddar Cheese Combos that I used to carry stuff home from Costco last time. And the pink curtain I created using tape and the wrapping fabric of a box of oranges my school gave me. RESOURCEFULNESS.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

La Plancha Restaurant in Itaewon

I used to write restaurant reviews for my college newspaper pretty frequently (mostly because I could eat for free,) but I also enjoy writing about restaurants, so it's surprising that I haven't written anything about restaurants in my blog yet. I guess this is because most of the places I eat at are small, might-as-well-be-nameless Korean restaurants. However, I wanted to take Jae Hyun out for a nice dinner to celebrate his birthday, and spent some time researching some higher-end Western-style restaurants in Itaewon, because we were really hungry for steak.

I ended up choosing La Plancha restaurant in Itaewon, which is apparently a popular destination for foreign diners as well as reasonably priced compared to other steak restaurants in Seoul. I read several blogs in which reviewers raved about the restaurant, and the interior seemed beautiful and upscale. However, I thought La Plancha was a waste of money, and did not have a very good experience there.

I tried calling the restaurant to make a reservation that morning. Since this is a restaurant in Itaewon, which is known for attracting foreign visitors, I assumed I could be connected to someone who spoke English. But, when I called, the person who answered the phone was a very rude Korean woman who would answer any of my requests (even in Korean!) to speak with someone who knew English, and just kept saying "Yobosaeyo?" over and over again. So I just hung up. I mean, I can't really fault someone in Korea for not speaking to me in English, but when I went to the restaurant later, EVERY SINGLE PERSON WORKING THERE was speaking English, including the two owners (I assume) who spoke perfect English.

As it turned out, a reservation wasn't necessary, as there was only one other group in the small restaurant besides us. I wasn't aware that they opened at 6:00, so we actually had to kill some time wandering around Itaewon (shudder) until the restaurant was open.

Initially, the menu looked great. It had a ton of drinks, different types of meat (steak, salmon, and lamb,) and- the best part- side dishes like mashed potatoes! Jae Hyun decided to order a T-bone, and I decided to order a tenderloin. However, when we tried to place our order with the waiter, he informed us that the restaurant wasn't serving T-bones or tenderloin steaks that day. So our only option was a rib-eye. So, this restaurant that specializes in steak didn't have 2/3 of their famed steak menu available. On a Friday night.

Our food came out quickly, which was one point in La Plancha's favor, but the meat was paper-thin and resembled a grey pork chop more than a steak. The best part was the avocado salsa topping. The mashed potatoes I got as a side dish were delicious (first time I've had mashed potatoes since Thanksgiving!) and the French fries Jae Hyun ordered were made from real potatoes, and also good. But, seriously, that was not a steak.

I also found the service lacking. There was only one other table besides us, and yet the staff were apparently too busy to notice that our water glasses were empty.

So, in conclusion, I found La Plancha to be a huge disappointment and a big waste of money, as most Western (especially Mexican!) restaurants in Seoul are. The dishes for which they are most famous were 'unavailable' that day, the steak was thin, and the service was bad. We should have just gotten Korean barbecue^^. Or Lotteria, which I kept telling Jae Hyun was where we were going to eat.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Monday, May 2, 2011

Petite France Village

Midterms at my school started yesterday and will finish on Wednesday. Then we have no school Thursday and Friday for Children's Day, and no school Tuesday, for Buddha's birthday. As a celebration my school went on a trip to Petite France in Gapyeong in Gyeonggi-do (the suburban/rural area that surrounds Seoul.)

We left at 11 (we have half days all this week) and boarded a party bus outside the school gates. (Korean buses are pretty epic. There are always wild Rococo curtains and decorations hanging off the windows and usually a TV, built-in karaoke system, and sometimes flashing lights or a disco ball. Unfortunately my school only used the TV this time to watch American crime dramas, which Korean people love... at least I assume they do, because they are always on TV.)

We drove for about 20 minutes and stopped at a restaurant for lunch. It was so busy they actually ushered us out after our plates were half-finished. I got spicy bean sprout soup. Yes, I used to really loathe bean sprouts, but in the spicy soup, they weren't too bad. And it was better than the alternative (crab covered in spicy sauce) which would have ended up all over the front of my dress (and also my upper arms, where the soup we had for dinner ended up... but that happened later.) After our rushed lunch we piled back in the van.

Basically this trip was perfect for me because we made a bathroom stop every 30 minutes. It was actually kind of annoying, and took us much longer to reach Gapyeong, and usually the bathrooms were public rest stops without toilet paper and they smelled kind of bad, but whatever. I really needed multiple bathroom breaks because teachers would come up and down the aisles every 20 minutes and politely force me to accept various drinks (water, Gatoride, Chilsung cider... everything but coffee, which I knew I would never drink.) We also got a cute little snack pack when we boarded, with cookies, bread, nuts, dried fish, and M&Ms!

My school is in Eastern Seoul so within half an hour or less we were in country land. Very different from Seoul. Lots of beautiful untouched mountains, overgrown fields, and little streams. Occasionally you could see Buddhist grave markers and statues on the sides of the mountains, or little gardens with fences made of trash and tree branches and the cute old farmers hanging out on little huts they made out of tree branches and huts. It was like stepping back in time- this is what Korea must have looked like 60 years ago. I saw a beautiful, enormous (maybe 20-story?) white church building with a giant cross sticking up between two mountains, and groups of white high-rises sticking out of the sides of mountains (reminiscent of Hong Kong.) It was really beautiful. As we got closer to Gapyeong, we saw more run-down old restaurants and houses near the roads.

Before we went to Petite France we actually stopped at a lake (Homyeong Lake?) to 'take a rest' or something. Everyone just took tons of glamor shots of themselves. The lake was really pretty and had a nice look-out spot you could walk up to and two big swan boats floating in the middle. You can't actually swim in the lake, though. Lots of old Korean grandmothers and grandfathers were relaxing in the sun in their hiking gear. Old Korean women always wear bedazzled glittery sun visors to protect their skin when they go out (it's kind of a joke with foreigners here) and these women had the most ridiculous big glittery visors of all time. I also had to wait forever to the bathroom because they all pushed ahead of me (ajumma are so pushy.) When I finally emerged from the bathroom they were all sitting in a circle outside singing "Amazing Grace" in Korean.

We got back on the bus and FINALLY headed to Petite France. Petite France is really in the middle of nowhere. It's near another lake, with nothing around it but little restaurants, motels, and pensions. In Korea a pension is a little house you can rent instead of a hotel or motel room. They are really cute and I stayed in one once near Everland. There were some people out on their boats, since the weather was nice, and we even saw someone water-skiing (the drunk teachers thought this was hilarious.)

Petite France is beautiful, but there's really not much to do other than take pictures. It's a small recreation French Village on the side of a mountain. You can guy French-style dishes and knick-knacks, which is about the only unique thing you can do. You can also get French coffee and waffles, but you can do that anywhere in Seoul. There were also recreation French rooms which were really anachronistic but kind of funny. And there was a cage with rabbits and a turkey and a lighthouse. Also there is a small stage where throughout the day two men will play piano and guitar and sing songs that are not French like "Fly Me to the Moon" and Frank Sinatra songs. It was crazy, and even crazier than I expected.

We had an hour to look around so everyone split up and explored and took lots of pictures. If you are a fan of dramas, one room has photographs and autographs of tons of famous people on its walls (I didn't see Big Bang but I did see Lee Min Ho.) Also, the room where they filmed the office of the music conductor from the TV show "Beethoven Virus" is here, and you can pose behind his desk. And, they filmed part of the first episode of "Secret Garden," when Joo Won and Ra Im first meet each other, outside in Petite France (Ra Im is a body double who is filming a fight scene on the streets of Petite France.) There is a commemorative sign that everyone wanted to get a picture with. When I saw that scene when I was watching the show, I thought they were in Petite France (I'd seen a few pictures before,) so I was happy to learn that I was right (pshhh, I'm ALWAYS right.)

We were there for an hour and did everything you could possibly do so after that we left and went for dinner. We got a spicy fish soup that had potatoes and tons of vegetables in it. It was really good but I don't remember the name. It was just 'spicy fish head soup.' Usually at school gatherings everyone gets totally trashed but there wasn't a lot of drinking this time. I just took shots of cider every time someone called for a toast, and so did most of the other teachers.

Then we went home, watching another episode of CSI or NCIS or whatever on the TV and eating snacks. I had the window seat and it was really comfortable and I slept through most of the trip home, waking up automatically when we were a minute from school (that always happens! It's like your body subconsciously knows where it is!)

So, my opinion is that Petite France is adorable and a great place to take pictures, but maybe not worth making an independent trip there on your own. I think the best thing to do would be to go in the summer and rent a pension for a day or two and go to Petite France and also enjoy swimming and boating on the lake. It was about 1.5-2 hours from Eastern Seoul.

Now, the best part- pictures!