A Taste of Korea

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Early view of Seoul

Last weekend I went to Seoul, in the Republic of Korea. A whole weekend! Now I’m an expert on all things Korean.

The Won is the Korean currency (“wahn”). What do you call a bunch of Won? A Won-ton! (Now I’m hungry.)

There’s about 1,000 Won to the dollar. Just think of the comma as a decimal point. Try not to get nervous when you pull 100,000 Won from the ATM.

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Where’s the comma?!

They should drop 3 zeros and reprint their currency. (Japan needs to drop 2 zeros from theirs. <hold breath>)

Friday afternoon we wandered around Itaewon (pronounced eat-taiwan, which seems like cross-marketing. And makes me hungrier.) We found a hamburger place run by Americans. We had Guinness at an Aussie bar. And then we struck gold. Pancake Hotdog Sale. Yep, bratwursts with a pancake for a bun and yummy asian sauces drizzled over them.

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Whine

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OK readers, switch on Pandora radio and find some pouty, minor-chord tunes. Break out the cheeseboards and stemless glassware. It’s time for a full-on whine session.

What do I have to whine about on this trip-of-a-lifetime?

(Besides the fact I can’t get Pandora. And don’t even mention Netflix.)

Well, here are the top 4.

  • Japanese is hard
  • Everything I do is wrong
  • I can’t read menus
  • Moving is a pain

Japanese is hard

There. I admit it. For today only, I’m going to say it’s hard. Difficult. Frustrating. Dizzying, confusing, confounding. It’s really just the verbs and the nouns. And the adjectives. And the prepositions. So basically just everything.

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A Day in the Life

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Next to the very handsome guy is a clock made from tiny water fountains. Every minute the little fountains change to show the new time. That’s technology!

Here’s what my life is like in Japan.

The morning started with a Skype call with my niece. It’s 8:30am on Tuesday my time. 6:30 pm Monday hers. We practiced speaking in Japanese and then made plans for her upcoming trip to Japan. I don’t know which is cooler – that she wants to learn Japanese, or that she’s scratching an item off her bucket list before she finished high school.

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