I've taken a lot of taxis, eaten a lot of meals at the work cafeteria, and, um, mostly slept. When I have been out, I've had a few really cool meals. One day, I had "dalkkaseu," which is a flattened chicken cutlet, breaded in panko and fried. In this case I ordered the one that came stuffed with sweet potato. Unfortunately, that's not "sweet potato", that's sweetened potato. So that was a little unexpected, but it was still very tasty. I've had a snack food called Kikiriki Drumstix Original Fried Chicken-Flavored Snacks (or so the internet tells me—all the packaging is written in Hangul). It consists of hollow drumstick-shaped pieces, about 1-1½ inches long, that appear to be something like the coating that goes on fried chicken. The best part, right? The package helpfully recommends that in addition to being a delightful snack, one could also crunch them up and use them to coat home-made fried chicken as well. The cafeteria at work serves four meals a day, breakfast from 5:50-7:30, lunch from 11-1, dinner from 5-7, and second dinner from 11:30 to 2. So regardless of my work hours, I can always find a hot meal. On the off hours, when other options might be scarce, meals come with packaged side items as well, for later snacking. At breakfast yesterday, I had a hot dog, wrapped in a croissant type dough, with a light glaze of ketchup on top, but mostly, it's been rice and soups and sauced pieces of meat. I have noticed a lot of sparkling juice beverages, and grape seems to be a particularly popular option.
My favorite dessert so far (and maybe the only one I've had I guess) is "bingsu." Bingsu is a delightful lightly-flavored ice, with a heap of fresh fruit on top, and small scoop of tart yogurt above that. They're enormous, so best shared in a group. The one I had was slightly vanilla ice, with cubed mango on top.
I've been out for drinks with some folks from work, and there's certainly a drinking culture here. One of my coworkers explained that there were many of social obligations. His boss was there, and was orchestrating a lot of the drinking games, so it was hard for him to refuse (although I noticed that he did step out of the action while talking to me for a while, so there may be many ways around it). I played the foreigner and jet-lagged cards pretty hard and avoided most rounds after I'd had enough.
At the start of this project, we had a "kosa" ceremony at work, for good fortune and profit in the endeavor. There's no easy way to put this; this is a different culture, with different business practices. There is a low table set with excellent quality food and drink, and in the center, the head of a pig. Incense is lit, and groups of managers bring envelopes full of personally-donated money and put them in the mouth of the pig. They kowtow before and after placing the money in the pig's mouth. With each round, the highest-level manager pours an offering of wine, which was then hidden behind a screen (I think this was to reset the stage for the next offering, but when I looked, the wine hadn't actually been poured on anything). There was a speaker during the ceremony, but since it was in Korean, I didn't catch anything that might have explained things more clearly. Then there was a party with lots of food and drink. I later learned that all the pig's money is divided between departments to fund small parties for everyone.
I'm getting a significant amount of walking in, topping five miles per day. Fitbit tells me that my daily mileage has increased by 69 percent this week over last week. To really drive home the point, the in-app leader board of my friends has me beating Rachel's seven-day rolling total. Although I guess she hurt her toe or something, so maybe that's a factor.
Work is interesting and going well, and I'm making new friends. Although my schedule has been pretty hectic, I've been adjusting well, and I'm looking forward to the next few weeks.
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