E is for...

Eating.

Today I am a little at a loss of what to write about, so I am cheating and using my housemate's idea of a post about food.  So, as it has been a long time now and I don't have anyone to help me name everything, here is a collection of photos of just some of the food I ate in Korea.  I quickly picked up the habit of taking photos of almost every meal I ate out, firstly because it was all new, interesting and delicious, secondly because that is what Koreans seem to do!  It is one of the things you quickly notice, they use the cameras on their smart phones and take photos of food, or just of themselves.  Seriously, I am not kidding.  Take a look at this blog, there's a post all about the self-photo phenomenon (I just wanted to use that word).

For now, here are some (partly labelled) photos of Korean food...

21cm ice creams in Myeongdong

Pre-cooking.

Korean style BBQ, delicious.

I love Korean side dishes, you order one thing and get several side dishes free of charge.

And if you go to the right place, you can get this many side dishes!

Some kind of jjigae (soup), I think it's bean curd jjigae and super tasty.

They eat a lot of steamed sweet potatoes, so simple yet delicious.

Dried squid?

Rice porridge, very wholesome and warming.

Terrible photo, but these red bean stuffed fish HAD to be included.

Spicy pork served with rice and leaves to eat them with (you put the meat and rice in the leaves).

Ginseng chicken soup, that whole chicken (stuffed with rice) was all for me.  Classic summer dish, believe it or not, as it gives you lots of energy.

Rice noodle fried dumplings.

Think this was called jimdak, and those scissors you see in the top left corner are used to cut up the noodles.

More BBQ, complete with egg ring omelette.

A kimbap, Korean version of sushi (California roll style) preparation station.

This was from a soup, beef back bone or something similar.  It was super tasty but fiddly as you had to take the meat off of the bone (with chopsticks).

Instant noodles, purchased at a convenience store by the river.

They LOVE waffles!

Potatoe pajeon, pancake.

This was delicious!  Cannot remember the name, but it contained chicken and potatoes.  Mmmmmm.

More side dishes.

Side dishes purchased at the local street stall.

Korean BBQ.

Lady making mung bean pancakes.

Amazing dinner, before it was cooked.  It was delicious and looked so pretty.

The end piece of some kimbap.  In there you can see Radish (the bright yellow), spam (the pink), crab stick, egg omelette thingy, odang (fish cake light brown thing) and I think carrot?

Special apron for eating Dak Galbi.

Potatoes on a stick, covered in cheese powder.  Tasty and another example of street food, especially what can be found in the Myeongdong shopping district.

Corn dogs covered in chips.fries and deep fried.  Looked amazing, tasted okay.

Peanut butter roasted squid, to die for.

A is for....

Welcome to my first post for the 2013 A-Z challenge.  My posts are going to be a mixture of things, mainly based on my travels (including a large proportion about things I learnt during a year in South Korea).

So, A is for ANNYEONG-HASEYO  안녕하세요

This is the way you say hello in Korea, in Hangeul to be exact.  Hangeul is a fairly simple language, in that it is comprised of only 24 vowels and consonants.  Compared to other languages in Asia, Japanese, Cantonese etc, it is pretty easy to learn.  There are things to learn, like what sounds are produced when certain characters are put together or doubled etc, but all in all it's a clever system. Here's a glimpse of what the alphabet looks like;

Found on this blog, worth a look if you want to learn a bit of Hangul! http://josefwigren.com/hangul-in-20-minutes/

That said, after a year of living in Seoul I knew only a handful of words, but that was purely down to being lazy on my part.  I could sound things out, enough to read a menu or the name of a place.  Like many countries, Korea has a lot of words influenced by the West.  These words are referred to as Konglish, when an English word is written in Hangeul.  I would feel all excited and proud that I had figured out the word, only to realise it was English!  Classic words you see written in Konglish are simple things like camera or hamburger.

Oh, and if you are ever in Korea, they refer to mobiles/cell phones as hand phones... 

안녕히 가세요  Annyeong-hi gaseyo (Goodbye to a person when they are leaving but you are staying, meaning something like go in peace).

The last few days in pictures...

Went for a run on Thursday, first one of the year (and in ages).

The "after" shot.

New favourite snack.

The first of the snow, isn't it meant to be Spring?

Breakfast in bed on Saturday.

Snow in the air.

Apple cake (and hot chocolate) in town with a friend.

Daffodils trying their hardest to hold on.

Finally tried out the local Korean restaurant, spicy pork and bibimbap.