On Hunger

Day 2 (March 19, 2008)—

The morning brought hunger. The one thing that is sure to drive you from the comfort of your bed is hunger (or being sick, but that has not come…yet). So, I got up in the morning and took a shower in the indentation in the bathroom floor. No, it is not the toilet. However, it does not really seem big enough for taking a bath nor does it have a shower curtain for blocking water. So, I am kind of forced to stoop down or kneel and turn on the water, and use my body to block the spray of the water from shooting out onto the bathroom floor. There is a drain in the floor of the bathroom, but I have been trained well by my mother to not get the bathroom floor flooded with water. I might have to get used to the idea, but I am not there yet. So, I will continue to stoop.

Oh, yes, back to the hunger. I was not really sure where to go eat. My roommate was not back yet from his long weekend. So, I walked out into this new place, for the first time without any guides. Alright, it is not like navigating through a minefield. Well, it might be, but I do not know the Korean word for “mine”, so I hope not. Anyways, I left the apartment to find some food. Both of the places that I went the night before were closed. Although, I could not really find one for sure, I am sure I passed it, but I did not recognize it in the daylight. However, one of the girls the previous night had mentioned a good bakery that I did see in my travels around the block (or two).

The bakery was obviously used to serving English teachers (there are a number of English teaching schools in the area). All of the signs were in Hangul and English. So, I got a cream cheese-filled croissant and a chicken donut-looking thing. The chicken was infused inside of the donut-thing (no, it was not sweet; it just reminded me of a donut). I went back to my apartment to eat. The chicken-donut was good. It was a bit spicy, but there was some substance to it. The croissant, on the other hand, was tasty in so far as the bread was concerned, but cream cheese? I don’t think so. I am not a huge fan of cream cheese in the first place, but this was really funny tasting. I still gutted it out because…well, I am in a foreign country and I might as well eat everything. I just hope it was not bad…though, I have not had any ill-effects, yet. *Cross my fingers*

My roommate showed up a few hours later. He is the British guy, which was pretty easy to guess without ever talking to him. There are English flag pillows and posters and such scattered around the apartment. Overcompensation, anyone? Well, he is a nice guy, nonetheless. Though at times, I can understand as much from Koreans as from him. I am not sure whether we actually speak the same language all the time, but I only have to ask him to repeat something every 10 words instead of every other word. It works out somehow.

The school has lunch at noon, which is free for teachers and students. It is a bit of a stretch to call me a teacher as of yet. However, stretch it I did. Because, as you can tell this day was about food. I am not sure what the food was except for the rice. The meat was chicken, I think. I am maybe sixty percent certain about that. There was also some sweet root dish. I was told it was a root of some kind by one of the other foreign teachers. It was all pretty good. I am still working on getting the chopsticks down, but I am refusing to use the spoon in any situation where I would generally use a fork. So, I go on with chopstick survival camp.

Alright, well, I wrote a long blog yesterday and this one is fairly lengthy. So, I will just say that yesterday was also my first day of training. However, I will gather my thoughts about it and write something tomorrow, hopefully. And, I have a doctor’s appointment in a bit that I have to go to. It blows, I know.

--Matthew