For the next month I'll be living out in a corner's edge of Seoul, in a city called Nowon, doubling my paycheck and teaching floor hockey. Instead of arriving last night, I thought I'd make the long hike out here today in the morning. One problem, it snowed last night so, like any arrival of bad weather, Korean drivers become super-spooked drivers, driving about a mile and hour, riding with their hazards on, and insisting on using their breaks every other second. Using the breaks on an unplowed road means a lot of fish-tailing and shot nerves. Instead of it taking us the expected hour and a half, we gave ourselves two hours but ended up taking three hours... yikes.
But I'm here, safe and sound now. The others foreigners whom I am working with have been super sweet to me and props to one in particular who hooked me up with where to find coffee!!! Oh, I should mention here that they don't allow coffee on campus. Even the local GS25 story is coffee-free. The university which has hired me for the next month has some particular rules and ideas that are, well, for lack of words... "interesting".
NO COFFEE
NO MEAT
I've been told that both their no coffee and no meat rule on campus are not particularly because of any kind of religious belief but because of health reasons. They view both coffee and meat as being bad for your health. Having said this though, I find their reasoning to be quite contradictory. They say the addictive nature of caffeine in coffee is to be frowned upon yet they sell pop here and tea, both of which also have caffeine in them. I'm still a little fuzzy on why they don't eat meat. I thought it might because of things like steroids or whatnot that have been used to raise larger cows and so forth but they told me that some do eat beef here. Turns out that they definitely don't eat pigs nor do they eat seafood that doesn't have scales on it because all of these particular animals are bottom feeders. Pigs eat just about anything and certain seafood like catfish and lobster eat off the ocean floor.
NO COFFEE
NO MEAT
I've been told that both their no coffee and no meat rule on campus are not particularly because of any kind of religious belief but because of health reasons. They view both coffee and meat as being bad for your health. Having said this though, I find their reasoning to be quite contradictory. They say the addictive nature of caffeine in coffee is to be frowned upon yet they sell pop here and tea, both of which also have caffeine in them. I'm still a little fuzzy on why they don't eat meat. I thought it might because of things like steroids or whatnot that have been used to raise larger cows and so forth but they told me that some do eat beef here. Turns out that they definitely don't eat pigs nor do they eat seafood that doesn't have scales on it because all of these particular animals are bottom feeders. Pigs eat just about anything and certain seafood like catfish and lobster eat off the ocean floor.
After work I tapped into a wicked source, a much-needed hook-up, someone who said they knew where I could get coffee. We're basically in the middle of no where but after a very cold 20 minute walk, I looked up and low and behold what should be standing up ahead of me but a Cafe Bene. Thoughts of caffeine running through my body and a buzz to keep me warm was the only thing that kept me moving, ignoring the brutal cold drop in temperature.
I nursed that coffee like it was the last coffee I'd ever drink. I even brought my take-out paper cup back with me to the dorm. I walked into the dorm with my coffee, not knowing and not caring whether or not anyone saw me with it. I felt like such a rebel... hahahaha.
They don't allow meat so they serve vegetarian dishes. At first thought I thought that perhaps this could be a really good thing; it'd mean they'd be serving more veggies. Not so. It just means they serve more fried foods, which I find this to be quite contradictory to their "for better health" ideals. Their main sources of protein they offer is tofu and peanuts, only in the morning do they offer eggs. I think I've eaten my weight in tofu and I've tried to stay away from their sauce-drowned peanuts. Thankfully I've got an iherb order of protein shake mix coming to me, I've got a full stock of eggs in my room and I even brought my blender. Eating raw eggs on a daily bases is rather ghetto but I've come to terms with controlling my gag reflex and tough times call for tough measures.
I finish work every day at 5:30pm and then I'm free to leave after dinner but with a long travel back to Cheonan and then having to come back in the early morning, I've decided just to live here for the time being. The evenings are long despite me only have experienced one here. Talk of some of us foreigners venturing out to find coffee and "real" food circled among us today but wait till I tell them I've found coffee.... oh ya, I'll be the cool kid on campus... hahaha. Huge shout-outs to my lovely lady friend here who was super sweet in showing me where to find coffee!
After my run tonight, I came back to a ghetto protein shake -- blended raw eggs with spinach and a little of water to help wash it down.
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