Landfall

My flight touched down late on Saturday, I've spent the time since then trying to rid myself of jet lag and remember how to live in this country. My host family surprised me at the airport, which was great. As simple as it is, having somebody to wave hello when you get into a foreign country makes a big difference.

I'm living with the same family who took me in a year ago, in the same apartment in Daebnag, a neighborhood almost smack dab in the geographic center of Seoul. My host mother's sister returned from Vietnam, where she was working with the Korean version of the Peace Corps, so now there are five people living in the apartment. My host mother assures me that it's not a problem to have so many people living together, she grew up in a home that held her extended family, so she says it's something that she got used to.

After my stomach became a casualty during my first weeks in Korea, I have prepared myself for a diet that shares absolutely nothing in common with what I eat in America. Below you can see a picture of what constitutes my meals. There really is no way to overemphasize the amount of rice people eat here.



What you're looking at (from left to right) is a bowl of leafy greens,the little silver things are sauteed mini-anchovies, fish bologna, kimchi, spicy red pepper sauce, and a bowl of rice, I have rice for literally breakfast lunch and dinner.



a close-up of how you eat the spread, placing small portions of the rice, kimchi, and anchovies into a leaf of lettuce, one bite-size portion.

I walked around the city for a bit today, just to get reacquainted and find out how to get to my workplace later in the week. In case I couldn't pick out the name of my building among the other similar office towers in the neighborhood, it's the only one with a dozen identical black chauffered town cars out front. I'll just have to see how I fit in with the upper crust here.

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