Today has been a productive day. After just less than 48 hours in the country, I’m finally set up with crucial things – like washing powder and bread. This is thanks to the director of my school who, with his wife, came and picked me up and took me shopping this morning.
Arriving at the shop – a local grocery store – I realised just how lucky I was to be there with someone who could translate for me. Largely because I would have had no idea how to ask for – or find – dishwashing liquid, washing powder or toilet paper. For those who are wondering, I have no Korean at all. I probably should have tried to acquire a basic level before I arrived, but even then I doubt I would have been able to figure out this selection of things. Thankfully, it wasn’t a problem today. And now that I know what to look for, I can probably manage in future on my own. Interestingly, the washing powder looks a lot like Skip. But the dishwashing liquid looks nothing like Sunlight (picks on fb).
I also picked up some food. After reading guide books and forums about Korea, I was a little concerned that I may find myself staring at lots and lots of foreign looking foodstuffs with no idea what to do with it. Not at all. Not only can I get all the usual things I’d pick up at home – potatoes, cheese, ham, butter, pasta, etc. – but they all use pretty much the same pictures on packaging as we do. Lots of them even have English names on them, along with the Korean. The only place where not being able to read Korean would have been a problem is with the salt and sugar, which look remarkably similar except that the packets are different sizes. But that one is really not that hard to figure out.
A few first impressions about Korean groceries:
1. Some of their packaging is really not particularly intelligent
(she says with the smugness of someone who has decided that, in some minor manner at least, her home country is superior). The eggs, for example. Eggs are normally (by which I mean ‘in South Africa’) packaged in these wonderful cardboard egg boxes that fairly efficiently stop them breaking and keep them safe until they hit your fridge and/or frying pan. It’s a simple system and, just to add to the beauty of it, the boxes (at least the cardboard ones) are biodegradable. I bought eggs this morning packaged in very thin plastic which did nothing more, really, than coat the eggs with a layer of think, pink stuff and was stapled closed. The (I think probably inevitable) result was that, by the time I got home, one of the eggs had broken. It just doesn’t make sense to me to use this silly packaging when there is another, easily accessible way of doing it. Unless this is cheaper. But even then, you’d think the customers would complain, wouldn’t they?
2. The Babushka doll-approach to packaging
It seems – in my very limited experience – that there is a tendency here to pack everything inside a packet/box/container of some sort which is inside another packet/box/container of some sort. Like those little Russian dolls. So, for example, the butter I bought this morning (which seemed to be the only kind available at this shop), is a whole box full of ‘mini-butter’ containers – just like those you get at hotels and restaurants – complete with their own individual foil and plastic. A box of butters as opposed to just a tub of butter. Similarly, the cheese (oh, how I’m going to miss real cheese) is packing in three 100g packets, all contained within a larger packet, to the front of which is taped yet another packet, this one containing four slices of cheese. I looked for a block of cheese but unfortunately could only find grated or sliced. Everything pre-packaged for convenience – sliced bread, sliced cheese, etc. The coffee also comes in little sachets inside a box, instead of in a tin.
3. Cooking oil can be made from anything!
This will perhaps not come as a huge shock for other people, but I’ve never seen anything other than sunflower as a basic, ordinary cooking oil. I realise you can also get olive oil, and recently avocado oil, in SA. But all of those seem logical – they’re all oily fruits (nuts? Seeds?). And all familiar, which I suppose is part of the reason. I’ve never before seen bean-oil, though, or… wait for it… corn oil. For cooking. More and more I think someone needs to do something about the USA’s ridiculous overproduction of corn. Or give the excess to starving Africans instead of turning it into cooking oil. I’m intrigued (but not hopeful) about the taste of ‘Pure Corn Oil’.
4. Processed, processed, processed
After enjoying a reasonable steak lunch yesterday (with my boss’s boss – probably. Still figuring the hierarchy out), I was optimistic about the food choice in this country – steak available suggests there will be much fresh meat and happiness (says the Eastern Cape girl, before anyone makes any comments). Unfortunately, it appears not. I’m told that most of the food in South Korea is imported, mostly from Australia. This is not surprising, given that 75% of the land is forests and lakes and quite a lot of the rest is covered with industry and a population of roughly 50 million – all of whom still need to be fed. I assume it is as a result of this that most food seems to be super-processed and/or tinned. This makes me somewhat sad but I’m sure it’s not the end of the world.
Also, it doesn’t apply to fruit and vegetables. These, it appears, are available on the side of the road. It feels a little bit like an extension of the type of market experience in Mozambique – with trays and boxes and plastic bags of tomatoes and potatoes and what in SA is called ‘Chinese cabbage’ – except simply as road-side hawkers rather than in organised markets. Which makes sense given the South Korean shopping set-up seems far nearer to the British ‘high-street’ system than American malls.
So vegetables shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Also, I am quite excited to explore the area around my school (the place where I’ll be working) because – from the very little bit I saw yesterday in the rain – it looks like it’s surrounded by a maze of the type of little alley-ways full of stores that you see in movies of ‘The East’, with everything from umbrellas to socks to lots of fresh vegetables. The idea makes me happy, even if I won’t be able to bargain any time soon unless I miraculously acquire the language overnight.
Another productive part of today has been doing laundry. I spent the last week in SA staying with friends in Joburg, so had a load of washing which needed doing from the moment of arrival. Luckily, my flat comes equipped with a washing machine. It’s a large, 10kg LG washing machine. Just like the washing machines we have at home in SA. I was pleased to see, when I was unpacking and rearranging things that there is even an instruction manual. Which is great. Except for one minor detail: It’s in Korean. Both the instruction manual and the washing machine are in Korean. Korean instructions and wash cycles and buttons. This resulted , this afternoon, in me standing in the wet-room with an armful of washing and a bag of washing powder, trying to figure out how to make the washing machine work and, equally importantly, how to make it work without flooding the whole flat or destroying the clothes. This was before the internet was working at home, so not even any chance of checking there. Eventually, after much guesswork and trying to remember what buttons did what on the washing-machine back home (which I don’t think is an LG but looks a little bit similar), I chucked in the clothes and washing powder, took a deep breathe and pressed the ‘play’ button. Amazingly, it worked. So I now have clean, if damp, clothes. I also have a bathroom floor covered in water but that’s apparently what is meant to happen – the used water runs right down the wet-room drain in the middle of the floor.
So, I now have food and the ability to wash things, as well as internet and a phone – even if the phone seems to have trouble sending international smses and is terrible at anything internet-related. All in all, a productive day. I start work on Monday, so am planning to spend the weekend curled up in my flat going over the teaching material. Or perhaps not curled up, given the weather. A little warm for curling up. Not ridiculously warm, though – at least not today. In fact, after a couple of days here, I am starting to think that all those people who write guide books that say that Korea in July is unbearably hot and humid have never been to Mozambique in summer. Or to Durban, for that matter. It’s warm but pleasantly warm, with lovely thunderstorm-y weather and the kind of mild humidity that is only really a problem if you’re trying to dry your clothes or have hair that tends to frizz. So perhaps I’ll just sit in the flat instead, perhaps with an ice-cold coke and some chocolate, and get ready to teach debating.