Edvenchers: Temp Work: Deajon

I did some temp work in Deajon a couple weeks ago. There is a new city being built and a new language school was in need of a teacher to help out until the contracted teachers arrived in Korea the next week. I will use another post to show some pictures of what a "new" city looks like. It's a head trip.

This first photo is of Sook and Heather in the teacher's office. Sook is the head Korean teacher and Heather is a staff teacher.

After our first day of work together, the director paid for our dinner. The food is called Sam Gyup Sal (3 Layer Meet). They cook it on the grill in front of you and you eat it as it becomes ready. You can see they give you a lot of side dishes to sample. The way you eat this meal is you hold a lettuce leaf and put some meat and other toppings on, then you eat it in one mouthful. There is a bottle of Soju on the table. That is very common to see in Korea. It is a kind of strong alcohol. You can also see the "trainer" chopsticks they brought out to me. I didn't ask for them and even laughed when I saw them. Koreans are always worried that foreigners don't like spicey food and can't use chopsticks. On this night and every night, I surprise them all.

Tony, the teacher's trainer who hired me for the job, came with me to do some training. After dinner, we went to a bar for some more soju. It snowed in Daejon that night.

In the morning, I got to taste my first Korean toast sandwich. This one was an egg, cheese, and ham style toast. They mix some small veggies into the egg before cooking. Also, they use a really sweet sauce on the toast. Tony said a lot of the street vendors who sell these use brown sugar mixed with ketchup for the sweet sauce. I am addicted after eating just one.

This dinner is called takgalbi. It's a bunch of cabbage, rice noodles, and spicey chicken cooked in front of you. This is eaten the same way sam gyup sal is with a lettuce leaf. This has been my favorite meal so far in Korea.