Learning

Don't have any pictures to share from today because I forgot to take pictures. I'm not too impressed with my Operations Management professor because all she does is read off the powerpoint she e-mails us right after lecture anyway... and the way she talks is very clipped so it's a bit difficult to understand. She stands in the same spot for the whole 1.25 hours, she hardly ever looks at her students, and she speaks softly so all the students nod off. The information is useful, though... Operations Management is about mixing finances, operations, and marketing into one... but I just don't find it necessary to attend lecture so it's a bit unfortunate attendance is mandatory... but I do not regret dropping Management Accounting for this course at all.

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Food right off campus can be really cheap and filling so on school days, it's easy to eat under a budget of 10,000won. It's almost a rush to get to these restaurants for lunch because they fill up so quickly you almost always have to wait for quite a while if you're not early!
I found this one chain restaurant that sells typical Korean food and dumplings. I've eaten here a total of three times for lunch. It looks empty now but it became one full house 15 minutes after this picture was taken.
Their menu items:
Bulgogi something -- 5,500won and so filling you won't need a full dinner.
Another hot spot is this underground pub that has only 4 menu items - all very inexpensive.
This is their pork cutlet with salad, sauce (w/ a heart in it!), kimchi radish, miso soup, and some flavourful rice for 4,000won ($3.70CDN)!
Korean fried rice with an egg on top, salad, miso soup, and kimchi radish for 3,000won.
This restaurant is always packed. The food is so cheap (all less than 3,000won for a meal)... but it's not really what you'd expect quality-wise in Korean standards.
I asked for Kimchi Jjigae (Kimchi stew) for me and Bibimbap for Florence.. and the owner told us that each person gets both for 3,000won (about $2.75CDN)... what?! So we get this spread.. and then since the owner could tell that we were foreigners, he gave us "special treatment" and showed us how to mix everything in a very happily elaborate manner.. which was mixing the lettuce with the rice, a bunch of different condiments, and eating it with a bit of the stew. It was entertaining but Florence wasn't too fond of the food. I felt as though I was eating army food. We won't be going back anytime soon.
Another restaurant -- I had soondubu (tofu stew) which is very flavourful. After a while, though, a lot of Korean soups taste fairly similar. The yellow dish is egg that the server gave us for free because we were all "pretty students".
Today, a few of us int'l students + Byeori from my marketing class cooked a Mexican dinner (well, Brenda from Texas+Mexico cooked) with the most authentic ingredients from Home Plus in the kitchenette! We had a great time and it turned out to be really cheap - about 2,000won/person! The only thing is that it takes time to make so we can only try to do it once a week. Next week it's my turn to cook a "Canadian meal". What's that? Shepard's pie? In return, they will do the dishes. Score!

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Side note: When I learned about Korea through blogs and Youtube, I found out that the locals think very highly towards foreigners, especially if you don't look Asian and can speak fluent English, and that they would go out of their way to be extra friendly. Students and sales associates are definitely very curious about international students. Once in a while, a random stranger comes up to us with a camera and asks to take a picture with us -- but not me, of course, because I'm Asian and look Korean - nothing unique. Koreans stare. Kids are the most obvious - they tug at their mother's coats in a "whoa.. mommy, check those things out. I've never seen one of them before" way. Sometimes older people would roll down and stick their head out the car window to stare. Staring is easily tolerable, though... but there were a few incidences when my obviously non-asian friends were scoffed at by ajusshis (men over 35-40ish). The ajusshis would call them Americans even when they weren't and would mumble angrily about the economy. I've even had an ajusshi yell at one of my friends for speaking English on the subway! They (the students) couldn't talk back, though, because respect toward anyone older than you is an extremely important aspect of Korean culture. Shocking, though!