Category Archives: travel

Good Eatin’ in Charleston

Posted on by
3

I’ve come down somewhat from yesterday’s Charleston high, and I can say with a clear head that I am not ready to pack up and move here tomorrow. For one thing, I’m not sure where anyone works here, unless it’s a restaurant, store, or art gallery. And as much as I’m loving this winter weather (50 degrees this morning; I ran in shorts and a tank top!), this must mean that the summers are muggy and miserable.

Camellia in Charleston

The thing that would bring me back to Charleston, however, is the abundance of delicious restaurants and Southern food.

Hominy Grill

Today, we had lunch at Hominy Grill, which is pretty famous for its grits. On a Wednesday at 11:55am, we almost had to wait for a table. It’s that popular.

Grits @ Hominy Grill, Charleston

I had some tasty pinto bean cakes with green tomato sauce, sour cream, and chow-chow. This was my first time having chow-chow, and it’s a mound of sweet and tangy pickled deliciousness. If I weren’t deathly afraid of canning, I would try to make it myself.

Pinto bean cakes @ Hominy Grill, Charleston

Meanwhile, Fiancé-friend ate the “Big Nasty Biscuit” with fried chicken and cream gravy. Curse his metabolism.

Big Nasty Biscuit @ Hominy Grill

Later, we walked around the College of Charleston. It was very pretty, though quiet and abandoned without the students. I was surprised to find that on the peninsula, the surroundings go from ritzy/tourist-trap to [apparently] sketchy/dangerous without much warning. The CoC seems to be close to the turning point, though I can’t say anything for certain.

College of Charleston

Want to hear about a poor decision we made? At Barbara Jean’s, where we ate dinner, we also ordered the “Chocolate Stuff” dessert. It’s basically chocolate sauce and undercooked brownie mush, topped with a mound of super-rich whipped cream. I’m pretty sure that I never want to look at food again. EVER. AGAIN.

Food coma @ Barbara Jean's

This has been a super-fun little vacation and a great way to see a new city. Tomorrow, we have an early start to get back on the road to head back to Virginia, and then back to the frigid reality of Illinois.

Bye-bye, Charleston, I will miss you and your delicious sweet tea.

Sweet tea @ Hominy Grill

Charleston: Where I get excited for the future

Posted on by
8

Greetings and Happy New Year from Charleston, SC! Instead of acquiring more stuff for Christmas, Fiancé-friend and I elected to give each other the gift of a visit to this historic coastal city over New Year’s Eve.

Couples photo in WaterFront Park, Charleston

Obligatory couples photo, NYE 2012.

Unlike last year’s midnight fireworks debacle, we were able to position ourselves right here, on Waterfront Park, to ring in 2013 with fireworks in all directions.

View from Waterfront Park

Dad and Pat loooooove (LOVE!) Charleston and have been singing its praises for years. Like most good children, I allowed 90% of their parental advice to go in one ear and out the other, so I had a shockingly impoverished understanding of Charleston. Wait, it’s on the coast? You say it’s a peninsula? It’s steeped in awesome history? [Oops, AP US History fail!]

Everything in Charleston–at least, on the ritzy end of the peninsula–is stunningly beautiful. It’s open and clean, delightfully charming, and totally walkable. It’s everything I love about the beach (that sweet coastal feel) with a lot more to do.

Charleston palmetto trees

Everywhere you look, Swiss chard is being used as a decorative planting: the fountain at our Courtyard by Marriott, window boxes, front gardens. Fiancé-friend strongly discouraged me from picking it to nom-nom later.

Decorative chard

This pineapple? Not so much good for eating. Good for welcoming though.

Welcome pineapple

And the southern food is so, sooooo good. I had a [virgin] bloody Mary at lunch. SPICY DELICIOUS.

Biscuits @ Fleet Landing

I’m not sure when I became an adult who walks around and admires other people’s houses [Be proud, Mom. I totally jumped up and down trying to peer in someone's front window last night.] , but somehow, I do that now.

See this house? Yeah, I want to live in it. I’m sure I could learn to love mint juleps if I had a porch like this to spend my lazy afternoons on.

Charleston house

I used to feel obligated to distance myself from the south and southern culture. I didn’t want to be associated with southern gentility or y’all or sweet tea. An Asian southern-belle seemed really, really goofy and not part of a persona I wanted to develop. While I don’t plan on ever cultivating anything resembling a drawl, I am finding more and more to appreciate from the south. Who knows? Maybe I’ll subscribe to Southern Living one of these days.

Boiled Peanuts @ Hyman's

Once again, I am hit with the intense desire to get the hell out of grad school and settle somewhere cool. This morning on my run, I kept turning down quaint streets and saying, “Maybe we could move here! I like this street! We could walk Bodger here!” [Har, har, Mica. You definitely do not have the money-dollars to live here.]

Call for an appointment.

I called for a showing appointment of this historic home. No, just kidding.

I am so glad that this upcoming semester will be my last in grad school. Finally, we are ready to embark on our next adventure. I’m scared for the inevitable moment when I realize “Oh, what is this? The real world succccccks!” but for now, it’s great to have so much openness in our planning. I am not limiting myself to one field of employment or geographic location, so I hope we’ll land somewhere cooler than where we are now. Hooray, 2013! Let’s do this!

Waterfront Park @ Dusk

And now, I  conclude my first post of 2013. This is guaranteed to be an exciting year, full of changes and new experiences: getting married and Wedding Victory Tour, [hopefully] finding a good job, moving to a new city, woohoo! I am excited to blog it all, as life changes make for interesting content.

Christmas tree lights

Coming up: my super-awesome idea for 2013 Resolutions.

 

Jetlag

Posted on by
2

It’s 5:39am. I woke up at 4:42am and haven’t been able to get back to sleep.

Yesterday, my first full day back, I woke up around 5am but managed to fall back asleep…until 2pm!

Jetlag sucks.

Suggestions?

Last night in Korea!

Posted on by
2

Taejeongdae park, Busan

(South point overlook in Taejeongdae Park)

Wow, 82 days after I arrived in Korea, it’s finally my last night here. As I’m sure you guessed, I am plenty happy to be heading out. Today, in fact, I had two meltdowns thanks to sunburn, sweating, and humid, fetid city air.

Still, I’m feeling a little sad that I’m leaving–not because I’m saying good-bye, but because I didn’t have a better time. Should I have pushed myself to do more? I’m sure once I get away from all the things I hate about Korea (LACK OF BREAKFAST FOODS!!!), I will fondly remember things and want to come back. At least, I think so…

Anyway, I am exhausted after walking about ten miles today in the hot sun. (We had a really great day though, one of the most memorable of the whole trip.) My shoulders are pink and tingly, so I think it’s best for me to get some sleep. When I write next, I’ll be in Japan!

Undercover Korean

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday, fellow adoptee and UIUC alumna Beth played “undercover Koreans” in the Sinchon/Hongdae area.

Beth took me to Loving Hut, which is a vegan restaurant chain in Seoul.

After lunch, we wandered over to the Hongdae area, which is filled with so many Korean hipsters. Except, here, they’re not hipsters, they’re just Korean college students. It was refreshing to see all the fashion after the standard collegiate uniforms at UVA and UIUC.

The amount of stuff in Seoul is truly overwhelming.

Hongdae is apparently the artsy university. It was kind of shocking to see a large amphitheater in the middle of Seoul:

Beth doesn’t speak any Korean, except for what she has picked up in the last ten months. I can’t imagine what that would be like; her progress and acclimation is really impressive.

It is not always apparent what word adoptees should use to describe themselves here. When we speak, we are immediately identified as non-native, but our lack of language seems to be initially perplexing, if not irritating, to native Koreans. Upon SooHyun’s recommendation, I have been using “foreigner” (외국인) to describe myself because “American” (미국사람) can be interpreted as “second-generation Korean-American who didn’t learn the mother tongue.”

On the other hand, using “adoptee” (이뱡아) apparently elicits [unnecessary] sympathy. Beth said that there’s an eye clinic in Seoul that gives away a number of free Lasik eye surgery procedures each year to adoptees. Instead of retrospective sympathy, I think it’s better if Koreans change their attitude towards unwed mothers, encouraging a climate where they can raise their own children. It seems like things are slowly moving in that direction, but I can’t say for sure.

There I go again, making cultural judgments….

Things I learned today:

이뱡아 – adoptee

 

Plastic me

Posted on by
4

Yesterday, Tarita, who took Korean with me last year, arrived in Seoul. She is staying with a homestay family in the same Dreamtown apartment complex.

When we went to lunch, the restaurant ajumma immediately handed Tarita the English menu. For a hot second, I was perplexed as to why I also did not receive an English menu. The ajumma was then very confused when I asked to see it.

After wandering around Dongdaemun, we grabbed coffee (purple sweet potato latte? Okay!) and headed to e-Mart, the Korean equivalent of Target/Walmart to stock up on living essentials. Because the towels in Korea are so small, I ended up buying an ugly mumu to wear in between the bathroom and my room.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

See our blue cart? We saw it sitting abandoned in one of the aisles, so we grabbed it. Later, an employee came over and started jabbering at me. I eventually figured out that we had the wrong kind of cart; all the other shoppers had smaller gray carts. The employee told us to stay where we were and trotted off. Right as I was going to tell Tarita that we should just make a run for it, she came back, this time with an official store cart.

For classes next week, I have to bring in two 2.5×3 cm photos of myself for my university ID card. Yesterday, homestay mom took me to a photo kiosk to get these taken. The photographer was rather disgruntled by my swoopy bangs, but it’s not like this is a passport photo, used for international identification–not a big deal.

I picked up my photos last night:

Do you think it looks like me?

I guess it’s standard to photoshop all images. My skin is now flawless and plastic-looking, and the dark circles under my eyes are gone. I can’t tell if he slimmed my jawline or not. I tried to tell homestay mom about this, but I think I ended up just repeatedly saying “Face! Change!” She kept saying, “No! Pret-ty!”

In any event, I now have like nine photos of my plastic self, so if you want one, let me know.

I also discovered that homestay sister wants to get plastic surgery for her eyelids during high school. This shouldn’t have been surprising, given the prevalence of such procedures, but it still distresses me. I made it obvious that I don’t think she needs to do it, but homestay mom said, “She has small eyes,” to justify the surgery.

 

[Edit: Apparently, homestay mom does not approve of her daughter getting eyelid surgery. Yay!]

Cultural relativism is a hard thing to avoid. On one hand, I don’t want to make judgments about other cultures through the lens of my own. On the other hand, plastic surgery for eyelids (and nose bridges, chin lines, cheekbones, etc.) seems so unnecessary and ultimately detrimental to one’s self-esteem. (Though many Koreans will argue otherwise, saying that it makes them feel better about themselves.)

On the note, I’m going to go get my Friday started. I will leave you with a picture of homestay dog being drowned bathed.

Learning traditional Korean things

Posted on by
7

Today, it was back to the grind. Homestay dad apparently left the apartment at 7am and won’t return until 11pm. (He is getting an MA in city planning after he works as a municipal official–oof!). Homestay sister went to school, and so I tagged along with Homestay mom to her art class. I thought she was teaching the art class. As it turns out, she was taking a semi-private lesson with a friend and the teacher. Her friend lives in a fancy apartment near Namsan mountain, only a few “blocks” (Blocks? What are blocks in Seoul??) from the guesthouse I stayed in two years ago. I was amused by this sign in the subterranean parking garage: I can’t tell if this is just for pregnant woman or not. I assume not because we parked there. Homestay mom and her friend were working on dackjongie dolls, which is a traditional Korean artform. It’s like papier-mâché, except less runny and using a special kind of paper (한지) made from a Korean tree. Homestay mom has a few of these paper dolls in the apartment, and her friend also had made a lot of whimsical figures. I was really surprised by the level of detail and anatomical accuracy of the dolls, until I watched their teacher at work. She rules with an iron fist. At one point, she picked up the frame of one of the dolls (head, torso, legs) and determined that the legs were too short. As Homestay mom nodded, the teacher proceeded to rip the legs off violently and reform them with wire and paper. Apparently, once you get the hang of it, you can apply to become a teacher of this traditional art form. After lunch, we went with Homestay mom’s friend and her mother-in-law to the Korean traditional village (한옥마을), which has some restorations and replicas of traditional Korean houses. Unfortunately, we discovered upon our arrival that the houses are closed on Tuesdays. Maybe I’ll file this away as something to do with the boyfriend when he comes in August. There were still things to see and do, like an assortment of useful straw items: And tacky photo-ops! Tomorrow is the placement test for the Korean Language program. I reviewed a few chapters tonight, but it’s not worth it to try and re-memorize a bunch of random grammar points that we covered this past year. I’m also excited to meet some other students and eventually add some structure to my day. Since Homestay family doesn’t speak very much English, I spent a good deal of time being silent. Oh, Korean, why are you hard! Things I learned today 은행나무: ginkgo tree (은행 is coincidentally the word for “bank” in Korean, so this can also be translated as “bank tree”)

“Once again, we have cheated death.”

Posted on by
2

My uncle Dick told me that he says this after every landing. I’ve also picked up this habit, mostly because I am so thankful to be on solid ground and feeling partially in control of my life once more.

After taking me and the boyfriend to El Famous Burrito last night, Kim was a doll and drove me to O’Hare this morning. I was shocked at how many kiosks were open at 4am, which, as far as I’m concerned, is no-man’s-hour.

I managed to hold my shit together on the five-hour (Actually, more like four) flight from Chicago to San Francisco, where I am currently taking advantage of their free Wi-Fi. During the flight, I may or may not have cried while watching The Vow.

The next post I write will (hopefully!) be from Korea. For now, I’m going to go wander the International Terminal and get some exercise.

한국에 갈 거예요!

Getting Ready

Posted on by
3

The boyfriend and I made it back to Illinois, and I’m spending about 24 hours here. My flight leaves from O’Hare at 6am, so Kim has kindly offered to let me stay with her tomorrow night. Then she’s going to be a real saint and drive me to the airport at Dark o’clock.

Wow, it has been a whirlwind tour. The boyfriend figured out that for seven days, I will sleep in a different location each night:

  • Monday, 5/21 – Urbanna, VA (Boyfriend’s family’s house)
  • Tuesday, 5/22 – Richmond, VA (where Dad and I didn’t like the wine)
  • Wednesday, 5/23 – Dayton, OH (Mid-route stop-over)

We ate dinner at Blind Bob’s in Dayton. I had the “famous” pickle soup as a side. It was basically potato soup with shredded pickles in it, which sounds gross, but it was delicious!

  • Thursday, 5/24 – Chambana, IL (If I actually go to bed….)
  • Friday, 5/25 – Round Lake, IL
  • Saturday, 5/26 – Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean (Who even knows what “night” will be.)
  • Sunday, 5/27 – Seoul, Korea, assuming that I disembark, get my luggage, find my cellphone, take a bus into the city, and get in touch with my homestay family.

Alright, I’m off to tinker with my computer and hit the sack. Packing is 75% done!

Also, I saw only one friend in Richmond. That special person was Paula! We got fro-yo at a garish, Christian-based store and then complained about being adults.

These days

Posted on by
2

These days, I feel like I’m living out of a suitcase, constantly on the verge of forgetting something important.

I just returned from a whirlwind trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with Mom, Steve, and family/friends…and dogs:

Having rented many beach houses in the Outer Banks (How bourgeois do I sound now?), I have a lot of happy memories attached to this place. It was great fun, and I wish we could have spent more time there.

Especially since it was too windy and chilly to spend much time on the actual beach!

I leave for Korea in a week, and I haven’t really even thought out my packing or arrival plans. (PANIC!) Everyone keeps commenting on how much whirlwind travel I’m doing this month (the boyfriend too), and it is exhausting. Still, the reason I’m keeping up this crazy schedule  is to see family and friends. I am lucky that people want to spend time with me, so I plan to enjoy this as much as possible.

I can sleep when I’m dead…or, you know, when I’m stuck alone on a 16-hour flight to Seoul. (Except I’ll probably cry and then study Korean before the placement exam.)