Tuesday, January 5, 2010

In which I'm reduced to posting about the weather

The largest snowfall in 70 years...and my snow boots are in a different city. To be fair, it never really snows in Seoul. You get a flurry or two every winter but very rarely something that sticks. Silly me, I thought that with a pair of high tops and pointy flats I'd be set for everything! Check out these photos on NPR. There has been a lot of frustration in Anyang. It's a major city and yet most of the plow allocation has been focused on Seoul, just 20 minutes north, leaving the roads out here treacherous beyond belief. Since it rarely snows in the area, the cities were completely unprepared and the few snowplows that it owns hadn't even been serviced and made road ready for this winter. The government actually dispatched soldiers to go help clear roads and shovel sidewalks.

Of course, I'm still sick so I mainly have been sitting inside, coughing, sniffling and napping. I am on my 7th book of this vacation. To say I miss our lovely free public library is the understatement of the century. I forgot how much of my budget goes to keeping myself in books. For the first time in my life I am (rather unsuccessfully) trying to train myself to read slower. Right now I'm reading The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. It's fantastic and mind blowing. He is also one of the first Russian authors I've read who manages not to completely confuse me with the Russian names. The characters actually remain separate entities in my head instead of blurring together in a never ending mess of similar word endings.

Last night I went to Pyeongcheon's very first Turkish restaurant, Istanbul. It had nothing on the Turkish food I can get in New York but by Korean standards it was fabulous. The staff is all Turkish and they only speak Turkish and Korean though the menu has some English. I think that the influx of foreigners to the area has led business people to realize what a cash cow foreign food is. Foreigners don't miss burgers, they miss the plethora of ethnic food available in their home countries. Within a 10 minute walk of Salsa Boy's apartment you can now get Italian, Tex Mex, Indian, Japanese, Chinese and Turkish. It's kind of exciting.

Tonight there is nothing exciting on the agenda. I'm going to help Salsa Boy pack (his contract is up on Thursday) and eat left over arroz con sam gip sal. It should have been con pollo but we were out of chicken and had left over sam gip sal meat in the fridge. Pork, chicken, it's all yummy when mixed with Puerto Rican spices.

2 comments:

Brian Gessler said...

There's a public library in Naeson Dong that has a fair selection of English books. When I went there they were super helpful with getting me a library card. Yes, it's technically in Uiwang not Anyang, but books! It's not an unreasonable walk from Hagwon-ga, about 40 minutes if you know where you're going. They even had Where the Sidewalk Ends, which my Korean kids didn't enjoy nearly as much as I did.

Alex said...

I wish I had known about that last year! Maybe I can find one down in Busan.