Western style New Years in Korea

New Years. This year was an interesting one. Phil, Ryan, Victoria, Lyndsey and I hopped the good old 225 bus to Gwangju despite the fact it was snowing very hard. May I add that it has only snowed 2 days the whole time I have lived here. When there is snow on the road or anywhere, Koreans go crazy. They literally do not know what to do what so ever! It is pretty funny! Once we arrived downtown, we walked around trying to find a restaurant that everyone could agree on. I like how Gwangju literally only has 5 options: Korean Food, Japanese/Korean Food, Chinese/Korean Food, Italian/Korean and Western/Korean Food. Notice how Korean is attached to all the different types of food?? No matter what, Korean influence will be in any type of cuisine. At any restaurant ever, you will always get a side of Kimchi (different kinds) and a bowl of sweet pickles. Koreans believe that if you eat pickles with any meal it will cut down on the grease while eat. awwww okay?!?!? Plus, Kimchi is apparently good for treating every aliment known to man. The other day in the cafeteria, I did not take any kimchi and a Korean man said to me, 'Kimchi is good for you. You are a woman and Kimchi is good for your skin. It also prevents cancer'. Are you kidding me? That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I then argued that there is more to the world than Kimchi to prevent cancer. ugh! Anyways, we had some Korean/Italian food which wasn't bad. I will admit that is the only thing Koreans can not mess up and make it taste bad. Western food here is pretty gross. For example, if you eat a fruit salad they will cover it in mayo. Yup, mayo. They love mayo while I do not!

After eating a massive 6 person set menu meal between the five of us for a very good price, we then went to Paris Baguette for some coffee. Paris Baguette, just like many Korean coffee shops, are rather inefficient. What I mean by this is that literally there is two people working and they will take one persons order in a line. Then they will leave to go and make it together and leave everyone waiting in line. This also happened at McDonald's when my coworker and I ate breakfast. My order was taken and then the lady went to go make it for 5 minutes and then after took my coworkers order. Would the logical thing not to take both orders at the same time and then go make it???? This is a candid shot of me enjoy my caramel latte. Yum Yum.





Here is the snow falling in the streets of Gwangju after we had a great conversation over some coffee. It was nice to chat and get to know eat other better. The oddest thing is that Koreans use umbrellas when the snow falls. It was super odd. Koreans are obsessed with appearance and will do anything to protect their perfect hair and makeup. It is interesting to see everyone always made up anywhere you go. The other day I got some passport photos done and I was a hat on my head. When I took off my hat, my hair was a bit disheveled. The photographer, pointed at the mirror with a bunch of beauty products surrounding it. I tried to adjust my hair the best I could and he just looked at me and shook his head in disgust.

The other crazy part of this story is they airbrushed my passport photo. They cleared up my skin, made my eyes, glossy and for some reason my nose is smaller. They love airbrushing photos so everyone looks perfect. Goodness gracious!





High heels for every season in Korea. I also noticed this phenomena in pretty much every Asian country I have been too. The really kicker is that high heels are sold in only 4 sizes: small, medium, large, and x-large. I barely fit into an extra large. So many women will buy shoes that are too big or too small for them and it looks silly! I have seen women wear high heels while hiking, walking in the snow, and really everywhere. Clothing is the same in Korea. Considering this country is rather homogeneous, they are able to have most clothing stores really carry one size. So if your larger or tall, well tough luck honey! Being a Western in Korea is difficult when it comes to clothing shopping. I even have a hard time fitting into Korean clothes! Lyndsey doesn't even try.





We ended up going to a German bar run by a Korean man who lived in German for a beer or two and some chatting. It was too cold to wonder the streets of Gwangju. Also prior to coming to this bar, we bought some fireworks in the downtown area. There was a street New Years party set up. Any who, I bought my fireworks and being the occasional stupid girl that I am, I turned to show Ryan and Phil my lit firework and at that instant a firework shot out to them standing about 10 meters away. It missed their heads by 3 feet but man it was pretty shocking. They started to laugh while two Korean men where yelling at me in Korean. I didn't think that would happen and then they grabbed the firework and pointed it into the sky. Ohhhhhh... whoops! After having a round at the German bar, we proceeded to the Speakeasy, the foreigner bar of Gwangju. There we counted down the evening, dance a bit, and had some not so bad times. I will admit the assortment of people in this place wasn't really my cup of tea.


My last point goes back to restaurants. When you go to a restaurant you usually get an extra bonus dish of food known as service. Usually I have noticed that service food is really odd in that it tries to be cutting edge in food technology. For example, this salad on the left in the picture was drizzle in corn, beans, sweet pickles, shrimp wound in fried noodle, and chicken bits sprinkled on top while drizzled with an odd dressing. It's pretty gross. The nachos in the right of this photos were something lyndsey and I were super excited about. These $11 nachos each were covered in a very sweet but spicy salsa, a slab of processed cheese, and I think there was some mayo. I was sooooo disappointed because all I wanted was some good old nachos. Conclusion, when it comes to eating Western food in Korea, don't even waste your breathe. It is totally not even worth it! Just wait till you get back to North America!