Korea Travel Blog

Part 3: Humble Beginnings

In my case, jet lag lasted for 4-5 days before I got back to normal.

This was my first time experiencing jet lag since I’ve never travelled outside of Europe before.

I felt completely normal for most of the day and then a sudden crash happened around lunch time every day, where I just had to lay down and take a nap. It felt like a bodily malfunction and a forced shut-down.

Before I knew it, my 3-day SIM card and plan had expired and we had to go to the city center to get the cheaper option at Chingu Mobile. Did I really have to go now?

Actually Sunny didn’t want me to go alone and she was working all day at the time so she came back home exhausted.

I realized I am just not in that much of a hurry. I’m staying here for the next 80 days anyway.

Rest, get your bearings, communicate with friends and family, explore the surrounding neighborhood and set up a new work routine. Which, by the way, now required shifting some regular meetings around due to the new time zone.

Since I work remotely, I’m flexible with work time and my company allows for any workflow that helps me get the job done. So grateful for this whenever I see how locked-up everyone else’s schedules are! There are tradeoffs, of course, but I won’t go into that.

I downloaded some maps and explored the neighborhood for some places where I could walk or visit or go shopping.

Prepared my own solution for translating their weird hieroglyphs. Downloaded Korean on both my Android Keyboard and Google Translate app. Then I could just translate with Google Lens after taking pictures or just pointing my camera. It worked quite well in most cases.

At this point (~Dec 5th) it wasn’t snowing, but soon enough it would start and everything became white fairly quickly (in one night) - the snow didn’t stick around though and after maybe 4 days it was all gone, making way for a mostly dry, chilly, and windy December.

I met Sunny’s family. This is where Google Translate failed spectacularly. Every time I wanted to say something slightly more complex than a basic sentence, Google Translate would give me an awkward translation. They often understood what I wanted to say, but they’d simply never use those phrases to convey those specific thoughts. This had me a bit worried for the long-term, I have to admit. I found more translation options later on. See here.

They seem like nice people but I’ve seen enough Bong Joon Ho movies to know better. Famous last words, lol…

Her father was very guarded, and thought of me as a weird foreigner at first, before warming up a bit. His mistrust was almost palpable in the first few weeks.

Her mother hugged me like a son at first. I was touched. She practiced English for months, just for me. I noticed she put exceptional effort (for her age) to make me feel welcome. Her dishes were amazing.

I’m not a picky eater, by the way. In fact quite the opposite. I’m also quite blunt if I don’t like something. For example, Korean “spicy” is too spicy for me. But their family don’t usually make such food, which is great news for me.

After praising every single dish for a 3rd meal in a row, her father leaned toward mom, grumbling:

“This guy is lying! How can he love everything?!”

Of course, Sunny was amused and immediately translated what he had just said. The old folks, as it turns out, are quite picky eaters, her mom being the more picky one. They just didn’t expect me to like so many weird things like loach soup and blood saucages.

Her father likes sweet things and traditional Korean cuisine. And has absolutely 0 tolerance for anything even remotely sour. Put 5 droplets of vinegar in a salad and he will avoid it like the plague. He can handle spicy just fine, though.

Mother seems to have sharpened her cooking skills recently. I know since Sunny told me she didn’t used to cook like this before. She usually doesn’t eat much and is quite a bit pickier than the father.

Her brother was super-polite but very distant at first - his character is kind of like that unless you make an effort to get closer. Closed, focused, calm, surprisingly quiet as opposed to their parents who are very loud people.

When it comes to food, bro is probably the least picky person I’ve met there - he’ll eat literally anything - in impressive quantities, too. Smart guy, though - he often skips breakfast which ends up being kind of like an intermittent fasting routine.

Sadly, he was mostly completely absent from family lunches and dinners because of work and/or going out with his own friends. Or working on a side project, outside of the house, of course.

Koreans are huge foodies and I will have to write about their eating culture in several different posts.