korean street food

now, i wrote everything and was ready to post last night, but the site was down...
and it didnt save my post =__=
siiiigh hope i remember everything i saiddd

i've done a post on food already (oct. 2010 post), but it was very brief..
so here i am to talk about my favorite topic again!
street food in korea is very common (especially around shopping districts and schools) and inexpensive way to fill your tummy with delicious snacks :)


on left: 떡볶이 (ttukppokki) on right: 오뎅 (odeng)
- the basic and the most known street food. ttukppokki is round (unseasoned) ricecake, cooked(?) in a special spicy sauce with odeng (fishcake) and other ingredients such as leek and onions. spiciness varies from bearable to super spicy (to my taste) and it goes hand in hand with odeng. these odengs in the picture are put on skewers and kept in the broth, and its really good on a cold night :)
prices: tpk=~2000won/serving (~$2); odeng=~500-700won



꼬치 (kkochi)
- literally means skewers. filled with many goodies, from fried chicken to hot dog to mixture of rice cakes and veggies, these treats are covered with sauces ranging from sweet to spicy. stay away from extra sauces if you cant handle it!
prices: ~1000-3000won



튀김! (tweegim)
- fried food! these are best with tpk and if the ahjumma (/immo) is nice, she'll cut your tweegims and pour tpk sauce on top of it! yummm usually there are fried... calamari, potatoes, kimali (seasoned clear noodles wrapped with dried seaweed), motnani (pancake-like thing made with shredded potato, carrots, etc) and so on. some places sell shrimp as well but is cost bit more than others. i <3 fried food too much and thats probably how i gained so much my first week in daegu :x
prices: 2-3 for 1000won


호떡 (hotteuk)
- made with pancake-like batter, filled with brown sugar and nuts (and seeds), fried to goodness. theyre really hot once they are ready (dur) and can get pretty messy, with sauce dripping down the napkin or the paper cup. very sweet though :)
prices: 1-2 for 1000won



붕어빵 stand!
- i went to the korean market the other day and got these in a pack :D not ask crunchy and more work, but still good :) these are fish shaped snacks, filled with sweet red beans. smaller ones are called inguhbbang at some places, and sometimes, they have different fillings (custard, cream, etc). japan also has these, called taiyaki, but the batter is thicker so the filling cannot be seen in the japanese version.
prices: 2-3 for 1000won



@공주떡볶이 (gongju tpk)
- street food is sold by vendors on the streets (dur) but there are many stores that sell these treats as well! there are even cute cafes and they tend to have better decor and some will use better(?) ingredients to charge bit more. gongju tpk is a chain specializing in tpk and fried calamari :) pictured above with the two is 납작만두 (napjakmandoo), a daegu specialty dumpling with almost no filling. sighh im really getting hungryy D:

woo, i didnt steal any pics for this post!
glad i had them from food presentation in CLiK :)
ooh, like the napjakmandoo, different cities have their own unique treat. busan, i know, sells 떡오뎅 (ttukodeng) which is a white big rice cake on a skewer, soaked in the broth with the rest of odeng. i remember eating them as a kid :)
do you have any favorite?

road shop cosmetics

during my 5 month stay in daegu, i spent a LOT of time in downtown. and when waiting for friends- or even walking around with friends- i could not resist stopping by these shops...



tony moly. nature republic. etude house. innisfree. the faceshop. skinfood. missha. bavi phat.
these are just few of the many common make up stores you can find walking down the streets of korea.
these stores are commonly called road shop stores, and they are similar to drugstore cosmetics here in the u.s.- accessible&inexpensive.
interesting observation? there are two or three of the same stores in the same area. for example, i know myeongdong has at least 2 nature republics, and downtown daegu had 3 tony molys. some of them are just a street down from another, which i find redundant. but meh

now, although there are many of these road shops, many have distinct themes so its always fun to visit them. the only thing i found bit annoying was that most of the time, the shops are filled with saleswomen who will just follow you around, even when you tell them to back off. and in the earlier days, the sales unnis in front of the stores would literally hand you a cart with a sample and drag you in (like the scary annoying cell phone salesmen) but everyone stopped dragging one day. probably a lawsuit or a law that made them change :/ anyways, i like good service, but when the ladies stand there looking eagerly to sell, i feel bad to just look around. the only way i found to keep these ladies away was by talking in english, but this wont work in heavily tourist-filled places like myeongdong, where the shops most often have salespeople who can speak korea, chinese, japanese, and english...

the thing i like most about these shops are the samples aka freebies they give out :D it can range from cotton pads to remove make up (if you stop by enough, you dont have to buy these EVER) to face packs to even fuzzy socks in the wintertime. there are also the store cards where you can get enough points to buy more products&hear about the sales they have. i know the end of the year is the best time to shop since many stores go crazy, but this could attract many MANY customers so you may have to wait in lines for awhile (like when missha had the 20% off EVERYTHING sale at the end of 2010).

now let me introduce couple of MY favorite shops...

tony moly.

[just the few tony moly items i have brought back from korea]

when yl unni asked what road shop represents me the best, i said tony moly.
&i definitely said that because i favor tm over other shops. but who could resist its cute designs and high ratings??
tony moly has i think the best designs out of all the road shops. from the green apple scrub to pore cleanser eggs to latte art creams, including little berries for lip balms, it won my heart over many other shops.
i have also read many reviews about the different products before buying things i wanted, and most reviews pointed to tony moly out of the many road shops.

favorite items have to be the gel eyeliner (khaki black), snail cream, &kisslover lipstick (lovely orange)

nature republic.


my second favorite road shop. i think i just liked to buy face packs from them since they had a large selection of it. i really like their lotions too &im so sad im almost done using my peach lotion :(

one shop i regret not going to as often is etude house. i think its pink and dollhouse-like theme kinda set me off, but i later found out they have good products- especially the lip tint that i want now :(

other items i would recommend? baviphat's sleeping apple mask (for acne troubles) & innisfree's volcanic pore clay mask.

gah how i wish i was shopping in korea right now...
i also miss online shpping&the quick delivery system D:
i remember this dream i had couple weeks ago, where i had only couple hours in korea and i was frantically trying to buy everything that i wanted -__-;;
to my friends in korea, enjoy & shop much instead of me <3

korean transportation II

So i have already talked about basic info about public transportation in korea.
but what i didnt mention is how it is like to ride one...

busses:

the worst. sure, when youre sitting with friends on a tuesday mid-morning or riding the first bus at 5:30, it isnt too bad. but when it is rush hour (&if your bus stops by a local high school, ooh...) and youre standing with folders in one hand and coffee milk in another, you better drop one of the items and cling onto a pole. some bus drivers are nice enough to wait, but most dont care if you take a seat before he starts to rush to the next stop. and busses going to more rural areas are crazier than the ones running within the cities.
my 1st bus to my elementary school wasnt too bad. most people got off at my stop (college campus, dur) so i enjoyed my coffee/strawberry milk (my breakfast), sitting. most of the times i could find a seat on my 2nd bus as well, and since i followed the bus-bus routine when i wrote my first transportation post, it wasnt too bad.

but as i started getting lazier, i took the taxi-subway-bus route. and when i got on the bus, it was usually lunch time... and my stop was couple stops after a local high school -_______-
i like my bubble. i dont like it when my bubble pops. but especially during finals week or during break (when students STILL go to school but end early), the busses are packed to the max, and some will just skip stops since they have people standing out to the doorsteps.
- you'll be surprised how many people can fit in a bus:


if youre able to avoid schools, the only big traffic day is saturday (busses going to downtown that is). i remember waiting over 30 minutes for a bus to go to downtown since 3 busses, jammed with people, skipped my stop >:0 ooh that reminds me, these busses WILL NOT WAIT FOR YOU. you know how when you see a bus coming&run to catch up? out out countless number of busses i rode during my 7-month stay in korea, only ONE stopped for me (well, the stop was right by the traffic light and it had to stop while i crossed the street). ive seen many drivers that ignored people running after it/pounding on the door at stop lights. and if you dont stand when your bus approaches, theres a big probability it wont stop. korean busses dont like to stop when they dont have to, so if you dont press the bell [when youre in the bus] or if you dont look like youre going to get on the buss, it.wont.stop.for you :)

subways:
full blast a/c during summer & heated seats in winter. thats probably why subways are jammed packed, especially in these seasons. idk if i mentioned this but unless youre an elder or pregnant, youre not allowed to sit in the seats designated for these people, unlike on busses (where you just have to give up your seat when a senior gets on). even when people are standing and these 6 seats are empty, people wont sit there o-o

in the beginning, i thought subways in daegu stopped more abruptly than the ones in seoul, but after riding around daegu for 5 months, i think i got used to it haha
- my first subway ride in daegu:



mm interesting(?) thing about korean subways: [most] subway seats have 'grooves' so exactly 7 (i think?) people can sit in one row... probably like this since most koreans are 'asian sized'
- even costco agrees:



dont you like how ive added more pictures to my post? :D
special thanks to peppermint who doesnt know i stole these pics ;)

of course, ive only lived in seoul&daegu so my opinion can be different from people living in other cities but this is my 2 cent on the topic :)

blogging again?

already over 4 months have gone by since ive returned from korea.
so why am i blogging again?
i have finally printed out my pictures and started scrapbooking about my time in korea.
in the past two hours i have finished 5 pages -____-

but anyways, as i was reminiscing and looking over my old notes, i noticed a list of blog topic:

- jesah (제사) in korea
- street food
- teaching (fun games, expectation&reality)
- korean transportation (info&what riding on them is like)
- good&bad about dorm life
- taekwondo/dongari?
- packing list

i know its been awhile so my mind is a little fuzzy but...
since i have more time (yay summer <3) i thought i would write again about korea :)

i miss korea&my friends, and have friends who will be leaving for korea soon so i hope this blog help/entertain you :)