Another handful (thoughts on S.K.)

I decided to try something new with the older girls and so far so good. This ties in with the stickers bit. ^^

Welcome back to the second edition of my thoughts on South Korea! Interspersed with random photos of irrelevant things, of course. That said, this time I will touch on a few things as I make my way down my growing list of observations.

The girls pulling out their sticker books and going through their collections.

1. OMG Stickers! Now, liking stickers isn't a new thing by any means and kids just generally like stickers; they're good rewards, they can be used to achieve better items (sticker charts and the like), you can stick them in awful places and have trouble getting them off, the list just goes on and on. So yes, there is the general appeal of stickers to youngins, but I feel like it's a bigger deal here. It was really interesting to me when we first got here that the older girls would just take out their sticker collection books and go through them or trade, etc. They have stickers of everything, from food to cute characters (i.e. Porororo) and everything else. The girls like to share them and give them to us, so Zach and I both have small sticker collections on the back of our phones. Mine has a cake, ice cream cone, a small bee, a bear, the fox character from Porororo, and a rice ball or "jumeok bap" in Korean. Because they love stickers so much, I've decided to use it against them and make them compete during class for stickers, it's still sort of in the works, but I think I can use it to my advantage. Stickers here are cheap too (₩ 1000, which is less than one USD) and you can find them at a lot of stores, and they're so cute, along with tons of stationary.

Believe it or not, most days these boys aren't happy or sad, they're Angry Birds!

2. Angry Birds (the game/app where you sling birds around with the intention of mowing everything in your way over) is huge here. Not only can you play it on your phone here, but similar to the states, there is Angry Birds stuff everywhere. One girl, Julia, has an Angry Birds pencil case and pencils inside it. James has worn Angry Bird socks to school sometimes. In Seoul when we went to visit our friends I saw a crane game thing with tons of Angry Birds as prizes. All that aside, the reason I wanted to make a note of the Angry Birds is because it's become a sort of morning class ritual in my class for the boys to say that they are Angry Birds today when I ask how they are. I will typically go around the room and ask how my kids are today, sometimes I'll get happy or sick or sleepy, but the 3 or 4 boys always tell me they are Angry Birds! So after I hear that, it's always important to follow through and ask what color. This morning John and Tomas said they were black Angry Birds while James and Michael said that they were blue Angry Birds. Never a dull moment! 

No, we haven't eaten there yet. Western food is more expensive generally.

3. Western food in Korea is an experience, by experience I mean that if you had the option you should probably be eating at your favorite restaurants here instead of back in the States. That said, it is generally more expensive than other types of food you can get whether it's more traditional Korean fare or more modern cuisine (like Rice Story which is amazing). Thus far we've sampled a few Western restaurants including Pizza Hut and Burger King. Pizza Hut here is actually a nice place where people will go on dates, which is kind of cute. The pizza toppings they use here sometimes can be pretty crazy, especially based on what we saw walking by Mr. Pizza and other places. Even Pizza Hut had some odd looking toppings. Zach and I are not huge fans of Pizza Hut at home, but we decided to go and try it and it was actually really good. We got a small cheese pizza and split it (we haven't gotten paid yet!) and drinks and we were able to eat for a little less than $20 USD or (approximately ₩ 20,000). Not the kind of place to go frequently, but it was nice. We also grabbed Burger King in Seoul at the Nambu bus station while we waited for our bus back to Cheongju and it was pretty good too. Fast food is fast food though. At some point we will probably eat at Outback and TGI Fridays, but probably not a lot because of the price. I will now leave you with a few pictures from our Pizza Hut experience.

The Pizza Hut menu, in some ways it's very standard. The cheesy bites fondue pizza is on my list of delicious sounding things to try though. 

I would totally try that, it looks like it may be some sort of bulgogi pizza, I think?

Koreans like to serve pickled something with meals, whether it's pickles or radishes, onions, etc. The pizza was good though, even though we decided to keep it simple.