Day 3 - Wandering Songdo

This morning, I woke up bright and early with my roommate to see the sun rising over some buildings amidst the soft clouds.

Foggy, but lovely!

We debated whether breakfast was served from 7:00-8:00am or from 8:00-9:00am and went down to the cafeteria early, just in case.  It turned out that I was wrong, but the women who ran the kitchen were kind enough to allow us to buy tickets and eat anyway.  Luckily for us, they forgave our lack of Korean and directed us to the trays and food.  Several embarrassed bows and "kamsamnida"s (thank you) later, we gratefully sat down to generous portions.

The mound of rice accompanies every meal, this time white rice mixed with black rice.  Not much of a distinguishing flavor, but there was a pleasant, hearty texture reminiscent of oatmeal.  The spicy beef broth included bean sprouts and daikon (white radish), very satisfying.  Soup accompanies each meal.  The brown, wheel-like objects at the top were lotus root slices cooked in soy sauce, a sweet-salty vegetable with a crunch.  My favorite item were the quail eggs cooked in soy sauce, however.  Hard-boiled and peeled, a thin, chewy white surrounds a rich, creamy yolk that takes up about 80% of the volume of the egg.  Artery-blocking, for sure, but absolutely delicious.  I was interested to find that in Korea, water is not served with the meal.  If you order a beverage in a restaurant, they will serve it during the food.  At the cafeteria and later, the food court, however, small steel cups are provided for the customer to sip hot or cold water after the meal.

Our next stop was to E-Mart, a sort of one-stop shop for both groceries and department store items, such as clothes and kitchenware.  Guided by a friendly instructor whom we had met the day before, all four of us picked up snacks and essential supplies, like laundry detergent.  Afterwards, the boys and our guide bought breakfasts from the food court.  An interesting (and quite beautiful) novelty was the displays of glass or plastic food.  Each was crafted to look exactly like a dish served at the food court.  I found it lovely and enticing, an investment that certainly, most food businesses in the US have neglected.  I have seen these mock dishes in the US before, but almost exclusively at Japanese restaurants and never at this scale.  Two full cases of beautiful, realistic dishes were on display, each case about 15 ft. long by 6 ft. high.

Top Left Photo courtesy of Rendy.

After a quick nap back at the dorm, one of the boys went home for the night while the rest of us visited Incheon's shops.  Taking the bus in a different language is an experience all itself.  With the stops announced in Korean, then English, we needed to keep an eye out for our stop.  Also, in Korea, the bus stops only go one way.  In order to return to SUNY Korea, we found another bus stop across the street and a little further down than the stop where we had gotten off.  Wandering around Songdo, a region in Incheon, we stumbled across...

A tank full of adorable, active, live squid!

Clothing stores with discount racks!

Finally, dinner!  Pasta cabonara (minus the bacon) up top,
fried potato wedges with peach salsa, and a dozen buffalo
chicken wings.  The yellow sauce is honey mustard.

A sweet woman wiped down the tank when she noticed I was taking a picture.  She knew a little English, we put together some broken Korean ("Anyeounghaseyo!" means "Hello!" or other greetings) and we managed to talk for a while.  We also managed to find several of the items on our shopping list and stumble across a small restaurant for dinner.  Luckily, one of the servers knew a little English.  The food was remarkably good.  The potatoes were crisp and hot, the peach salsa sweet and spicy.  At the end, we caught the bus back to our dorms, to prepare for another day!

Edit:  We also finally found our electrical adapters in a small hardware store.  They were inexpensive (~$3 or so each), but difficult to find.  For anyone visiting Korea or other countries, I would suggest trying to hunt down these adapters early in the trip.  I would have liked to have purchased an adapter or two in the U.S. before flying off to Korea.