Starving to Death: Early Days Part 5

I'll add a new update to my early days series from time to time, but from this point out, it'll probably be rather spuratic. I may even tell some things out of order, simply because some stories deserve to be told more than others. Anyway, on we go.

My first day in Korea, as mentioned, I bought some groceries. I didn't find much. For the first week I was here, I lived almost exclusively on rice and vegetables. Try it: eat nothing but rice and veggies for a week and see if you can maintain your sanity. Damn me and my vegetarianism.

Anyway, I had been settling in to school fine after the first week. I was still nervous much of the time, I still screwed up all the time, but hey, I was making it. This despite the fact that I was wasting away. I lost 15 pounds in my first week in Korea. Fifteen pounds, no joke. And many of you know that I don't have 15 pounds to lose (on a side note, I'm actually down about 22 or so pounds from my American weight right now, but I'm in much better shape, so it doesn't seem like so much).

It wasn't until I was here about a week and a half that I found more food. I was complaining about the lack of vegetarian things to eat to Terrilynn, a coworker that has since gone back to Canada.

"There isn't anything vegetarian here," I said. "Save Zone has nothing."

"Have you checked out Home Plus?" she asked. I hadn't. I didn't even know it existed.

When she took me there later that night, I was floored. They had all sorts of fruit and veggies. They had baked beans. They had pickles. They had french fries and hash browns. And most importantly, they had peanut butter, which I now eat nearly ever day for lunch. They even had soy milk and soy cheese. My menu quadrupled in a single visit. I still wasn't back up to full health after that, but I was a hell of a lot closer even after a single meal of things I bought there.

It wasn't for another three weeks that I found my first vegetarian restaurant here (I've since found two more), and it was another month before I found out I could eat at any buddhist temple. It was probably three months before I could speak Korean well enough to eat at a regular Korean restaurant (and ask for dishes without certain items in them).

I started going to Home Plus for nearly all my food. I got used to the fact that employees yelled out what was on sale. I got used to being bowed to by the sales clerks. I got used to hunting down an employee whenever I needed produce (they have to weight it and price it right then). I even got used to being approached in the store and asked to buy things I didn't need (such as whole fish or weird ass Korean vegetables that I still don't know the names of) But it was my third of fourth visit that something really odd happened.

I ran over to Home Plus on a school break to pick up a few things. Mid shop, music started playing over the sound system and all the employees went to the end of their aisle and started dancing. Their little dance went on for a couple minutes.

What was I supposed to do, I thought. Should I just keep shopping or do I stop and watch? I put my head down and just kept on shopping. I tried not to watch the dance even though I had a hard time looking away. I've since found out that this little dance happens on the hour every hour.

It was about a two months later that I started buying about almost all my fruit and vegetables on the street. See, in Korea there are fruit and vegetable vendors everywhere. They usually grow their own stuff. It's far superior, and usually a little cheaper, but you have to know how to speak Korean to buy stuff from them. Farmers don't know any English, and they don't have cash registers that you can look at to figure out the price.

Plus, they won't do a little dance for you if you buy something from them.

R