Itaewon: Indian food and more fun with language

I finally ventured into Itaewon yesterday. It' known as the foreigners' district in Seoul, specifically the American area because there's a U.S. Army post there. I'd avoided visiting until now because I didn't see the point in going to a Hard Rock Cafe zone, when I can see those same shops and clubs back home, and in dozens of other cities around the world. After all, I didn't shop at Nike Town in NY, so why make a pilgrimage to it in Seoul?

Sure enough, there was a Hard Rock cafe. And chain stores selling American brands of clothes, which you can find all over Seoul anyway (at least the parts I've seen so far). But here they were the predominant portion of the retail establishments. And there were more Americans than Koreans on the streets, many of the GIs. And therefore lots of bars with names like Friends and Cancun. Again, pretty much what I'd expected. Even though none of the shopping appealed to me, it was refreshing to be able to speak English the whole time I was there.

One thing that did surprise me, though, was the presence of several Russian shops and clubs. It was kind of fun sounding out the Cyrillic alphabet in my head again, after having been doing so with the Korean one these last couple of months (although my Korean language skills are still extremely rudimentary, I did get a feel for the Hangeul alphabet during the Korean course I took in the Fall . It's actually easier than it looks because it's phonetic, with consonants and vowels, just like English, although they're arranged a little differently. I'd been afraid it would be based on characters, like Chinese.)

Anyway, I'd made plans to meet my friend Marty, also an American teacher and a vegetarian. He's been in Korea many years and knows the ropes about where to go in Seoul. The primary goal of our expedition to Itaewon had been to find a vegetarian restaurant. So we found an Indian place with a buffet and stuffed ourselves with spicy veggies. It was worth the trip, which was about one and a half hours from home.

I also had another very funny language experience, this time while I was getting a manicure.
I have a lovely bruise on my chin right now because I tripped a fell a few days ago. It's healing fine, but is just ugly. So, the manicurist noticed it and said "How?". Or so I thought. So I tried to explain about having tripped and fallen, but I'm fairly sure she didn't understand. She repeated her word, but this time spelled it: "cow." Now I was the confused one. I first thought she was jokingly asking me if I'd been kicked in the chin by a cow (don't know where that idea came from, especially since Seoul is the opposite of rural). Finally, she said "steak" and it became clear that she was suggesting I put a raw steak on my chin to heal the bruise! I thanked her for her advice and didn't even begin to get into the vegetarian thing.