Monday, August 10, 2009

This morning's cafeteria meal was rice, cabbage kimchi (in more of a tomato sauce and warm), pieces of hot dog with cabbage and carrots, scallion and onion salad, sauteed tofu and noodle soup. The thing I like the best about the cafeteria certainly isn't the quality of the food, but rather that I never know what's coming. I think the weekly menu is posted, but it's in Korean so every time I eat there it's a little adventure. All the food was good except for the scallion salad, which was a little bit strong for the morning (or really any time of the day). I only had a little of that.

Class #6 met this morning and we mostly had discussions and then time to work on our group projects that are due on Thursday. After class we ate at the food court in the student union and I had noodles in broth. It also had some veggies, like seaweed and cabbage and what I think was two triangles of tofu. After lunch Kate and I bought Yonsei University t-shirts. The student union is currently being renovated so there is a make-shift bookstore in one of the cafeterias that is closed. It has the usual bookstore gifts, except that everything was much cheaper than in the US. My t-shirt was the equivalent of about $8.

After buying our t-shirts we browsed the school stationary store and the book store and bought some postcards. We met at the main gate at 2:30 for our next library visit - Namsan Public Library. Unlike the other libraries we visited, this one wasn't too far away - only about 20 minutes by cab. It was big, but otherwise like most public libraries in the US. In general, the libraries we've visited in Korea have a ton of reading/studying space and fewer stacks of books. Some libraries had books in storage, but it seems like others have only recently developed their collections and just don't have too many books yet. There were a ton of people at the library studying and working on computers. There were coed, all female and all male study rooms - I guess so there are no distractions while studying. There also happened to be a photography exhibit by some students at the women's college which was cool because I like photography exhibits.

Back on campus I've just been doing school work and had dinner in the cafeteria. Tonight's random meal was a thin layer of egg (like a piece of an egg used for an omelet) over white rice, topped with brown sauce. The rice also had some little pieces of pepper and carrots in it. Side dishes were mini spring rolls (filled with what looked to be kimchi), potato kimchi, and a very spicy rice noodle dish with cabbage. The broth today was miso with seaweed. We also got mini bottles of a sweet yogurt drink. It was a nice contrast to the spicy noodles. For dessert I got a red, white and blue ice cream cone novelty. It was berry flavored and the blue ice cream seemed to have pop rocks in it. There are just so many types of ice cream novelties here. I'm hoping to try as many as possible before heading back to the US.