Last weekend, we ventured to the local food market near our neighborhood. It was our first experience taking the bus (instead of the subway) and it went really smoothly.
As we sat at the bus stop, I was concerned about not being able to see the numbers on the buses until they were nearly passing by until Alex pointed out that there was this handy dandy digital sign informing us how many minutes until each bus would arrive. Sweet!
Also, we each have a T-Money card which is kind of like a debit card for transportation here in Korea. We put money on the card and can then use it to ride the subway or the bus, to pay for a taxi, or even to buy things at the 7-11. Very organized and easy!
The market is huuuuge. In fact, it is basically a warehouse complex and a lot of the food is sold in bulk. We checked out the map and decided to wander through the fruit, head toward the fish, and make our way back through the veggies. Hopefully, in the future we can tag along with some returning teachers to see if we hit the right areas of the market because even with all that we walked through, we skipped entire sections.
We struggled a little in the fruit section since in general produce isn’t very cheap here (at least not compared to Latin America!) everything was sold in bulk. I love fruit, but $30 worth of peaches is probably more than we can handle.
We did buy an entire box of tomatoes though. I made a big batch of salsa and homemade marinara sauce to freeze.
We didn’t buy anything in the fish section, but it was incredibly entertaining to wander through.
Tiny shrimp
Mussels, clams, and other shelled sea creatures that I couldn’t identify.
A tank filled with live eels.
Stingrays
Unlike a lot of the stuff in the seafood section, I could probably actually figure out how to cook with these…
By the time we hit the veggie section, I was kind of on overload so I decided to focus on specific items that I could use with my box of tomatoes. We bought garlic, onions and peppers and even found cilantro (which can sometimes be hit or miss here).
The veggie section had beautiful colors!
We also used some of our newly learned vocabulary during the excursion. Alex would ask “Olmayo?” which means “How much is it?”. The vendor would hold up some fingers. We would pay and then say “Kamsahamnida” which means “Thank you.” Our next goal? Learning numbers so we don’t have to rely on our fingers!
From Russia with Love 