My WWOOFCSA box arrived!

The other day, I placed my order for my first WWOOFCSA sample box. Korea is the land of deliveries, where most people shop online for everything. You can even have your laundry picked up and dropped off, although I haven't tried that yet.

So anyway, my friend posted pictures of her WWOOFCSA box. And I thought it seemed like a good idea, so I ordered one too. And before I could articulate the acronym, it had arrived.

For a measly W30 000, I have:

Lettuce
Salad greens (different kinds of leaves)
Bell peppers (red and yellow)
Potatoes
Onions
Carrots
The most delicious apples ever
Eggs
Oyster mushrooms (uh oh)

If I had chosen the bread option I'd have a loaf of walnut-potato bread too, and some mulberry jam. Yum. This is the couples sampler basket. I might have paprika.

What is WWOOFCSA, beside being a very long acronym?

Not my box, but very similar

Launched this month, it's a community that coordinates sales, packaging and delivery of organic produce from farm to your doorstep. You pay in advance, which allows the farmers to be able to plant their crops and harvest them. If there's a natural disaster or just bad weather or something like that, it affects the crops. For example, there was a bad broccoli harvest a few weeks ago. The broccoli farmer threw in some extra other crops to make up for it. The food is mostly farmed near the city you live in, and mine arrived fresh, delicious and in perfect condition.

I get mine delivered to my school because I'm never home during working hours. I was worried that the box might be too heavy to carry home, but Koreans are masters of packaging and it's a small, light box. My plan is to see if I can cook and eat everything within the week. If I can, then this will probably become my main dinner source (as lunch is provided by my school).

Read more about WWOOFCSA on their website, and have a look at pictures of what's in the box. For W108k a month, I think that's a hell of a good deal. It's slightly more than I'd pay for 5 jjimdalks. They have breadless and vegan options too. You can also join activities like strawberry picking, and through the main WWOOF organisation you can do something like a 'farmstay' where you work for a certain number of hours in exchange for food and accommodation.

click to embiggen

Less Miserable 2nd Graders

Well, winter camp has just ended, which brings me to the end of my first year in Korea. I'm exhausted.

Here's a fantastic parody my students wrote today:

I dreamed a dream of times gone by

When  class was fun, and life worth living.

I dreamed that kids would never learn.

I dreamed that teachers would be forgiving...

Then I was free and so relaxed,

And textbooks were closed and shelved and dusty.

There was no homework to be done.

No film unwatched, no game unplayed. 

But the exams come in April 

With their questions hard as Mensa.

As they tear your hope apart,

As they turn your dreams to formulas.

He slept a whole week on his desk.

He filled his nights with endless gaming.

He took my champion and my pride,

But he was gone when 3rd grade came.

And still I dream he'll come to class.

That we will learn English vocabulary together.

But there are grades that cannot be,

And there are questions we cannot answer.

I had a dream my life would be

So different from this class I'm studying.

So different now from what it seems.

Now school has killed the dream I dreamed.

The Happiest (and cheapest) Train

Hello, and welcome, children. Today we're going to talk about something very few foreigners seem to be aware of. I only discovered it myself over Thanksgiving weekend. It's a marvelous thing called the Happy Rail Pass.

What is it?
This is a little card that you buy which can then be exchanged for unlimited train tickets for the duration of the period you booked it for. So, slow trains and KTX. But not subways. This saves you a fortune if you're doing multiple transfers, or going up to Seoul for the weekend, for example.

All prices in KRW:
KTX from Daegu to Seoul: 33,600 - 55,300
Saemaeul (slower): 30,000 - 34,000
Mugunghwa (slowest train): 17,200 - 20,000
Bus:  17,000 - 27,700

Those are one way trips. Yeeeeeeeeesh. So, a return ticket to Seoul on the KTX will total over 100,000 if I want to travel in style, or 68,000 if I slum it. Ouch.

Now, we get to the Happy Rail Pass. This pass is best used when travelling in a group.
Happy Rail Pass (solo) for 2 days: 87,000
Happy Rail Pass - saver - (solo) for 2 days: 78,300
Edit: I misread the information, unfortunately. The group price is 78,300 per person.
And that is including your return ticket home, and any KTX/slow train travelling you do during that time.

The Happy Rail pass is aimed at visitors travelling within Korea, but it can be used by anyone, including foreigners with ARCs. You need to use a credit card and your passport number when booking, and include the names and passport numbers of your companions if you're putting them on the same pass. Bring your passport with you when you go to the train station. You can use foreign credit cards to book this pass online.

When you get to the station, take your Happy Rail Pass number (you got it when booking) and your passport to the ticket window. Exchange it for your first ticket. The timer starts now. Keep the little card they give you; that is exchanged for all train tickets during this time except subway tickets.

The Happy Rail Pass doesn't guarantee you a seat rather than standing ticket during peak season, so get there well before it's time for the train to go in order to be certain of one. Peak season is summer vacation, Chuseok, lunar new year and Thanksgiving day, year end and beginning of the year.

Book your ticket online here: http://www.korail.com/
(English version of the site is available). Happy Rail passes are under "Travelling".

Bon voyage.

Traitorous Jjimdalk

When I moved into my apartment, and before I learned how to order food, I relied heavily on local take-out places. I'd walk in, point at stuff, and show them my ARC so they could figure out where I lived.

I developed a mild addiction to Andong Jjimdalk. Run by a lovely ajeossi and his wife, this noodly, chicken and veg concoction makes me happy in my mouth. I want it.

It also made me fat, so now I ration my jjimdalk. Over the months, it has gotten so that I can walk in and they know my order - spicy, boneless jjimdalk with a coke, sometimes. They know where I live too. I just walk in, hand over my card or cash, and food magically appears at my door within half an hour.

Of course, one cannot live on jjimdalk alone (OH YES YOU CAN) so I downloaded the free 요기요 app from the android store so that I could order delivery without making awkward bad-Korean phonecalls with frustrated, nervous and non-English speaking restauranteers.

Tonight as I walked home from my Korean class I was hit by a sudden craving for jjimdalk. I went to the restaurant, where the lights and TV were on (there's a hairdressers' chair for waiting people to comfortably sit and watch TV, or for the ajeossi (who does the deliveries) to hang while he waits for orders). But the door was locked. She was out and he was on a delivery, so they'd briefly locked up. This is very unlike the chicken place down the street which stays teasingly open all day but is hardly ever manned by people to take your order.

Dejected, depressed and still craving jjimdalk, I trudged home in the rain. But the craving persisted.

I picked up my phone and questioned whether it would be a complete betrayal to eat different jjimdalk. And what if the new jjimdalk was better than the one from my local place? Would it forever taint the awesomeness of my regular jjimdalk? I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth and tried to push the guilt to the back of my mind. I felt like such a traitor as I scrolled through 요기요's different options of local takeout places. I even had a little daydream in which I showed my ajeossi and ajumma the app and their business soared, and we celebrated over jjimdalk. My stomach rumbled.

I selected the first one I saw, and was amazed by the options. It is so simple to walk into my jjimdalk place and order the same thing every time - 매은 순살 (spicy boneless). But here I had options. Half a chicken. A whole chicken. A chicken and a half. Noodles. Extra noodles. No noodles. Three levels of spiciness. For the sake of testing quality to compare my jjimdalk place to the 요기요 one, I chose an order similar to my usual but a little cheaper (not boneless, medium spicy). A few minutes later the sms confirmation came through, and it told me it would take about 30 minutes.

So far, comparing wait time, they're the same. Prices are the same too.

I paced a bit.

My stomach rumbled again.

At last! The doorbell. I skipped over and let the delivery guy into the building, and then hovered by my door, waiting to hear the rustle of the bag outside. I opened it as he rang that bell. And there he was, with the glorious jjimdalk in his hands. His face was covered by his helmet, but as I handed over the exact change, he raised his visor and smiled at me.

My ajeossi. From my jjimdalk place. The one I've been ordering from all year.

And it tastes just as good as ever.

Yum. Not my picture.