Look Mom! I can read!

I have finally somewhat achieved literacy in Korea (well maybe not as good on the writing part but I can read things at a pace of about 30 seconds per sentence!) I think it may be because I learned to read pretty early as a child but I never feel like a full participant in society until I can read. Even though the Korean alphabet is not that hard compared to other Asian languages, I'm pretty impressed that I could pick it up in 3 classes.

Onto more exciting things, my favorite Korean desserts. First is the waffles. They put a bit of fruit sauce and a swirl of soft serve ice cream and then fold it in half. Pure deliciousness. Another excellent dessert is bing su (shaved ice with frozen yogurt, fruit, and red bean). I also had a linguistic realization: bing sui in Cantonese = ice water --> Korean adaptation --> bing su = shaved ice. Just shows you everything can be traced back to China.

I thought I'd close off with some general observations about Korea:

- you can never find a garbage can on the street yet you're supposed to throw out your toilet paper rather than flushing it
- you can buy a 500 mL bottle of soju (kind of like 20% vodka) for about $1.50 at a convenience store but a single apple is about $1.20