Day 1

Today was our first official Study Abroad day in Seoul. We had a later start, meeting at 10 am in the lobby. First our our agenda was getting food. We attempted to go to the Tongin Traditional Market for food, but unfortunately it was closed. It did however give an introduction to the distribution of food locally through markets like this within the city. After regrouping, we went to a bibimbap restaurant. We then set out on our first task of the day: a Scavenger Hunt. I was paired with Fletcher and Yadiel, and we were sent out on our quest to find Gukseon Laquer, a local shop specializing in handcrafted boxes  and accessories made from mother of pearl. It was quite the adventure to find this place. We first rode the bus to where the map told us to go, and found ourselves immersed in a vast textile market, with vendors selling a plethora of items, mainly various stunning fabrics. We had a lot of trial and error in our attempts to find our location, having to ask the tourist information people for help. We found where we needed to go eventually, but it seemed to be blocked off by construction. On our final attempt, we talked to the tourist information people, who were able to contact the store owner. The store owner was able to bring us around the construction and up three floors to his shop on the roof of the market. We then looked around his shop, talked to him for a while, and took many pictures.

After, we went to meet up with the group at the Bank of Korea Money Museum. We walked through the museum while other groups finished up their tasks, and once everyone was done, we walked to the North Tower. We took the cable car up the mountain, seeing the large city of Seoul beneath us. We explored to tower and surrounding area for a while, and then went to dinner.

Blog 1 Theme: Self Serve Stations

Many restaurants in Seoul utilize self serving stations. This usually spans from drinks to sides dishes, particularly pickled radishes and kimchi, but from my experience also includes heartier things like soup. This helps with food distribution by allowing people to get what they want when they want it. This hopefully would reduce food waste. However in certain instances might increase it with people overestimating how much of the side dish they want, not having portion control, not liking the food after getting it. This is very different from the US, where side dishes or complimentary food is brought to the table by restaurant staff rather than put out in self serving stations.

However, I did notice that not all restaurants operate this way. Many follow the same operation as the US, and probably many other places, in bringing these types of complimentary products to the table. This also helps to reduce pressure on wait staff by allowing them to focus on cooking, running food, cleaning, etc. I noticed this in the first restaurant we went to where we could get our own lettuce, bean sprouts, kimchi, sauces, etc. It has become a noticeable trend across various restaurants. I learned after some research that these complimentary dishes (whether served by staff or self served) are known as banchan. I also found another blog with this same observation and have linked it below!

https://creatrip.com/en/blog/8577