Chicken Anus
October 25, 2005

Over the past week I've been fairly busy with work stuff.  The brochures we designed are finally done and now it's time to get the word out to the military bases and get students in to take the class.  My adventures recently have been involved with making "grrrrrrr" noises to communicate with and figuring out what not to eat.

Almost everywhere you go you'll find little stands of fried foods and sticks with something on them in a broth.  It turns out that something on those sticks in broth are called "fish cakes."  They are freaking amazing.  It's fish chopped up and pressed together and cooked.  It sounds a lot less appealing that it tastes.  It's difficult now to pass by a fish cake stand without having at least one.  Apparently there are spicy ones too but I have tried them yet.

Starrlite (my interpreter) and I stood in front of three of these fried food stands and she explained all the offerings.  Everything sounded pretty good except one thing.  Chicken anus on a stick.  Yep....chicken anus on a stick.  I'm glad she told me what it was before I tried it, because it just looks like little hunks of chicken on a stick.  It comes in a marinated variety too if you every want to try it.

I went to one of my havens here in Korea...Wal-Mart.  My beard trimmer doesn't work here because it's the wrong voltage and instead of buying a transformer to make it work, I figured I'd just buy a Korean one.  One interesting thing about a lot of stores is there's almost one person in every section waiting to help you.  Often you'll find cute girls dressed up holding certain items from that section.  Like for Oral B.  There was a cute girl in a mini-skirt drawing attention to the Oral B toothbrushes.  I already hand one at home, but she made me want to buy another.

Anyway, back to my beard trimmer.  I couldn't find one near the shaving cream and blades so, of course, I asked the two cute girls hold razor blades.  I can say hello, thank you, and goodbye (there's 2 versions) in Korean and that's it.  So imagine me trying to say "Pardon me, where are the electric beard trimmers."  Yeah...not easy.  So, being an actor type, I acted it out.  I held up my hand to my face, rubbed it in circles, and made this sound - "Grrrrrrrrrrrrr."  They immediately understood what I wanted and pointed one floor down. 

What I learned today about Korea:  1)  There's chicken anus on a stick.  2) "Grrrrrrrrrrr" in English translates to "Pardon me, where are the electric beard trimmers" in Korean.