Time for Sit-Ups

Seriously, who goes to Korea and gains weight? Apparently this guy. Lunch at work yesterday? Oh yes, a spoon of mashed potatoes, a hunk of fried chicken, and a huge piece of pizza (with ALL the toppings, pepperoni, mushrooms, onions, peppers, black olives, way too much cheese, pineapple...mmm, pineapple and mushroom pizza...). This was all washed down with a Coke and a smile.

Typically Koreans do not have a drink with the meal (at least at lunch, it seems). There is a big ol' bowl of soup, and you can drink that, thankyouverymuch. So the Coke was quite a novelty yesterday. In the cafeteria at Hyundai, as you are exiting you can get a small glass of whatever tea is available in these huge steel drums. Today's was citron tea (apparently a citron is a Chinese lemon. See what you learn when you travel abroad?) Yesterday was cinnamon tea, and it pretty much tasted like they blended a Cinnabon at the mall and steeped it in some water. VERY SWEET. We've also had plum tea, iced tea, hot tea, ginseng tea, and some sort of tea that clearly was made from Mexican insanity peppers because it was the spiciest thing I've put in my mouth since we got here.

Oh yeah, today's meal, in addition to curried rice and yet more pickled orange roots (ah yes - turnips, I remember now!) included a great big custard-filled, chocolate-topped Boston creme pie style doughnut. This big boy won't be able to fit into his pants.

Sorry all the posts are about food, when we are in Namyang nothing exciting happens (other than I had a scare with the Blue Screen of Death with my computer today), and nobody wants to hear about work (and I don't want to type about work), so that is what we get.

Oh, since we can't take cameras into the R&D center, I included a picture from the vending machine in my hotel room my first night here. Mmm, nothing sounds better than squid roasted in butter in a personal hotel room vending machine at the scary-ass Hotel Air Park in Incheon, Korea (only 4000 won, or about US$5!)