Thanksgiving day in America may have been the newly revised date of the Korean SAT (수능), but that wasn’t going to stop me and the other Fulbrighters from having a huge American-style turkey dinner the Yongsan Army Base in Seoul.

Many thanks and “I’m grateful for’s” were said over the food-oriented weekend, and in honor of exactly that, let’s look at one of the the top non-family and non-essential things I’m thankful for this year:

The food.

Yes, I do have my biweekly In-N-Out daydream as I’m zoning out in the teacher’s office, but that still doesn’t beat the truth—Korean food fits this palate better than the imbalance that is typical American diets.

“Don’t you want to go have something not Korean?” ask my relatives whenever I visit.

No, no, absolutely not. While here, experiencing as many Korean foods as possible has become my goal, maybe even a “fourth point.” From grilled eel (not a huge fan) to spicy marinated chicken feet (kinda a fan) to grilled stingray (eh) to fermented blue crab in soy sauce (fan-ish), I’ve set out to try it all.

Except bundaegi—fermented silkworm larvae. A bug is a bug, no matter how small. People tell me it’s like eating a meaty peanut, except I’m allergic to peanuts, which provides the necessary excuse to wriggle out of my normal maxim to ‘not knock it before I try it.’

Thankfully for my gustatory crusade, the school cafeteria might as well be a restaurant that happens to use cafeteria trays. This ranges from:

to:

and:

and also:

and finally:

Sometimes I pretend to have extra work and read the NYT while waiting for 5:50 to hit so I can sneak into there for a quick dinner. Still being mistaken (and called out) for a student is certainly worth the price.

Outside of Youngsaeng high school, car rides to club baseball games has been another source of more cultural exchange, also known as me trying to explain American food chains.

Why is Subway Sandwiches called Subway? My limited Korean explanation: it’s not 지하철 (train subway). Sub is short for submarine, which is like a ship that’s beneath the ocean, and a submarine’s shape looks like a long baguette. Way is like 방법, aka method, not like 길 (pathway). In summary, according to Korean intermediate 3, is that Subway means something like “the way of sandwiches that look like the shape of a submarine.” Whew.

Subway is somewhat famous in some more populated parts of Korea, but not other smaller cities and towns such as Jeonju, and is well-known for its sandwiches being tasty, and not the quasi-fast food we’ve come to see it as in the states.

If that wasn’t tiring enough, try explaining Shake Shack. My 30-year-old teammate was in the middle of telling his girlfriend who was sitting in the front in Korean that he thought Shake Shack was called that because they take the marinade and spices and put it into a bag and then shake it vigorous, and I decided to bravely try to correct that one mid-laughter.

“Shake is short for milkshake,” I offered.

“Mil-k shay-ku? What’s that?” I repeated the phrase again, this time with my best Korean loanword guess.

“Ah, 밀커새이크? (pronunciation: Mill-kuh Shay-ee-kuh).” Something like that.

Shack was a bit tougher—“it’s got a 맞집 느낌,” (tasty restaurant feeling) I attempted tentatively. “Not a legit sitdown restaurant—kinda like street food feeling.”

I’m still not quite sure if my Korean-speaking listeners were nodding to be polite or because they had caught my drift.

One last one I tried to clarify was Outback Steakhouse, which is quite expensive and fancy in Korea but not so much in the States. “In America, it’s steak for when you want to eat meat but you can’t afford to eat a real steak so you go eat something that’s like a real steak but not as expensive.”

That sure got me a blank stare—guess it’s more motivation to practice my Korean grammar and vocabulary more.

Eating galbi-tang (갈비탕) with the team after a win.