Spending a lot of time over the last year in Asia has had fairly detrimental effects on my ability to speak proper English. In Japan, I found myself speaking Japangrish, to make myself more easily understood, and in China, well, I just didn't speak much English at all. It's gotten so bad that my mom has started making fun of me for it. Case in point: In an email thread with my family, I referred to the "laundry machines" at the office. My mom's reply: "Here in the 'new world' we call them washing machines :)" I love my mom for being cool enough to make fun of me.
Recently this article about 10 things that South Korea does better than anywhere else has been making the rounds on social media, but when I first read it, I couldn't tell if it was sincere or satire. A few of the items on the list are not very positive, such as "overworking" and "using credit cards". So, I thought I would try to put together a better list. Here are 10 other things South Korea does better than anywhere else: 1) Small side dishes, a.k.a. " banchan " (반찬) Banchan are by far my favorite aspect of Korean cuisine. Rather than the "appetizer and main dish" approach of the West, a Korean meal is essentially built around small dishes. Even a 5,000 won (about $5 USD) meal at a mall food court will come with two to four banchan in addition to the "main", and often people will actually choose restaurants based on the banchan (e.g., seolleongtang , or beef bone broth soup, places tend to have the tastiest kimchi). Ther...
Try surviving in Korea for over two years, you're English is great, I'm quite jeruse, what is a washing machine?
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