Of Garbage Bags and Grocery Stores

This afternoon, with our food supply dwindling (and our milk totally depleted, having sat out of the refrigerator for the duration of our retreat and soured), Leslie and I set out on a grocery expedition.  But first, Leslie carefully sorted through all the refuse we've accumulated so far into two bags.  Neither of us really understand the garbage sorting system here, but you have to dispose of food waste separately from other kinds of waste, and stuff that can be burned from stuff that can't be burned, and probably some other stuff too.  We didn't have any food waste yet to speak of (we had eaten exactly three meals in the apartment, none of which included anything besides cereal and peanut butter and jelly on toast), but there's a fair bit of other kinds of waste that have accumulated as we've moved in.  Once Leslie had filled two bags with different kinds of trash, we left in search of a place to dispose of it.  When we found our apartment complex's trash disposal area, we discovered that everything was behind a locked gate except for the food waste bins (and yes, I opened all five of them to make sure they were all for food waste).  Crestfallen, we retraced our steps to the apartment and left the bags there.  Hopefully we'll be able to dispose of them on Monday.

We then set out to buy food.  There are several grocery stores in our vicinity.  The other teachers in Wolgye district have nicknames for them.  We first looked through "Ricky's."  It probably would have been sufficient for our immediate needs, but we wanted to look further.  We took a pedestrian underpass to get past a busy thoroughfare and headed for "Antoine's."  It's right next to a store called Paris Baguette that sells a variety of baked goods.  We stepped in there first and got a loaf of "Italian" bread (it turned out to be very good, sort of like challah) and cheesecake for dessert.  At Antoine's we were able to buy eggs, onions, and "cheddar" cheese for our early dinner tonight, along with milk, yogurt, Concord grapes, spaghetti, and a bigger frying pan than the one already in our apartment.  It was one of the weirder grocery shopping experiences I've ever had, because someone ("Antoine"?) was talking over the store intercom for almost the entire time, apparently talking with someone outside the store who would occasionally yell back at him from the doorway.  I was glad when we finally got out of there.  We crossed back under the road and went to pick up some extra garbage bags at still another grocery store, before finally getting back to our apartment, where I turned up the AC and poured myself a glass of cold water before I began to prepare our eggs.