You are What you Eat (With)

When I first got to Korea, there was very little that actually surprised me, despite how amazing and different Korea is from the West.

However, the biggest surprise and shock came in the most unlikely of places: chopsticks.

I am not stranger to a pair of chopsticks. While I'm not the most adept person in picking up and handling smallish objects with a pair of sticks, I think I can hold my own. I don't know about you, but the kind of chopsticks I've always been accustomed to, exposed to, and used, back in the US--in chinese, japanese, vietnamese restaurants and the like--looked something like this:



The dramatically tapered end, and the other the heavier, slightly rounded boxier end. This is what chopsticks were to me. So when I got to Korea, and sat down for that first meal, I was surprised to see this:


The slight tapering of one end, the ornate decoration on the other. The general flat and slender design of the stick. This was one of the most surprising things for me to encounter when I first got to Korea.

The first time I used these chopsticks, it was as if I had never before used a pair of chopsticks in my life. It was embarrassing. I felt like a child, with how much food I kept dropping or how much ended up neither on my plate nor in my mouth, but either on the table or on my clothing. I couldn't use them in quite the same when as I had the other kind, because of how slender they were and how they fit in my fingers. In general, I just think you have less surface area. Less area in which you can maneuver, and less surface area in which you can use to pick up food.

I had expected to encounter different things when coming to Korea, but this--this, seemed to come out of nowhere! Did not ever expect to stumble over my chopsticks :)