A Stove Story

So after two weeks of eating out and not cooking, I decide it's time to break in my kitchen. (Just miss eating my own food) But being the complete nub that I am, it actually took me a whole 30 minutes to turn on my stove!! It was kinda ridiculous. Here's what happened....

I was all ready to cook and everything. So I turned the knob but all that happened was the clicking sound of the lighter lighting the stove. There was no fire :( Now back home in GA, our stove is old and the stove's lighter doesn't work, which means you have to get your own lighter to ignite the gas. So, (being the clever person that I am) I reason that this stove is the same.

I go to buy a lighter, but I still don't really know how to ask for things in Korean very well. I looked up "lighter" in my handy-dandy dictionary, and show up at the store to ask if they sell it. Of course, they don't understand me. I tried saying it several times and even showed them the dictionary entry, but still no. Finally, I was just so at a loss that I just blurted out "lighter". And they understood me!! They were like, "Oh! Light-ta!"

So after 15 minutes, I finally buy my lighter and go back to my apartment. I try my stove again, this time with the lighter, and still it doesn't work. At this point, I have no idea why the stove isn't lighting. I'm starting be afraid that it's broken.

I go down to search for my building maintanence guy to ask for help. When I find him, I try to tell him that my stove doesn't work. Again, I looked up "stove" in my dictionary before finding him. He doesn't understand. Again, I show him the dicitonary entry, and that doesn't help either. Finally, I'm not really sure how, but somehow, the term "gas range" came up. I can't believe it. He didn't understand "stove", but he knew "gas range".

So he gets his tools and we go to my stove. The first thing he does is turns this little knob somewhere along the pipes on the wall, and he lights the stove. OMG!!! Apparently everyone, even other teachers in my program, knows you have turn on the gas. No one told me!! And so, the mechanic spends the next five minutes explaining to me how to light the stove, all the while thinking I"m an idiot. : /

Moral of the story: if you're ever in Korea, and your stove doesn't work, make sure you turn on your gas switch!