So, back when I was living in Canada I worked as a cashier supervisor at a local grocery store, and after six years slaving away on the register I can say with absolute certainty that I have seen it all. From dedicated price matchers and coupon cutters, to junk food junkies and impulse buyers. But none of that experience matters when you are thousands of miles away from home, in a small country town where half of the food you took for granted does not exist, and the other half has jacked up price tags.

It is a challenge, to say the least.

But there are ways of working the system to your advantage. For one, you can always order your food online and have it shipped directly to your apartment within a couple of days thanks to Korea’s expedited delivery system. Or, you can learn to make do with what is available, and adjust your budget as needed to incorporate the tastes of home.

Which is what I have done. Partially because ordering food online is a bit of a logistical hassle, but also because I want to learn how to adapt to the country I am in, instead of clinging to the one that I have left.

Though of course, there are definitely things that I miss, such as bagels and the variety of cereals. Oatmeal. Rice cakes, the puffed ones, not the Korean sticky ones. Salt and Vinegar chips. Cheese. Canned soups. The list goes on and on.

But ironically one of the things that I miss the most…and the main reason I am writing this post. Is the expiration dates.

I don’t know about else where in the world, but in Canada most expiration dates outlast the shelf life of the food. Meaning that for the most part the food will be eaten before it can even think about going bad. But in Korea, especially for naive foreigners such as myself, it tends to be the opposite.

Take yogurt for instance. I have definitely bought containers with expiration dates extending up to a month. But in Korea? I am lucky if they last until the end of the week. Same goes for milk. In Canada, most milk bags will last anywhere from 14-21 days, but in Korea it is more like 4-10.

And don’t even get me started on the bread. I would buy a loaf Monday, and when I say loaf I am not talking about some fresh baked bakery shit, but plain old regular bread that by the weekend would be either stale, moldy, or some combination thereof.

The food here just doesn’t last, and while that is probably an indication of the lack of preservatives and hormones present in the food, it is still annoying to have to constantly worry about whether the dinner you plan on having will have gone bad by the time you go to make it.

So I guess the lesson here is: shop for the short term.

Or make http://www.coupang.com your new best friend.