donut

It's become a custom for Autumn and I to spend weekend days (before and after the roller coaster rides, of course) people watching at cafes.

The Paris Baguette near Kyungsung University is an excellent venue, as it offers sandwiches and salads as well as tasty sweet things, and on very hot July days it is also air-conditioned.




(That delightfully shiny ring-o-balls on my tray is a mochi ring, which I highly recommend if you ever come across them in the States. They have them at Mister Donut and Dunkin' Donuts here, but I don't know if they do over there. It's chewy and sweet in the same way that you'd imagine Hello Kitty is chewy and sweet.)

Happy Birthday!

It's been a month and a half, but I turned 28!

Peter and I had a picnic on Saturday by the river in Yangsan.


(Pictures of me in this post are taken by him.)

He brought bubbles.


(I brought water guns. It was fun.)

That evening, we went to the city and saw Autumn. On Sunday, my actual birthday, Pete and Autumn and I had ice creamy waffles for breakfast and then Peter and I explored a mostly-empty building at the north end of Gwangalli beach.

Here's the view from the 14th floor (there are business on maybe 2 or 3 floors but everything else is empty.)


And looking down...


And then there was a visit to Me World and the drop tower.


Autumn's gift was *another* picnic (I really like picnics!) for which we walked to Shinsegae, the world's largest department store, to buy CHEESE and SALAMI and WINE and CAKE. These are rarities in Korea. (Well cake is not a rarity, but good cake is.)

piggies

There is a delicious aspect of Korean culture that you should know about. It's called "Sam Gyup Sal" which means "Three Layer Meat." I like to call it "Giant Bacon." And it's amazing.



Here are three varieties: Spicy (the rolled up ones in the back,) Regular (in the middle,) and Galbi, or Marinated In Delicious (in front.) Also visible: Hite, a terrible Korean beer.

You barbecue the meat over coals on a setup in the middle of the table, like so:


And you use meat scissors, a lot. I didn't get a picture of the eating, which involves wrapping meat, garlic, onions, bean paste, and a tasty mixture of spring onions and hot sauce into a lettuce or sesame leaf. Lettuce-wrapped giant bacon is good for your health.

atomic dog

There are a lot of things in Korea that folks in the States would probably find foreign and interesting, but I just take for granted. Then I act like there's nothing to blog about, but there is.

In Korea, they paint their dogs.


(This one would not turn around to show its pink cheeks!)

You see a lot of fluffy little white dogs with pastel ears or tails. Last summer around Kyungsung University, there was also a big fluffy white dog dyed to look like a panda. I never took a picture.

Also, soup. In America, I took it for granted that I could dig into a bowl of soup with a spoon and eat whatever I retrieved. In Korea, one is expected to take out cow bones, clam shells, or half a crab and dissect it at the table before eating.

This soup was pretty good.

we'd just eat more

This post is just a recap of the most memorable meals from my trip. I tend to take pictures of my food.


This was the strangest airplane meal(?) I've ever seen. It included hickory bits, dried radish, onion cookies(!) and chocolate covered wafers. This was from the flight from Shanghai to Bangkok.


The first night in Bangkok, my friend Jason showed me a great German restaurant. I had goulash, hefeweizen, and this. Sauerkraut is not at all like kimchi, except for the part where it's rotten cabbage.


Rice comes in shapes in Thailand. This was at the Hippie De Bar on Khao San Road. I think I had Pad Kapow (fried basil leaves and chili peppers--with shrimp in my case) with it. Yum.


Twice at Jep's on Ko Samet I have ordered Panang Talay (Panang curry with seafood) and gotten Panang Gai (gai is chicken.) Whatever. It's good.


This is the Christie's Mak Mak. I don't know if anyone ever ordered this cocktail before me. It's pretty, though.


But fried red curry with prawns and long beans at Bedrock is the best meal in the world. I felt sorry for everyone around me whose tongues had not just experienced what my tongue had just experienced.


And this was what Elle ordered for dessert on my last night. It's at a fancy place in Bangkok called Spring Summer. It's cake, which is thick and chewy like a brownie, baked into a cup with ice cream on top. Amazing. I ordered a chocolate souffle cake. It was not as good as this.

night in Bangkok

I stayed on Khao San Road when I was in Bangkok. When you're on Khao San Road, you get your falafel here:


Notice the red Fanta for the spirits.

Also on Khao San Road you'll find some wacky performance art. I was out with Ryan, who used to work with me in Ban Phe, and we came upon this scene. I looked at the little baby doll (which is dancing to the music) and said, "wow, that's creepy." Ryan looked at the guy's white mask and said, "yeah, that's creepy." Then we each saw the other thing, and whoa!


Taxis in Bangkok sometimes have advisory stickers like this one:

That's no weapons, no sex, no animals, no alcohol, no durian, no cigarettes.

I still haven't tried durian. It's okay, since I think I'll always go back to Thailand.

Sometimes

There is a restaurant across the street from Autumn's apartment called "Berry Yam Story." This is totally adorable, but we are creatures of habit, and have a habit of going down the road to Breeze Burns for their brunch on Sunday mornings.

I wish I had a picture of brunch at Breeze Burns. It's fantastic. (I stole this picture from a review. It was important. You can read reviews of Breeze Burns by clicking on the picture.)



At first you might be impressed by the sheer volume of food on that plate. You get eggs, hash browns, green beans, toast, bacon, sausage (or in our case, double bacon,) tomato slices and...a quarter of a waffle.

The best thing on this plate is the waffle, and unfortunately Breeze Burns does not sell whole waffles for breakfast. Which is weird (in fact, they sometimes don't allow double bacon and instead insist on two different breakfast meats.)

Well. One morning, on the way to Breeze Burns, there was a sandwich board with photographs of delicious-looking foods. On one side, the bacon yakisoba and curry shrimp fried rice beckoned, but on the other...there were waffles.

Upstairs, I was grateful that it wasn't sometimes.


This is the cutest restaurant in the world. It has little plants, books, and pictures on window sills and in a tree. There are crayons at the table.

And then...there was this.



Oh, yes. That is breakfast. A whole waffle, smeared with cream cheese, with strawberries, blueberries, almost slices, powdered sugar, a big scoop of ice cream and chocolate AND caramel syrup.

I tried to explain "sweet tooth" to my co-teacher a few weeks ago. She asked if there was a different tooth for different days. I said no, there is only a sweet tooth.

you can get anything you want

I didn't celebrate Thanksgiving a month late; I just wrote about it a month late!

Some rad people (from BELLINGHAM) hosted a Thanksgiving party on the Saturday after the holiday. There was turkey. And pie. (They have Costco in Korea, so it was a lot like home.)

Here we are, fat and sleepy:


Thanksgiving festivities included some party games (which went from charades to more "we don't have to stand up to play this!" question and answer games as the day went on) and American tv shows! We made a list of things for which we are thankful, and took a picture, and it was good. Happy really late Thanksgiving, all.

silver trays

I took a picture of each of my lunches last week, in the hope that I could show you a typical week of lunches. Last week was kind of atypical.

Monday at Neungdong Middle School:

(Clockwise from top left) Beef with peanuts in a sweet sauce, tempura-battered french fries with chili sauce, KIMCHI, spincach soup, rice with the occasional red bean (for flavor and texture.)

Tuesday at Neungdong Middle School:

(Clockwise from top left) Sweet rice dumpling filled with red bean paste, KIMCHI, Korean grapes (suck out the innards--don't eat the skin!) giant bowl of noodle soup with vegetables and egg, fried prawns.

Wednesday was the first day of exams, so I went out to lunch with the homeroom teachers after school closed early.

(Clockwise from top left) (Actually I don't know what a lot of this was) Onion and greens with chili sauce, garlic greens, fish cakes with chili sauce, garlic cloves and sliced pepper, (partially visible) steamed cabbage, whole fish with chili sauce, greens with sesame seeds, KIMCHI, more greens...with onions, salad, fish with a radish, and in the center, soup with tofu and mushrooms.
The piece of wood in the lower right is the lid to my personal stone bowl of rice. After scooping the rice into a bowl to eat with the side dishes, you pour hot broth into the bowl and put the lid back on. When dinner is finished you have soup from the rice that was stuck to the stone. It's good for digestion.

Thursday, at Naedeok Middle School:

(Clockwise from top left) Fish in sesame soy sauce, KIMCHI (cabbage and cucumber!) garlic greens and ground beef, soup (potato, carrot, big mushy white things,) rice with beans and corn.

Friday at Naedeok Middle School:

(Clockwise from top left) vegetable pancakes, KIMCHI (cabbage and...radish maybe?) potato and beef stew (spicy and sweet,) spinach soup, rice with barley bits.

Korean school lunches are about as representative of Korean food as American school lunches are of American food. Still, one big difference between the Korean lunch and an American lunch is the prominence of rice. Korean food is rice plus side dishes, while American food tends to be meat plus side dishes.

It's getting near dawn

Saturday was the last night of my extended Chuseok holiday. Autumn and I took a walk on the beach (as usual… I was so spoiled by this whole thing.)

It was like the last day of summer. When I got back to work on Monday the students had all switched to their Fall uniforms, adding sweater vests and switching from gray to black. But Autumn and I made the most of this, and she showed me this great Indian restaurant with little curtained-off tables surrounded by pillows on the floor.

They offered these appetizery things that resemble cheetos, but with caramel instead of cheese. They’re fantastic.


Autumn thought so too.


It was a great Saturday, with dancing and live music and pool and more dancing. When Autumn and I got back to her apartment, I gasped at the sky “is that the DAWN?” Yes, Emily. That’s the dawn.

The Autumn moon lights my way.

Chuseok is the Korean Thanksgiving. I got four days off of school and spent the week with Autumn in Busan.

I worked just the Monday of Chuseok week, and the principal and head teacher gave me presents for the holiday. This was my Chuseok haul:



That’s six cans of tuna packed in oil, two bottles of canola oil, some hand cream and body wash. Most people spent Chuseok visiting family in rural parts of Korea, but I left on Tuesday to go make sandcastles on the beach.


Sometimes there’s a pirate ship.


The moon was full and Le Pot was magnificent.


Autumn and I took an evening walk to the fitness area at the end of the beach. Two of the giant hula hoops had mated, forming the biggest hula hoop ever seen ‘round these parts.

splish splash

Autumn took me to the biggest jimjilbang in Busan at the end of August. It has a feel much like this picture.

The women's area also had frolicking children and it was a very happy place.

Last weekend we visited what might be the *fanciest* jimjilbang in Busan. The inside of the pajama area looks eerily like this:

(This is actually the set of Dollhouse. They zap your brain upstairs.)

It's located inside this:

The world's largest department store (with a Cartier department and a Bvlgari department) also has the fanciest food court I've ever seen. When your meal is ready, the number comes up on the screen.

My $7 soup was FANTASTIC and yeah, that's a little abalone in there. There were FIVE abalones, and I kinda kept the shells.

Best food court food ever.

After eating, we went to the jimjilbang and enjoyed the many casino-themed sauna rooms (there's a Roman room and a Pyramid room and a vibrating room and a "liquid dreams" room with a greenish light shining through a pool of water, making interesting designs on the walls and ceiling. Jimjilbangs are kind of amazing.

Korea seems to love rainbow lights, so this happened also.

mushroom mushroom

Sorry guys! It's not that stuff isn't happening that's worth blogging about; it's that it's all "I went to Busan this weekend and spent a whole day talking to Autumn about boys and clothes and traveling."

But I'm not lesson planning right now, so let's talk about how crap I am at basic human functions like feeding myself.

I partly went to Thailand as an exercise in being a grown-up. I had never lived by myself or relied on myself to feed myself. It's different when you live with someone, because you can share those burdens. Or something.

Anyway, Thailand proved to be the land of $1 Pad Thai and housekeeping cleaning my room once a week and taking my laundry all the way across the street to be done every week. It was a challenge, I tell you. It made me laugh, because I was far less capable than I had been in the States. At least there I cooked for myself. Sometimes.

Now in Korea I realize that I am rubbish at feeding myself. I keep running out of food. Like, usually I have breakfast cereal with fruit and yogurt for breakfast…and dinner. But this morning, I didn’t have any fruit or cereal. Instead, I had leftover corn on the cob and blueberry yogurt, and now have no food again! This keeps happening! On the bright side, there is a once-every-five-days market near my house. I discovered this while on the way to the grocery store (I had run out of breakfast cereal again.) The sidewalk surrounding the grocery store was full of produce stalls, and the funny usually-vacant area behind the grocery store was now a bustling market!



In a way I'm spoiled (this time of year) because when I run out of food I can walk two blocks and buy overpriced nectarines or tangerines. Or other fruit but why would I buy other fruit when I can buy nectarines and tangerines? And the mushrooms—there are so many different kinds of mushrooms! Cooking real food is difficult because it’s hard to buy small quantities of produce, so my stir-fry is usually limited to two vegetables, which are always broccoli and oyster mushrooms. This is because, when told to choose two vegetables among all the choices at market, why would anyone not choose broccoli and oyster mushrooms?

Unfortunately, the market only happens every five days, so the rest of the time I have to go to the actual grocery store, which isn’t so bad because they do sell those corn flakes with the cranberries and almonds.

(I should note that I eat a hearty Korean lunch at school every day. The teachers are regularly impressed with my tolerance for spicy food--dudes, I lived in Thailand.)

This is my exciting life in Korea!

what good things mother makes

Gosh, I'm sorry about this lapse. I'm going to lectures and eating kimchi a lot. I also had some European Luxury Waffles, which were tasty.





Additionally, corn. There was a bag for the cobs, but it went away. In Korea, we recycle!