ben.and.catie.goto.korea

Catie: Sick days and socks

2010-10-02T20:40:00.000-07:00

I've been sick. Not super sick, just a sore throat and some coughing, but enough to make me unable to sleep for more than a couple hours at a time and enough to make me miserable. I woke up yesterday morning, fully intending to do nothing all day but take Mucinex and lay on the couch.

But then there was a knock at the door, and, as is his custom, Han Sam came galloping in, merrily shouting, "Anyanghaseyo!" (Hello). He just wanted to get the money for the water bill, but he also wanted to talk. These days, he cares less and less that we don't speak Korean, trundling ahead with hand and full body motions to rival a mime. We love him.

Good thing, too, because he always manages to burst in at the worst possible moment.

Yesterday, he wanted me to:

A.) Go to the hospital for my cough. It's just down the road, he said. Very important. It was easiest, so I told him I had already been (I hadn't and would never go for a cough this minor...) and that everything was fine. The more I respond affirmatively to everything he says, the less he repeats himself. Although... that means I end up in some crazy situations sometimes. It's pretty fun for me, though, who am I kidding?

B.) Come downstairs to knit with Oenni (say it: oh-NEE). That's what he calls his wife (to me). It's not her name, but it's the affectionate Korean word for a woman who is older than you. I didn't feel like knitting and was still in my pajamas, so I made lots of faces and told him I was in no condition to go out.

This did not deter him, however, and he started saying, "Sigsa, sigsa!" Which, for our purposes, usually means, "But we'll feed you!"

They know I love food.

I gave him no definitive answer, although I was trying to say no, and he left to get us change for the water bill.

Next, Oenni showed up. With a bag full of yarn and knitting needles and our water bill change. This time, it became apparent that she wanted to me to knit with her.

"But I'm sick and I look terrible," I said.

"But I'll feed you!" she said.

We repeated this back and forth, several times. I gave in.

It should be mentioned that, with me working, all we have in the house for food right now is kimchi, yogurt, peanut butter and a heel of stale bread (and a lot of ingredients that I wasn't up to cooking), so their offer to feed me was entirely unfair. There was no way I could refuse.

Plus, she makes good food.

So, I got dressed, took my knitting and went downstairs. The food was delicious. A vegetable, meat (beef or pork?) soup, kimchi, several other fermented side dishes, and rice. They didn't have enough rice for me, so Oenni ran next door to our neighbor's restaurant and got me a little bowl. Rice is often considered the main course in a meal, so it's very important.

I was sick, as I had said over and over, so they dumped a bunch of dried seaweed into my rice. I am quite partial to the right sorts of seaweed and, thankfully, this was the right sort. Salty, a little bit sweet, with toasted sesame seeds. Delicious. What am I going to do without Korean food?

After dinner, we had coffee and songpyeon (gluey rice cake). I normally don't like songpyeon. It's not entirely unlike trying to eat a rubber bouncy ball. Although, to clarify, it sticks to your teeth in ways that a rubber bouncy ball could never. So, maybe more of a rubber bouncy ball crossed with a marshmallow.

Songpyeon, with pine needles

But it's a Korean delicacy. They think it is so delicious the kids can sometimes hardly breathe when they talk about it. It is like holiday pie is to me. A-mazing.

It sometimes has funky flavors that make me gag (on top of the fact that you can't actually chew it, you can just kind of chew on it), but this was straight out of the pot, with sesame seed filling that tasted like peanut butter. We had to pick off all the pine needles, one by one, that are there to keep the pieces from sticking together. A sticky process, but a good cultural experience. Songpyeon is also much more delicious when homemade, I think. When homemade and still hot.

All through dinner, they were talking about knitting, pointing at their feet and saying things real fast in Korean. I was supposed to understand something, but I was sick and still coming off the Mucinex I'd taken the night before. It wasn't clicking

After dinner, Han Sam left and Oenni and I went out front, to the ginseng shop, to knit. At this point, it finally became apparent that she wanted me to teach her to knit socks.

Out of crochet cotton.

On size 8 circular needles.

"Okay, this isn't going to work," I said.

"Why?"

"You can't use these needles," I said. "They're too big."

"Go get yours," she said.

So, I went and got some needles and, while I was at it, some leftover sock yarn because I couldn't, in good conscience, try to teach someone to make socks out of shiny, crochet cotton.

I showed her how wool yarn is able to stretch - boing, boing - and cotton doesn't - snap - so, wool is better. She's a good knitter, and got it right away.

Interestingly, this may have been the easiest time I've ever had, teaching someone to knit socks. So many people think socks will be a good first knitting project (they aren't, just some FYI) and there's not a LOT to learn when knitting socks, but you do have to be able to do about 4 basic things that can be a stretch for someone who's never encountered them.

So, she already had the actual knitting knowledge, all I had to do was show her a funny cast on, and try to explain that you increase twice, at either side, every other round. It took her some time to get it (I don't know why, I kept saying it over and over again in English!!), but when she did, her whole face lit up and she smiled real big.

"You mean you (a bunch of Korean)!"

"Yes!" I said. And hoped that all that Korean had meant, "Increase twice, at either side, every other round."

She was very excited and, when Han Sam invited all the other women shop keepers over for the songpyeon leftovers, Oenni was proudly showing them her sock toe, and they were all aghast. Korea doesn't really have double pointed needles, especially not in Song Gang-dong. And no one has time to knit, especially not socks, which you can get on every corner for about a buck a pair. So, everyone was very interested.

"Knit your own socks? Crazy!" they kept saying.

But, as Han Sam pantomimed over and over again, hand knit socks are much better (thumbs up) than acrylic socks (frowny face, shaking head). Even his toe socks, which he adores and wears on a daily basis, got a frowny face. He told me that hopefully Oenni will knit him socks now and also that pink (the sock yarn I gave her was pink) was his favorite color. An admission that is evidenced by the fact that she's also knitting him a pink and green striped, cabled sweater right now... It's awesome.

Anyway, it was a really, really marvelous sick day, in spite of the fact that I felt terrible. They also gave me some sort of pink, hot tea-ish drink. But more in the vein of citron "tea" (which is like orange flavored honey mixed with water), so not really tea at all. It tasted like cranberry juice, maybe, or cranberry apple. It probably comes from one of the red boxes that line their ginseng shop shelves. I think it's for sick people because it made me feel better. But then, I think ice cream is for sick people because it makes me feel better...

Oenni sent me home with the leftover songpyeon and told me she would let me know when she was ready to turn the heel. She made sure to say, "Thank you!" in both English and Korean, multiple times.

It may have been the best day I've had in a while.

Catie: Here you go, Mom!

2010-09-22T23:57:00.001-07:00

First of all, yesterday was not a good day for a photo-op. I'd been cooking Chuseok dinner and even though it wasn't hot outside, the kitchen was hot, so I look kind of awesome.

And by, "awesome", I mean, "not awesome".

Anyway, these are the things I've been knitting over the past few months because my Mom keeps asking me to post them.

It's been a sort of knitting frenzy around here.

Multnomah, pattern by Kate Flagg

This is my Multnomah Shawl, made from some sort of sock yarn I got off The Yarn and Fiber Company's website. It looked completely different in person than online (not entirely in a good way) and I wanted something that would keep the colors from pooling into giant patches of pink and blue.

It still looks a little like a fraternal twin baby shower exploded... but I like the Multnomah pattern.

The crazy sock yarn also bled like CRAZY when I washed it the first time. When I laid it out to block on our bed, it stained the sheets (I shouldn't have put it there, though). Don't know what that was all about, but I won't be buying it again.

This is another Multnomah that I made for Natalie, but I did a lot fewer lace repeats and added stripes. Made from Brown Sheep Fingering (from my Mom!), 100% wool.

Brown Sheep Fingering is pretty fine, I think. Even for a fingering weight yarn. It made a very airy fabric when I knit it on size 4 needles. I like the result.

And I have a real huge thing going for feather and fan lace right now.

This is my Daybreak shawl. I knit it for me. It's bigger than the other two because the Daybreak has a pretty long "wingspan". I added a feather and fan border because I love it so much, instead of the Daybreak border. I may make another Daybreak and do it properly this time, but I love this one and I wear it out and around the house a lot.

It's starting to get cooler outside and perfect for a light shawl -- finally!

Daybreak shawl, pattern by Stephen West

I knit it out of Misti Alpaca Hand Paint sock yarn (the oranges and yellows) and Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine, I think. They bled together in a real weird way because I didn't notice that the Misti Alpaca had the same color as the Ultra Alpaca... blah, blah, blah... anyway, I'm okay with it now.

I also used a bit of Korean "sock" yarn at the bottom (the grey stripes). I just wanted to see if I would like it better than the bleeding Misti Alpaca... This shawl is kind of a disaster, really. It's a wonder I love it so much.

The feather and fan border, all blocked out.

Bella Mittens, pattern by Marielle Henault and
Star Crossed Slouchy Beret, pattern by Natalie Larson

This is not a super good picture of the knitted things, but these are my Bella Mittens and Star Crossed hat. I don't do Twilight.. things, but I liked these mittens because the cables make them warmer and they're really long so they'll stay under my coat. And I am holding an apple, because.. apparently, it's a thing you do with Twilight. It felt appropriate. That's the Daybreak again, too. I love it.

I knit both the hat and mittens out of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride, which is soft and yummy (and hairy! Don't wear black while knitting with Lamb's Pride). Mom sent me two skeins of it and I forgot to check the dye lots until it was too late and the mittens were finished. I doubt anyone else will notice that much, but there is a line across the wrist of the right hand mitten.

Endpaper Mitts, pattern by Eunny Jang

A blurry picture of my Endpaper Mitts. Knit with Ultra Alpaca Fine (the off-white) and more of the Lamb's Pride fingering in olive green from Natalie's Multnomah. They're a little tight (one of my first stranded/colorwork projects), so I really need to find someone with small hands, I think. I like them a lot, though.

Sorry the picture is blurry, my photographer was getting fed up with my shenanigans.

I know. Me? Shenanigans?

Cabled Cowl, inspired by Olga Buraya-Kefelian's Cabled Cowl

Another blurry picture. This one is my Cabled Cowl. I didn't use the pattern (we couldn't afford it, haha), but I took a good, long look and figured it out. So. much. cabling. It took me months to finish the scarf itself (mostly because I kept getting burnt out on cabling) and only this last week did I do the finishing, like knitting button loops and sewing on the buttons.

It grew a lot when I washed and blocked it. In the future, I will wait until my things are washed and blocked to sew on buttons, but it worked out okay this time. I think it's pretty and it can go two ways!

It's not covered in buttons, though.. like it looks here.

Another blurry picture! And dark, too. There was a lot going on yesterday. This is my Noro Silk Garden Infinity Scarf. I pretty much made it up. It's just 41 sts in 1x1 ribbing with two full skeins of Silk Garden, kitchenered together. I like it okay, but it's more for function.

This is Ben's infinity scarf that I made him for our anniversary. It's gold and purple (incidentally, his college's colors... oops) and I didn't have a pattern for it either. I cast on the same amount of stitches as I did for mine (above), and did seed stitch in real wide stripes. I like it. I think he does, too, maybe.

That is all for now! I'm currently knitting a Hemlock Ring shawl in vintage Munro Spun wool. It's a little moth eaten, so the back of it is a bit of a nightmare, but I'm no Master Knitter, so I'm okay with it.

Anyway, there you go, Mom. All the things I've been knitting.

Or at least most of them.

Catie: Lily

2010-09-17T05:35:00.000-07:00

There is a little girl in my 102 Writing class named Lily. She is very small, and only 11 years old (10 in Western years). The 102 class is getting very close to fluent and her English may be the best. Everyone else in her level is more between 12-15, which makes her look even smaller.

She says and writes a lot of very cute and thoughtful things. Like the other day when she took my hand and looked up at me. "Will you walk me to the elevator?" Her voice is very young and she has a heavy lisp. If I could take her home, I would. Lately, she's been teaching me how to use my mobile phone. She gave me her phone number yesterday so I could, "call her if I think to do it." Today, she set my phone background to a picture of Rilakkuma, a very popular Japanese bear.

This is her essay from today. I'm in love with Korean English (Kongrish). It just makes so much more logical sense than proper English.

Should dangerous sports be banned?

I think dangerous sports be banned with these reasons; because of it is dangerous and traveling is dangerous.

The first reason is very dangerous. It's harm to players and harm to family of players. As well as if we hurted. There will have very much money for hospital bills!

The second reason is that travling is dangerous. Swiming from country to country yo could be die. Another going and hiking fall is dangerous country. And some times other countries have bad healthi care.

In summary, if there had dangerous sports, I should banned it because of it is dangerous and traveling is dangerous.

I think I will adopt her.

Ben: Notes From The Weekly Meeting

2010-08-31T21:14:00.000-07:00

Things that Nicole says in our weekly meetings are often baffling and hilarious. For example:

We have to assure the thought, the thing.

We must have big concern of the certain student. (But which student?!)

All is well that ends up.

This is the work for kinda service.

If you have some asking or concern for yourself, just let me know.

You must make classes tight. Very tight!

Receive them with your warm hands.

Ben: Pin is the Bloon!

2010-07-11T05:21:00.000-07:00

We were learning about machines in class last week, so I had my kids design and draw their own "Mouse Trap" style machines. Kevin drew this, and it is by far the best one. His prize (that he doesn't know about) is that it gets to go on our blog! It reads:

Tom is eat milk. Pin is the bloon. The switch is on and boat is move. Have a fire. Have a fire. Tom is die.

Since he drew it Catie and I have been running around saying "Pin is the bloon, have a fire have a fire!" at random. We think it's pretty hilarious.

Ben: What I've been reading

2010-07-11T04:52:00.000-07:00

Catie has finally convinced me that I need to buy myself books at least once a month so that don't drive myself (and her) crazy with my lack of reading material restlessness. Last month for my birthday I bought:

The City and the City by China Mieville

http://www.amazon.com/City-China-Mieville/dp/0345497511

China Mieville is, in my humble opinion, by far the most talent science fiction author currently writing. His books are always some combinations of postmodernist steam/cyberpunk with a strong dose of weirdness through in. He is able to paint incredibly vivid and very different worlds, without the usual wooden expositions that sink so many promising science fiction books into "It was a blue alien world with four moons and .4 Earth gravity." His narratives, like his worlds, are a complicated mess that somehow come across as intrigues and addictive, not headache inducing nonsense that requires a flowchart to follow.

Empire of the Ants by Bernard Werber

http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Ants-Bernard-Werber/dp/055357352 7

The book is split between the perspective of an ant colony (actually three ants within the colony) and a human family. Strangely the author does a better job humanizing the ants than making the actual human relatable characters. The end was fairly disappointing, but it was worth reading for all the neat descriptions of his imagined ant society.

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

http://www.amazon.com/Years-Rice-Salt-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0553109200

This book pretends that instead of merely killing 1 out of every 3 people, in this book the plague kills 99 percent of Western Europe, leading to a very different history. I thought it was an interesting read, especially considering how much the real plague change the world. One out of every three people died over the less than 20 years, which would be the equivalent of 100 million people dieing in modern America. I'm always amazed that there was any society left in Europe after the plague swept through. The writing is less than exciting, but the alternative history is fun to read.

This month I'm going in a more non-fiction direction with my purchases, since I'm about science fiction-ed out for now. My parents are also sending me the backlog of New Yorkers, Economists, and Atlantics that have been piling up in their living room (thank you Mom and Dad!), so July will be a much more educational month than June was.

Ben: Making things is fun

2010-07-11T04:07:00.000-07:00

I've run completely out of Kroy sock yarn (and other sock yarn too, I just like Kroy the best). I stole some of Catie with the promise that she could have the resulting socks so long as I could knit them. Here's what I made:

Catie's pair are on the right, and my last pair (from our current yarn stash) are on the left. I haven't weaved the ends into mine yet, but they are otherwise finished. While I was working on my second sock I was waiting for the bus to take me to work. When I got on the bus the lady behind me starting yelling at me and pointing out the door. I looked and saw that my yarn was trailing out the door. I jumped off the bus and ran down the street, gathering up my yarn for a full block until I found my ball of yarn sitting in the gutter (which was, thankfully, the only clean and dry gutter in Korea). I then ran back to the bus, where the bemused bus driver was waiting for me. The mess I made with my yarn took me the rest of the day at work to untangle. My Korean co-teacher, Landon, kept encouraging me to just cut the tangle since it was taking so long, but I successfully resisted and save all my yarn.

Since I'm all out of sock yarn, I've started working on my first sweeter. This picture is terrible (on account of me being a lousy photographer). I'm just about ready to join the pieces together. I'm pretty excited since this is my very first sweeter ever. I've been working on it nonstop for two and a half weeks, but now the complicated joining and decreasing begins. Hopefully by the time I've finished with it my previously blogged books and magazines will have arrived, because I've taken about all the yarn Catie will let me steal from her!

Here's a much better picture of what the sweater should look like when it's finished:

Ben: Monsters of Ewha

2010-07-11T03:41:00.000-07:00

Han's monster pictures. Notice how they all eat different parts of my body? What sweet kid! Also, I think the middle monster looks like Frylock from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Here are Harry's monsters. I like that I have a gun and fangs in my picture.

This a pretty good picture of the front cover of the listening book that we were using in class.

All the classrooms have CCTV (creepy, but everywhere in Korea is watched by CCTV, so you get used to it and now it doesn't even seem that weird). If only it stopped them from doing any bad behavior.

I like how you "must learn military arts of the worlds" to attack me!

Iris drew this one and I look like I'm on meth or something in it. The kids didn't have to draw me as an Ewha monster, but for some reason they all did.

This is "Albert's World," where you must "kill, throw bomb, war, and zombie" and you mustn't "die, eat, or walk." Not sure how walk got in there, I guess Albert really hates walking. Also, it would seem that not being able to eat would make it hard to stay alive.

Ben: This World Cup Thing Is Kinda a Big Deal

2010-06-25T22:03:00.001-07:00

This is a picture of Seoul at 3 AM last Wednesday. The funny thing about this picture is that this is for a game that the Korean team tied! The Koreans are serious about their "football" Here's the rundown on the World Cup as seen from Korea so far.

Game 1: Korea vs. Greece

Before the game most of the Koreans I talked to were skeptical of Korea's chances. So when Korea pulled off a 2-1 victory, the cheers were resounding even in our little neighborhood.

Game 2: Korea vs. Argentina

This game happened at 8:30 PM on a Tuesday night. Normally we would be teaching around 50 middle school students at that time, that night we had about 8 show up. All they wanted to do was watch the game on their cell-phones. Sadly Korea lost 3-1, with one of the 3 goals being a point they accidentally scored on themselves.

Game 3: Korea vs. Nigera
Since this game took place at 3 AM Wednesday night I figured most Koreans would skip watching it and catch the result when the woke up in the morning. I could not have been more wrong. Resounding cheers filled our neighborhood and every student I polled the next day had watched the game. I'm glad for Korea that it was a tie and they'll be able to move on to next round, but I'm also thankful that it wasn't a more resounding victory that would have led to even more yelling at 5:30 am.

Now that Korea has moved onto the round of 16 the football excitement promises to increase even more. I hoping for Korea vs. USA battle in the final game!

Ben: More Funny Answer from Ewha Tests

2010-06-25T05:55:00.000-07:00

What are some animals that can fly?

Jenny: birds, eagles, and an airplane.

Anna: bee, queen ant, a dolphin.

What does a coffee maker make?

Harry: I copy a Picasso painting picture!

Sally: People.

Amy: My mom.

But the best blooper was on a listening test where they were supposed to fill in the blank in this sentence:

Alex's mom wakes up at 630 in the morning and gets _________.

The answer is supposed to be dressed, but a little boy named Chan instead wrote trashed instead. Alex's mom has a problem!

Catie: Saartje's Booties

2010-06-21T23:39:00.000-07:00

It is hot here.

Oh, it is so hot and humid. Maybe worse than the east coast, but maybe not. Still, it is hot and we are without an air conditioner.

So, I am knitting tiny things that do not touch my legs or arms or even my hands, really:

These are called Saartje's Booties (I think you say Saartje like "Sartcha" sort of, that's how I say it and I am smart). I have been meaning to make them for a long time, but now it is hot and I have little bits of sock yarn and things left over from bigger projects that I want to use up, so I making lots of teeny weeny baby things.

These were so quick. I made them last night after dinner. I know some people say they come out really tiny and they are a bit small, but they're super stretchy, too.

And anyway, I made them for our friend Landon's new baby and they make Korean babies real tiny, so even though she's 3 months old, I think they'll fit.

Saturday was her first 100 days party. We didn't go and this isn't the traditional gift of money and gold rings, but we're the dumb Americans. So, I think it's okay.

I didn't have too much trouble parting with them since they were so quick to make, but they are so super cute that I did kind of want to hold them all day and sleep with them under my pillow.

They're made of Ultra Alpaca Fine which is 50% wool, 30% nylon, 20% alpaca. Alpaca is super warm so it should fit the Korean keep-your-baby-very-warm-even-in-the-drenching-heat bill. Poor kid. It's also really soft and a little hairy. I held it double since it's so thin.

Now, I'm starting on this, which looks easy and quick. I picked up some real weird yarn at the downstairs store today and had I noticed then what was in it, I may have reconsidered.

The label reads:

Biosof Multi-functional Yarn blended with Mirawave

Gentle machine wash warm in approved detergent (are there detergents approved for Mirawave? What IS Mirawave?)

Do not bleanch (that's right, please refrain from bleaNching)

Mirawave 50%

Tencel 30%

Cool Wool 20%

I know that Tencel is a fiber made from wood. And I know that Cool Wool is a brand name of something in America, but I don't think it's a particular sort of fiber. I can't find anything when I google it.

Mirawave, however, is.. ridiculous.

Or awesome? In a completely ridiculous sort of way.

It's benefits are said to include:

Anti-static, anti-odor and antibacterical properties
Thermal regulation
UVA and UVB protection (don't all clothes do this..?)
...as well improving your metabolism and "bettering blood circulation".

No wonder they don't sell it in America.. It would be laughed right off the shelves. I know there are super great fibers out there, but this is just a little... a little something.

Apparently, it's some fiber blended with silver? There's no real explanation of what exactly is going on. I'm a little scared to make anything that a baby might wear out of it, but I'll wash it after I make it, so maybe that will make it a little less radioactive.

At least I know the baby will BE PROTECTED. From so, so many things.

The websites say it protects against staph infections and pneumonia.

My question is: Why doesn't EVERY baby have a sweater made out of this? Or, better yet, a full suit of ARMOR.

Ben: The first thing Bruce said to me today.

2010-06-09T03:28:00.000-07:00

"You have to pay for the excrement tank."

I guess once a year they pump out the sewage tank and all the residents pay for the service. Its only 20, so its not a big deal, it was just a very startling sentence for him to say to me.

Maybe it will not stink in the bathroom so much?

Catie: Natalie is coming to teach in Korea!!!

2010-06-03T23:18:00.002-07:00

YAY!!

My friend, Natalie is coming to Ewha to teach with us in August!! Two teachers will be done with their contracts then, so I will be teaching and so will Natalie and so will Ben - we will be the only foreign teachers at Ewha and we will be kickin' it old skool in the hagwon.

I AM VERY EXCITED.

I think this will be a fun day.

Also, Ben didn't mention how often they played "WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED" alternately in Korean and English during the election. It was a big, fat truck, usually accompanied by a long line of marchers.

And, since then, I've had the chorus stuck in my head.

But, yay, Natalie!!

Ben: Pick the Daejeon King Day

2010-05-31T20:08:00.001-07:00

It's time for local elections in Korea, or "Pick the Daejeon King Day" as my students told me it was called while lobbying hard for Ewha to close down for election day. Elections in Korea are a little different than elections in America. For one less than a month ago we had no idea they were even on their way. Then suddenly streets and buildings were covered with massive banners.

This poster is for Candidate Number 2! His color scheme is lime green and red! Each candidate has their own number and color scheme, which is good because otherwise they all look like the exact same slightly chubby, middle aged Korean male.

Here is part of a rally for Candidate1. His theme appears to be blue and red. The stand that the man in the center is speaking from (right next to the giant TV screen) is actually the back of a truck. These trucks have been driving around blaring music, speeches, and other general nonsense for the past couple of weeks.

Here's the same truck from another angle. I'm not sure if they have to buy those uniforms, or the campaign issues it to them, or if they're actually provided by the government for each candidate to use. There are all identical though. I especially like the row of people just standing stiffly in front of the truck. It almost looks as is they are there to be the muscle protecting the speaker on the truck, just in case Candidate 2's goons stop by to disrupt the rally.

Here is one final picture of Candidate 1's truck. This day his man was doing a speech for him, but last week it was just loud, Lord of the Ringish music accompanying a video of the Candidate walking around, giving talks, serving in the army, and other really not so epic things.

If you want to get a sense of the volume (and the awesome music that is played) you should stop by http://www.eatyourkimchi.com/ and watch the video they did of their local election.

Catie: Have you seen these?

2010-05-24T01:59:00.001-07:00

String gardens. Oh, I want one, but it looks so hard.

I think I will just covet for now.

Catie: A Rainy Sunday Walk

2010-05-23T02:43:00.000-07:00

Since it's our first spring in Korea, the cycle of weather is totally new to us. I think part of me is still used to a dry, arid climate - everything that Korea is not.

So, it's probably normal for Daejeon, but to us, it's been a lovely, rainy spring. In the past week, it's stopped raining only twice, and only in order to get blistering hot and humid.

Needless to say, we favor the rain. :)

And today, arming ourselves with umbrellas, we went for a pleasant Sunday walk in it.

I look so angry, but I wasn't!

I just love the way the streets and pavement look in the rain. As shiny as patent leather.

A little roadside garden. I'm constantly amazed by the creativity of the people in our neighborhood. They can take whatever they have and turn it into something useful. I'm trying to watch closely and learn from them, but I swear they're just born with an innate sense of brilliance. I wish we had any tiny plots of dirt near our apartment.

A couple pictures of my Tea Leaves Cardigan (I finished it!). I know the pictures could be better, but I forgot to have Ben take any of the sweater itself.

Turns out it's a perfect rainy day sweater and since I finished it earlier this month, I didn't think I'd get a chance to wear it until fall, but I did! That alone was worth the walk around town.

The roses outside one of our local churches. They smell so good.

I've shown it before, but here's another photo of our next door neighbor's roof top garden. The white pipes on top act like ribs to hold a plastic tarp so her garden is a greenhouse in the winter and a garden in the summer. Genius!

And our own roof top tomato plants:

Nothing nearly as exciting as everyone else's container gardens, but we hope they'll turn out.

Sorry for the picture overload, the light was just so perfect today, I couldn't help myself.

Ben: Harry

2010-05-16T19:23:00.001-07:00

Here' s a picture of Harry, soaking wet and suffering from A Flower Allergy.

Ben: More Essays from Harry

2010-05-16T01:45:00.000-07:00

I stole Harry's essay book from Aaron Teacher (he is in charge of grading his class this term) so that I could copy out a few more of his more hilarious essays. I wish I still had the essay prompts, because the context that puts them in makes his essays even funnier. Sadly that document, like so many others, went down with my laptop.

If I had a whole day to do whatever I wanted, I would go to PC room. Because my computer is too late, but PC room's computer is so fast. And PC room's computer has many games. My most favorite games are Starcraft and Sudden Attack and Maple Story. Then there are another special fun. That is playing games with some grilled cuttlefish. When I am in there, I am not hungry. There are a wonderland for children.

I should note that the above essay is neater and uses better grammar than most of Harry's essays. When I noticed and asked him about it he told me. "Oh! It is because my sister is write it!" Than quickly rethinking the wisdom of being so honest, he attempted to backtrack by saying, "Oh! My other name is Sister! I is write it!" Politicians take note, you could learn much from little Harry.

I have many good friends. When I play with them I always have fun. I have a nice guitar. When I play guitar all my stress disappears. Sometimes I go to the common bathroom (sauna) with my father. Swimming in there is very fun. I go to Lotte Mart at every weekend. When I buy some delicious puddings, I am very happy.

My mother is says to me, "The most important thing is honesty." So I'm sorry to mother. Because I sometimes lie. When I play computer game, I hide in my room. Mother is say to me, "You must quit the computer game." but I sometimes do computer games secretly. So my mother often walk very quietly to my room and opens the door. Every time I am discovered and horrified!

I like to eat, so I am a little chubby. I like three kinds desert. First, it is bread. Second, it is yogurt. And third is orange. There are sweet and fresh when I eat them. I feel that my body becomes lighter and my feeling is clear up.

I'm not sure if these are the foods that Harry likes to eat, or he is supposed to eat.

I become president. I can kill my people. My country will be very big. My country's people is rich. My country is like a heaven. School has no exam and children can kill teacher. So, my country's future is bright!

Ben: Harry and the GodJejus

2010-05-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

Harry's Essay in response to the question:

What is something that always makes you smile and feel happy?

I believe god and I believe jeajuse, son of godjejus said to us "love your neighbor" and jejus treated sicked people. In addition he revived dead people. He always talked about heaven. I love jejus and believe the bible and then I want to give a present to my teacher, a bible.

Just in case you are confused, by jeasjuse, jejus, and godjejus Harry means Jesus.

Ben: Harry's Electric Guitar Essays

2010-05-11T03:21:00.000-07:00

These are actually essays from last term, before Christmas. Harry wanted an electric guitar desperately, and mentioned it to me as many times as possible. I think he believed that I would tell his Mom how important it was for him to get one if he could only convince me.

Essay 1
I went to the music academy. In the music academy I learn electric guitar and nowadays I want to get a electric guitar. I asked for father to buy a electric guitar and than father said to me. "If you get good grade at the final test, I will get give you a nice electric guitar." I studied very hard and then I get good grade at final test! I am success! So I will get electric guitar.

Essay 2

This Christmas I received electric guitar. That moment I feeled the biggest happy in my life. A tear from my eye fell because I was so happy. My heart was beating so fast. I learned the existence of the happy tear that time. I thank God for father so much. I was proud of my new guitar. Whenever I play my guitar it reminds me of that happy time.

Harry than proceeded to bring his guitar to Ewha and set it in the chair beside him for about two months. It was really cute, but also a pain because no one sitting behind him could see around it and he insisted on seating in the front row. Thankfully his pride has calmed down a bit and I haven't heard about the electric guitar for a while now.

Ben: Harry and A Flower Allergy

2010-05-11T02:59:00.000-07:00

More from everyone's favorite English student. Right after class started this exchanged happened:

Harry: Oh teacher! Can I go toilet?!

Me: Why Harry? We just had a break?

Harry: I have a flower allergy! Is very terrible!

Me: Okay, come back quickly.

Harry: Oh thank you! You very many kind teacher!

About five minutes later Harry bursts back into the classroom, his face and hair completely soaked, dripping water all over his shirt and the floor.

Me: Harry, what did you do?

Harry: Oh! I fill the sink and than put my head in. Is very good!

About five minutes after that Harry pulls out a tiny eye-dropper and opens it up. I don't know what was in it, but it smelled like Vick's Vapor Rub, only ten times stronger. The classroom instantly reeks of it, and everyone starts coughing and yelling at Harry.

Me: Harry! What is that?

Harry: Oh! Is medicine! I eat it!

Me: Okay, but why does it smell so bad?

Harry: You know bomb? That soldiers is throw? And they are make smoke? Is same as that!

Me: It's tear gas medicine for allergies?

Harry: Oh yes! Is wonderful!

Your guess is as good as mine. Now, two hours later, all of Ewha still smells of Harry's medicine. I promise I'll take some pictures of the rascal next time I have his class, because it will make the stories that much funnier when you see his Calvin-like expressions.

Ben: Notes from the Weekly Ewha Meetings

2010-05-06T21:21:00.000-07:00

Things that Nicole instructed us to do this week at work:

Wake them up from their lazy minds!

Telling us to make sure the "lazy" middle school students, who skipped the last two weeks of Ewha so that they could study an 6 extra hours each day for their midterm school exams got back to work

Grab the student's energy and make them love you. Don't treat them emotionally.

Strangely contradictory statements, said with a straight face, one right after another.

Receive them with your warm hands.

By far her best comment, which I think means that we should make the students feel very welcome at Ewha? Whatever it actually means, it doesn't not sound right at all.

Ben: Funny Moments from Ewha's Final Tests

2010-05-06T19:04:00.000-07:00

Harry:

a. What make you feel nervous?

I worry about call to my parents. Many teachers call and say, "Oh! Harry is crazy terrible boy!" Than mom is hit me! Is terrible!

b. What is a challenge you have faced?

My challenge is once upon a time I do steal some ice cream in the super mart. I am success!

c. How did you overcome your challenge?

My friend say, "You steal super market ice cream, I tell my teacher!" Oh no, is terrible! But friend goes to another apartment. I live!

d. Describe what you see inside Ewha. What does Ewha Academy look like?

Ewha Academy is exist many American teacher. So first I go to academy I'm so scary, but now I'm okay. Ewha Academy's not very good point is have exist detention. Is detention very hard and my arm very sick. Is in academy everyday have small test. So I must memory many Englishe. I'm very tired! Is terrible!

Catie: I Like Food. (Cooking from scratch)

2010-05-04T01:48:00.000-07:00

Since January, we've chucked all our processed foods (goodbye, delicious Bisquick...) and started cooking from scratch. In the beginning, it was like a test of strength and endurance. No more canned soups or broths, no more canned vegetables (though we do still use tomato sauce and paste), no more packaged spice mixes. But as I've grown accustomed to the change, it's become 100% easier (I don't even notice it anymore) and it's been meal planning that made it that way.

I Heart Meal Planning.

I never, ever thought I'd be one of those weird people who was so anal they planned things like meals in advance. Then I found out that I'm not an organized person... And if I'm not an organized person (i.e. one of those weird people), we won't eat good food, we'll just eat the mustard chicken-on-a-stick from the cute little man around the corner.

This is why meal planning rocks my face off:

I don't have to think, all day long, about what I'm going to make, whether we'll have the ingredients or I'll have to run to the store.
We don't end up eating out (almost ever), which helps us save money (to go back to America in the fall), and makes us feel better (fewer MSG headaches).
I'm learning to cook. Slowly, but surely. It's not that I couldn't before. I could follow a recipe. But it's gotten easier to read a recipe and know how it will work/know if it will taste good. It's gotten easier to alter recipes I already have, and to just make things up on the fly without them tasting like roadkill -- or how one might imagine roadkill tasting.

Anyway, something I read, early on, that is supposed to make meal planning easier (because it was a pain in the beginning), was to get together your 21 Favorite Meals. When I started, we didn't have 21 meals that we ate on a regular basis, much less a Favorite 21. So, there was a lot of experimenting, a lot of repeats, and some leftovers, and like, fifty-hundred failures. But now it's May (and I'm a total MASTER), and I've compiled our FAVE 21 Meals.

And, for lack of a better post, I thought I'd share them here.

I've linked to recipes where I could, but I've altered most of them, so we don't follow them as is. My favorite recipe websites are, All Recipes and Tammy's Recipes.

In no particular order.

--------------------------

Ben and Catie's FAVE 21 Meals:

1. Crock Pot Roast Chicken

2. "Hamburger Helper" (toward the bottom of the post)

3. Baked Salmon

4. Oven-fried Chicken (we turn them into "chicken nuggets")

5. Taco Soup/My Grandma's Vegetable Soup

6. Kung Pao Chicken/Stir-fry

7. Barbeque Chicken Sammies

8. My Mom's Macaroni and Cheeze

9. Bean and Cheese Burritos

10. Chicken Fajitas

11. Spaghetti

12. Pesto Spaghetti with Vegetables

13. Cheezy Chicken and Rice Casserole

14. Pot Roast

15. Meatloaf/Meatballs

16. Chicken Tacos

17. King Ranch Chicken/Chicken Mexicali

18. Pesto Pizza

19. "Shepherd's Breakfast" (I can't remember if that's what it's really called, but it's just pan-fried potatoes, scrambled with eggs and tossed with cheese)

20. Quesadillas (sometimes with chicken, sometimes without)

21. Beef Stew

Most of it I've either made up, or smooshed together from two or more similar recipes.

But, look it, that's THREE WEEKS of meals there! Maybe I will get around to posting some recipes so they can all have links (not because I think other people might want them, just because the OCD in me wants all the items in the list to be the same color... is that weird?).

Things I (almost) always keep on hand that make everything move like clockwork:

Homemade chicken stock, frozen: For soups and gravies and even drinking -- yum.
Diced onions, frozen: When you're only cooking for two, a whole onion is ALWAYS too much, I throw all my diced onion leftovers into a freezer bag and then, when I need some fast, I always have it.
Homemade yogurt: To use in place of sour cream, cream cheese (I use drained yogurt), buttermilk, sometimes "cream of..." soups, and even milk when we run out.
Fresh, ripe cherry tomatoes/regular tomatoes: 16-20 cherry tomatoes, cut in halves, sub great for a can of diced or stewed tomatoes.
Chicken gravy/bechamel sauce: great for replacing "cream of..." soups in 99% of recipes.
Shredded chicken: We buy 1-2 whole chickens a week that I either boil or roast (chicken is tons better for you off the bone, plus you can save and freeze the bones for making stock later on) and then I pick them all at once and either freeze the leftover meat, or leave it in the fridge to use the next day.

With all of that, dinner's almost never take more than forty five minutes to prepare, even if I'm making homemade tortillas or something. And I always know exactly what we'll need to get from the store, so we only have to grocery shop once a week now (instead of every night). It's probably cut our weekly food money at least in half.

Sometime over the past four months, I've gotten a little ridiculously frugal... I guess I finally realized that if I put the work into planning our meals, I'd have a better chance of finding money to buy yarn.

Plus, I get this really cute, happy husband who writes nice things on our blog.

I figure it's paid off.

Catie: BREAKING NEWS

2010-05-04T00:18:00.000-07:00

I stumbled on this link:

Press Tribune Article: Sundowner Motel in Caldwell Closes

while checking out the costume my friend, Natalie, is making for a local fashion show. Of course, The Press Tribune has it listed under, "BREAKING NEWS". I love you, Caldwell...

They've just closed their (only somewhat sketchy) retro doors after 48 years and, having stayed in the motel myself (and being quite partial to the GIANT, red "MOTEL" sign that hovers over downtown Caldwell at night), I'm actually kind of sad. They did have a cute sign, after all. And I like old motels.

Things always change when I'm gone and I hate it. Maybe I'll just stay here forever so I can always remember Idaho the way I left it.

Oh, well.

Ben: Catie Makes the delicious foods

2010-05-02T20:14:00.001-07:00

It's been awhile since Catie has posted on our whole/raw foods program that she has been on, so I thought that I would post an update (and brag about the food that I get to eat). Last night for dinner Catie made baked salmon, green beans, with some sort of delicious butter sauce (it's made with butter, strawberry jam, and Jesus I think). The night before she made beef stew starting from scratch. She had previously used our leftover chicken bits to make chicken stock, which was than used as the base for the beef stew. It was delicious. On Friday we had stove top fried chicken nuggets and spinach, rice, cheese casserole (I contributed by discovering the spinach at our local Lotte Mart a couple of weeks ago). Earlier in the week we had cheesy chicken/rice/broccoli casserole.

In sum, we eat very well thanks to Catie. As one of my co-workers pointed out, quiet jealously, for us eating Korean food in Korea is a novelty and the exception. The other day we were walking around our neighborhood, enjoying the spring weather and I was struck by how much different things were food wise than when we first arrived here. Last fall we would wonder hungrily looking for something to eat. Now Catie has our meals planned out a month in advance, so we never have to roam the streets looking for something to eat. I've eat better these last couple of months, than at anytime since I left home for college. Thank you Catie!

Ben: Frequently asked questions: about cell phone!

2010-05-01T05:08:00.000-07:00

This is from a monthly pamphlet that the local "Daejeon International Community Center" puts out. Some funny, and very Korean English.

Q1: What documents do I need for to open the cell-phone?

A: Basically you need "the Aliens registration certification" and you "bank account(bank book)"?

Q2: What kinds of wire agencies are in Korea?

A: There are 3 agencies in Korea. SKT (SK telecome), KTF and LGT (LG telecome). SKT requests to foreigners extra 200,000 won for warranty fee when they register. To use KTF's service, credit cart is positively necessary. But LGT doesn't ask extra charge or other documents except 2 basic ones.?

Q3: I heard that there're many "Free" phones. Can I have that too?

A: Sure. But free phone connect with it contract. Most of contract in the Korea are for 2 years. (Basically 2years) If you contract for some determined rate system, you can get chosen phone for free.?

Q4: Can I get the phone through Internet?

A: Well.. There are many websites that available to buy phones but foreigner only can get phone by off-line stores. And stores are classified by agency so please make sure check what agency you prefer before enter the store.

Q5: I want use cell-phone only for an year. If so can I do 1 year contract?

A: First, it's impossible. As I told you before, contracts are for basic 2 years. So you have to pay penalties. So there's another choice. You can get the "pre-paid phone."

Ben: Computer Problems

2010-04-26T21:43:00.000-07:00

My trusty Acer laptop recently died. It's been going out for awhile, gradually staying on for less and less time. We'd turn it on, it would work for awhile, and than decide it was time for a rest and turn itself off. Well last week it decided that about 2 minutes of on time was about all that was really necessary. We spent several frustrating days trying to fix it. It's strange how urgent the need to fix a broken computer feels, as this comic from http://xkcd.com illustrates:

Luckily my work has been generous enough to loan us one of the many unused desktops at my work. There are actually 15 unused computers at Ewha, five in the teacher's offices, and ten more in the computer lab. Before they would let us take a computer home, I had to have this slightly absurd conversation with my boss Bruce:

Ben: So the laptop that we brought to Korea has broken.

Bruce: Oh?

Ben: Yes, it has stopped turning on.

Bruce: (very puzzled) Okay...

Ben: It is what we use to talk to our families back in America, and to watch movies on since Kyle (the previous teacher) broke the TV. So we were wondering if we could borrow one of the unused Ewha computers.

Bruce: (looking very alarmed) One of the computers? But I think that we need them for running the school.

Ben: Don't we have some unused ones? (looking in in the direction of the three unused computers within five feet of Bruce's desk)

Bruce: (looking around the office and counting computers) Oh, that is true, we do have more computers than teachers, but I think these are kind of public computers for the teachers to share. We well have to take a sort of poll to see if everyone will be okay with losing one of them. (pause) Oh! Wait! I have just had a sort of great idea! There are many unused computers in the computer lab! You could take one of those!

Ben: Oh! Yes that is a good idea!

So we now have a "new" computer.

Catie: A quick note on Silkworm Pupa.

2010-04-26T07:41:00.000-07:00

We've seen this stuff around:

Mostly as steaming street food.

And I always knew it was bugs, but I never knew what kind until tonight when I stumbled across it looking up Isaac Toast.

Well, turns out it's silkworm pupa.

You read that right. The festering eggs of the worms.

It was a serendipitous discovery though, because just tonight, while having Korean BBQ, the hosts thought it would be pretty funny to bring the foreigners this tempting treasure (sigh). It was the first time we'd ever seen it up close.

(FYI: it's no better looking in real life.)

Beondegi, for that is it's given name (really? I totally would have guessed "puke worms"), is one of only a couple things I cannot bring myself to try. Not even a little bit.

Not even the tip of my chopstick.

It is covered in sticky, brown sauce (Read: slime).

It LOOKS like bugs.

So, we did not try it. But we didn't give them the satisfaction of being grossed out either.

At least, not outwardly.

And in retaliation, I ate lots of kimchi and all my raw green onions.

And I am certainly hoping they were properly surprised, because they have gross kimchi and their green onion salad leaves something to be desired.

I miss our old KBBQ place.

Catie: What is a toasty sandwich?

2010-04-26T07:14:00.000-07:00

After Ben mentioned that the top Ewha sticker prize was a toasty sandwich (or is it 5,000 W.. I don't remember), my mom asked what that was. And, instead of just replying in the comments, I thought I'd give you a few pictures of these, erm, tasty.. cabbage-y... egg-and-cheese sandwiches.

[/caption]

This is your typical toasty sandwich from Isaac Toast, probably the most well known toasty chain in Korea.

And People Baking Toast is one our favorites.

These ones are all over Daejeon. There's one right outside Ewha and I'm pretty sure they make the prized toasty sandwiches Ben mentioned.

There are also loads of little independent toasty shops, too. We have one called TOAST about two blocks away from our apartment.

These places have all kinds of sandwiches, but most seem the same to me. All of them feature a fried egg and American cheese, and almost all feature shredded cabbage, corn (often fried inside the egg part) and pickles and/or some sort of sweet sauce. Many locations carry several flavors of these sweet sauces. I know Isaac has their own "Isaac sauce" and I'm sure People Baking Toast probably does, too. A few sandwiches will have different meats: bacon, ham, Korean sausages, etc..

It might sound a lot worse than it actually is. I know the thought of eating cabbage on things was not just a little repulsive to me when we first got here, but now it hardly fazes either of us. It's really not as awful as it sounds, although, at the same time, it's not something we're dying to have. Maybe it's the sweet sauce that puts it over the edge..

If you think about it, though, this must seem to the children like Jesus came and a made a perfect Korean combination.

Corn: on EVERYTHING.

Eggs: on everything ELSE.

And Cabbage: on ALMOST everything.

So, I guess they just kind of took all the things that go on everything and made a sandwich. It probably seemed like a brilliant plan and I'm sure questioning the ingredient choices would be met with a sort of, "duh, eggs, corn and cabbage are the perfect combination," kind of response.

To Koreans, they truly are.

What is funny, to me, is that Isaac Toast just opened a location in California: Korea’s Isaac Toast Sandwich Shop–First U.S. Location Now Open in Westwood–First Impressions

Head on down to California for an American Toasty Sandwich...

You may notice the wheat bread, the delicious looking tomatoes and crispy bacon. Note that none of those are typical of a REAL toasty sandwich.

Here, you will find yellow-pink, slushy (yes, slushy) tomatoes, pure white 1950's style white bread and limp, pink -- not red or brown -- bacon that neither breaks nor crunches when you bite it.

This sandwich, by comparison, actually looks pretty durn delicious.

For a look at The Real Korean Toasty Sandwich Experience, check out this blog post: Isaac Toast: The Korean Version of the Ramly Burger .

I don't know what a Ramly burger is, but THIS is toasty sammies at their best.

Or.. worst, after seeing the American picture.

Scroll down to the last picture on the blog post and you'll see the kind of bacon I mean.

Yummy, yummy.

...sorry if I made you hungry. : - |

Ben: Ewha Stickers

2010-04-24T22:24:00.000-07:00

These are the "Ewha stickers," the much desired carrot of Ewha's carrot and stick child disciplining approach to encouraging good behavior. There isn't actually any stick, besides getting the Korean teachers to yell at and maybe scare the kids, so we're pretty much dependent on bribary to get them to sit still and do a lot of things that kids never want to do. They can take the stickers and use them buy goodies from the front desk. For the younger kids there are pencil cases, pens, and rulers. For the older kids they can get computer game money and coupons for toasty sandwiches. Some of the older kids also use them to gamble with.

For my first two months I didn't actually know about the stickers (go Korean communication/teacher training). When I found out, I thought I could give out any old stickers, so I tried to give my students some animal stickers that I found in my desk. They were cute, but worthless as Ewha currency. The childrens quickly set me straight. Since than I have given them out like they are little sticky pieces of sugarless candy. It is an utterly painless way for me to bribe the kids and curry favor. The other American teachers are pretty stingy (mostly because they don't seem to like the children), but I see no reason to spare the stickers.

My ultimate goal, besides paying off the kids, is to pass out so many stickers that German style hyperinflation will take hold of the Ewha economy, hopefully resulting in new stickers or something equally exciting. According to my kids, the sticker payoff system as already had to be revalued twice during the past two years, causing the price of a toasty sandwich to increase from 30 stickers to it's current price of 120 stickers. Hopefully with time and determination I can help to drive the price up to at least 500 or so stickers.

Ben: Funny Konglish

2010-04-24T22:20:00.000-07:00

Nowadays almost people think is funny.

I think I have seen "nowadays" written more times in Korean than the rest of my life combined.

When they write "almost people," what they really mean is most people, not some subhuman group of cloned "nearly" humans that exist only in Korea.

Finally, funny is constantly miss used to when they mean "very fun." As in, "I went to watch the movie "2012," it was very funny. Or, "playing computer games is funny." No matter how many times I explain that "funny does not equal very fun," they will write it week after week. So I've long given up and accepted it. Living in Korea is just more funny that way.

Ben: DO YOU NEED TO KNOW WHERE TO BREAST FEED?

2010-04-24T22:13:00.000-07:00

Cause it is here:

[caption id="attachment_556" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="The breast is best!"][/caption]

For a sense of scale, the thing in the right hand corner is one of those ridable floor moping machines. Yes, this sign is big, about 10 feet by five feet big. Also it is just one of two, there is another one, the same size, on the other side of the room. You know, just in case you somehow managed to miss the first sign.

This in a country which is horrified when Catie wears a sleeveless dress. Also while Mel was here we had all the trouble finding places for her to feed Rocco. Clearly we were just missing the GIANT signs.

Ben: Almost people think this is funny!

2010-04-23T22:37:00.000-07:00

Some of the things the kids say at school (over and over again) are pretty hilarious.

Like:

Almost people think this is funny.

This se

Catie: You Know You've Been in Korea Too Long When...

2010-04-23T22:34:00.001-07:00

I'm stealing this from Mel. I didn't pick mine up any one place, though. I've collected them. These are my favorites and the ones I notice most:

You know you've been in Korea too long when...

- It feels normal to see and hear little kids playing in the street at midnight.

- You no longer notice that all the meat at the butcher's is still recognizable as actual body parts - full heads, ears, feet, etc.

- You realize you really do know all the words to "Country Road" and "Let it Be".

- You select shoes based on how easy they are to get on and off and you can tell the ones that aren't because they're all bent flat in the back.

- The smell of soju mixed with sewage means you're home.

- You can fall asleep on the city bus and wake up at your stop.

- You can shove your way past a crows of ajummas (old ladies) to get to the front of a line.

- It doesn't seem strange to have a male friend tell you how handsome your husband is.

- All "good looking" men look more like girls.

- You stop holding the door for people entering a store behind you, no matter how close they are.

- You start eating onions topped with ketchup and mustard as a side dish.

- You understand the mystery of the missing 4th floor.

- You start dropping all articles of speech. "I'm going to the store," becomes, "I go store".

- You can recognize and sing, from start to finish, most popular K-Pop songs.

- You no longer pick the corn off your pizza. Or your toast. Or out of your hot dog.

- "Toast" means a fried egg, bologna and cheese sandwich with cabbage.

- You start wearing a surgical mask as soon as it gets cold out.

- You recognize traffic lights as mere suggestions and always listen for honking cars when in the crosswalk, because those are the kind that will run you over.

- "Eating out" means eating outside, on brightly colored child-sized, plastic stools right next to a mobile grill.

- You understand the mystery of the missing 4th floor.

There are a lot more that are equally as applicable, but now I'm TIRED.

It's just funny to think we've been here 7 months. Everything is just so normal now and even though I am dying to get back to the US, I also know it'll be overwhelming. I never understood reverse culture shock, but I think I will. Korea drives me CRAZY, but I think it's also secretly become home and that's just weird.

There are certainly things I miss:

- Corn meal.

- Whole milk that doesn't smell and taste like corn.

- Good chocolate.

- Superstores you can enter with a product in mind to purchase and actually be able to walk out with said product.

- Diner breakfast. Being able to eat out for breakfast is impossible unless you wake up and get to McDonald's before 10am.

- My sewing machine.

- Other people's babies. Do you know how long it's been since I've gotten to hold a baby? Yeah. Seven months. Koreans don't let creepy waygooks (foreigners) touch their babies.

- Out of season produce. I know I shouldn't miss this because it's really good to eat in season, but I still do. Also, produce from afar. Avocado for less than $12.00 how about?

- Consistently hot showers. Even with our hot water heater fixed, there are just some days when hot showers don't happen. We hear that's common in Korea and I'm used to it, but also done with it. I guess it makes sense that showers would be warmer in the summer )(because it's hot outside) and colder in the winter (because it's cold), but then, along another line of thinking, it doesn't.

Still.. the longer we're here, the less I have very many feelings one way or the other. I have fewer and fewer I Hate Korea Days and it kind of feels like a game now. I spend a lot of time feeling like we're on the frontier or something because we're always making do with FAR less (and for FAR more money..) than we would in America. And while it's definitely irritating sometimes, it keeps life interesting.

Also, there is Han Sam downstairs, who came up just now to collect our water bill. Something he's taken on since our next door neighbor (probably the most angry ajumma in the entire world) moved out. Interesting to note that since she moved out, our water bill has been cut in half... But Han Sam is very sweet and is always saying things to me that I don't understand and making wild hand motions and dancing. He pats me a lot and tells me to call him, "oppa" which is a sort of affectionate, respectful name for men who are older than you. We see him all around our dong, chipping ice and fixing his car and riding his bike. He always says hi and smiles and sometimes we have to go into his ginseng shop and drink tonic (so gross, you have no IDEA), but I would only do it for him. His wife is on the iffy side. I can never tell how she feels about us, but she knits and crochets and likes to show me her projects. I think she likes us.

And I think those are the things you have to think about when the shiny wears off and all you want is cornbread with your chili and more embroidery floss than just the primary colors. Also, pinto beans...

Not thinking far into the future helps, too. I keep myself focused on today and tomorrow, but rarely anything past the end of the week. Time flies that way. I can't believe we're at 7 months already. In, I think.. June, we will reach the halfway mark. This, though, is past the halfway mark for Ben's first contract and we only have five months to go before we'll visit home.

I can't wait to eat cornbread and legit Mexican food with REAL refried beans and Americanized Chinese food and real milk and maybe even some Hamburger Connection.

Catie: A Borrowed Computer

2010-04-23T22:34:00.000-07:00

I know this isn't a real post, but I'll come up with something soon, Mom.

Catie: All the Finer Points of Our Anti-Diet.. Diet (subtitle: way more information than you ever wanted about what we eat)

2010-04-23T22:33:00.000-07:00

I think the main problem connected to this blog is that, after a few months abroad, life gets boring.

Not bad boring.

Just life-boring.

I wake up, wash the dishes, clean the house. Maybe I leave to buy groceries, or maybe I just stick around all day, making peanut butter and granola, or chopping onions for the freezer. I start dinner right before Ben gets home. We eat dinner, and then we... knit some socks. Watch a show. Go to sleep.

It is a good life.

We like it a lot.

But there's not a lot to say about it. We're homebodies. We like to cook and we like to knit and we like to read.

None of those things involve a lot of exciting narration.

But.. we have been eating freakishly, which... I do keep talking about. It's become apparent that this is my current obsession. Really. I've even taken a hiatus from knitting for the past 2 or 3 weeks because I haven't been interested in anything but good food.

...although, I did cast a sock toe on last night and it's coming along nicely.

Anyway, I thought I'd go all rambly and tell you exactly what we were doing.

Since it's really not like anything ELSE is going on over here, this is the only halfway exciting thing happening. Believe me, if there were anything else I would tell you. I know this is my favorite topic, but there's a good chance it's not yours...

Maybe I can have Asperger's Syndrome for the day, which would mean that I didn't have to pay attention to the fact that you were disinterested and I could just talk for as long as I wanted about one thing.

Sounds like a plan!

This is our diet (and when I say, "diet" I mean, "what we are eating", not, "restrictive, trendy plan"... not that we're not trendy, because we totally are -- it's what keeps us on the cutting edge of awesome) with numbered, bullet points:

1. No enriched or refined flours or sugars. This one's the biggest, I think, because these two are what make countries with excellent health (i.e. some places in Africa and South America) start getting really sick once they're Westernized. It means no white flour, no white sugar, no brown sugar, no fructose and no corn syrup. We are sweetened with honey and real maple syrup only now. Also, sorghum, if we could a hold of it, but.. we can't. Honey makes it so we still totally get to eat sweet things. And, when baked, honey tastes at least as good as sugar, if not better. I am not even lying.

Our bread we get from Costco and it says "whole grain", which I know can mean about a hundred things in the US and I'm sure it means bad things here, but it's also the best bread we can find. We keep it in the freezer and don't eat much of it.

2. No processed foods (or, foods with ingredients we can't pronounce, things with weird preservatives, and things that wouldn't have been recognized as food by people 100 years ago). We've cut out almost all canned foods, although we do keep tomato products around like paste and diced tomatoes. Also, we have some coconut milk that I need to find a use for (coconuts are amazing, fyi) and some chicken broth leftover that I'm going to use up. Other than that, unless I can it myself, we'll be off the cans. I'm hoping to can some diced tomatoes myself come summer, as well a few other things like strawberry honey jam with homemade pectin (yes, you can make apple pectin yourself, I found out!).

3. No trans-fats. That means most unsaturated fats, I think (if not all, I'm not exactly clear, but I do know how to stay away from them), and all hydrogenated oils like shortening and hydrogenated soybean oils. This one's real easy as long as we're staying away from processed and packaged foods because trans-fats don't come in bell peppers or brown rice.

4. Lots of lacto-fermented, fermented and probiotic foods. This is where my yummy yogurt comes in, and kombucha tea (which I am working on securing a starter for locally..), plus lacto-fermented mayonnaise that goes into our salad dressing and would go on sandwiches, but we rarely eat them (Korean bread makes crummy sandwiches -- haha, crummy.. crumby.. haha).

Lacto-fermentation is pretty cool and I'm planning to make some lacto-fermented salsa once summer rolls around (or maybe sooner) with the cultured whey we always have in the fridge now after making yogurt cheese. I'd also like to try making my own lacto-fermented kimchi and cortido. Basically, you can ferment anything and it can be better than canning, from what I can tell (though it also takes a more refined palate.... which I hope to gain... we shall see). Fermenting preserves vitamins, and also enhances them (which is why Koreans survived a bazillion winters on kimchi alone). Probiotics are all the good bacteria and stuff. They help you digest your food, especially other dairy products. They're in fermented and lacto-fermented foods. And they're yum.

5. Whole foods. We make our food from mostly whole foods. This means foods we can recognize as having come from the ground or as something that's eaten food from the ground. It gets complicated in Korea because how we'd like to eat (entirely grass-fed meats and grass-fed, raw dairy, organic fruits and vegetables, etc...) isn't realistic. So, we get organic where we can (in, like, two things.. no, wait! three), but try to trust that Korea is usually smarter about things like pesticides when it comes to food than Americans and.. inorganic fruits and vegetables are far better than NO fruits and vegetables.

We try to keep our meats on the bone with all the fat, because animals products are much more usable by your body when in their original state. This has been a little gross as I had to de-neck a chicken the other day and it had a couple feathers still attached and then we developed a kindred relationship... But it's a growing experience.

There is quite an argument out there for natural, saturated fats and we've bought into it. I've read a lot about it and, to me, it makes sense. Also, I've lost a somewhat significant amount of weight now, all while eating bacon, dark meat chicken and as much butter as I want. Paired, though, with lots of vegetables always, all the time, lots of vegetables.

6. Filtered water. We have a pitcher that filters out all chlorine and other.. stuff. We probably should have gotten it earlier and we really got it because not even Koreans drink their water from the tap. Although, we never did get sick from it..

We are also almost drinking only water now, not really anything else. Well, coffee and tea, and I like the Talking Rain from Costco (it's only 1,000W a bottle at the vending machine and they have ORANGE!), but we don't drink soda, for obvious reasons, or juice because, blah, blah, blah, I know, but fruit juice separated from fruit fiber makes your blood sugar skyrocket and so on, just like refined sugar. So, while some is probably okay, none is probably better and we don't have a juicer anyway to make our own.

I do want to start making green smoothies, though. They're supposed to be delicious!

7. No more soy (you have to type in your email to get to this article, but they won't spam you, I promise). Soy can mock estrogen in your body and is especially bad for young boys (it's in almost all baby formulas, too - hooray), but also bad if you're a woman looking to reproduce. It can really mess up your reproductive...ness. It can increase chance of cancer and maybe it's also good for you in some ways, but all the good things about soy can be found elsewhere, in foods that are less controversial. Plus, it's all heavily, heavily processed. I know, I sound like a broken record. I bore myself, too.

8. Soaking our nuts, seeds, grains and legumes. This is the freakish-est of all the freaky and it's actually taken me a few weeks to come around to even believing I should put the time and effort in. In the end, though, I figure it won'thurt. At the most, it will make our grains easier to digest and make the vitamins and nutrients more accessible to us, and at the least, we'll have softer grains and, hopefully eat fewer of them (since they're really not the best compared to meats and vegetables) because the time it takes to soak stuff is boring and long.

The main argument in favor of soaking (which, of course, I find infinitely interesting) is that nuts, grains and legumes are all seeds which are not really meant to be digested by animals, but to leave the body, unchanged, so they can grow where they're "planted". This means they all have a bunch of.. stuff in them that keeps them from being very easy to breakdown. Which is why people develop wheat allergies and generally have trouble digesting wheat and other grains. Apparently, we weren't meant to digest them at the rates we do.

However, if you soak them in warm water with some sort of cultured, "acid medium" (I use whey because we have it but you can also use kefir, yogurt or.. something else, too, I think), it mocks the seed sprouting environment and makes them kind of sprout (but not really), just enough to release the bad stuff, as well as the stuff contained in them that's meant to eat the bad stuff, so they can grow.

Convoluted?

Yes.

If you really care, you can check out this blog post. Soaking is, like, totally all the rage.

Another big argument is that cultures all over the world have been soaking their grains for centuries and, only in the past few hundred years have we decided it was unnecessary.

It's better, though, in my opinion, not to eat that many grains. They obviously aren't meant to be consumed at the rate we consume them and we keep them to a minimum.

9. No more plastics. This might be as freakish as the soaking.

I know. It's probably overkill, but as long as we're crazy, why not just go whole hog.

As we all have heard, most plastics (except, thankfully, for my precious Nalgene) contain BPA (Bisphenol A) which can do just terrible things. It's been linked to serious weight gain, and also thyroid dysfunction (a huge problem I'll probably have to cope with anyway) because it's an endocrine disruptor. I guess it's been decided by some folks how much is "safe" for humans, but I'd rather not ingest any of it.

Still, we all will because all canned foods are lined in plastic and have BPA leached into them, as well as most plastic, air-tight containers.

Korea, though, has super sweet glass lock-n-locks (awesome sort of tupperware) and real cheap stainless steel containers.

So, we're going plastic-free, though this is taking a long time.

Those are the basics, but we've been implementing them slowly over the past couple months or so, so it hasn't seemed like a huge deal all at once. Also, because we get to eat honey and it's not a plan-diet, we don't have points to count (I was always terrible at that sort of thing) or real restrictions and simply cutting out the things we have has made the hugest difference.

Basically, the more I read, the less I want us to eat the things we did before. And the less I eat refined sugars and flours, the more I develop a real taste for soaked whole wheat (soaking makes it lighter and less strong-tasting) and honey. I don't crave foods much at all anymore (except chocolate sometimes and then I just eat it because... I CAN).

Also, it's kind of fun. It makes cooking more interesting (I'm easily bored, maybe it's the ADD), and shopping much more interesting.

Plus, we both feel better. And we still get to eat almost every single thing we did before, we just make it ourselves now so that we know what's gone into it.

I feel like a dork most of the time, being all overly concerned about BPA and phytic acid and so on, but all it took for us to feel better was taking out processed foods, so... that made it easier to jump on the no-plastic, grain soaking bandwagon.

Right now, I have rice soaking for paella tonight. And, yesterday, we had chicken fajitas (we're going through our stock of white flour tortillas because they're yummy, but then I'm going to make my own!.. I hope). The day before that we had roasted Crock Pot chicken and it was SO good I thought I might die.

That is all.

Right now, I have to straighten up the house because it is lame in here.

Sorry we're so boring nowadays! Maybe it'll get more exciting once it gets warmer out and we actually feel like leaving the house.

- catie

Catie: Mr. Flopsy

2010-04-03T01:10:00.000-07:00

As I have said previously, I've been going a little bit CRAZY over the lack of craft supply superstores here.

Or, just craft supplies in general.

But, occasionally, I'm able to pull some things off.

Like Mr. Flopsy (not be confused with the Flopsy of "Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail").

[caption id="attachment_536" align="aligncenter" width="448" caption="Yes, I do take ALL my pictures in the kitchen window... you'll soon have an intimate knowledge of the neighbor's rooftop garden, like we do."][/caption]

As usual, you can tell that amazing photography skills don't belong to me.

Maybe someday.

Until then, sorry about all the blurry.

[caption id="attachment_537" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="My favorite is the sweet little Japanese fabric his shirt is made out of."][/caption]

He was hand sewn (obviously, since we don't have a sewing machine), which was a little bit a nightmare (not that I wouldn't do it again about fifty-hundred times if I had the fabric). The fabric is pretty coarsely woven, maybe a linen. The linen look is popular here. Anyway, though, to keep him from fraying, I had to sew every seam twice: once in running stitch, once in blanket stitch.

It was fun, though. I just complain because really I wish I could do it again.

I actually had all of this lying around the house. The red felt was from the stockings I made us for Christmas, the white I bought to embroider, but didn't, and the brown and cute fabrics I had from a project I started... a long time ago.

I made him from the Black Apple doll pattern, here, from Martha Stewart.

I don't have paint and I'm all about the embroidery now, so I embroidered his face instead of painting. I also modified the pattern to make him a boy. Hopefully he looks like a boy, I'm not sure.

But he is. So, at the least, he'll just be a girly boy.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to.

[caption id="attachment_544" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="A closeup of the cute fabric. Sorry about the dark, my trusty kitchen window was having a light malfunction today."][/caption]

Oh, that and the quadruple batch of These Muffins that I made. Well over 40 muffins have been shoved in our freezer, which is nice, because then I don't feel like I have to eat them all the time, but I also don't feel like I have to MAKE them all the time.

I switched the recipe up a little bit to accommodate what we had and because the first batch made a real thick batter that baked up dry and crumbly. They turned out way better the 2nd, 3rd and 4th times and it's my new fave muffin recipe.

I also added streusel with a teensy bit of cinnamon, which just.. I mean, why even MAKE muffins without streusel is what I want to know?

1. We didn't have all whole wheat flour, so I did half whole, half white.

2. I put in maple syrup instead of sugar, cup for cup. I'd usually cut the other liquid in the recipe back because of it, but it was so dry before that I didn't this time. Also, quick FYI: Maple syrup is my new best friend, because it doesn't make me feel nauseous when I eat it, it doesn't make baked things brown too quickly like honey does, and it tastes exactly like sugar.. which is probably because that's all it is.

3. I added yogurt for half the milk because A.) The oil it called for isn't enough fat (our yogurt is about 1/6 heavy cream, which I thought might help), so the muffins ended up really dry, and B.) I didn't want to use all the milk we had. Ben likes his milk. This was probably the best improvement.

4. Flavoring: I added the zest of one lemon + the juice of half a lemon. I also added a little vanilla, because I have vanilla and I like to add it to stuff and I can if I want. This really combated the blah factor that was all over the first batch.

Aannd... that was all.

They're still a teensy bit dry when they come from the freezer (especially the ones from the 1st batch), but if I defrost them in a ziploc it seems to help.

I like blueberry muffins the best of ALL.

- catie

Catie: I am The Kitchen MASTER.

2010-03-29T04:41:00.000-07:00

Orrr... actually not.

Since my oatmeal cookies failed miserably.

Tip: Oatmeal cookies taste better with butter inside of them, as opposed to, you know, sitting on the counter..

My banana bread is on the verge of terrible failure as well. It said to put it in a large loaf pan, but I knew better. I shouldn't have listened.

There's a lot you can bake in a toaster oven without adapting. A lot. The only exception I know of is bread. I guess I didn't expect quick bread to rise very much, but it did, and now it's but centimeters from the top element and although the top is VERY dark, the bottom isn't cooked.

Alas.

Such good intentions.

Still, I had a few successes prior to the failures. I made a triple batch of granola, which equals kind of a lot of granola and definitely a lot of work. With a toaster oven instead of the real thing, it's a little more like making 6-8 batches of granola. Granola is annoying, period, though, which is why I made so much. I just hate being tied to the kitchen, stirring it every three minutes.

Still, it is worth it. It's delicious and I've missed having it around.

I also made granola bars with dried cranberries, walnuts and pecans and some mini chocolate chips. They aren't like store bought granola bars. Maybe they're more like oatmeal cookies in bar form. So, I guess it's just as well that my oatmeal cookies didn't turn out. The granola bars are delicious. And, so we won't feel compelled to eat every single one of them by tomorrow, they're in the freezer.

I also have my yogurt incubating, by now a regular Monday happening. I can't believe we go through what must be a half gallon of yogurt a week, but we do, using it for buttermilk in recipes, and as sour cream in recipes and on other things like tacos. It's cheaper than sour cream (8.00US for a tub) and tastes nearly identical, though it is a little runnier. I make it with cream, though, so it doesn't have the thin flavor of regular nonfat yogurt.

On the stove, I have my second batch of chicken stock going and it turns out (duh) that it's a whole lot easier to pick a chicken if you just let it cook long enough. Then it practically falls apart for you and it doesn't take an hour.

It's still disgusting, especially when I have to de-neck them (I don't for stock, but I do for roasting), but I'm getting used to it.

The difference between chicken broth and chicken stock, I found out today, is bones. Stock has bones and broth doesn't. I didn't know there was a difference, but I made stock. I've boiled two whole chickens, as well as a couple carcasses leftover from roasting. Also, I heard the tip somewhere that you should save all the ends and weird pieces from your celery, onions and carrots, and boil them for stock. I have been over the past little while and it's so nice not to have to throw a real, live carrot, onion and celery in there. It always felt like such a waste of a delicious carrot. That, combined with saving the carcasses, makes homemade stock almost free!

And, the longer we're poor, the more I learn the value of FREE.

Especially when it comes to food since I like food.

Also on the stove, is some enchilada sauce for chicken enchiladas tonight. It's a little more like.. chili or something, without the dried ancho chiles, but.. we do what we can. We'll see how it turns out.

Speaking of enchiladas for dinner, I should go and actually make them.

Look who's coming to visit in two weeks!

I'm pretty much excited.

Hopefully we'll find interesting enough things to do... The more I think about life here, the more I realize that chicken stock and granola are pretty much it.

Haha.

It makes me happy. I'll have to think of something more than that for people visiting though.

- catie

Catie: Let's pay a visit to the Statue of Limitations.

2010-03-20T06:21:00.000-07:00

Our latest interest has been the Myers-Briggs test.

Actually, the fake Myers-Briggs test since... we aren't willing to pay $30.00 just to have a computer define us with four letters.

[/caption]

I'm sure pretty much everyone I know has already taken it. I'd taken it before, too, but I couldn't remember my letters. It's kind of funny to read an in depth description of each personality type because it's a little uncanny.

Anyway, we took our free test here: http://similarminds.com/jung.html There are probably better ones, but this one worked pretty well.

For a more in depth description of each type, we went here: http://www.personalitypage.com/portraits.html

In case you've never taken it, there are four categories: Introverted/Extroverted, iNtuitive/Sensing, Thinking/Feeling, Judgding/Perceiving. That breaks down to I/E, N/S, T/F, J/P.

In every category, you're rated higher in one or the other based on how you answer the questions and that gives you your letters.

Ben is an ISTJ: Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging. And, apparently, according to our picture there, is "doing what should be done". He'd be pleased to hear that.. let's NOT tell him. ;)

I'm an ISFP: Introverted (we're an outgoing pair, aren't we..), Sensing, Feeling, Perceiving. Yes, apparently I see a lot of stuff, but I never share. I don't know what that means. Except that maybe I don't like to share... but I don't think that's true. Until Ben tries to eat my chocolate.

Well.

Anyway, we think everybody should take the test and post their letters in the comments because we want to know them! If you know them without taking the test, that's fine, but tell us your letters! We're interested. We've even been taking the tests FOR some of you and we've got you all figured out... That's right.

You can read our "portraits" here:

Ben: ISTJ

Catie: ISFP

Tell us your letters! Do you realize how long we've been here? We probably don't even remember what any of you are LIKE.

We need the reminder so we'll recognize you when we get home. Otherwise, we'll see you at the airport and be like, "You LOOK like my mom, but my mom is Feeling, not Thinking and she's MUCH more Extroverted..."

And you wouldn't want that.

- catie

Catie: Lemon Cream Cupcakes

2010-03-19T22:13:00.000-07:00

I know nobody likes my cooking anymore, but it is still delicious. So there.

[caption id="attachment_511" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="yum?"][/caption]

While I did sub maple syrup (in the cake) and honey (in the frosting) for the sugar and whole wheat flour for white, these were seriously amazing. It was a real recipe to start, so you could just make the real thing: Lemon Cream Cupcakes. Like normal people. Unfortunately, we're just not that boring. :p

In the interest of AWESOME, I tried The Pioneer Woman's (speaking of awesome... check her out: thepioneerwoman.com) The Best Frosting I've Ever Had instead of the frosting in the recipe and The Best Frosting sounds weird because it has flour in it, but it is NOT weird. You should believe me, 1.) because it is the pioneer woman and she does not lie about food, not ever, and 2.) because I LIKE good frosting (not store bought) maybe better than anything in the world and apparently better than my teeth since I keep eating it...

I picked this frosting at first because I thought I could substitute honey for the sugar, which I did, and it turned out so much better than I expected. I kept hearing that it had the texture of whipped cream, but I disagree. I think it has the texture of really, really good buttercream like the light, airy kind I make out of my cupcake cookbook that's, like, 1/2 butter and 1/2 whipping cream. For the lemony-ness, I added about a tablespoon or so of lemon juice (would've added more but I was pushing it with the liquid additions..) and about 2 teaspoons of lemon zest and it is SO killer.

I like cupcakes. I make cupcakes. I EAT cupcakes. I do not lie about cupcakes.

[caption id="attachment_512" align="alignright" width="225" caption="I like lemon..."][/caption]

I asked Ben if he'd eat them before I made them (not so lemony, that one..) and he said he would, but I did not expect him to be quite so enthusiastic once they were done. Between last night and breakfast this morning, he's had 5.

It should mean something that I used whole wheat flour and they're STILL all light and airy and yummy. And the frosting is all light and airy and yummy and I expected it to taste like whole wheat, but it doesn't. Although, being my crazy self, I soaked both recipes about 12 hours before making them. It helps to soften the edge of that "whole wheat" taste and also makes things bake up much lighter (extra baking powder helps as well..), in my opinion.

[caption id="attachment_513" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="cupcakes for breakfast! and somebody's tired of having a camera in his face... oopsy!"][/caption]

These are going in the repertoire.

Forever.

- catie

Catie: They're all copycats!

2010-03-16T22:52:00.000-07:00

Well, now everyone in my family has a blog. It's nice. Now I don't have to talk to them to know they're still alive. It really simplifies my life. :)

Julie Swallowtail: My mom, in Pennsylvania, rockin' out to snow and gravy boats.

Miss Mayah Says...: My sister, Sarah, and quotes from Mayah, the almost-four-year-old.

Just Something We Do: My sister, Mel, and her husband, Rob, livin' it up in Libya. Or.. y'know, mostly traveling everywhere BUT Libya, but she's coming to visit to me, so I'm down with it.

Allendar's Magnificent Creations: Jeff and his amazing creations. You might not understand any of it, but I think that just reinforces how super smart he is. He speaks a whole 'nother LANGUAGE. I never even knew...

Right now, I am embroidering without an embroidery hoop. Not some of my best work as embroidery puckers without a hoop, but.. I'm making do.

Check out the suh-weet blogs.

- catie

Catie: Recipe - Fried Bananas and Whipped Cream with Cinnamon Mandarin Sauce - um, hello? Yum.

2010-03-12T01:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, so we've cut back on sugar even more and I was doing fine with it until I decided to cut wheat out almost completely. I kept reading that of all the grains in the world, wheat is probably the worst ever, so I decided to experiment. I've now been off it for.. I don't know, maybe a week? I didn't notice anything at all different, so yesterday I decided to eat a piece of toast -- whole wheat toast, one piece -- and about 1/2 an hour later I thought I was going to die a slow and awful death. It was weird. Sort of like the last time I ate ice cream after being off sugar for a couple weeks and it made my whole body itch like a plague of.. itching fire. Anyway. Gross. Sorry. Moving on.

So, cutting out wheat has made my sugar craving SKY ROCKET. Your body basically ferments wheat into sugar as soon as it begins digesting. I read somewhere it's such a quick transition that if you hold a piece of bread in your mouth for just a few seconds and let your saliva work on it, it will start to taste sweet. So, obviously, it was giving me some sort of sugar.. thingie. And, obviously, it wasn't a good.. thingie, judging by yesterday's breakfast. Still, in the interest of staying sane, I HAVE to eat something that tastes sweet SOME of the time.

Thankfully, my standards for sweetness have gone down a lot (in that I don't require a whole hot fudge sundae to be able to breathe) and fruit usually works great (especially these mandarins... I am telling you, they are the fruit of the gods). So, I went through my trusty new Nourishing Traditions cookbook and found this Fried Banana recipe. I tweaked it a little to leave out even more of the honey (Ben found some raw honey at the market -- amazingly -- so I would've used that, but I'm trying to save it for when Ben's allergies kick in later this spring, plus.. it just didn't need it), to make enough for just two of us, and because it called for creme fraiche (or piima cream), which we didn't have on hand. It was still super yum.

If you like bananas. And whipped cream: You will like this.

Also, I know I'm all weird and creepy now (I creep myself out with all the "Real Food".. ness.), but whipped cream really isn't bad for you. It's best raw, straight from the cow, and ultra-pasteurized is basically useless, but... the fat is really good for you. It's natural fat, so it burns quickly, keeps you full a long time and is full of calcium your body can actually absorb. Plus, it has butterfat, a rich source of vitamins A and D, two vitamins that are real hard to come by naturally in anything but egg yolks and butter, and the sun, but that's minimal.

So now you know. You probably don't care, but I do, because it means I get to eat whipped cream. So there.

Fried Bananas and Whipped Cream with Cinnamon Mandarin Sauce

2 very ripe bananas, large

2-3 T. butter

juice of two mandarin oranges

1/4 - 1/2 t. cinnamon

1/4 c. heavy whipping cream, whipped with vanilla and about a teaspoon of honey

Peel bananas and slice lengthwise (we sliced widthwise because I didn't read the directions). Saute in butter and transfer to a pyrex dish (or.. glass lock-n-lock..as the case may be). In a small bowl, mix mandarin juice and cinnamon. Pour over bananas and bake at 300F for about 15 minutes (we baked it about 20, just.. know your oven). Serve in bowls with a dollop of whipped cream.

I wish I had pictures, but I didn't think of it until... we'd eaten all of it.

It's a little rich, so keep that in mind. I shouldn't have eaten a full bananas worth, it made me a little ill.

Ill in a good way. You know.

- catie

Catie: Things I would make if we were rich...

2010-03-12T00:47:00.000-08:00

I took for granted all the fabric and craft stores of America. I still don't know how I feel about giant chain stores coming in and killing off the little guys, but right about now, I would kill for a Michael's or a JoAnn's with their miles of buttons and bias tape and fabric for less than $10.00 a fat quarter. The warm weather makes me really want to sew, but the problems of not having a sewing machine or actual lengths of fabric to work with leave me a little stranded. Usually, I'd go buy a sheet if I really couldn't afford a bunch of fabric and I wanted some (thrift store sheets make dresses for $2.00), but Korea doesn't make sheets.

Haha. I'm at a loss. And while it can be infinitely frustrating, yarn has proven easy to come by. And that's just amazing. It seems like every time I round a corner there's a yarn shop (okay, not really, but I'm being positive). I've found four so far, plus E-mart, which has a little. The fourth one I found at the big, fat traditional market last weekend when we went down there in search of buttons. No buttons were found, but we did find a bazillion bolts of silk and other shiny, traditional Korean wedding dress (Hanbok) fabrics. I hold out hope that somewhere in the literal maze of shops I might find some affordable fabric someday. Someday. When we're rich.

Anyway, today I went looking for an orange extract recipe and, somehow, stumbled upon a million Martha Stewart sewing patterns. Some of them were not so cute, but some of them make me all bubbly inside and now I'm conniving ways to get around our financial barriers and utilize our dollar stores....

Until then, these are on my list of things to make, either when we're rich, or once I devise a most brilliant plan:

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption=""Sleeper of a Bag""][/caption]

This super cute bag is made out of one pillowcase and I want it. I'd want to make it out of two, so it would have a lining and not be too thin, but......... Korea doesn't have pillowcases, only pillow shams... so. Maybe next life.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption=""Doily Tablecloth""][/caption]

I think this is cute. Plus, it looks easy and quickly gratifying. At the Dollar Place, they have a bunch of doilies for cheap, so this one might actually be doable. We'll see.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption=""Bandana Tablecloth""][/caption]

Bandanas: distinctly American. This one looks cute and summery and also very easily gratifying. I'm really into things that are easy and gratifying.. maybe because I've been knitting all winter. While not difficult, it does take concentration and it is painfully slow sometimes. Still, I did pick the Tea Leaves Cardigan (see last post) for my gold yarn and the yoke is coming along nicely. So, no actual complaints.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption=""Homemade Duvet Cover""][/caption]

I made a duvet cover in high school and it was cute, but I could make a cuter one now and since we have these two, big white fake-down comforters that keep getting dirty, I want to make one even more. I've been working on it in my head for a long time, but so far: nothing. Why does Korea sell big, white fluffy fake-down comforters with no duvet covers? There are a lot of answers I can't give you. Basically, America is the land of way too much. You can find anything in the entire world you want in America in almost any city, big or small. Shipping is usually not very expensive if whatever-it-is has to be ordered. Other countries don't live that way, it turns out. They make do with what they have. It's entirely frustrating, but.. not unreasonable. In a way, I guess it forces more creativity. Seriously, you should see some of the little carriers people have rigged up to their bicycles and scooters. Nothing short of creative genius. On the whole, I'd say our land of plenty makes us a lot less creative and a lot more color-inside-the-lines boo-riing. Now just so long as Ben doesn't remind me I wrote this the next time I complain that Korea has nothing I want...

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption=""Slipcovered Headboard""][/caption]

I just think this is cute. Mostly because I like things that I can change on a whim, like Swatches. If you made enough, it could be like a headboard Swatch.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Button-Up Window Shade"][/caption]

I want this. And I want this now. Where, God, does Korea keep it's buttons and it's cotton fabric?

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Handmade Dolls"][/caption]

I like dolls. I think they're cute. Especially when you get to make them yourself.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption=""Bias Toward the Pretty""][/caption]

Bias tape just makes things look nice, doesn't it?

And, lastly...

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption=""Removable Tote Organizer""][/caption]

This is clever. And I like it. I don't have a tote... but if I were rich, I'd make one, just so I could make this to put inside it.

There are just about a hundred things that could be on this list, but these are the ones I'm lusting after today. By next week, I'll probably have a whole new bunch.

I'm going to post a yummy fried banana recipe next, so... you should read that, too.

- catie

Catie: Good Kimchi!

2010-03-09T23:26:00.000-08:00

Well, the Kimchi turned out AWESOME. Actually.

I kept saying I thought it would be bad, bad, bad, but it's totally not. Maybe a teensy bit too sweet (though that should decrease over time, even in the fridge) and I think I'll use soy sauce instead of Yoshida's next time, but it is good. Like seriously good. Way better than even our favorite Korean BBQ place across the street and I've always liked theirs pretty well.

But maybe I Americanized it somehow so it appeals to my palate a little more.

[caption id="attachment_485" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="yummy."][/caption]

I am eating some right now, just plain because.. I don't have anything else to eat it with. I had it with eggs and bacon for a weird dinner (because I put the chicken in the crockpot too late to actual EAT it for dinner...) and that was good, too.

Kimchi's the best with meat, though. Especially if a meal sits really heavy, I've noticed. If I eat some kimchi, it just digests a lot better. Plus it's all, y'know, good for you and stuff. Amazingly good, actually, and the more I read about it, the more I find that foreigners here fall in love with it if they just give it a decent chance. It's a little strange the first couple times and the smell is intense, but it tastes a ton better than it smells and you won't believe how many points it'll earn you with the Korean population at large, all of whom eat kimchi at every single meal including breakfast.

My sourdough starter came to a miserable demise (perhaps due its being left too near the kimchi?). It got all watery and smelled just terrible. I was pretty excited about bread for a while, but now after several irritating failures, I think I'm ready to just wait until I can either get someone to hold my hand throughout, or until it's worth it for me to buy a bread machine. Right now, it's just not. Besides, all I've read about bread makes me think we may be better off without it.

In other news, I've taught myself to haphazardly read crochet patterns. It is NOT as easy as reading knitting patterns... probably just because I know what most knitting pattern abbreviations mean, and usually there's a key at the bottom for odd ones in case you forget, but that doesn't always seem to be the case with crochet patterns. I end up googling abbreviation after abbreviation and, in the end, I make up my own dumb pattern because I just can't figure out what they're talking about.

Still, though, I got a cute little market bag out of it:

It's a bit skinny and stretches long, so it's kind of funny, but it works really well. I'm making another that's wider and it will be shorter, too.

I got my gold yarn in today, finally, from New Hampshire. I ordered it back at the very beginning of January, but it was on back order and things ship slow to Korea where everything has to be opened once it arrives and is usually stuck in customs for several days.

It's really nice and I'm happy with the color (a few other ones looked very different on the website and, thankfully, Ben liked them, but I thought they were a little blarghy).

[caption id="attachment_488" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="delightful, golden Cascade 220"][/caption]

With it, I think I will be making the Garter Yoke Cardigan or.... maybe the Tea Leaves Cardigan. Not sure yet. I really like the Tea Leaves one.

Lastly, I got this book in the mail:

[caption id="attachment_489" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon"][/caption]

And it's my new super-fave. It's more a cookbook than anything with all sorts of crazy recipes for things like beet kvass, fermented berry preserves, baby formula (......?), potato cheese, fermented ketchup and mustard, and a whole section on organ meats with recipes for kidneys, liver and hearts. Ooh.. and brains in wine sauce. Maybe someday........... It also has a totally lame recipe for kimchi (1/2 teaspoon red pepper instead of 1/2 CUP), but I am willing to overlook that because of the fermented root beer and sweet potato soda (?) recipes.

I'm pretty excited.

Anyway, I need to go do something with this yarn because.. it looks lonely.

- catie

Catie: On Making Kimchi

2010-03-05T03:27:00.000-08:00

We're still not going to be sure how this will turn out until around Monday -- I, for one, am afraid it will be too salty -- but, the process works, even if it does turn out too salty.

And I know it works because, well.. you know, people have being doing it here for hundreds and hundreds of years.

[caption id="attachment_467" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="the ingredients"][/caption]

THE MAKING OF KIMCHI:

First, you have to get all your ingredients together.

- Napa Cabbage (Napa is best, but any kind will work, I think)
- green onions or scallions
- peeled garlic cloves
- raw ginger
- other vegetables: daikon radish is traditional, I hear greens are real good, I like carrots and cucumber and I think broccoli would be good and maybe beets
- a small apple
- sea salt (iodide in salt can make your ferments turn BLACK, plus sea salt is better for you and it tastes better and sticks better to your food)
- Korean red pepper flakes or some sort of alternative like Thai chile paste
- fish sauce, anchovy sauce or soy sauce, although I used Yoshida's BBQ sauce (which is not actually BBQ sauce) because it was what we had on hand
- 1-2 t. honey

This won't make you the most traditional kimchi in the world, but it will make you good kimchi (or so I hear), and I believe it. The ingredients look right and all of them were found in or around the Kimchi-making section of the grocery store.

I didn't do a lot of measuring, I just kind of made it up (another reason it might be too salty...), like I, y'know.. do, and so you may want to actually measure things. If you do, Kimchi recipes abound online, or I will actually measure what I put in the next time (once I know if this time is a flop) and post that here.

Also, you can make White Kimchi, which leaves the red pepper out.

Since coming here, I've grown quite a fan of the red pepper in things (in a moderate sense.. a moderate sense which is never really applied to Korean cuisine, so I'm not sure how this happened), so I put it in, but it can be a little spicy, so keep that in mind.

First, you want to take the top leaves off your cabbage. I got only half of one at the grocery store for two reason: 1.) I was unsure as to my skill in fermentation and, 2.) it was cheaper. So, I took off the toppest two leaves anyway, because you need them for later. Wash them and set them aside.

Now, chop your cabbage up.

[caption id="attachment_468" align="alignright" width="300" caption="my cabbage half"][/caption]

Or.. that is, first cut out the big stem thing, and cut out more than I did, because I ended up having to pick out big chunks of thick stem later on. The thick bits are favorited by some people, but not by me. I like the curly, tender bits.

[caption id="attachment_469" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="chopped and rinsed"][/caption]

Now, you want to chop it to bits. Traditionally, it's not chopped nearly as fine as I did. Maybe... in 3"x3" pieces, but I want to be able to use it more as a relish on meats and things, plus.. I like my Kimchi a whole lot more when I don't have to shove a HUGE piece in my mouth all at once. The beauty of Kimchi is the absolutely overwhelming flavor and who can focus on the overwhelming flavor when they're simply focusing on the fire that has been ignited in their mouth by thousand bits of red pepper on a giant leaf of cabbage?

Tiny bits are nicer.

Then, you want to rinse them and salt them. Some recipes will say to soak the leaves in salt water, but I liked this approach better.

Put the rinsed bits into a colander (or a sieve like I have there), salting them as you go, and then..

[caption id="attachment_475" align="alignright" width="300" caption="water weights"][/caption]

weight them down with ziplocs full of water.

What would have been ideal is to have had a gallon ziploc on hand, but I didn't, so these two quart sizes worked.

I laid my outer cabbage leaves, the whole ones, on top of my chopped cabbage leaves and salted them, too, before adding the weight. Then, in the interest of curiosity, put the sieve over a bowl so you can see how much water comes out of the leaves.

Leave them to drain for two hours.

In the meantime, though, you can..

[caption id="attachment_476" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="green onions and carrots"][/caption]

Chop your onions and grate/chop your carrots. I chose grating. It was easy. Plus, that tiny bit at the end that will murder your fingers if you keep trying to grate it: you get to eat it. And carrots here taste a little bit like sweet chunks of candy, so I ate it.

Also, use less than half of what I did here. Not a whole, giant carrot, and not a whole bunch of green onions.

After that, you can peel and chop your ginger, garlic and your apple.

[caption id="attachment_477" align="alignright" width="300" caption="everybody peeled and ready to chop"][/caption]

You will, again, want to use less than half of what I did here. Half an apple, two garlic cloves and a one inch finger of ginger.

Eat the other half of your apple. If it's like mine, it is delicious and, like the carrot, a little bit like candy.

Then chop them up, but you don't have to go really fine, because next you stick all three of them in the blender and whiz them until they're all pulpy.

The apple is in place of white sugar and gives the excited stuff something to eat while it's getting all fizzy.

[caption id="attachment_479" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="cucumber, green onions, carrots and apple-ginger-garlic pulp"][/caption]

That scrambled egg stuff is what it'll look like.

Scrambled eggs, I guess, basically.

Don't taste it, though. It won't taste like scrambled eggs.

Don't forget to chop up all your other vegetables, too. I almost forgot my cucumber and threw it in last.

Mix all the vegetables but the cabbage up and put them to drain, too, while the cabbage finishes. They won't drain much, but unless you want your Kimchi to be swimming in red water, some drainage will be nice.

Once the cabbage is drained, you want to rinse it. Really, really well. Better than I rinsed mine. Good enough to get off a lot of salt since there's probably a lot on there and, as I said before, sea salt sticks real well to everything including your friends and relations.

And your cabbage.

Then mix all your drained vegetables together in a big bowl with (approximated from what I used.. which is to say.. somewhat less of each than I used):

1/4 c. red pepper (I actually did use this much and while you should definitely use less if you don't like spice, this is probably pretty accurate as far as tradition)
1/8 c. sauce (fish, anchovy or soy)
1-2 t. honey (more for the happies to feed on)

And don't use your hands because red pepper is hot and your hands get into your eyes and nose and unless you wash them really well that can HURT.

Not that I'm saying you don't wash your hands well, just... you know. In case you didn't. For some reason.

Also, the red pepper can stain your hands, or so I hear.

After all the mixing, you can transfer your glop into a clean, glass jar (plastic is pretty likely to leach, especially with the high acid content you'll have going). You will want to make sure, if you either making more than me or using a smaller jar than me, that you leave some head room. I just had a really big jar, so I didn't need to worry about head room, but I'd leave about 1 inch, maybe?

[caption id="attachment_481" align="alignright" width="225" caption="pressing out the oxygen"][/caption]

And now you can start pressing out the oxygen.

You want to get as much oxygen out as possible because it can have all kinds of weird stuff in it and weird stuff can cause the BAD happies (happies = bacteria) to grow and that will just end badly.

If you jar is clear like mine, you'll be able to see the bubbles coming up to the surface.

Don't be afraid of smooshing your vegetables. They're resilient. Plus, Kimchi is supposed to be wet and kind of mashy.

That being said, don't KILL them either.

I used the pestle from my mortar pestle to do it. It worked real well.

Once you are satisfied that most of the air is out, you bring your whole cabbage leaves back into the picture.

Part of the successful fermentation process is to keep your ferments under the liquid they're in. This can be real tricky when it comes to things like green beans. While this isn't always an issue, it's my first time fermenting vegetables, so I am feeling cautious.

Break your whole leaves up to fit in the jar and press them down on top of the rest of your vegetables. This will keep them covered, away from the outside air, and, hopefully, keep them under the little bit of liquid.

Now.. as far as what sort of jar you should use. Koreans often use the traditional Kimchi jar, a big clay pot of a thing. Dark brown, with a lid. The kind of thing they still keep outside, and the thing those in the country still bury in their backyard in winter. I, however, am using the more modern Kimchi jar, found at LotteMart. It's got an airlock thing on it so that the gases made by the fermentation process can escape.

If you don't have a Kimchi jar (and chances are you don't..), you should be careful not to screw your lid on too tight. This will allow the gases to escape without exploding your jar.

Now, put your jar in a nice, room temperature place and leave it for three days.

Do not be afraid.

That is what everybody says.

In the West, we have this fear of things going unrefrigerated for any length of time. "Keep hot things hot and cold things cold", etc... but people have been doing this for a long time, so it is SUPPOSED to work.

That means if you can't make it work, you are obviously less of a person.

Or.. it means... you used too much salt. Like me. Or something. else.

[caption id="attachment_482" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="my waiting kimchi"][/caption]

Here is my finished jar.

I hope it's good, but I have low expectations...

Today I killed my SECOND batch of yogurt in a row. Actually, my third, if you count the last funky batch that we ended up throwing half of out.

This is not because yogurt is scary, though, mind you.. it is because A.) I used bad milk once and, B.) I forgot about my yogurt. Twice.

Yogurt is still easy, you just.. have to watch it. And not use bad milk.

Anyway, I am also hip deep in sourdough starter lately, too! It's pretty exciting because it's all bubbly and sour-smelling and I get to feed it every day.

Though, I just realized it's right next to my Kimchi and there's a school of thought that says ferments can cross breed and get all wacky, so I'm going to go move it now.

It's probably fine, but still.

Tonight, for dinner, we are having Kung Pao Chicken (we have a favorite place here that makes it, but it's far away, probably made with scary ingredients, and.. cheaper to make at home) and fried rice.

Because we've started soaking our grains, I've started meal planning. At first, I thought it was totally dorky, but the more I do it, the more it is AWESOME.

1. I actually end up making food 5 nights a week because I don't have to worry about what to make, I just look at my list.

2. I only have to go grocery shopping once a week.

3. I use up everything perishable we have because I can plan around the foods that will be going bad soon.

4. Soaking our grains isn't as daunting because I know when to start them.

5. It keeps me on a waaay better (and cheaper) budget than before. We're now spending about 4,000W a day on food, where before it was 10,000-11,000W. That means we're eating dinner for, like, 2,000W per person, per night. Plus leftovers for Ben's lunches. That is kind of awesome.

Anyway, my starter needs moving and I need to wash the dishes.

So long!

- catie

Catie: Coming Soon...

2010-03-04T04:27:00.000-08:00

...to a-- computer? near you.

[caption id="attachment_464" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="my kimchi"][/caption]

I made kimchi!

And, while I'm fairly certain most of you are grossed out by the idea of eating vinegared, left-out-on-the-fridge-top-for-three-days vegetables, the process is interesting. So, I took some pictures and, soon, you too can make left-out-for-three-days cabbage.

It's really good.

See that? How could that not be good?

...at least, I hope mine is good. The jury's out until Monday.

I'll let you know.

- catie

Catie: Yesterday, I...

2010-02-23T02:26:00.000-08:00

1. Made more granola - this time three times as much.

2. Made my own breadcrumbs - we're sticking with whole grains (as far as anything is whole grain in Korea) and cutting out weird ingredients we can't pronounce, which means I can't just crunch up Zecs (like Ritz crackers, only Zecs) anymore when I need breadcrumbs.

3. Made my own peanut butter - we've switched to no refined sugar, and no high fructose corn syrup, and since there's no Adam's peanut butter to be seen for miles, I've made my own. Unsweetened, with heavily salted peanuts we got from Costco and washed, then dried (a long process). It tastes a lot different and I think I may have put in too much oil, but it's real good on toast with a little bit of honey.

I am currently roasting a chicken in the crock pot with carrots, potatoes and onions, having just learned how to de-neck the fair creature and having saved the neck for bone broth (the best kind of broth you can make -- or so I am told).

We feel so good on this freaking food thing.

And have I mentioned I've lost 10 pounds? Because of the kilograms to pounds thing, I thought I'd only lost 2, so it was never worth mentioning, but after talking to Ben about it last night, it turns out it really IS worth mentioning.

And so I am.

Also, the food we're eating now: way more consistently delicious and amazing than anything ever before on the face of the earth.

Also, natural saturated fats are good for you.

Look it up.

- catie

Ben: I has made socks!

2010-02-20T20:57:00.000-08:00

I have now successfully knitted three (3!) pairs of socks! Each pair with less and less need to ask for help from Catie every third stitch (which I know she is grateful for). On my last pair I even turned the heel and and bound them off all by my very own self. I still can't figure out how to cast them on yet, but thankfully I married talented knitter extraordinaire. Umm, I can't really think of anything else to say. I'm sure if I was Catie I could tell you all sorts of detailed business about the knitting process, but I'm out of things to say. So... pictures!

[caption id="attachment_438" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Set (3) Socks!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_446" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="These were the first pair that I knit, and required lots of help from Catie. As in "Ah! I ruined them! Help!""][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_447" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Pair number 2. Charcoal is really hard to knit with, but thankfully it also masks all of my mistakes."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_448" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Okay, so when I said I had finished three pairs that was a little bit of a lie. I've finished this sock and have turned the heel on its mate, but haven't quite got it all done yet. Still I'm more than halfway there, so I just made a slight rounding error!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_449" align="alignright" width="300" caption="It fits! Nothing beats knitting a sock and than having it fit perfectly when you try it on."][/caption]

Catie: A Second Fridge

2010-02-19T23:41:00.000-08:00

We've had a lot of interesting difficulties figuring out how to store all the food we eat at home.

Costco is a problem for us. It is great because we can get so many of the things we need like cheese and butter and these organic frozen vegetables we found there last time. But it's Costco. And everything comes in bulk.

Still, we can't get this stuff anywhere else.

So, we buy it. And then we just try to shove it in the freezer and fridge. Which...... works. But is a little haphazard. Not to mention scary times whenever you open the fridge or freezer. Especially the freezer since bricks-o-chicken seem to fly out unexpectedly.

I was contemplating canning a few things. They sell canning jars by the piece here and you can just water bath can them in a pot with a towel. Or so the jar instructions say. But the jars are expensive (3-7 bucks a piece) and canning takes more time than freezing, plus it's not as good for things like vegetables as freezing is. And fermenting. Apparently, fermenting is the best ever.

Sorry, nutritionist again.

Anyway, a few days ago, we were discussing the freezer/fridge dilemma and Ben went online, looking up whether or not anyone in Korea sells freezers.

They don't.

Kimchi fridges, yes.

Freezers, no.

BUT... he did find us a whole 'nother fridge/freezer combo!

Go, Benny.

And it arrived today.

It rocks. First, it's WAY nicer than our other fridge. It has SHELVES. That aren't broken! And the guy who sold it to us (for pretty dirt cheap) cleaned it out really, really well.

And second-- actually, I don't think there's a second. But the first is pretty great.

We also got another mattress for when Ben's family comes to visit. And a vacuum!!

I am very excited about the vacuum.

Now we are going to Costco to get frozen blueberries (so yummy in homemade yogurt and now we have a place to put them!) and a big shelf for the second bedroom, where food storage is finally going to start happening.

Man... it turns out eating at home is hard.

But it's also pretty delicious.

- catie

Catie: I like food.

2010-02-19T01:39:00.000-08:00

I don't know if I've ever liked yogurt as much as I do since making it myself.

[caption id="attachment_418" align="alignleft" width="180" caption="homemade yogurt and granola"][/caption]

Yes, I made my own yogurt!

I know, right? I was super excited, too. It even got all creamy and thick and culturey. And all I had to do was heat it up then stir in some store bought yogurt.

Okay, I'm starting to sound like an infomercial, but seriously. I kind of am an infomercial when it comes to yogurt right now.

Korea has The Most Yogurt of Life. And it's all a little scary. From yogurt cups to yogurt drinks to yogurt milk? Isn't that just yogurt? For a few things, I was buying, "plain" Activia (sweetened with fructose.. plain?), but the healthier we get at home, the more I'm cutting out creepy processed foods and sweeteners and I've been reading about all these people making their own yogurt.

It is EASY.

Seriously. Like, SO easy.

This isn't like when I make something and Ben says, "Yeah, it was easy for you." Not like that kind of easy. Like actually easy, I guess.

Here is what I did:

[caption id="attachment_419" align="alignright" width="180" caption="I added cranberries afterward because they are YUM."][/caption]

1. Put 1/2 gallon milk (any fat content works -- even nonfat) in crock pot.

2. Turn Crock Pot to Low and put lid on.

3. Leave, with lid on, for 2 1/2 hours to warm.

4. Turn Crock Pot off and unplug. Put 2 cups of the warm milk into a bowl and add 1/2 cup Activia (2 little yogurt cups) to the bowl. Stir and the put all this back into the Crock Pot and stir that. Put lid back on Crock Pot.

5. Move Crock Pot to warm-ish, out of the way area and wrap entire Crock Pot in two big bath towels with one dish towel folded on top to cover the lid.

6. Leave for 8-12 hours. I left mine 8. I was too excited to leave it longer.

7. Now it's yogurt! Store in fridge, in airtight containers.

I know it's seven steps, but two of them are all about doing nothing and letting the Crock Pot just sit there, so, really, that means it's only five steps.

[caption id="attachment_429" align="alignleft" width="203" caption="This is my giant Costco jam jar full of yogurt that I made on Wednesday. It's now Friday and at least half the yogurt in the jar (plus everything that wouldn't fit into the jar) is gone. Which is primarily because I ate it... Ben is not so excited about it. And I've just been craving yogurt, what else is there to say?"][/caption]

Advantages to making one's own yogurt:

1. It is actually PLAIN yogurt! No sweeteners, no thickeners, no additives. I know what is in it (and pretty soon, after using my own yogurt as my next starter, I will get all the Activia starter diluted out of there) and it is just milk and cultures.

2. It is fresh. The cultures contained in yogurt rock for your body (and I know this because I am smart and I read now. It is a newly acquired skill), but most yogurts either don't contain any active cultures, or they did contain active cultures and now they're dead/weak and lame because they've been on the shelf too long.

3. It is, like, SO good for you, okay? The cultures help you digest other dairy rich foods, like milk, with lots of lactose because that's what they're doing in the yogurt. That's what makes it taste sour. The cultures are eating all the lactose. Then, you put them in your stomach and they eat all the other lactose. And other stuff. They're awesome for digestion and, let me tell you, my yogurt may have started from Activia, but it works way better.

4. You have ALL the control. I like this in.. well, everything really. It's my mom's fault (sorry, mom! <3 that's supposed to be a heart...... for love. you know?) . Anyway, since you can control how long you leave the yogurt to incubate (that's the towel-wrapping-leaving-it-to-sit part), you get to control how much lactose ends up in the end product. So, if you leave it for 8, like I did, you still have quite a bit of lactose (milk sugar), but the yogurt is really mild (not very tangy at all), so I just don't put any sweetener in it, only my homemade granola. But if you leave it for 24 hours, all the lactose should be gone, you'll have a really tart yogurt, and you can sweeten it with honey. Which is also yum. And good for the lactose intolerant.

5. Yogurt cheese. I have just discovered yogurt cheese and it is my new best friend. A lot like Greek yogurt in

[caption id="attachment_430" align="alignright" width="158" caption="See my cute little jar-o-starter for next time? Right next to the cute, brown eggs from our lady at the traditional market."][/caption]

consistency (real thick), yogurt cheese is awesome to use in place of cream cheese on bagels and toast because it has more redeeming value than cream cheese what with it's active cultures and lack of creepy additives, but it has a lot of the flavor of cream cheese. And all you have to do to make it is put the yogurt in a piece of cheesecloth in a strainer, over a bowl, and drain out all the whey, so it gets all thick and yummish.

I know I sounds like a nutritionist now. It's annoying. But I was homeschooled. You can totally blame it on that.

In other news, as pictured above IN the homemade yogurt, I made my own granola, too! It is also good and has the same value as yogurt as far as no processed foods and additives go. I know what went in it and that makes me feel better about eating it.

I think that's one thing that's hard about living here. Not being able to read the ingredient labels and knowing that Koreans have a different standard for what's okay to eat. Obviously, it works for them. They have the least obesity overall of any first world country. But I don't necessarily want MSG or sodiumdioxihydratedphosorosates or... things. Like that.

We've been making a lot of food at home.

Can you tell?

The granola has:

Rolled Oats

Sunflower Seeds

Pecans

Walnuts

Almonds

Honey

Butter

Water

I got it a little browner than it should probably be, but it still tastes fine. I just won't be sharing it with the neighbors, who seems a little adverse to my offerings thus far anyhow. I tried to give them banana muffins.

I think it was a no-go.

But I drank the Red Ginseng Tonic that makes me positively gag, so.. we're even.

In the realm of knitting, we have:

[caption id="attachment_420" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Ben's clogs. He says they are cozy and warm. Unfortunately, the wool also picks up all the lint on the floor. Or, perhaps, fortunately. He can be my dustmop."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_421" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="The foxy I knit. In very bad light. I've had issues with light that are irritating. Sorry it's so hard to see. I finally gave up."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_424" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The elephant."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_425" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="And the octopus. With two red tentacles since I ran out of blue... haha."][/caption]

Anyway, I think that is all for now.

Soon, I think I will make some crackers because we haven't been able to find any decent crackers here and we would eat a lot more of them if they were available. I know crackers are time consuming as well as a pain to make, but I'm hoping they might be worth it for us.

Oh! And once we get a blender (maybe not until next month -- I keep putting it off), we will also make our own peanut butter. It is easy. Or so we hear.

More later.

And hopefully more often.

But don't expect the sounding-like-a-nutritionist to wear off. Poor Ben... He's a trooper.

- catie

Catie: I guess you could say it's been a while.

2010-02-19T00:40:00.000-08:00

But can I just note that I have been very busy.

Number 1.) Knitting.

Number 2.) Cooking some stuff.

Number 3.) Failing at all baking endeavors.

Number 4.) Knitting more things I want to have.

Number 5.) Organizing the kitchen, living room and bedroom intermittently.

Number 6.) Cleaning out and setting up the spare room to become a makeshift pantry. (All right, I haven't exactly done this yet, but soon I will be very busy doing it, so it is my excuse for next time.)

See how busy I have been?

Answer: So very.

Yes, you are right.

Things I have knit:

1. a pair of slipper clogs for The Benjamin.

2. a pair of socks for me.

3. ...half of another pair of socks. also for me.

4. still MORE on my red, cabled cowl scarf and no, it is not done yet, believe me, I will be the first to tell you when that bane of my very existence is finally DONE.

5. half a pair of one slipper clog for me. I got bored. yes, yes, I got bored. probably because, for this pair, I didn't have a husband waiting for slippers.

6. a red and blue elephant.

7. a red and blue octopus.

8. a happy little fox.

9: three weird looking balls.

10. a felted handle for a basket/makeshift drawer that contains kitchen utensils and lives under a riser on the kitchen table/makeshift counter top.

11. a little felted bag with a button hole that hangs on a hook near the sink and is filled with every rubber band in existence. It's a cute bag and I needed those rubber bands off my counter. I'd normally put them in a drawer, but Koreans don't like drawers, and we only have two, both housed in our wardrobe. So, there is a ledge along the back of the kitchen sink, under the window, and I kept them there in a little box. But they kept collecting odd food particles as well as always getting tangled up in the green robot man that I found under the fridge a few months ago who managed to make his way into the rubber band box. Anyway, it was just TOO much. So, I knit a wall-bag (and I coined the term "wall-bag"). Mostly in public, while out and about. Korean women always think I'm knitting hats. Always. They point at my hands and they hit their heads saying all kinds of things in Korean and then, in Korean, I say "No, no." (since that is just about the extent of my second language skills) and then I say, "Bag. Is bag." (like if I speak in broken English they'll be better able to understand) and I make the motion that seems to be Korean speak for "shopping bag", which means moving my hands from a cupping gesture, outward and up to sort of outline the bottom of a bag. Then they look at me like I've just lost my mind because who makes shopping bags that small and.. then they give me a nod and pat their head one more time, saying the word for "hat". Just making sure I'm really looney. And I smile and they leave and anyway, now it's done. So, they don't think I'm crazy for making tiny shopping bags, just for wearing birkenstocks in the winter and for leaving the house in a very light drizzle without an umbrella.

13. a calorimetry. it turned out waaay big, but I wear it anyway.

14. I just-just finished my first pair of endpaper mitts yesterday. it may possibly be true that I have been lusting after them in an unnaturally disturbing sort of way. possibly. but, now they are finished.

I think those are pretty much all my recent projects. I am now working on a second pair of endpaper mitts (they were the funnest thing I've made in a long time), the half-done sock and NOT the bane of my existence. Oh, and also my 1/4 finished clogs, which are cute colors. red-orange and pale turquoise.

It is late now and the light is bad, so I do not have pictures for you, but I am planning on taking some of, you know, things.

We didn't cook much in December. It was busy and crazy and we just ended up eating out a lot. To the complete detriment of our health. But, through many fits of digestive illness, we have again begun to cook at home. This time, I've been paying a lot more attention to our healthier American food options like whole wheat spaghetti and fresh frozen green beans instead of canned, etc... Eating American in Korea can be difficult (although I'd venture to say we're quite adept at this point), but eating healthy American is even more difficult. However, there is a lot of brown rice, some frozen alternatives to canned vegetables, yummy yogurts (waaay too many yogurts), soy products, awesome tofu and the best produce and eggs anywhere. Now I just need to figure out which greens are what so we can make salads. None of them make sense to me and all of them look like the weeds you pull out of your garden. Some of them taste like them, too, and that is gross.

Today, we found some good frozen vegetables at Costco. This is nice only because the combination includes broccoli and cauliflower, two vegetables we either can't find or refuse to eat (cauliflower = nowhere to be found, broccoli = tastes like the smell of new tires mixed with moldy navel oranges). We eat lots of zucchini and I think I may have found beets the other day which could be interesting. I've been craving a chocolate beet cake.

Anyway. I have to go... you know, do something. Like I usually do.

- catie

Catie: Our new old house.

2010-01-03T21:56:00.000-08:00

Since, for so long, we didn't expect to be staying here, we did some improving, but not all that much. We cleaned really well and got a few small things to make stuff better, but no real furniture or anything very permanent.

However, since we've decided to stay here, we've been doing quite a bit and this place now feels better than ever.

I think I talked about it a long time ago, I don't remember, but we didn't have anything set up to take "Western" showers. Korean shower heads are, mainly, these white, plastic, only slightly curved things. So, although most bathrooms do have a little wall socket thing that you can put your shower head in, the thing is almost flat, so all you're doing when you turn the water on is spraying the opposite wall.

I'll take a picture to better explain once I've cleaned the house.

Really, I should just clean the house and take a picture and hope that everyone assumes our house is always so beautiful.

So, anyway, we got this awesome suction cuppy thing.

Everything that goes in a bathroom in Korea incorporates a suction cup somehow. Because all the walls and floors are tile, so they'll stick to anything.

It's got a suction cup at the base, then a bendy, metal tube (a bit like the shower hose you'd see on a detachable shower head) with a socket in it. So, you can stick the dumb, flat shower head in the socket and then bend the tube to actually point *downward*.

It's pretty much like a miracle.

And it's so much less cold when you don't have to set down the shower head every 30 seconds.

After that, we went a got a bunch of little things like some more pot holders, some little shelves to go in our cabinets to create more space, a suction cuppy device that sticks to our kitchen sink and holds my green scrubby thing (so much less gross this way), and a bunch of baskets, which are my best friends -- all of them.

Korea has the cheapest baskets of life. Or maybe it's just me... Anyway, I can go down to either the dollar store (a store close to our house) or the dollar place (a section of LotteMart), or even DreamMart and get all kinds of crazy baskets for, like 1,000 - 3,000 a piece. They are my organizational staple.

For instance, when you don't have much room in your cabinets -- or many cabinets, for that matter -- you don't get to designate one cabinet per type/category of thing. So, all these things just get shoved in with each other and then when you want a packet of taco seasoning, it's 16 inches above your head, behind and underneath seventy-hundred (a very precise number) very heavy cans of food that hurt when they fall on your head.

However, if you have a basket for these packets, all you have to do is pull the basket down.

All our lock n locks are in a basket, all our beans, pasta and rice are in one basket, all our fresh produce is in a basket, even all our clothes are in separate baskets because we don't have a second wardrobe yet.

Baskets are awesome.

After all that, our computer broke :(. Something happened with the charger cord thing and it wouldn't charge anymore. We did despair, momentarily, until we told Bryan about it and he said he would take us to TechnoWorld.

Do you like how everything here is either a land, a world, or a galleria? Because I do. A lot. Or, if it's not that cool, it's probably just a mart. Lots of things, like TimeWorld Galleria Department Store are multiple things, including a department store (although TimeWorld is actually a three building, twelve story mall and not a department store... that distinction got lost, I think).

It took us about five minutes at TechnoWorld to find what we were looking for from a man who sold us (after some impassioned haggling) a cord for about 33.00US. Not a bad deal. It was 10.00 on Amazon, but shipping to Korea is not good and usually costs more than the item you need shipped. Plus, we didn't have two wait seventy-hundred weeks for it to arrive.

THEN Bryan took us to this older part of town where everyone sells used furniture. It is awesome. And he took us to this back alley place that looked like... nothing, really, where we knocked on a giant sliding metal door and this guy took up a huge freight elevator to the second floor full of couches and big chairs.

We wanted to look around the area, so Bryan ended up dropping us off and we wandered for a while, but eventually went back to Mr. Freight Elevator and got a "sopa", with two chairs for not a bad deal at all. Then we got two nightstands and a space heater that looks exactly like a fan, but with no blades. It is the best everrrr.

Mr. Freight Elevator got a little concerned when we explained to him, via one word sentences, that we were planning to take the "bussuh" (bus) home and he thought for a minute, then asked if we wanted coffee.

We were confused, and it's always better to say yes, so we did and had some coffee. By the time we were done, he had loaded all our stuff into the back of his truck and then it became obvious that he wanted to load us in next.

Knowing a good thing when we saw it, we hopped in and gave him our address and, without needing any directions (and we live in a weird area and have to give taxi drivers pretty detailed directions), we arrived directly outside our door soon after. He helped us carry it all upstairs and then he was gone.

Very nice man.

And now we have a couch and two big chairs, plus two nightstands and a WARM space heater. They are not cute (think: Dentist's waiting room from the mid nineties+some irridescent qualities), but they are pretty comfortable by Korean standards and they're not fake leather, which most couches are here. It's probably due to the mold and the fact that slippery couches wipe down better and, perhaps, last longer. But they're also FREEZING in winter and sticky (thus, slippery) in summer.

It's real nice to have somewhere to sit besides the bed and our two kitchen chairs.

THENNN...

Last night, we were walking home from the bus after Starbucks -- the weekend ritual -- and there was a pile of furniture outside our building at our trash pick-up place. Most of it was lame, but there have been two big things on our (now much shorter) wish list of furniture and they had both appeared outside our house! A bookshelf and a dining room table that doesn't turn you, your friends, appliances and linens all grey. Not to mention how it ruined my bread.............

They were dirty, but with some magic erasing (I love magic erasers!) and a lot of scrubbing, they are good as now and, suddenly, we have a fully furnished apartment!

It's a little bit miraculous since, on Friday, we had nothing.

So, things are looking good here and I do plan to take some pictures of our new little domecile as soon as it's clean -- which should be ASAP.

Cross your fingers.

- catie

Catie: The uhh... UnMove. Yes, you heard me.

2009-12-29T04:56:00.000-08:00

Are we bitter?

Well, perhaps.

Angry?

Not as angry as we were...

I think the question we just keep asking ourselves is, WHY DID WE LISTEN TO EWHA???

In early October, we told Ewha we would need to move. Our place had mold, was filthy and filled with cockroaches, gross long hairs, and grime from centuries of uncleanliness.

"Oh, yes," Ewha said. "We will move you. We will find somewhere and we will move you."

Later, in November, we said to them, "When are you going to move us, Ewha?" and they said, "We will move you."

Later, in early December, we said to them, "WHEN are you going to move us?" and then they said, "Alex teacher will be leaving after Christmas and we think that you can move into his apartment when he gone. It is very new and nice."

We said, "Great. Will this apartment be clean?"

"Oh, certainly," said Ewha. "We will have a lady go to clean it after Alex leaves."

"Good," we said. "Will we have time to move there before someone comes into our apartment? We want at least one full day to move."

"Oh, certainly," said Ewha.

"Good," we said.

Christmas Eve was Alex teacher's last day at Ewha, part of the reason we went out to the spring roll restaurant. Everyone from the school was there.

Here is a quick chain of command:

Mr. Min owns Ewha and is the Big Boss.

Bruce is the under-Mr. Min boss.

Nicole is the head teacher.

Then there are seven other Korean teachers: Paul is the detention teacher (what a cushy job, right?), Ken and Jane are "desk teachers", which means they sit at the front desk and you can scare kids by saying you'll send them to, "desk teacher". Landon (the best English speaker at Ewha), Alisha, Amanda and Jessi are all classroom teachers. They teach Grammar and other things it would be difficult to explain without a fluency in Korean.

And, after that, the foreign teachers: Bryan and Aaron are brothers from Colorado, Alex is from.. actually no one is sure where he is from... no one ever asked, nor would he probably have told anyone had they asked as he tended toward paranoia, then there is Spencer who came to replace Alex because Alex left yesterday, on Monday. Spencer is from England and pretty much everyone is in love with his accent. He's maybe the most normal person at Ewha. Very, very nice and, you know.. just normal.

Anyway, while eating dinner, Bruce told us that Alex would be moving out Monday morning.

"So, when would you like to move to Alex's apartment?" he asked us.

"How about we start on Tuesday?" we said.

"That is good," said Bruce. "Also, perhaps Alex will leave you many things in his apartment."

"Okay..." Great. Just great.

That's when Alex piped up in his affected deep voice, "I'll leave you all my good books," he said.

"Uh, thanks," we said. Too bad you have a cold sore on either side of your mouth, a seriously bloody looking case of conjunctivitis and you wear the same clothes for a week before you switch them out. Not to the mention the graphic stories you've told of your, paid "conquests" in Itaewon, Seoul. Fill in the blanks there.

"He has gotten many things while he has been in Korea," Bruce said. "So, perhaps he will leave them for you. Then, if you will leave many things for Spencer. That would be good, I think."

"Actually," Alex said, leaning into the conversation now. "I haven't really accumulated much." Then he sort of stroked his creepy facial hair. "Except a ton of memories," he said wistfully and leaned back again, half mumbling, "Man, I always have a headache until I start drinking soju, then it just goes away..."

Yeah, isn't that called alcoholism?

"He has many dishes, though, I think," Bruce said, looking at Alex, probably hoping he would take back the, 'I've accumulated nothing but memories,' comment. Bruce basically wanted us to leave everything for Spencer.

"Um..." we said. "All right..."

"So," Bruce said, "You should leave these things for Spencer."

"Our dishes?"

"Anything you have gotten in Korea," Bruce said.

Right. How about... no.

But you quickly come to find here, that it is best to play along, plus Bruce had done a good many shots of soju by this time.

"Yeah, okay," we said. "We'll see."

"Also, Alex has said he will clean the apartment."

What?

Alex sort of nods through his soju haze. "Yeah, I'll totally clean it for you guys."

Yeah. I seriously doubt that an alcoholics take on clean is going to jive with my take on clean...

"Okay..." we said. "Is someone else coming to clean, too?"

"I think we will see after Alex leaves," Bruce said.

Oh. My. Gosh.

But we dropped it there, thinking that we'd have time to deal with this. No one had said anything about Spencer moving in soon, so we had time to deal with this. Christmas Eve was Thursday, we could talk to them on Monday, once Alex was gone.

So, Monday rolls around, and Alex has left us keys to his, "apertment" (yes, that's A-P-E-R-T-M-E-N-T) along with a note about security codes.

Yes, he taught English for a year. Korea picks only the best for their children.

The funny thing is, that Ewha is actually considered one of the best hagwons. It's very expensive, and considered somewhat prestigious.

Still, there's an Alex there.

"But his voice is so beautiful," the Koreans say.

Yeah.. his voice isn't actually his voice. He makes it deeper on purpose. And.. it's obvious.

Anyway, it's Monday and Ben goes to work, I pack up the entire house, cleaning everything, Aaron brings Spencer over to see the apartment. Everything seems to be going according to plan. Spencer is very nice and Aaron says nice things to him about how clean our house usually is. I tell Spencer it will be clean when he gets here, not to worry. I know he only believes me inasmuch as anyone believes the tenant moving out who says they'll clean for you, but I really am cleaning for him. I was doing it before they arrived. They leave, seemingly happy with our place.

"It's WAY nicer than before," Aaron said to Spencer on the way out. "So much cleaner."

Then Ben comes home.

And he is not as happy as Aaron and Spencer.

He went to look at Alex's place on his lunch break and also had a revealing talk with Bruce, who let him know that Spencer would be moving into our place that night: Monday night.

So... not only are we not ready to move, since we're thinking we don't have to be out until Tuesday night, now we're basically supposed to have been out by Monday morning because Spencer brought all his belongings with him to Ewha.

In fact, he was told that he could sleep in our house -- in our bed -- Monday night.

Right. Thanks for telling us THIS IMPORTANT PIECE OF INFORMATION!!

For a while, we're thinking, okay, maybe this is just the Korean way. We already know they don't think about things until last-minute. By American standards, they're disorganized. That's culture more than anything else.

But then we realize that even when things happen last-minute, they always let people know in advance. Often, "in advance" is only one day. Occasionally even several hours, but always in advance.

This is no advance.

So, suddenly, we're realizing that, no, this is not the Korean way, nor is it the American way and we're beginning to become irritated.

But, Ben goes on and tells me he has talked with Bruce and Spencer, we will move Monday night -- immediately -- and Spencer will stay in a hotel for the night and move in Tuesday morning.

THEN.. Ben starts telling me about Alex's apartment. Filthy, he says. That is the adjective that is used over and over. Filthy, filthy, filthy. Alex left pretty much everything he owns, which.. had Alex been a normal person, that would have been nice -- we'll get to that. Ben tells me he didn't have that much time to look around, all he knows is that it's dirty.

Still, I'm thinking: but the floors in Alex's apartment are real laminate floors, not paper-thin linoleum that's not been glued down. And: Alex's apartment has a lot of room.... And: the kitchen is so much bigger.........

So, we pack the car up, drive to the Alex "apertment" and start unloading.

It is 10:00pm when we enter the apartment.

And I am having a nightmare. This has to be a nightmare because this is not the home of a normal person.

Well, that's just duh... Alex was never normal. He told us he wouldn't treat his conjunctivitis because "antibiotics don't really work". Three kids that Ben and I know of then caught the pink eye. It's the only time in my life that I've religiously washed my hands every hour or two.

So, we shouldn't have expected miracles.

But this is... this is miraculous in a bad way.

It's miraculous that filth like exists.

And I am angry. I am not sad, I do not feel anything except the severe urge to bash someone or throw something at someone or scream at someone. The main someone is Bruce, but I'd settle for Alex if he were in country.

How to even describe Alex's apartment...

He has left in the entryway: two pairs of disintegrated shoes, a dirty umbrella and the filthy, stained leather jacket we most hate that he wore every single day. As well as a bowl of change (okay, that's not terrible) and a bunch of weird books in the shoe cabinet next to the door. Dirty cleaning items occupy the utility cabinet. A broom, a mop, a scrub brush, all covered in black grime and hair.

The floors -- the floors I want, the nice, laminate floors -- are covered in dirt. How anyone could track that much dirt into a house is beyond my ability to comprehend.

And the kitchen. The two burner, gas stove is near identical to ours, but instead of looking shiny and well-loved, it has a thick, impenetrable glaze of grease over its entire horizontal surface. As well as over the entire cabinet above the stove and the one below it and everything surrounding the stove within ten inches. It is yellow -- I mean, everything in the vicinity is yellow -- with grease.

Every cabinet door has black fingerprint smudges on and around the handle as though whoever had touched them had never washed their hands. As though, perhaps, they were unaware of hand-washing as a common, human practice. As though, perhaps, this person were a cave person. Or a Tarzan. Or an abandoned child raised by wolves (that could actually be true of Alex...). The fridge and freezer were the same, black and brown fingerprints over it's entire surface. And slimy inside with red, green and yellow goo. There were dishes. He did leave us dishes. They were plastic and had Peter Rabbit on them.

And they were in the sink.

Covered in dried food and another layer of yellow grease.

Alex left us blocks of freeze-dried seaweed, Korean off-brand ketchup (don't try it), and a bunch of bowl noodles, as well as a zillion empty water bottles and wine bottles, stacked two and three deep in a windowsill above our heads.

The bathroom has a broken toilet seat on the ground, surrounded by probably every empty toilet paper roll he'd ever used. The toilet was black inside, the washing machine in the bathroom that should have been navy blue was grey with hard water. The walls near the floor that should have been off-white, were a rusty brown with.. heaven only knows. And the floor drain was just ugly.

Then there was the hair. So much hair.

He left us a bunch of books on sex and a bunch of books on Korea.

Yeah.. apparently those are his good books, the ones he told us he'd leave.

They makes sense in context, though, as those two topics basically surmise his one and only hobby. Which is probably the main reason no one ever befriended him. He didn't/wouldn't/couldn't talk about anything else.

It could also be why he left a strategically placed pair of earrings right on top of the books. As if to say, "See? All those things I told you really happened."

I was really okay hoping all those things he told us were lies. I was really okay in that world.

He left a sweater, a flannel shirt and one black sock in the wardrobe. A pile of dead light bulbs. An exercise ball.

Oh! But he did make his bed. His cozy bed with greyed blankets and yellowed pillows. His nice bed.

His teeny, tiny bed.

That was when I lost it.

It took me ages to clean the house we're in right now. Ages. It is finally beginning to feel like someone normal actually lives here. We've fixed things that were broken, kept up with maintenance. I am finally used to OUR bed. It is also small, and hard. Real hard. But I am used to it now. And at least it's not THIS small.

Then we walk into Alex's place and it's like somebody really mean is playing a trick.

Stunned, we carried everything from the car, up the stairs. Flights upon flights, up to the sixth floor, making probably six to seven trips. All I could think the whole time was, A.) Who lives like this?! and B.) I can't move here. I cannot clean another house full of other people's dirty grossness.

Usually, in a situation like this, one of us -- Ben or I -- rises to the occasion. One of us thinks about it and comes up with a nice, bright side of things and says, "We can do it like this," and the other person grudgingly goes along and then we do it like that we feel better. This time was not like that. There was no silver lining and no way to do it that would make us feel better. This was like the wall of Jericho only we had no horns.

I the inability to even find one nice thing to say made it much worse.

We drove back to our clean, bright and happy home. Moldy in places, maybe, but loved, yes. This also made it worse. Thinking that tonight was our last night in paradise...

Who knew this place would ever feel like paradise.

And we started packing the car again.

Two or three trips in, I came inside and collapsed on our warm, queen-sized bed.

I did not want to move to Alex's.

Suddenly, our sad little apartment in the old part of town with a filthy outside walk-up, whose front gutter often smells of raw sewage, seemed like the only place in the world I actually wanted to be.

When Ben came in to get another load, I asked if we could Skype Bryan.

"Why?"

"Because he might call have Nicole's number."

"We can't call her this late."

"Oh, we can. Korean's don't sleep."

"Why do you want to call her? She can't do anything this late at night."

"I want to tell her we're not moving. I'm not going there. It is disgusting and they told us it would clean and they told us we'd have time to move and it is midnight on Monday and we just walked up and down six flights of stairs a thousand times. I like it here and I like this bed and I am staying here."

"I have her number somewhere..."

So, we called her and she couldn't understand us and then we called her back and she still couldn't understand us (language barrier+Skype+bad wifi="phone is no work"), so we said we'd email her, which we did, letting her know in no uncertain terms that everything was very bad and we could not move there, very sorry, but we would stay in the apartment we were in until our contract was up and that was fine, thank you.

Then we emailed Spencer, told him there were complications with the apartment and that he wouldn't be able to move in Tuesday morning, really sorry, we'll get back to you, etc...

And we unloaded the car.

And we went back to Alex's place and reloaded the car. Up and down six flights of stairs.

And came back home and unloaded the car.

By 1:00am, we were finally done undoing everything. It was exhausting, but we got to sleep in our own bed.

And Nicole came by this morning to tell us we could stay here, that was fine, she was sorry things were so bad at Alex's and we said it was okay, as long as we could stay here, it was all fine. We just weren't walking into another terrible disaster and thank you so much for understanding.

So, now we are moving back into our own house. Everything is packed and has to be put away again.

But I got to deep clean most everything as I packed it, so we're putting things away into a clean house. That's nice.

And we get to stay here.

I think we both realized that we should have just said we'd stay here a long time ago. I don't think I really wanted to move, even though I thought I did, because once we decided to stay, I was relieved on more than one level.

I like it here. Grimy, creepy-linoleum-ed, cement brick house that it is.

It does get tons of good, natural light all day long as there are windows on all sides.

Plus, it's clean.

.....I feel pretty bad for Spencer. But I told him I would help him clean Alex's apartment and I will as long as I don't have to live there. :/ And I told him I would make him a pot roast (which is apparently food of legend and now that I've made it once no one will stop talking about it specifically and then: how amazing, you can make REAL food in Korea!).

I guess he went and saw it and said that Ewha was going to have pay someone to clean it before he'd touch the place and he also didn't know what sort of person lived like that.

I would have told him that lots of people do, apparently, since we cleaned a house like that in Boise last winter and then the one we're in now also.

So, ambiguous end for Spencer, who will hopefully still want to carry on amiable relations with us.

But HAPPY ending for us!

Plus, now Bruce can't try to persuade me to, "leave everything we have gotten in Korea" behind for Spencer.

And I am making chicken with potatoes and carrots and onion soup mix in the crockpot.

So glad I brought the onion soup mix with us. That and the dry ranch have really paid off. Bryan and Aaron were super impressed at Christmas that we had real ranch. They wanted to know where we got it and I told them I made it. It's the only flavor dressing you can't find anywhere here.

Well, that's the update on us. Hope all is well with everyone else! :)

- catie

Catie: Finally, a new post.

2009-12-28T20:52:00.000-08:00

So much has happened!

I will give you a brief overview and then focus on what is really important: our move.

Since we last posted:

- We discovered Old Downtown on a trip to Costco. Usually, we take a bus and then the subway, but we didn't want to have to walk to the subway (actually, I didn't want to.. :D), so that day we took two buses instead. The first bus, number 2, dropped us right in the middle of Old Downtown.

Old Downtown is crazy. We had been there once before, to get to the International Center, but we'd never gone exploring. There is a huge, underground shopping center. Yes, underground. It's cool, basically a long subway tunnel with shops on either side. It stops at the river and then starts up again on the other side. It spans maybe... half a mile? That's an uneducated guess. There's also a huge, traditional market.

On the day we really went to explore, it was snowing tons. Tons and tons of tons. So, it was freezing-freezing, but it was really fun to walk through the outdoor market in the snow. Most areas are either covered, or vendors shelters overlap one another enough that you're basically covered. Some Koreans carry umbrellas in the snow. The traditional market sells (of course) mandarins and navel oranges, persimmons, lots of beans and grains, vegetables, fresh eggs, a lot of various street food, dead fish, live fish as well as lots of other live sea food like king crabs, oysters, clams, lots of squid, sting ray is popular, also dried fish, prawns and shrimp in various forms. Basically, they sell everything in the world, mostly food. Like our traditional market, only huger.

For dinner, there's this sort of square type place -- by square I mean something like a "village square" -- that was crazy-decorated. We're not sure if it was just for Christmas, but it was nuts. There are these huge, white metal arches all along the length of it -- it's more of a rectangular.. square -- with scrolling all in them and lights all over them. First, in the spirit of starving, we got our first Korean waffle. You see these waffles everywhere. Koreans consider waffles to be desert, so they're often served with ice cream and other sweet toppings. They're all Belgian waffles, thick and airy. They're also delicious. Most street vendors sell a single waffle for W1,000, and spread some sort of honey/jam on one side, and a sweet kind of cross between butter and whipping cream on the other side. I've never had any sort of cream like it and I assume it's at least partially non-dairy, but it is yummy. We've had several waffles since and I like Korean waffles. Next, we found a place selling wraps. They're a little gyros and places that have these spits, like gyro places in America have. You know, with the legs of lamb, turning around and around and they carve off pieces as it turns. Only... here, they're piles chicken and chicken upon chicken, layered with pieces of chicken fat, onto the spit in the shape of a leg of lamb. Then, as though it were a leg of lamb, they carve it as it spins and the pieces fall into tiny bits instead of slices. But I am not complaining. This was the best wrap of it's sort that I have ever had. I know I've said it before, but I will say it again. They take a really thin tortilla (I think it's the same kind we buy at Costco -- there's so many small businesses, I think a lot of them actually shop at Costco), put a plain, white, "yogurt sauce" on it (which may actually be straight up yogurt), then a mixture of shredded vegetables, mostly green cabbage, with some red cabbage, carrots and sometimes lettuce, then sliced yellow onions, and tomatoes. They put the "lamb" chicken on top of that and then what I think is honey mustard (Koreans only really eat honey mustard, it seems like) and the most delicious spicy, red sauce I have ever tasted. I could eat it with a spoon. Have I said how I'm becoming accustomed to the spice in things? Because I am and I love it.

We ate the wrap.

And then we found the coolest thing we've found yet in the history of street food. It was a whole potato (they're tiny here), spiral cut pretty thin, stretched out long on a wooden skewer and fried. It was like really thick potato chips. When you buy it (for W1,000, like all street food - cheap), they roll it in a lightly sweet, seasoned salt. It is yum. You would like it.

So, Old Downtown in fun. It is very, very loud. There are tons of shops. There's a North Face and other familiar brands like Unionbay have stores. There's a Baskin Robbins, an Outback Steakhouse, a Pizza Hut, seventy-three million 7 Elevens, and a Starbucks, too. Plus other places I can't remember.

Also, a yarn store! But, I think it pretty much turns out that all yarn stores in Korea are about the same. So, while it was fun to find another one, I don't think, in the end, I really need one. That makes three that I've found, though! Plus, one tiny fabric kiosk I found in our dong.

Moving forward.

- We got a membership at the International Lending Library. To do so, we had to donate four paperback books (or three hardbacks -- who buys hardbacks?) and bring in our alien registration card (like a green card). Ben had run out of things to read -- completely run out, he ran through his newest batch of New Yorkers and other magazines like a wood chipper with shavings coming off the sides! -- so I took the bus down there one afternoon and got a membership. The problem, then, was picking out books he'd actually like, but thankfully, you can only get two books at a time per membership. We only get to keep them two weeks, too, but there are only 2,000 books in the whole library, so it makes sense. So, Ben is now rereading the full Lord of the Rings trilogy as well as some political book called Terror and Consent. Sounds so light and fun! It's nice to have the membership, and we've figured out that it's much faster to get there by taking the bus to the subway and the subway to the Int'l Center than by just taking the number 2 bus. Number 2 takes well over an hour. It's good for him to have books.

- Christmas Eve was spent with Ben's co-workers at a Korean spring roll restaurant. It was so good. I can't even tell you how good. There is some Korean food that I may not even be able to live without when we come home.

Okay, so here's how it worked.

Korean meals, like Chinese meals, are very communal. There are a bazillion side dishes and, depending on the size of your group, there may be multiple bowls, but usually no more than one per three people. So, in the middles of the tables, there were grills (most restaurants have some form of either grill or pot in the middle of the table), with pots sunk in the middle and then in the front and in the back, there were these little metal tins of warm, red water. Then, each person had a little set of dipping sauces and everyone shared piles of round, rice paper and several giant platters of shredded vegetables, including: red and green cabbage, two kinds of bean sprouts, seaweed, turnip, zucchini, carrots, a leafy green that tastes a bit like.. mint? It's everywhere. And other ones I can't remember. Then, the waitresses bring you platters of meat, some of which they arrange on the grills, and some of which they plop into the pot of hot salt water brine/broth that makes up the base of any and all Korean soup pots. They cut the boiling meat so thin that it cooks in a matter of seconds and the grilling meat cooks pretty fast too, with yummy dark grill marks.

So, what you do is you take a piece of crispy-hard rice paper with your chopsticks and drop it in the red water then immediately take it back out and lay it on your plate. It won't be soft then, but it will get soft on your plate while you pile vegetables onto it. Plus, the red water makes it pink, so it's so cute. You do want to make sure you get it out while it's still hard, though, or you'll be trying to peel apart this slimy piece of pink rubber. Like peeling apart plastic wrap, only worse. Then, you grab vegetables and meat (we had bulgogi [beef], duck sausage, and a very ham-like pork, but uncured, of course) with your chopsticks and make a pile in the middle and you roll it up into a spring roll! YUM. You can dip it in the sauces you have. One was so, so good and sweet, but RED hot, another was red and sweet, but not hot, one was ginger wasabi (ick) and then there was a garlic, red pepper, sesame and onion infused oil and also another sauce, but I don't remember what kind. The red hot sauce and the not hot red sauce were the best. Ben liked the sauce I can't remember what it was.

It was the best meal ever.

Then we had kimchi.

And, a lot of the time, at the hot-pot type restaurants (one with a pot in the table), they will come at the end of your meal and mix some rice and vegetables in with your remaining broth. So, they did that, and mixed it until it was almost a rice porridge. It was pretty good, very oniony, though, like most things.

The most delicious meal I've had since we got here.

- Christmas Day, we had Brian and Aaron over. I made a pot roast with carrots and vegetables in our crock pot, gravy from the beef stock that came from the crock pot, a hashbrown casserole, a green bean casserole, and a lemon meringue pie and a chocolate cream pie. It was a big hit and the pot roast had been in the crock pot all day long, so it was SO yummy and tender. They don't have roasts here, but they do have chuck, the shoulder meat that chuck roast comes from, so I drew a picture of a cow, divided into cuts of meat like they have at butcher shops, and wrote out the Korean for chuck roast in the shoulder piece of the cow. The butcher got it right away and apparently, "chuck roast" in Korean is, "chuckaroasta", so....... I probably could just have said it. Although, "Costco" in Korean is "Costaco", and unless you add the extra syllable, they have no idea what you're talking about, so actually, I probably couldn't have just said it. Regardless, the chuckaroasta came in six.. basically steaks, instead of one piece. So, I tied them together with some string, and it worked like a charm. By the end, I didn't even really have to untie it, the meat was falling apart so much. It was SO good. I will do it again. That was Christmas.

- And yesterday, we moved. But this post is really long. So, I'll talk about the move in another post.

I need to take more pictures, too, I don't have anything to show for any of this!

We hope everyone's holidays are going well!

- catie

Catie: Korean Apples and the fall.

2009-12-07T03:20:00.000-08:00

Have I said how much I like Korean apples?

In America, I get so confused with all the apples types. I just try to remember that I like Honeycrisps and Jonagolds the best, although on NPR I just heard that Honeycrisps are considered an eyesore by, "Apple Experts". I still like them.

In Korea, there is just the apple. It looks like a Fuji or Gala, but it tastes SO good. They're new apples (duh, it's apple season), so they are crisp and happy and ripe and I just keep EATING them.

I do not have a picture of The Korean Apple because, well, I have now eaten them all. But really, apple pictures are boring anyhow.

The Korean Apple is not good for applesauce, pies, or any kind of baking. It is only good to eat raw. We've been putting them in with our tuna salad sandwiches a lot and, when we are rich enough again (WEDNESDAY!) to afford chicken, we will put them in with our chicken salad sandwiches - the rich man's tuna.

A lot of Korean produce is seasonal, so I am very afraid these apples will go away, which is why I keep eating and eating them.

Speaking of seasonal, all the leaves have now fallen. They were so cute coming down, too, because so many trees here are Ginkgo and Japanese Maple. The Ginkgos turn bright yellow and the Japanese Maples have sweet, tiny red maple leaves.

Before they all fell, I took some pictures.

[caption id="attachment_386" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Some (male) gingkos -- no sticky fruit droppings here, but a lot in our dong from female trees."][/caption]

They may be blurry, we were walking and it was cold and windy, so there was some shivering happening.

[caption id="attachment_387" align="alignright" width="225" caption="One of the giant highrise apartment buildings that the entire middle class is housed in."][/caption]

The giant highrises are interesting. Not only are they very.. you know, high, but they are considered high status, too. These ones are probably upper middle class. They're in the downtown area, very close to our HomePlus. If you want to be considered middle class or above, you have to somehow manage to live in one of these... things. And they're not cheap. We hear they're gigantic, though.

Down there is a mandarin orange man's truck. He's not our mandarin man. Our mandarin man doesn't have a truck, he just sells mandarins and persimmons right next to our bank. Everything you buy on the street here is bought in large quantities, so to buy mandarins off the street, you have to get a big bag of them. But these are only W3,000.

[caption id="attachment_388" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="A mandarin man."][/caption]

Let me just tell you, the mandarins here are like the apples, to. die. for. I can sit down and eat five to six in a matter of minutes. The problem is we always buy so many at once and the window of delicious-ness is so small, that the last bits of them often gets way too ripe to be good anymore.

At their peak, though, you have never tasted a better mandarin orange. Throughout the fall, everyone's been eating them. Everywhere we go, there are mandarin skins on the ground.

[caption id="attachment_389" align="alignright" width="300" caption="A lot of street vendors have blue trucks like these."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_392" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="So pensive."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_393" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The lovely male ginkgo."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_394" align="alignleft" width="224" caption="A typical big street in Daejeon: trees and a red, astro-turf walking/biking path."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_395" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The Quakers have come to Daejeon!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_396" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Plastic Island. Is that happens when we litter at the beach?"][/caption]

That's all from our walk. Actually, there's more than that, but I'm not sure where the memory card is. Have I posted our photo of Tomato Savings Bank yet?

And now I have to go and buy some, "pizza cheese", known in all other parts of the world as, "mozzarella". Even we don't say, "mozzarella" anymore though, only pizza cheese.

Brian and Aaron like to call it, "fake cheese", which I don't understand since it really is cheese... but they seem to think it's fake.

Anyway, off to find pizza cheese, dry the dishes and make dinner.

Tomorrow, I teach at Ewha. SCARY.

- catie

Ben: Winter Reading

2009-12-06T22:44:00.000-08:00

I've always liked cold weather because it makes me feel like reading (even more so than during other seasons). I've gone on a little reading bender over the past two weeks

Ben: Ugh! Have Energy!

2009-12-05T23:49:00.000-08:00

Working in an English Academy, I am constantly struck by the fact that what the kids really seem to be learning is advanced Kongrish. Which is understand, since English is a hard language for anyone to learn. Understanding aside however, here are some of my favorite abuses of the English language:

Very very very very/Many much

When my kids want to emphasize that there is much more than one of something, they tend to tack on a few extra "verys." For example, "Teacher very very very very very much homeworks," is something I hear over and over. No matter how many times I cross out the extra verys they just keep coming back. Another phrase they use in in the same way is "many much." As in, "We have many much homeworks," or "This class is many much long."

Funny

The word "funny"

Catie: I don't know, maybe everything, I guess.

2009-12-05T07:44:00.000-08:00

[caption id="attachment_375" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Do you like my illustration? ..............i think i might stick to knitting as a pastime."][/caption]

Taco soup = pretty delicious.

I combined a couple recipes to make it. One for a tortilla soup and one for a chicken taco soup, and it turned out nice, containing:

One can each:

Diced tomatoes

Tomato paste

Corn

and..

1 c. black beans/pinto beans mixed (approx.)

3 cloves garlic, minced (no granulated garlic yet - I actually bought some, "garlic powder" that was, well, garlic powder. Literally powder. I'm afraid to use it in much of anything and since garlic practically comes out everyone's ears -- or out their pores, at least -- I just use the fresh stuff mostly)

One quarter of a yellow onion I had in the fridge

1/2 a chicken cooked for stock and picked clean

1 teaspoon each:

Rosemary

Thyme

Basil

a bunch of chili powder (yay, mom!), maybe 2-3 tablespoons

a bunch of cumin (I'd never realized that cumin is what makes tacos smell like tacos and it's what makes them TASTE like tacos, too, it's delicious!)

and probably other stuff I forgot.

We topped it with cheese, sour cream and crunched up tortilla chips, a delicacy that is neither difficult to find, nor very delicate. The things are as tough as beef jerky and I don't know who that Indian is on the bag, but what's a Native American doing on my tortilla chips?

Mmhm.

I think the main problem is that you'll find tortilla chips at every grocery store (for nearly 6,000W), but I could swear not a single Korean has a clue what to do with them. Must be just for us.

But if they are just for us... why doesn't anybody ask us which kind we like?

Democratic country.... psh. I don't think so!

In other news.

MY PIE GREW! It was like the miracle of the previous miraculous pie dough was visited upon my chicken pot pie dough!

Only, when your pie crust grows -- and I mean literally, GROWS -- it's less exciting and more frustrating! Although, maybe that's only true of me, the ever visual cook, who likes everything to look pretty as well as taste good.

I even cut hearts out in it! Trust me, this pie was freakin' cute before the miracle of the dud dough was visited upon its tender flesh.

[caption id="attachment_368" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Some miracle. Hmph."][/caption]

As you can see, it is swollen, lumpy, and shapeless.

However..... did it taste delicious!!

It was SO yummy and SO flaky and delicious! Sort of like eating a pot pie made of filo dough or.. or like a croissant filled with pot pie.

YUM.

Aaron got real sick this week and came home with Ben one night to borrow some of our Nyquil (correction: Fake-quil from Wal-Mart) and I sent him home with a piece of chicken pot pie.

The next day, I went into Ewha to shadow his classes and the first thing he said was, "That pot pie was DELICIOUS."

The next thing that was said was from Brian, who shouted. And then was very angry the rest of the day that he had not also received pie.

[caption id="attachment_370" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Looks like mush, but it was nice."][/caption]

I told him he'd have to get sick first.

He said he had been sick just the week before.

I said he hadn't come to my door looking sad and pathetic.

He said he had to go back to America and then he left.

And now he's in Portland and we're ALL jealous and it's like he did it JUST because I didn't give him any pot pie!

And I guess he didn't.

But it's like he did.

That is the middle and I didn't realize that all a chicken pot pie is made up of is crust, chicken, vegetables and chicken gravy. They're SO easy to make!

And with all the chicken stock I cooked up, I will have many more opportunities.

On allrecipes.com (which is a nice website but has been infiltrated with a lot of, "easy" and "modern" cooking that's sometimes irritating), all the pot pie recipes called for 'cream of' soups (cream of chicken, cream of mushroom). I knew people made pot pies before cream ofs came in cans, so I kept looking for the real thing, and finally found it.

Chicken gravy is ridiculously fast and easy, too. Practically as fast and easy as opening a can. So, it was worth it.

[caption id="attachment_371" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Brand new sockies!"][/caption]

Beyond chicken pot pie -- hard, I know, who wants to move beyond a MIRACULOUS (some would even saying HEALING) chicken pot pie? -- we have knitting.

Almost as exciting.

These are Ben's new socks.

They were knit with GOLF Print, another Italian brand from.. Filatura di Grignasco. It's 70% virgin wool (I don't understand what the "virgin" is for except maybe that it comes from sheep who've been shorn for the first time?), 30% acrylic (not virgin).

It was fine to work with, I guess. Although, last week, at our new favorite Starbucks, I got really excited about turning the heel of the second sock and -- somewhat hyped up on half a grande caramel macchiato (a drink I never drank until I quit Sbux) -- my hands got real sweaty and the yarn got a little squeaky with acrylic which was gross. I hate, hate, hate squeaky yarn. I'm hope that they won't be too sweaty, but it's the only sock-ish yarn I've come across here at all, so I compromised all my values. An action I may later be struck down for by the mighty hand of.. natural consequence?

Also knitting the following:

A wrap inspired by THIS one. There's a better picture of it at Ravelry, which is the one I chose my cables based upon, but you can't get into Ravelry without an account, which is cumbersome and on and on. Basically, I saw the scarf and then I found some similar cables and just, you know, cast on, knitted five inches, ripped the whole thing out, started over and now I'm to.. maybe six inches again? Maybe 7. I'm happy with it this time. I like the actual pattern's small cable better than the one I was able to scrounge up off the internet, but mine is okay, too and it's the actual scarf I like, so in the end it's all the same.

The dishcloth is my poor man's project.

Is that string, you ask?

Why, yes, it is.

At Good Morning Mart, right next to the counter, there are these hanks of white string. Since the very first time I saw them I have been thinking to myself that I wanted to knit something out that string.

I am not sure what it's meant for. My first guess was just for trussing poultry, but they don't have ovens here, really, and don't eat much meat either, especially chicken which is very expensive. So, I think it might be for threading (the thing where they pluck your eyebrows with twisted thread -- so confusing). It's right next to a bunch of other hygiene-type products.

Regardless.

Today we are poor enough that I bought the string (1,700W for a ton of it!), and, back at our new favorite Starbucks (where they served us simply terrible drinks! maybe next time...), I pulled it all apart, discovered it was two hanks looped into one, and wound one hank into a ball. A task that took ages.

The string is TINY. And when I say TINY in caps, what I really mean is tiny in tiny letters, but we don't have tiny letters.

I'm holding it double for better weight and knitting it on size 1 needles, which are pretty small, but it's turning out really nice. I like the more delicate texture and weight of the dishcloth as opposed to one knit out of the regular dishcloth, worsted weight cotton. It just feels so, you know, delicate.

And that's it. We need to watch Northern Exposure (our new faaave show -- well, mine anyway!) and probably go to sleep or something equally as LAME and unexciting.

WE MISS YOU!

- catie

Catie: Pumpkin pie and chicken stock.

2009-11-30T00:28:00.000-08:00

[caption id="attachment_358" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="pumpkin pie in the crousty."][/caption]

Here's our pie!

Between baking and then rapidly consuming the pie, I forgot to take any pictures of it out of the oven and actually baked, but there it is IN the oven.

It turned out surprisingly delicious.

I've made a lot of pies before, but never pumpkin (I avoid it when... well, when I'm not out of the country and desperate for ANY pie at all), so that was new in itself. It was easy, though.

I tried a, "Baking Powder Miracle Pie Dough" against my better judgement. It had the word, "miracle" in it! I had to see if it was really miraculous.

Turns out... not so much.

The pie crust I would make at home has half lard, half butter and is delicious and tender and nice.

The "miracle" crust was.. hard.

Not to mention gross and weird.

And so, in future, I will stick with MY recipe. Not miraculous ones.

I also found out the Crousty doesn't cook evenly at all. This is fine. I mean, already I'm asking too much of our poor Crousty toaster oven. I think I can manage to turn things halfway through. It's just good to know. And the pie was still good, just a little brown on one side.

Yay! Thank you, my mom, for the spices!

Tomorrow (Tuesday) and Wednesday, I'm shadowing Aaron at school to figure out how to do things when he leaves for the US (I don't envy that plane ride -- ugh). I was supposed to go today, but the school has just developed a "CNN" debate class that starts this term.

And, yes, apparently it is patterned after The CNN. Although, I guess they got weirded out when Aaron tried introducing debate to the debate class.

"Why do you not teach them from the book?" or something along those lines was said.

But why would you have a debate class and no debate?

Welcome to Korea!

Anyway, Aaron doesn't teach the CNN class on Mondays, so I'm waiting to go until Wednesday, when I'll get to see how the CNN class runs.

Since we'll both be gone and out of the house for two days, I am cooking lots of food today. Which is really relative, because, in Korea, you can't cook lots of food at once. There are only small pots, small pans, and small ovens.

In light of this, I'm making two dinners. A chicken pot pie (if all goes well) and chicken taco soup. Together, I think these will hold us over for lunches and dinners for two days.

The chicken taco soup calls for (of course) chicken broth. And I've seen Swanson chicken broth at the gourmet market in Dunsan-dong, but that is far away and I didn't feel like hopping a bus and braving the TimeWorld Galleria crowds today. We did it Saturday and again on Sunday (all three of our Starbucks are located within a block of TimeWorld Galleria), so I'm not feeling up to it again. I even tried to bribe myself with this delicious wrap they have there -- it's this tortilla filled with chicken, a red cabbage/green cabbage coleslaw type mix, onions, tomato, yogurt sauce, sweet, spicy red sauce and mustard and it is A-MAZING, if spicy -- but to no avail as that would only have made the trip more expensive and, therefore, less appealing.

So, I'm making my own chicken stock.

SCARY.

I've never made chicken stock. Plus, I thought I'd found celery at the store, but it turns out I didn't, it was just MORE of the giant green onions. They look so much alike.

What I wanna know is: HOW MANY ONIONS DOES ONE COUNTRY NEED?

Apparently, a lot.

So, it's celery-less. Hopefully that's fine. It'll have to be fine.

Turns out chicken stock is easy, so I doubt anything will go wrong.

In better food-finding news, I did find vinegar!

Actually, to give credit where credit is due, Ben found vinegar.

It was located, at Good Morning Mart, right below the corn syrup. Just where you'd hope to find vinegar. Along side something sickeningly sweet. Actually, maybe that's where it would be in America, I think it was just the language barrier that really got me. All English is in teeny, tiny letters at the bottoms of labels, so you don't immediately see it. Plus, I tend to get self conscious quickly as Korean grocery stores are full of over zealous, over helpful staff and when I stand too long in one spot, staring, I'm always afraid I'll be accosted in Korean by a nice lady in a yellow shirt and orange apron who doesn't know what, "I'm just looking," means, nor, "Where the heck is your vinegar?"

I need to learn Korean.

What's the Korean word for, "vinegar"?

I got it though. I'm not sure what kind of vinegar it is. I wanted distilled white. This is a little yellow, but it seemed like the most generic kind they had and it's perfectly fine as far as I can tell. Maybe it's.. distilled yellow vinegar.

The more I cook, the more I long for American grocery store shelves, with their predictable order, their aisle numbers, their helpful signs and familiar ingredients.

Still, the hunt is challenging, and that in itself is fun. Plus, I get to learn to make my own ingredients.

Like French's french fried onions, evaporated milk. And chicken stock.

Let you know how all this goes!

- catie

Ben: Pictures of School Part II

2009-11-25T21:06:00.000-08:00

[caption id="attachment_344" align="alignleft" width="294" caption="Sally Student"][/caption]

Here a couple more pictures of my students. I will get pictures of the other teachers soon (I just haven't had a chance yet). These pictures are of my two favorite classes. They are both 100 level writing classes (so the kids are between 10-13 years old). Here is Sally student, Rebecca's arm, and part of Anna's head. They are all in the Tuesday/Thursday 100D writing class. For most of the term Sally was the only student in the class. She is probably the funniest student at Ewha. She knows enough English to be goofy and silly and love to ham it up. For two weeks she insisted that there was another student in the classroom besides here and would only answer questions if I pointed to her after she raised her hand. She also wrote a paragraph about how I shouldn't give her homework and another about her best friend, whose name is "Imaginary Electronic Computer Dictionary Friend." She is also really bright, and even with two more students in the class, she is still the one who answers almost all the questions.

[caption id="attachment_345" align="alignright" width="294" caption="More Hangman"][/caption]

More hangman. The other thing about Korean hangman is that they don't always know how to spell the words they are having the other kids guess. So spaces will be erased or added halfway through the game and sometime the word will be entirely rewritten after 15 minutes have guessing has gone on. Also letters will sometimes be guessed, not written down, and than suddenly appear in the word. Despite all these problems, they still love it.

[caption id="attachment_346" align="alignleft" width="294" caption="Sally Stumping Rebecca and Anna"][/caption]

Here is my other awesome 100 Writing class. There are seven kids it in, and they are younger than most of the other 100 writing classes. They are also still super excited to at school learning, even though it is the third or fourth hagwon they have in addition to regular school. This is Harry, who is super smart and earnest, he got the "Best Student in Class" award that Ewha gives out, and he deserved it. The girl behind him is Lily, who is also egger to learn. Whenever I correct her homework she always demands to know what she did wrong and right (most students just want the teacher to sign off on it and not give them detention).

Lily and Harry wanted to me to take serious pictures of them. I took funnier pictures too, but they didn't turn out because I'm not very good at taking non-blurry pictures.

I know that my last post was a bit cynical, so hopefully you won't think that I can't stand any of my students. I really do have fun students and classes that are a blast. Even those classes in which I despair of the students ever learning anything are usually still fun to goof around with.

-Ben Teacher

Catie: Korean Pizza

2009-11-25T04:57:00.000-08:00

Korean pizza is really not that bad. Often a bit strange, but never so bad it's inedible. Just so long as you stay away from the type with the sweet potatoes and prawns. It's just not the same.

And really, nothing's the same as homemade pizza.

[caption id="attachment_335" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="PIZZA."][/caption]

And so, I have just put this little treasure into the oven. It has grilled onions (I don't like crunchy onions on pizza -- but I like grilled onions on everything!), orange bell pepper, mozzarella, cheddar, parmesan, a delicious slightly sweet Korean sausage I took a chance on, and the tomatoes on top. They're not as ripe as I'd like, but I didn't think cherry tomatoes would work as well in this instance. I was actually surprised by how soft and.. pink? the smaller tomatoes were today. I got three that were workable.

Hopefully it tastes good.

The jury's still out on that...

- catie

Catie: Speculoos?

2009-11-25T00:38:00.000-08:00

[caption id="attachment_327" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Speculaas."][/caption]

When we were kids, we used to eat these windmill cookies. Sometimes they were shaped like other things, but mostly windmills. So, that was what we called them, windmill cookies. They were fun because they are dry and crunchy, so you can nibble and eat them really slowly. Also they're windmills and they have holes in them. Cookies with holes are fun.

Now that I am very old and eat them less because of their shape and more for their taste (a little like gingerbread), I have learned to call them, "Speculaas", the Dutch name. It's a fun word to say.

But funner to EAT.

Today, I took the bus to LotteMart (it's like a 15 minute walk, but I get SO cold! And there isn't a bus stop on the other side of the street to take me home again, so I do have to walk back...) to get some whipping cream for the pumpkin pie I'll make tomorrow and a couple other things and I was walking down the cookie aisle to get to the registers (btw, this is NEVER a good idea) when I spotted THESE.

[caption id="attachment_329" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Speculoos!"][/caption]

Advertised as Speculoos (apparently, the Flemish name for such cookies), they came in a long sleeve, all individually wrapped (sadly, not shaped like windmills, but I didn't even notice at the time) and I had to buy them.

I heart Speculaas at Christmastime because they're spicy and they're just really good holiday cookies. I was so surprised to see them!

Also, they are very good with coffee and tea (if only they HAD very good coffee and tea here...) and I have -- maybe -- already eaten six of them.

Ben will be lucky if there are any left when he gets home! :D

- catie

Catie: Ben's mitt/ens

2009-11-24T03:37:00.000-08:00

[caption id="attachment_314" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="the mitt/ens"][/caption]

We don't have a car -- though we'd be too scared to drive it if we did (the bus we were in got side swiped by a tiny, red geo-metro-esque car yesterday, which apparently was no big deal since the driver of the geo-metro-esque got out of his car, laughing) -- so, we do a lot of walking.

To the bus stop. To the store. To Ewha. To eat out. Back home from the bus stop.

You get the idea.

And it's FREEZING outside.

While we did each pack a coat, a hat, gloves and a scarf, we picked mostly utilitarian ones. Most of them are fine, but some of them are downright ugly (very warm, just very ugly). The worst of which is probably both our pairs of gloves. They just aren't cute.

And so, Ben got these. I know they look sort of blue, but they're really a smokey gray, not very blue at all. They're knit out of a 100% superwash wool called PRIME, made in Italy. They won't be as super warm as his giant, black eyesores (they're not really that bad), but when we're just walking around town, we usually have our hands in our pockets anyway. And they button back from mittens into fingerless mitts when he needs his fingers.

I have to force myself to knit fairly mindless things this time of year or I'll bog myself down with a bunch of complicated, unfinished projects. I already started doing it earlier in the month. I'm easily frustrated by the feeling of never finishing projects. Which is why I like socks and mittens.

I have a pair of socks in the works again, too. I'd forgotten to bring any "MAN" colored sock yarns with me from home, and it's pretty hard to find here, but we found a wool/acrylic blend at E-mart a few days ago (the same place I got the wool for the mitt/ens), in a variegated gray. It's all a little drab, but I'm getting used to it. There's just not a lot to choose from, especially as far as "MAN" colors go.

And soon, I want to knit me some form of fingerless gloves/mittens (hopefully cuter than my huge, black eyesores). We'll see how it goes.

Maybe there will be more to post on the knitting front.

- catie

Catie: Pretty persimmons

2009-11-23T03:23:00.000-08:00

[caption id="attachment_305" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="My three persimmons."][/caption]

Yesterday, I bought three persimmons for making something persimmon-y. The most popular things made from persimmons in the western world seem to be persimmon cookies and pudding. In Korea, it's really hard to say. I think they do a lot more raw-eating of persimmons than most people in America would dream of doing. Perhaps mostly because a lot of Americans have no idea what a persimmon really is.

I think they're a nice looking fruit. At our grocery store, DreamMart (which should really be called Good Morning Mart, but the Korean word for, "Good Morning" sounds like, "Dream") we occasionally get them confused with tomatoes because they're displayed upside down, so just their roundy little bottoms show and (sadly, for us), their orange sort of color is the same color as the rock-hard, never-ripe tomatoes they sell here. Although, as it gets colder, the tomatoes get greener, so it's becoming increasingly easier to tell the difference.

We just hope they're better than the tomatoes.

It's only getting colder here and while we keep our windows open to counteract our over-compensating water/floor heater, the Koreans turn their heat to 80 C and leave it there. We've done more sweating since it got cold than before, when it was hot outside!

We were pretty afraid they might not heat their buses, but now I have to put on a long sleeved shirt, my fleece jacket, a scarf, my double layer wool hat and gloves to stand at the bus stop, and then take them off inside the bus, just to put them right back on once we get out. Koreans leave all theirs on, though. And, literally, it's about 80 degrees on that bus.

Yeah, you think I'm exaggerating, but I am not.

On Friday, I made 60 Minute Rolls, also known as DeeDee's One Hour Buns, which, really, is totally a better name. Anytime you have the choice to say a phrase with, "DeeDee" in it, you really should. These opportunities don't arise very often.

I've only seen one kind of yeast here, a turkish yeast, "Pakmaya".

Very aptly named.

It's an instant yeast, which is kind of nice. Some people seem to swear by instant yeast. But, apparently, there is no way to test whether or not it's alive. Sure, they'll tell you about 1,500 different ways to test it, but it will fail every single of them and, in the end, still make DeeDee's buns rise.

I tried to foam tepid sugar water.

I tried to foam warm sugar water.

I tried to foam sugar water that was probably too warm.

I even tried mixing flour, sugar and water and waiting an hour to see if it would rise -- although the problem with that was mostly just that I got too impatient and decided to go ahead, regardless.

Finally, I mixed up a batch of dough and started kneading it, kneading it, kneading it. I was probably 5 -6 minutes into the 10 minute process when I realized that our grimy table was griming my DeeDees!

I wash that thing every day, too, so don't think it's anything I've done to it. It just has this weird black top with a gray splatter paint sort of pattern and I think the gray comes off, because it turns all my dishcloths gray and has since we moved in, I just didn't even think about it!

So, I made another batch -- argh -- and kneaded it on a big white tray we have that came with our cozy little... bingo parlor.

Kneading takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r, fyi. I worked at a bakery, and I think I took the bread mixers for granted, because, seriously, I thought my arms would give out before I got a, "silky, elastic texture".

Once I had them all ball-rolled and plopped into the pie pan, I was still pretty terrified that they wouldn't rise (and after all that, I wasn't taking any chances), so I boiled some water in the electric teapot, poured it into a coffee mug and set it on top of the Trusty Crousty (which I turned on low, the top gets real hot) with a chopstick inside it. Then I put the DeeDees right next to it and draped a towel over the whole set up.

They rose FAST.

Let me just reiterate -- F-A-S-T.

I thought to myself, "I will go to DreamMart and get some things for dinner." DreamMart is only two and a half blocks away, nothing could happen.

Is it ironic that I over-proofed them?

[caption id="attachment_310" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="As you can see, I did at least TRY to eat them.."][/caption]

I have trouble figuring out what irony is.

Regardless, in the end, they went the way of the first batch of dough. Sadly. But, to the DeeDees credit, they did taste good. They were just too weird and dry. They were the best right out of the oven. After that... you know, kinda downhill.

They looked cute.

I will try again, bread is something I can fiddle with over a long period of time, I think, and so I probably will. It's interesting and tad bit finicky, which seems like fun.

There are my DeeDees.

The main problem with bread recipes over the internet, though, is that no one -- lie detector says: maybe 3 people -- bake bread the old fashioned way anymore. Everybody uses their bread machines. Which is all well and good, until you move to Korea and all the bread machines are in KOREAN.

Then you're stuck the Trusty Crousty, but no Beard on Bread or whatever in sight.

I guess converting from machine to oven isn't too difficult, though, and I will be trying it.

For tonight, however, I am making fresh applesauce. And I wanted to make sweet and sour chicken, but was completely floored by the fact that DreamMart doesn't seem to carry vinegar. It's bizarre. I have seen vinegar. I have seen vinegar everywhere. And all I need is white vinegar.

Come to think of it, though, I don't know that I've ever seen plain, white vinegar. Which.. I mean, really? No white vinegar? Really? How hard could it possibly be? They eat squid, that's hard. That make kimchi, constantly, all the time and that's no easy trick. And they.. you know.. read the space age scrawl that is the Korean language.

They make all their medications in-country!

You'd expect a little white vinegar, now, wouldn't you?

So, now we are having stir-fry. Neither as good nor as fun as sweet and sour chicken, but I am at a vinegar loss. I thought about possibly using lemon juice, but, after my DeeDee failure, I need something to turn out properly, so I'm sticking to what I know.

Maybe next time.

Also, Thanksgiving is out. But we will have pie. So, I'll let you know how that goes.

- catie

Ben: Pictures of School

2009-11-19T18:33:00.000-08:00

[caption id="attachment_285" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Peace Teacher!"][/caption]

Korean kids are pretty stinking cute, but don't be fooled by this kid's smiling facade. I can't even count the number of times I've caught him trying to cheat on his spelling test or writing his homework for the next class during my class. No Korean kids are really cute (except for middle school students, who are punks, but than what middle schooler isn't). Catie has been telling me for sometime that I need to put pictures of my school and students up on our blog. The last couple of days have been the final days of this term, so since little work is actually getting done I thought I would take advantage of the chaos and get some pictures. I will also be posting pictures of the other teachers so that everyone can put faces to the names of the people I'm working with.

[caption id="attachment_286" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Andrew giving Scott some love"][/caption]

This is part of my 99D Writing class. Again, don't be fool by the apparent innocence, this class is trouble! There are 7 boys and the two girls you can just barely see behind Andrew and Scott. At the start of the term this class was just the 7 unruly boys who with the except of a kid named Fire (more on him latter) cannot sit still or stay quiet to save their lives. Bryan, Aaron, and I all teach this classes and we have yelled, threatened, and bribed ourselves to exhaustion trying to keep their attention for at least part of the 40 minute class. No luck yet. Two weeks ago, the first girl (named Anna) showed up in the class (that happens allot, since it is private after school academy kids appear and disappear from class very randomly). Since she was the only girl in a glass of 7 boys, we didn't figure she'd last very long. (Equally mixed gender classes seem to work best for classroom management. When you have all of either gender it is just madness. The worst though is having all boys/all girls and just one girl/one boy, because then they sit all by themselves and are alienated from the rest of the class). She stuck it out however, and a week latter Yumi showed up and since than they have slid right into the spirit of the class, shirking their homework, cheating on spelling tests, and talking with the best of the boys.

[caption id="attachment_288" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Fire and Sam"][/caption]

Two of the best students from 99D. This is Fire and Sam, far and away the sharpest sticks in this box of mostly broken pencils. Fire is one of my favorite students. He is super earnest and determined to study like crazy. I don't know how his parents have done it, but they've successfully indoctrinated him that he must study, study, study. Most of the parents tell their kids that, but the kids are all overloaded with regular school, 4-6 hagwons a week, and than extra studying for tests on Saturdays. By the time they get to Ewha many of them are burned out and couldn't care less. Fire is still going full steam though. Just to give you an idea of his attitude, he wrote an essay about his least favorite food, which is persimmons. He wrote that he hated the color, the taste, the texture, and how when when he tried it he felt sick. The part that is heart wrenching is the end where he says, "But my mom says that they are really good for my health, so I will still eat them even though I don't like them at all." Most of his essays conclude with something along this line, that even though he doesn't like it, if his parents say that he needs to do it, he will do his best.

The other kid in the picture is Sam, who is bright, if not quiet as dedicated as Fire. He was part of the Andrew and Scott clique at the start of the class, but sometime after midterms he must have decided it was time to shape up. How does one shape up? Well to start they move next to the smart kids and somehow their spelling test scores dramatically improve.

A common exchange:

Me: "Sam! Eyes on your own test!"

Sam: "Oh! Teacher! I not look!"

Despite this persistent cheating, Sam has improved dramatically in other, non-Fire related ways.

[caption id="attachment_293" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Hangman!"][/caption]

I don't know if you can tell, but the girls up front are playing Hangman, the all time favorite game of the students at my school. They tend to go crazy playing it, shouting and pushing their way to the front of the class, so the game is officially banned at Ewha, except for very special days. Their hangman strategy is to skip guessing letters and go straight to trying to guess the word. They also don't finish the game until the word is guessed, no matter how many tries that takes. This results in some very detailed pictures. I've tried to tell them that they should at least guess the vowels, but they aren't having any of it.

[caption id="attachment_294" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Louise 1"][/caption]

This kid is in the same class as the girls in the previous picture. His name is Louise 1. At the start of the term his name was just Louise (pronounced like Lewis), but than a new boy came to class and decided that he too would like to be called Louise (also pronounced like Lewis). I couldn't believe it when I saw his name on the attendance sheet, written as "Louise 2," but it was true. So now 97D has Louise 1 and Louise 2, equally unmotivated and easily distracted (right before this picture Louise 1 threw Louise 2's pencil out the window.

More pictures to come!

Catie: Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread!

2009-11-17T21:14:00.000-08:00

[caption id="attachment_277" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Don't look too closely -- it's so blurry!"][/caption]

Natalie, don't look. The following pictures are going to be very blurry. I AM SO ASHAMED.

The pumpkin bread turned out surprisingly delicious. As you may notice, it didn't fluff up very much -- or.. even at all. Which is due to several factors. In hindsight, I knew it would be dense, so I don't know why I didn't fill the pans up more. Neurological disconnect, I suppose. But it tastes really good. It just doesn't look as cute in it's little cardboard pans as it probably would have if it had risen properly in the oven.

I made a couple of changes. We haven't been able to get any whole wheat flour yet (though we may have found some very light whole wheat flour -- I can't remember how dark it's supposed to be...), but I did find some, "buckwheat powder" at Emart, which I naturally assumed was also known as "buckwheat flour". So, I added about half buckwheat flour. It also called for only white sugar and white sugar creeps me out a little, so I threw in about half brown sugar. I'm sure both of these were contributing factors in keeping the bread at the bottom of the pan.

It definitely did taste pumpkiny, though more mildy pumpkiny, I think. Which could have been because I didn't measure the spices, so maybe there weren't enough.

[caption id="attachment_278" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Little Japanese pans"][/caption]

A little less blurry and a better look at the little pan. They worked really well, though I wasn't sure whether or not to grease them, so I did just a tiny bit to be on the safe side and it kind of bled through. Maybe next time I won't, though I have a feeling some grease would bleed through anyway.

Overall, a success because it tasted delicious.

I have high hopes for my Thanksgiving menu as well:

Roast Chicken with stuffing

60 minute rolls

Mashed potatoes and gravy

Pumpkin pie

Green bean casserole

And possibly a wild rice sausage dressing and a cranberry sauce from dried cranberries. I have heard it can be done, it just doesn't taste as good. But when you're overseas and it's hard to get your hands on things, it doesn't matter if everything tastes, "as good", just so long as it tastes similar enough. I also might make a strawberry pie. They're the only berries I can find - even frozen. I'd like cherries, but alas.

Who knows how well this will work out. We will see.

Also, our internet has been on the fritz for the past two days or so. I meant to post this yesterday, but couldn't. So, if you don't hear from us again for a while, that could be why.

However, we will still be available via Skype.

- catie

Catie: Japanese Sweet Pumpkin

2009-11-16T00:28:00.000-08:00

[caption id="attachment_263" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="My little "Japanese Sweet Pumpkin"."][/caption]

I got this little "pumpkin" at HomePlus about a week or two ago and have been waiting to get the right ingredients and tools to turn it into something. Isn't it cute?

First, I thought maybe a pie, but Thanksgiving is coming up and it would ruin the fun (or the horror, depending on how the actual pie turns out........) to have a pie so close to the holiday. So, I'm going to try Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread instead. I thought about muffins, but, since no one bakes here, all baking pans run in the range of $8.00-$10.00 and, at Lotte, they have baking pans made of paper that are made in Japan (they're real cute, I'll post pictures once it's baked). So, I opted for some Japanese paper loaf pans and we'll see how that goes.

[caption id="attachment_261" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Seeds, strings and slime."][/caption]

I may try my hand at roasting seeds, but first we'll see how the loaf goes. The inside color of the squash is lovely, very butternut squash-esque.

I used the How to Roast a Pumpkin in 10 Steps tutorial over at Elana's Pantry to bake it and now I have a bowl full of lovely squash waiting to be properly mashed.

[caption id="attachment_266" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Squash mash."][/caption]

I only had the one, small pie pan, so I had to bake each half seperately, but it worked out well. The first half's skin got a little mushy, so I was able to let it sit and cool until the second half got done and they both scraped out easily. I've never tasted raw pumpkin straight out of the.. you know, pumpkin, so I don't know if it tastes similar or not, but it tastes like squash. So, I figure it'll be similar.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Also on the list to bake: Mrs. Reagan's Persimmon Pudding

Persimmons are all over the place here and they're so pretty, orange and red. I've been wondering for a while what people do with them. I know they eat them raw, but I remember trying one once when I used to work at a small, produce market and the texture's pretty weird. You're supposed to wait until they're super ripe to eat them, so they get slimy and pulpy. I don't remember how they taste though.

They could be really gross, but I want to try it since they're everywhere and all the ajummas (middle-aged-old ladies) swear they're really good for you.

Let you know how it goes.

- catie

Catie: WARNING!

2009-11-15T18:10:00.000-08:00

If you ever get your nose pierced, make note:

Do not wash your face. It is hazardous. At some point during the cleansing process, you may lose your nose ring in the sink. This will not easily be felt by you, or your nose as you are scrubbing vigorously, and so you may not notice for 45 minutes, even an hour. And then, as you frantically attempt to return the ring to it's proper place in your nostril, you will undoubtedly be forced to punch it through a layer of skin which has already closed, even though it has been only an hour, making a gross popping sound. This will not only hurt you, but REALLY gross you out when it starts bleeding profusely. Ultimately, it could easily lead to infection and ANGER with yourself, or, possibly, even the sink.

This TERRIBLE chain of events may or may not have happened to me and my nose ring.

Regardless, take heed!!! I know since I found out that this dire set of circumstances could be close at hand, I will NEVER wash my face again!

- catie

Catie: What we're eating.

2009-11-15T15:22:00.000-08:00

: The Trusty Crousty

While we may be alternately poor and only somewhat poor, we've been eating really well.

So far, within our repertoire, we have the following:

Spaghetti
Chili with biscuits
Vegetable Beef Soup
Pork Stir-fry
Sloppy Joes (of questionable merit)
Fried chicken with mashed potatoes and cream gravy (very unhealthy, but I needed cream gravy...)
Chicken pesto with fresh vegetables
Oven fries (Which go with everything)

And we eat a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches, sometimes with ham or an egg. Also, some "Eggs in a Basket", the toast with an egg fried in a hole cut in it's center, more gruesomely known as "Birdie in a Basket" by Ben, a name that freaks me out. I prefer to think of my eggs as... you know, NOT unborn chickens.

I think one of our best accomplishments thus far, however, is the baked chicken with pasta we made the other night.

I thawed two chicken breasts by heating water in our electric kettle and pouring it over them (still no microwave).
Then I rubbed them with a little olive oil and a mixture of oregano, rosemary and basil, and laid them in the weird, sort of roasting pan that came with The Trusty Crousty. I cut a red pepper into strips, and laid them on top and around the chicken and drizzled a bit olive oil over the whole thing. It baked at 350 F (about 175 C) for... 45 minutes or so.

While it was baking, I poured maybe a cup and a half of Prego (Costco) into a skillet and started it simmering, then chopped:

six cherry tomatoes in quarters
two garlic cloves really finely (no garlic press)
one quarter onion (small, diced)

and threw all that into the prego to simmer.

In a second skillet, I fried two slices of bacon, really crisply, chopped them up and threw them into the sauce as well.

At HomePlus, we got some multi-colored Fusilli (spiral shaped pasta, "The name comes from fusile, archaic/dialect form of fucile, meaning rifle. As the inside barrel of a gun is "rifled" using a similar screw-shaped device" -- Wiki) and I boiled some of that.

We poured the souped up Prego over the Fusilli and put the chicken and roasted red peppers on top. Ben made some delicious garlic bread, too. It was quite a success and, what with our current glut of chicken breasts, we may be making something similar later on this week. We got some Tortelloni (Legend has it when gods walked the earth, an innkeeper was so enchanted with the beauty of Venus, he modeled the little Tortellini after her navel! The nickname for this pasta in Bologna is "sacred navels"!  "Tortelloni" is a larger version of Tortellini.) at Costco and I want to make something delicious with it.

Italian food is ALL the rage here, which is kind of nice, because we have an idea of what to do with the ingredients and what goes with what.

: Us, all bundled up to go outside!

What I want to do is come up with things we've been able to cook in Korea, and sooking/baking substitutions that work and put all the recipes where other foreigners can access them. There are not a lot of places to find recipes that Westerners can cook here. And not a lot of places to tell you where to find ingredients.

But I want to do a lot of things.... psh.

Anyhow, that's what's been on our plates. I often find myself feeling like I have nothing to post a lot of the time, but, I think since it's been FREEZING cold the past few days, and I've been doing more baking and cooking, I should be able to post about that. We've also had a little more money and have been able to do some shopping for fun ingredients. So, I'll try to remember to post my cooking/baking misadventures.

There's a picture of us -- today, in fact -- all bundled up to walk Ben to school. It's chilly, but it makes it feel like the holidays are here!

- catie

Ben: Finals!

2009-11-15T06:28:00.000-08:00

We've almost reached the end of my first term teaching here (the year is divided up into four 13 week terms). This week has been taken over with the madness of finals. The kids don't know it, but their grade is entirely dependent on their mid-term and final test grades (Korea is craazzzy about standardized testing). Since nothing else actually counts (homework, behavior, work in class) finals are a big deal.

That being said, you wouldn't guess that from the way that we were instructed to make and implement them. We were given notice as to which tests we were in charge of writing one week before they were due. We weren't actually given anytime to write the tests, so we wrote them between classes and during breaks. We than turned the tests into Nicole for editing. She didn't return them back to us until the Friday before the week that the finals were suppose to take place. We were also specifically instructed to "make sure to teach the students what they need to know to pass the test, and to communicate with the other teachers so that you know what you need to teach them."

Test week itself is crazy, we have 40 minutes to give each test. Most of my classes are writing classes, so it is pretty easy for me. I just hand out the tests, read my book, and grumpily answer questions when the kids have questions. I say grumpily not because I resent being interrupted, I am there to be "Ben Teacher" afterall, but because most of the questions are inane. Apparently my students have the worst taking strategies ever. Their idea is to skip past any instructions and straight proclaiming "I don't understand, how do you do this?" Most of the time I just read them the question (that they didn't read) to them and then they set to work. Why they don' t start by reading the questions themselves I don't know. Perhaps they just like the sonorous sound of my voice. The only tests that are hard to conduct are those for the Listening/Speaking classes. In the L/S classes the Teacher has to play a recording 2-3 times (for the Listening Part) and then talk to each kid individually (for the Speaking Part). This gets tricky when you are trying to run through 12 kids in the less than 25 minutes that are left of class. Speaking in a second language (especially for a test) is nerve-racking enough without your teaching pressing you to hurry up, so I try not to rush them too much.

After the fun of giving the tests, we than have three days to grade all the tests. Grading is a whole adventure in itself. Since Ewha is a private, after school English Academy, one eye always has to be on the bottom line ($$$). Which means that you can flunk a kid, because than they might leave and that is money that is walking out the door. Instead Ewha works on a curve where no one gets less than 60 percent or more than a 90. This means that some creative grading is necessary to elevate a kid who turned in a mostly blank test to a 60 percent. We could just curve the whole thing, but that is far too much work to do for 30 different classes (that is how many I teach) and besides which Bryan tried it once and was unable to explain the idea of curving.

Tests are all over now, so now it is the turn of the Korean teachers to call all the parents up and explain to them why their little treasures did the way that they did on their tests. I'm glad that the testing is over, and can't wait to get started on the next adventure, writing syllabi for the next term!

2009-11-15T05:19:00.000-08:00

[caption id="attachment_227" align="alignleft" width="420" caption="One of many mandarin men, lining the streets of Korea"][/caption]

Good morning!

Or.. afternoon. As the case may be. It is 2:00pm here, I guess.

We both have our excuses for not posting in the past, you know, forever. Mine is also Fringe, in part. I do like it a lot (though it is SCARY -- a lot of people explode!). But... mostly, I'm just not as enthralled with Korea anymore. I still like it here (how many times have I said that? brainwash myself much..?), but it's not as new and novel.

Also, we are alternately very poor and somewhat poor, so we don't always have a whole lot to talk about.

We took some fall-ish pictures last Saturday, though. It's been a beautiful fall here. There are a lot of bright red Japanese Maples and yellow Ginkgos along the sidewalks.

And also mandarin orange, persimmon, and nut vendors. We're not sure what there is to do with persimmons. I used to work at a tiny produce market and we'd get them in every winter and put them in a slightly refrigerated case, where they would turn from orange to red and then get slimy. Really, really slimy. The mandarin oranges are amazing some of the time and bland the rest - it's really hit or miss. We get them a lot. And we haven't tried the nut vendors yet. They always smell delicious when we walk by though.

[caption id="attachment_229" align="alignleft" width="420" caption="The road that goes by HomePlus."][/caption]

This is the road that goes past our HomePlus store downtown. It's a good example of what most roads look like in Daejeon, though. The sidewalks are cobbled and there is usually a running/walking/biking path of red astroturf along side it. It will be really nice once we get bikes. We're continually surprised by how many bikers we see about.

Daejeon has even created a bike sharing program with these really cute, green cruisers. They have rows of them all over town, with little computer/monitor things next to them and you give them your alien registration number and cellphone number (when we get a cellphone we'll be able to use them) and.. I think the first two hours are 1,000W and after that it's 500W/half hour. I can't remember, but it's not that expensive. Plus, the bikes are cute. And there are so many pick up/return points all over the city that you'd only have to ride one way and then you can lock them back up and go about your business.

We've been having a lot of fun the past week or so. Since we got paid, we've been able to organize our house a bit better and get some more to cook with. We got a couple big skillets that, instead of being coated with chippy, flaky teflon, have been coated with some sort of "diamond ceramic". It's amazing. Nothing sticks to it. This backfires sometimes when, say, I am trying to flip an over easy egg the stupid thing just slips all over the pan instead of sliding onto my spatula. But, overall, they're amazing.

We were also able to go into town yesterday and have some fun. We stopped at one of our favorite destinations, TimeWorld Galleria, this G-I-A-N-T mall creation that houses.. well, we still haven't gotten a good glimpse. Last night, we checked out the gourmet grocery store in the 2nd basement, complete with a Burger King (you don't get much more gourmet than BK!), and a simply scrumptious gelato place. They had flavors like cream cheese, green tea, latte, dark chocolate (barely even sweet, just soo chocolatey and sooo good), tiramisu, banana, caramel, milk (isn't that a given?), menthe, withe chocolate (and no, that's not a typo, it was withe) and tons more we can't remember. We got the tiny size, and thus, three flavor choices: dark chocolate, tiramisu and I wanted caramel, but we got banana - some things just get lost in translation. We ended up sharing it because there was also confusion as to how many cups we wanted. It was really good, though there was some argument over who had to eat the banana. Poor, neglected flavor.

Ben: Watching Fringe

2009-11-14T05:06:00.000-08:00

So Catie and I have been slacking a little bit on the blog (sorry everybody). Part of the reason (and only part!) is that we started watching a show called Fringe (thank you Natalie). Fringe is sort of the X-Files meets Lost with more of an R rating instead of the X-Files P-13 content. It is pretty addictive. Some of the stuff is a little graphic (it makes the X-Files look pretty tame) and the main female lead's character is incredibly one-dimensional, but the crazy scientist and his son are hilarious. The scientist, Walter Bishop, is the best reason to watch the show. He is constantly craving random foods, wanting to conduct dubious tests on unwitting human subjects, and just generally being a stereotypical, but awesome mad scientist. The plot is typical conspiracy fare. Something called "the Pattern" is causing crazy things to happen and "Fringe Division" is the FBI task for charged with figuring out what is happening. There is also a massive international science corporation called, creatively enough, Massive Dynamic. Massive Dynamic may or may not be good/very evil, it is a mystery. The show is another J.J. Abrams project, and like Lost, you get the feeling that he either has an awesome plan for how every ties together, or he is just as lost as his viewers. Since Fringe is only in its second season, this has not yet become a liability like it has in Lost. I think most people have lost patience with the prospect of ever getting straight answers in Lost. Fringe is just starting so it feels okay to be confused and not like someone is jerking your chain. Anyways, flaws aside, it is fun to watch. It often feels like the X-Files at its best (think 3rd-5 season) and makes me feel nostalgic for old X-Files episodes. There is strong, if not amazing acting, but the characters that are good are really good. Since we can download just about anything nearly instantly we've watched through the entire first season and are now keeping up with the second season as it airs. This as resulted in some time being taken away from blogging, but we promise we will try to get on here more now that we have caught up with the show. Just be glad we caught it in the middle of the second season! If it had been in, say the fifth, you might not have heard from us until after Christmas (or more realistically, after Thanksgiving).

Catie: All the pepoples of Korea love their maple food.

2009-10-27T22:42:00.000-07:00

[caption id="attachment_202" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="all the pepoples!"] [/caption]

We had a pretty good weekend. We'd meant to go hiking on Saturday up at -- i think this is how it's spelled -- Gyeryongsan National Park. Which, apparently, is huge and awesome.

Unfortunately, we are not awesome. And we are lazy on the weekends.

So, instead, we hopped a bus into the big city. First, we went to HomePlus, which is another huge department store. There are so many here and they're pretty great because we can find stuff in them to cook at home. So far, we've been to LotteMart (too expensive), E-Mart (okay prices), Costco (expensive, but they have stuff you can't find anywhere - i.e. cheese, lunchmeat...) and now HomePlus.

They're all basically the same as far as looks and size. Three giant floors, each devoted to something different, and each of them has some foreign food we want.

HomePlus, though, might be our favorite so far. We found tons of stuff there. It was kind of funny. They have about six or seven different types of spaghetti sauce, Hershey's Special Dark chocolate chips, frozen tortillas, tatertots, canned diced tomatoes (an anomaly, it feels like), Hunt's tomato paste and tomato sauce, canned pinto beans, kidney beans, black beans and -- the holy grail -- GREEN BEANS. They're all french cut, but they have them! I was amazed. I thought I wouldn't see another green bean for a year.

We didn't get to go shopping this time, though we did buy green beans, canned corn (they're so obsessed with corn here that their canned corn isn't too awful and the frozen stuff is incredibly expensive) and a can of tomato sauce to make vegetable beef soup. It ended up tasting great and just like home.

I think people who live in Seoul, or in Daejeon proper probably think we're nuts for being so excited, but we don't find those sorts of things out here in boonies. We can find some stuff (Lotte actually has alfredo sauce) and we do have tomato paste here, but for one, like, 12 oz. can its almost $4.00, at HomePlus it was $2.00. So, if we lived somewhere bigger or more heavily populated with foreigners, it would be easier to find stuff like that, but it makes the finding even more exciting. And it forces us to think more about what we want to make at home, what's affordable, and when we'd rather eat out.

So, HomePlus was a success! And, even though we didn't go hiking, we did do quite a bit of walking to get there.

Also, we got the picture above from what seemed to be a small impulse fixture of shoes and purses (yes, impulse shoes for... thirty dollars). It's hard to read, so here's a close-up:

[caption id="attachment_207" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="all the pepoples!"][/caption]

Here is what it says in full: "Make up your skin!all the pepople Love your color.Bloom Boom Boom!"

While I do like the pepoples, I really like the Bloom Boom Boom. It sounds like someone's getting shot or it's a really loud concert. I don't know, but it's pretty funny.

Also, we say this all the time, but: Though we do cook a lot of American food, we eat out a lot, too. It's just that when we're less financially stable (right now), it makes a lot more sense to make a big pot of soup and eat it for dinner twice than to spend that ten dollars to eat once. A lot of Americans coming to Korea are accused of either hating Korean food or refusing to try it, and we've done neither. We like it and we like to eat it. In fact, we'd probably eat a lot more of it if we had the resources. However, moving forward.

After HomePlus, we went back to the Starbucks right next to our bus stop. It's at this HUGE mall called The Galleria Time World (kind of an awesome name) that is full of (as far as we can tell, though we haven't explored very far) brand name Designers: Chanel, Gucci, Dior, etc... I don't know how people afford that stuff, but it's always packed to the gills.

And across the street from The Galleria Tim World is another Starbucks! So, we get to choose every time we go into town. But the second one is newer and has phased it's soft chairs out, so we never pick it. Always the one in Galleria Time World. Also, the latte we always share, is maybe the best Starbucks latte I have ever had. Including back at home. The only thing we can think of is that they have the old, old machines. The ones before the last old ones that they have in America. Whatever it is, their lattes are killer.

That was Saturday, totally boring but good.

Sunday was.. weird. And awkward.

We'd seen somewhere that an Irish movie was playing at The International Center in Daejeon. And it was free. And in a part of town we'd never been to. And we got Colin Farrell and Colin Firth confused, so we thought we might actually like the movie. Unfortunately, we don't like Colin Farrell at all.. and we love Colin Firth, so the confusion was of a particularly bad sort.

But The Int'l Center does have a very small lending library of English books. Basically, when you're done living here or done with the books you brought, you can give them to the lending library and then other foreigners can get a membership and check those books out. There is one shelf of DVDs too, though.. we can download anything we want in minutes, so that's what we usually do. Ben was very excited about the English books.

The movie was.. well, it was called Intermission, and it was... sort of like a cross between Crash and, I don't know, maybe Love, Actually and then comedy thrown in between violence. But with a lot less Love, Actually. It was a real weird mixture. I was never sure whether I should be horrified or laughing. In all, we decided to make an effort in future never to confuse The Colins again. It does not turn out well when we do. Everyone in the movie dies, and then it's like you're supposed to laugh or something.

I knit a good piece of sock during the crazy though. And we got to try this Korean Cola (can't remember the name) that was like coke and coffee with the caffeine of a red bull. It was scary stuff. If someone ever offers you a drink saying, "You should like to try this, this.. cola. It is like a Korean kind of Coca Cola." If anyone ever says that to you, do not do it. You may not quiver at the mention of the stuff, but you will afterwards when you are suffering caffeine tremors.

The movie was weird, definitely, and very awkward when, once the movie was over and they had us trapped, they tried to commission everyone to commit to some program involving the Korean school system. All I know is that the paragraph on the flyer they handed out went like this,

"We have performed the multi-cultural educations with many foreign friends to Korean school students for years. According to that fact, we are currently looking for many friends who were not born in Korea and be glad to share their culture with Korean school students. We would like you to consider doing it with our teams. Plus, we'll provide small bonus for your favor."

All very awkward, yes, so.. we sort of just walked out and left without saying goodbye.........

The Int'l Center was on a really cool side of town, though. To get from the side of the street our bus dropped us at to the side with the center, we had to go through an underground crosswalk. Which went straight past a mall. This big hallway underground, with all kinds of people shopping. It was crazy. We should have gotten pictures.

And, after the movie, we stopped and got what we thought were steamed buns (I don't think Korea makes them, but they're the best part of China -- like a chewy roll with barbecue pulled pork inside), but ended up being more of a giant mandu (dumpling). Not the most awesome, but fun to try anyway. Inside they had ground pork and green onion and maybe some scrambled egg. They're pretty big, maybe the size of a large mandarin orange, and super oniony, but they were good.

Everything here, really, is either super oniony or super garlicy. We notice the garlic the most when we go to the grocery store in search of garlic cloves by the milligram and can only find either a giant sack unhusked or a styromfoam platter of maybe 20-30 peeled cloves, shrink wrapped in plastic. They eat a lot of raw garlic here. And raw, marinated onions, too.

The mandu place was cute. It was very tiny, probably ten feet by... 15 feet? It had two doors, one on either side, and two tables right between the two doors. It was so tiny that their kitchen was also the dining area with no barrier between the two, so we got to watch them make our mandu while we waited. Again, we should have taken pictures, but that was a situation where we sure they liked us and didn't want them to be offended, so.. it was better not to take pictures.

On the way back to our bus stop, we came across this poster all about delicious Autumn food at a sort of Starbucks-esque, gourmet little Korean cafe:

[caption id="attachment_205" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="what a colorful autumn table..."][/caption]

Wow, such a colorful autumn table. There's red food, yellow food.... maple food?

[caption id="attachment_206" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="red food, yellow food.... maple food."][/caption]

Maple food. My favorite.

They must have thought, "maple" was synonymous with "brown"...? Which could normally be true. Except when you're talking about food...

That was our weekend. Not incredibly exciting unless it's been a month since you last saw green beans! But it was fun and we got to take the subway once, too. Always a fun time.

Ben: Navigating the Daejeon

2009-10-26T04:09:00.000-07:00

We're still learning how to get around our sprawling city of 1.6 million people (which is a little bit bigger than Boise), but we're getting much better. We've figured out which bus to take to get from our suburb to the main downtown area called Dunsan Dong, which is where all the cool stuff is. It is Blue Bus 301 and it stops about a half block from our house. I made a discovery this weekend, which I am probably way too excited about. It turns out that if you enter in your starting point and destination into the google map of Daejeon, it will tell you which buses to take and where you need to on and off each bus. It's still on in Korean, but it is pretty easy to figure when and where to get off and transfer and such. That combined with some maps that we have found (thanks to socious) and made is making getting around Daejeon must easier.

Here is a map of our neighborhood, so that you can get an idea what is around us.

[googlemaps http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=110857219951873525850.0004751d85afa0edad822&ll=36.429946,127.387282&spn=0.011861,0.003492&output=embed&w=425&h=350]

Here is a link a map of the whole of Daejeon (we live in the small cluster of tags north of the main city): Greater Daejoen

Hopefully this will help anyone who is trying to visualize where we are and what is around us. Come visit use, we know how to take buses now!

-ben

Catie: Delicious food

2009-10-22T07:28:00.000-07:00

Sorry we've not been keeping up with the blog. I think we've settled in a bit and everything's kind of lost it's shimmer. Not that we don't like it, we still do. Everything's just not as shiny, new and exciting. It's been hard thinking of things to write about.

We've started cooking -- a little. We've now made spaghetti (eh..), stir-fry twice, and pesto with chicken and vegetables. Also, pancakes (Bisquick from Costco!), french toast (all the bread here is Texas toast-esque, very thick, perfect for french toast) and we had to make the syrup ourselves with the mapleine we brought. I would recommend that to travelers. There is real, live maple syrup here, but, like back home, it's usually real expensive. And, what at home would cost maybe $8.00, costs $13.00 here. So, we're very happy with our -- what? maybe $3.00 -- mapleine purchase that will probably last us until we leave. Unless we eat a lot of pancakes.... a distinct possibility.

It's been fun figuring out what we can cook here, but it's also been pretty hindered. In our kitchen, we have one giant wok-like skillet, coated in peeling teflon. That was left behind by the previous teachers and we plan to replace it in November. We have one, very tiny aluminum saucepan and one very tiny little aluminum pot. We have three ladles, one flimsy pancake turner, a whisk, and a wooden spatula. We have two cutting boards, two forks, and four spoons, plus one pair of wooden bamboo chopsticks and about five pairs of the Korean metal chopsticks. Then we have our rice cooker (it's awesome -- good rice in a matter of 15 minutes), our gas range top thing, and our lazy toaster oven that barely wants to work at all. And I mean it only has one job -- heat up to cook things. Can that really be so hard?

Apparently so since it would rather function as a dehydrator, drying all our food to crunchy ghosts of their former selves.

We will also be replacing the toaster oven come November as well as purchasing a microwave. I have very high hopes for our Thanksgiving.

In other news, we are going to the National park to hike on Saturday, so we should have something to say for a change.

- catie

P.S. I have typed most of this post using my left hand and the tip of my ice cream cone with my right hand (what? i have to EAT it... and I have to type -- simple solution!)... so, if there are gross misspellings, know that it is not my lack of intellect (not that inability to spell implies lack of intellect), but rather my phenomenal ability to make do with what is available to me.