Catie: All the pepoples of Korea love their maple food.

[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

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

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.

Catie: "Poor litte Pekingese needs a loving family.."

[caption id="attachment_180" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="health condition: overall good except eye issue"][/caption]

So, we've been looking for a dog, Ben and I.  What we really want is a Maltese or a Yorkshire Terrier, something small that doesn't shed (Ben has allergies), but that can keep me company during the day and also be fairly easy to travel home with.

In searching, we've read many ads on the internet, most of which contain phrases like, "I got the dog about 6 months ago and now I'm leaving the country, so I'm giving it away!" or, "This dog came from a puppy mill and has 54 broken bones and will need 23 surgeries at 2,000,000 won a piece!"

This dog is sort of in between the two of those, and is being adopted out by some guy in Seoul with 20 dogs in his house... or maybe by his friend, Sylvia.  And, to everyone in Korea who is genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of all the unwanted animals here, we are not making light of the situation.  It's horrible.  But this is FUNNY.  We laughed.  A lot, actually.

Posted by Sylvia

Poor little Pekingese needs a loving family...


Here's her story.

One of regular volunteers from Korean animal group to Asan shelter lives in a house with a lot dogs in a city called Siheung pf Gyunggi Province. Neighbours of course know that he loves anmals & takes good care of 20 something dogs in his house.

Sometime about a month ago, he found this poor pekinges(being called "Pippi" at the moment) at his yard. He made a tour to find her owner in vain. As the door was closed, he could guess that she might have been dumped to his yard. The problem is that her both eyes are not good condition. She has proptosis on her left eye & it already got blind. As there's very rare chance to pull her left eye to where it used go belong, it needs a sergery of extract. It's comforting that the right eye has only a problem of cataract that can be eased with proper meds. He has too many dogs & cats needing enormous care at the moment, he is desperate to find her a better home. It would be nicer to have someone who has some understanding and generosity to accept her eye issue.

Personality : very lovely, friendly, well mingling with other creatures..
Behave : no major issues, bark sometimes but her voice is very small
She also showed a sign of being peepad-trained !! (is she, or isn't she?)
Health condition
-Overall good execept eye issue
-She had a skin desease but it's gone after treatment
-Not spayed
Others : He can arrange a meeting somewhere in Seoul if needed.

Whoever would like to meet her, please contact me at email@address/phone-num-ber. There's an adoption fee of 50,000won that will go to the rescuer to help him continue to rescue animals needing help. Fostering is also welcome..
Thanks!

To read the post and see another (slightly more flattering) picture of the poor little pekingese, you can see it here: Animal Rescue Korea (ARK) And this may only be funny because we have looked at SO many ads, but hopefully you derive as much joy from the A-mazing Kongrish as we did!

We love you all and miss you.

- catie

Ben: Oh the absurdity of Business in Korea

I am actually at work right now, but due to the brilliance of Korean business management I have the time to write a post! On Tuesdays and Thursdays we teach middle school kids from 7pm-10pm. This time period is divided into 40 minute classes (I promise I will write more about my job someday soon). For the last week and a half we haven't had any middle school students, because they are currently taking their huge, nation wide, standardized tests that determines which High school they will be going to. This has led to all sorts of tension between the foreign teachers (I am one of four at this school) and the school's administration. The foreign teachers all figure, that since we have no students, and we have no work to do, there really isn't any sense to making us stick around for three hours.

The school administration disagrees. The last three sessions have been an ever escalating battle between Bryan (the most combative of the foreign teachers) and Nicole (the school's academic administrator, i.e. foreign teacher handler, who ironically speaks the least English of anyone on staff) over whether or not we should be allowed to go home early. I really don't care that much, because I can still write emails and read the news on the web, so it really isn't that bad. Bryan however thinks that we have to go home, we must go home, it is our right to go home if there is no work to do!

Tonight things are even more absurd however. Middle school tests finish up today and tomorrow, so the school told the kids that they could come if they wanted. They have the option to go to more school after they just took tests for two weeks, how fun! It turns out that 6 kids are glutens for punishment and they showed up tonight. That is out of the 90 kids who normally show up.  So now we (the four foreign teachers and the four Korean teachers) are sticking around so that we can all teach these six kids. To make matters even more absurd, we aren't allowed to cover any new material, because than the other kids would be a lesson behind. Finally, to top everything off, I don't teach anyone until my last class of the day, so I have 2 hours and 20 minutes to hang around before I have to go and not teach two kids.  I'm not bitter though, mostly just amused.

-ben

Catie: Korean Barbecue - picture LADEN.

These are the pictures from our trip Friday night to the barbecue place across the street.

Because we were so poor for two weeks, we had almost zero red meat and the first thing I wanted to do when we got paid was have barbecue, because all it is is slabs of uncooked pork, chopped and laid out on a grill in the middle of your table.

[caption id="attachment_157" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="a version of the korean barbecue table"][/caption]

This is a version -- a pretty cool one, actually -- of a barbecue table.  In this one, it's a metal table top placed on top of, like, a burn barrel/oil drum?  Sorry the picture is so dark, it makes it hard to tell what's going on.  You can see the hole in the middle of the table with the grill on either side because this one's grill is in pieces, which is also cool.  It's in four pieces of cast iron (something you never find here in cookware), but only the middle two are over the fire underneath, the outside two are over metal underneath and used only to keep things warm.

The box on the table is the sort of box you find at every single restaurant, no matter what kind.  It has these long, metal -- almost sundae -- spoons and flat, metal chopsticks which are quite a trick to get used to.  I'm still dropping mine all the time because they're flat and slippery, though my hands have gotten a lot stronger again.

[caption id="attachment_158" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="our table"][/caption]

This is our table, complete with all food and appetizers.  Here you can also see the copper fan that pulls down from the ceiling to suck the hot air up.

The cool thing about BBQ is that all you have to do is go in and know how to say what kind of meat you want.  So, we went in and said, "dwegee", which is, "pork", and then look all that food.  That's what we ended up with because they just bring you everything.  You automatically get, probably, five to seven side dishes/appetizers.

And they just keep coming.  Every time you think you're done and your table can't even fit anymore, they'll bring out something else and make it fit.

And we took pictures of all those things!  So, lucky you.  Haha.

[caption id="attachment_160" align="alignright" width="300" caption="lettuce leaves for making tiny wraps"][/caption]

You will notice, in some cases, there is not a lot of food left.  That is because we were starving and forgot to take the pictures until it was mostly gone.  Sorry!  Don't think the Koreans are skimpy with food, we're just gluttonous!

You don't have plates or any dishware to yourself at a barbecue restaurant, you just eat straight off the grill with your chopsticks and you're supposed to put the pork into the lettuce leaf like a wrap and eat it.  You can add any of the sides to it, too (we don't know if that's kosher, but it's fun!), so it's like a game of combining and tasting.  It is soooo good.

[caption id="attachment_161" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="red kimchi"][/caption]

Here you have the red kimchi.

Sour, incredibly spicy, tastes almost identical to sauerkraut, but a ton spicier.  I try to take a bite or two every time we go out (you get it as a free appetizer at almost every single restaurant), just because I want to get used to it.  But, so far, it's not my super favorite.  It's an acquired taste.

The guys from Ben's work, Bryan and Aaron, like to grill it and eat it in their lettuce wraps.

Sorry some of the pictures are blurry!  We are not generally amazing photographers.

[caption id="attachment_162" align="alignright" width="300" caption="white kimchi"][/caption]

This is white kimchi.

Again, just like sauerkraut, but waaay less spicy.  If you get up close you can see a little red pepper, but I think maybe they use white pepper too?  Hard to say.

It's not bad.  I like sauerkraut on things, I think I'll just need to adjust to eating it plain.

I do like the white kimchi a little better because it's not so spicy.

[caption id="attachment_164" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="red bean paste sauce -- YUM."][/caption]

This is our FAVORITE.

We think, from talking to Bryan, that it's a sauce made from fermented red beans.  It tastes like that is probably true.

Whatever though, it is AWESOME.  So, so good.

As you may notice... it is all gone.

Now you know why.

[caption id="attachment_165" align="alignright" width="300" caption="onion green salad"][/caption]

Ben's not so keen on this salad (it's pretty durn spicy), but I like it pretty well.

All it is..  is onion greens.  For a while, I thought it was just green onions, but I'm sure now that it's just the greens from fully developed onions.  It tastes a little milder than green onions.

There's a sort of sweet and sour -- again, incredibly spicy -- sauce over the top.  It tastes sort of like... maybe Catalina dressing?  Only spicy and a little more sour.

It's good if you like onions.  It's the only real oniony thing I'll a significant amount of.

[caption id="attachment_166" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="more onions!"][/caption]

This is a pretty common way to see onions done -- around our dong (neighborhood) at least.  I have to confess I didn't try them, not being a super huge fan of raw, marinated onions.  But I think they're just marinated in some sort of garlic?  Maybe some oil?  Ben said they were good, just very strong.

[caption id="attachment_167" align="alignright" width="300" caption="green... flat things?"][/caption]

This, we did not try.

No, we are probably not adventurous enough.

But, keep in mind, that whatever this is -- I'm pretty convinced it's these weird, long, turnip things we see at the market -- it comes in many colors and we are done trying it.

It came green this time.  We hadn't seen green before.  So, it was probably vinegary?  Most things are.  But we're not sure.

It was a very lovely shade of green, however.

[caption id="attachment_168" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="perhaps some seaweed"][/caption]

Again, we did not try it (we sound like truly bad travelers!), it's just... that once you try barbecue side dishes once, you come to realize that they'll probably all be heavily salted, and either very vinegary, or very spicy, or both.

So, you get a little done, and a little more choosy.

This is probably seaweed.  Which doesn't taste bad, I'm sure.  We were just hungry, focused on pork, and weren't feeling as adventurous.

[caption id="attachment_169" align="alignright" width="300" caption="garlic sesame oil"][/caption]

Another dipping sauce.

This is probably sesame oil, infused with garlic.

It is incredibly delicious.  You can dip your meat in here (or the red bean -- or both) before wrapping it in lettuce.  It's seriously awesome.

[caption id="attachment_170" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="jalapenos?"][/caption]

This super cute little dish used to have garlic in it along side these green peppers, but one of the most delicious-est things to do with your barbecue, is grill the garlic and put it in with your pork as a wrap.  Some sesame oil, some red bean.  It's good.

So, it's just the green peppers, which looked like spicy, green peppers.  And after all the other spice, these were another that we didn't try.

[caption id="attachment_171" align="alignright" width="300" caption="sort of a meso soup"][/caption]

This soup reminded us both of meso.

Those chunks are tofu and the broth tastes a lot like the meso soup you'd get with sushi or something.  Salty, not quite as fermented-ish, but good.

Ben loved it.  And it was good, not my super favorite, but he ate a bunch of it.

[caption id="attachment_172" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="custard"][/caption]

This was a very bland, unsalted, un-anything-ed custard.

It was also pretty watery.

But it seemed like the lady brought it out for us especially (probably not, it's just hard to tell), so we tried to make a point of trying it.  Definitely not bad at all, just boring.

Our dong is really tiny and we are two of four foreigners living in it (the other two being Bryan and Aaron -- neither of whom really ever go out).  We may be the only four caucasian people living on this side of town, period.  It's a little hard to tell.  But people are usually either really nice or really not nice, right off the bat.  And part of being really nice can sometimes mean bringing you special food.  Which is often scary.  But you eat it anyway.  Because at least someone is being nice.

And that is the Korean Barbecue experience.

Sorry it was so long!  I don't like long posts, I know they can get boring.  But there are just so many THINGS.

You should all come visit us and we'll take you for barbecue!  It's our favorite.

- catie

Ben: The Thoughtful E-Mart