Vietnamese Coffee

Oh, man, the coffee here is wicked good.

Dry Season

Well, I haven't been posting as much lately because I've been so busy preparing for Christmas and my winter vacation to Vietnam. So now that Christmas is over and I'm only a couple hours away from leaving for that vacation, I will be writing even less (probably not at all) over then next 10ish days. I will, however, have plenty to show and tell when I get back. Until then, patience.

Happy New Year and such.

Company and Brand Name Repetition

There are a few words, phrases, and word endings that pop way too much for comfort in Korea. I think they're trying to evoke certain images of being modern and Western, or just inviting, and they take it overboard.

The most prevalent one I see is using the word "story" in the names of mostly stores: Quilt Story, Wine Story, Gun Story, Storyway. There is also a really popular video game called Maple Story.

"Happy" just gets used randomly everywhere, from store names, to brand names, to names of sales in stores, to toy names, everything. Things have to be all cutesie here, and I guess "happy" is the best word they can come up with to express it.

On a related note, "Good morning" is also used a lot, I guess to make people feel all warm and fuzzy inside. There are Good Morning Hospital, Good Morning Butter, Good Morning Pajamas, etc.

One that kind of boggles me is the ending "-pia." I think that they're trying to make blends with other words and "utopia," and just doing a bad job of it. There is a suit store called Gentpia, my bathroom faucet was made by Waterpia, and I've caught sight of a few other -pias here and there.

Did you know that "Hyundai" means "modern"?

The Cleanest Clean That Ever Cleaned

I finally made it to a Korean bathhouse. I'm a little confused as to whether the one we went to is a standard bathhouse, though. It's called a jjimjilbang and also a sauna (in Korean, that's three syllables), but my guidebook calls a traditional bathhouse a mogyoktang, a sauna, or a daejungtang. It's possible the distinction is in the fact that this place seemed to be more sauna-based than bath-based. Anyway, it was still an amazing cultural experience, which I will probably start repeating once a month or so.

We went to the jjimjilbang after work last night. It was really nice--it was decorated like a luxury hotel. The entrance fee was 10,000 won (about $7), which gave us (Heather, Leon, and I) access to the gender-segregated locker rooms, baths in varying temperatures, showers, sauna room, and steam room, as well as the coed jjimjilbang floor, which has about ten sauna rooms ranging from about 30 to about 80 degrees Celsius, as well as an ice room, and a restaurant. I'm a little pissed about the men's facilities. Apparently the guys get a mud bath and a gym, possibly other stuff I don't know about. What the hell?

We first went to our respective facilities to put on the elastic-waistband cotton shorts and the t-shirt we were given for the jjimjilbang floor and went up there to meet Leon. He evidently misunderstood our plan, though, because after we waited for like 15 minutes for him to come downstairs, Heather had to go make an announcement on the PA for him to get his ass moving and meet us. Apparently he had been enjoying the lavish amenities of his floor, and got laughed at by the other men as he was called for and had to skulk out of there.

We tried some of the rooms for a while--the Ox Bezoar Room, which had little caves to lie in and sit in 32-degree comfort, then a slightly hotter sauna at 41 degrees. The saunas don't tend to have benches or anything in them. At most there is a bamboo mat on the floor and small pillows or wooden blocks with neck rests for lying down. After about a half hour we went to the restaurant, as we'd already been hungry when we got there. Then I had to go back to the women's floor to soak in the bath for a while. I had read online about the professional scrubdown you can get at these places, and I knew I could benefit from that. Heather made me an appointment for 12:30, and she said it would be good to soak in the hot water to soften up my skin before most of it was scrubbed away.

This being the first time I've been in a public place where naked people were walking around, I felt a little modest. I was particularly conspicuous being the only white person there, and I think I got a few stares at first. Nudity among strangers is part of Korean life, though, what with bathhouses like this and open showers at gyms and the like, so they got used to me pretty quickly, and after a while, I wasn't so shy. It was kind of awkward, though, when Heather had to come tell me later that I needed to pay before I started my cleaning. How often does one get seen totally naked by one's boss?

Before soaking, I took a brief shower at one of the stations. There are two kinds of showers: one type is at low counters with shoulder-height dividers and taps on both sides, with a mirror at each station. There is a bath tap and a handheld shower head, and you put a plastic basin below it to fill with water. You sit on a plastic stool and can use a small bowl to scoop water onto you, or use the shower head, while you scrub your body down. A number of women were there with friends or relatives, and would take turns scrubbing each other's backs. The other type is a standard shower head attached to the wall. There are no stalls or anything to protect one's privacy, but there is a separate shower room, I noticed. I didn't go in, but I'm sure there are rows of open shower heads in there, too, so there must be some advantage, like extra steam or something, to washing in there.

I chose the former type, it being the more traditional style of shower. In retrospect, I should have bought or brought some sort of scrubbing cloth and really cleaned myself well before going into the tub, but I was thinking what a waste of my time it would be to wash myself really well right before paying someone (25,000 won, by the way) to do it for me. Later I realized that going into the public bath without being super clean was probably against bathhouse etiquette, as they try to keep the water as clean as possible. The hot bath isn't for cleaning; it's for relaxing and opening the pores, then the cold bath is for closing them and invigorating oneself. I noticed after my treatment that one of the baths I'd been in had been emptied, and they later refilled it. I was mildly afraid it was because of me, but I had seen all these old ladies walking around in cotton shirts and lacy underwear (haha) scrubbing the place down, so I imagine it was just time to change the water.

As for the treatment, it was the most bizarre thing ever. The woman who cleaned me told Heather she was scared, because she doesn't speak any English, but Heather said it would be fine. When I was in the tub, the lady called me over 15 minutes early by walking slowly toward me and clapping, then when I turned around to see what the hell, she beckoned me toward her. Heather thought that was hilarious when I told her.

I got on this plastic table, like a massage table, and she started with my face. She put some gunk on it, then used a cloth to rub it off and give me a facial massage. Then she pulled my hair back with one of those long paper-like cloths and put this ground cucumber concoction on my face. While that set, the scrubbing happened. She dumped warm water on me with a basin, put on these square scrubbing mittens and proceeded to rub off half my skin. She scrubbed pretty much every inch of my body from various angles, turning me around in weird positions and manhandling my appendages, for almost an hour. It was kind of brutal, but it didn't really hurt, just was very intense.

I was filthy dirty rotten. Heather was telling me that Koreans don't take showers every day, because up until only a few years ago, hot water from the tap was a little hard to procure. So in recent times they have only been taking showers every couple of days, and before that, when they actually had to heat up water themselves and use the "poor man's shower" method, only about once a week. I guess this is why the bathhouses have always been so popular. Anyway, even though I take a shower (or even two) daily, I'm not nearly as clean as Koreans are. When Koreans do take a shower, they take advantage by scrubbing the hell out of themselves and getting not only dirt, but also dead skin, off themselves. I exfoliate with a Brillo pad currently, but only once every few weeks. I think Americans are under the impression that overexfoliation is bad for the skin or something, but I don't think that's true now.

You know when you rub your skin, you get those little shavings of dead skin rubbing off? Well with this treatment, I had so much dirt and dead skin coming off me that those tiny shavings turned into big grey worms. It was disgusting, and embarrassing. Heather told me Koreans have a word for those things: ddae. I looked it up today, and my dictionary says it means "grime." Seems appropriate. It also means "occasion." As all the ddae was appearing, and the lady kept scrubbing me everywhere, I heard her express what I assume was shock and awe at how dirty I was. I was telling Leon and Heather that I think she got dirt off me from the kindergarten sandbox.

When she finally finished scrubbing, this other lady came in and they dumped buckets full of water all over me and the table, having me lift up to get underneath me, too. Then they removed the face mask and rubbed me down with a soapy bath puff and rinsed me again. The second lady took over at this point for the massage that comes with the treatment. She first put a towel over me and pressed down on my back a bunch through it. Then she lubed me up with a LOT of this extremely slippery lotion and rubbed and pushed on most of my body hard. I think she could feel the pain in the shoulders and neck, and she tried to get the massive knots out for a few minutes. That's impossible, though.

She was also putting me in some weird positions. My favorite one was when she had me on my back, and she pulled my arms down towards the floor behind me, rubbed them there for a moment, then pushed them down and catapulted them back up so they landed smack on the table at my sides. At the end, she had me sit up on the side of the table so she could do some stuff, then she just pushed me off onto the floor, as I was so slippery. I didn't fall or anything, don't worry. The whole thing took about 75 minutes, almost twice what Heather told me it would be, as there was so much dirt on me. The result of this whole thing was crazy. My skin was glowing, smooth, and softer than it's ever been, and I think she scrubbed a couple years off my face, and more off my body.

The best, as in funniest and strangest, thing about this treatment was that it was topless, at least the scrubbing part. The first lady was probably about 50 and was just wearing these black spandex shorts, and there was this laugh riot going on in my head the whole time about getting a topless cleaning treatment from an old lady. The second lady had on a bra, at least, but with her I ended up getting the female version of teabagged, as she bent over my head to massage my stomach and I got a nice faceful of middle aged cleavage.

After rinsing off the lube and getting my little sauna outfit back on, I went back up to see if Heather and Leon were still up. This facility is open 24 hours and people are allowed to stay overnight. A lot of people use the 24-hour saunas instead of hotels, as it's cheap and you get so much out of it. It was after 1:30 by this time, and there were a number of people sprawled out all over the floor in the jjimjilbang floor lobby, hallways, and rooms. I wandered around looking, and found Leon still awake, but ready to sleep in the hallway. Heather was in a room next door. I was feeling really awake from the whole ordeal, so I hung out in some of the rooms for a while before trying to sleep.

The rooms were all different. Some of them had stones like amethyst or rose crystal set into every inch of the walls and ceilings, and others had walls made of different materials beyond stones and crystals, like wood, rubber, or metal. One room was called the Silver Room and was floored and walled with silver and gold-colored rubber that had little bumps stamped "99.9% silver." Liars. After a bit of that, I went downstairs and washed my hair and rewashed my body so I could go back into the baths. When I was in the baths the first time, there were two hot baths. One was at the normal temperature for a hot tub, and the other felt like it was close to boiling. It was so hot that when I first put my foot in it, I thought it was cold. I tried sitting in it both before my scrub and now at about 2:30, but I could never get fully into the water, just sit on the bench with it up to my midbelly, and I couldn't stay in it for more than five minutes. It actually turned my skin red, and made my heart pound so hard I could see my chest moving. I tried the supercold bath after this, and after the lobster pot, it seemed ice cold. I was pretty disappointed that the second time I tried the baths, both the hot baths were at the uncomfortably hot temperature. I had looked forward to sitting in a hot tub and soaking for a long time this time.

I tried the steam room next, and that was pretty cool. It had amethysts in it, too. Then I decided I should try to sleep, as we were planning to get up early in the morning for McDonald's breakfast before Heather had to go into work. I went into the Ox Bezoar Room again, so I could sleep in one of the little tombs and not have to deal with being looked at or tripped over. After some time being uncomfortable on the hard floor, with just a wooden block and my towel for a pillow, and also getting way too hot after a while, I went out to try the hall. I still had to deal with being on the floor, this time with no block, but the temperature was reasonable. But as I can never sleep well away from home, even with a bed, I eventually had to accept my fate and enjoy the place the whole night through. I went into pretty much all the rooms over the next few hours, including the ice room, which really looked and felt like the inside of a freezer. I talked to a couple young Koreans in there who spoke English.

I kept going back down to the locker rooms to see if I could catch it empty enough to take some pictures, but every time I went for the camera, some clothed or unclothed women came around. I didn't want to take any pictures with anyone in the room, in case they were afraid I would take pictures of them. So sorry, no pictures. At about 4:30, when I was down there, Heather came down to take a shower. I figured she'd sleep deeper into the morning, but I guess it's hard to stay asleep with people walking through and whispering all night. I went back up and hung out some more, and met up with her later. We sat around in a couple of the rooms until after 7, when we figured it was time to wake up Leon and get to McDonalds. I took one more shower before we left. What an experience.

How Am I Doing?

A couple people have recently told me how facty or complainy or detached my blog posts have been of late. So... how am I doing?

Pretty good.

End communication.

But seriously...

It's been just under eleven months now, and I'm in the process of extending my contract until the end of May. I recently sent my passport to a travel agency to get a visa to go to Vietnam for winter break, and was sweating its return. My Korean visa expires on December 20th, and I knew I would have to go to immigration to renew it. When I told Mingyu about needing to get there immediately so I would get it back in time for my trip, he laughed at me. He said it only took two days.

The next day he ate his words. Since I arrived here on the cusp of some major changes to the regulations regarding acquiring teaching visas here, I now have to resubmit a health check and a criminal background check. The health check is no big deal, the the background check has been stressing me out something awful. I found out that the local Los Angeles background check and clearance letter I got wasn't even necessary, and my employers never had to show it to the government. Now I have to get a state-level check, which requires fingerprints, and authentication from the Secretary of State in Sacramento. My brain almost exploded trying to figure out exactly what I have to do. After hours of searching the internet by both me and Heather, calling the US embassy, listening to a recorded message from the Department of Justice, then back to the internet for more specific directions, I think I have a handle on it. It just requires getting fingerprints here, mailing stuff to Sacramento, waiting for it to come back, sending it back to Sacramento to another office, and waiting for it to come back again.

Although I received special permission to leave the country during my vacation, since it falls within my original contract dates, I will not be allowed to leave Korea after January 18, until all my documents are in. Since it will probably take about two months for that to happen, I have to trash my plans to go to Japan during the Lunar New Year at the end of January. I'm pretty upset about that, especially since that will by my last long weekend before I go home. There are no more holidays until May, and that one falls on a Tuesday.

So I've been pretty stressed out lately, what with this, planning my birthday, Thanksgiving, and now Christmas is coming up. I lose more hair in the shower than I'd really like, but that's been happening the whole time. I think it's just the constant stress of being away from home that does it.

Beyond all that, life has been going relatively smoothly, but with some low points. I often find myself extremely irritable at work. I find outlets by pretend-yelling at my students all day. Sometimes I scream "NO!" at them no matter what they say to me for a few minutes. They find that pretty funny. They seem to find anything I say to them funny, as long as it's unrelated to teaching. I often say things like, "I don't like you, go away," or "Get away from me," but they always laugh. I'm glad they can take a joke. I think it has something to do with my being foreign. They don't take anything I say seriously, because I'm considered part of an inferior race.

But I am enjoying myself. My first eight months here I went on trips to national parks, visited the air base up north, vacationed in Thailand, went to the famous Boryeong Mud Festivel, and went on a few field trips with my bosses. I've been taking it easy the last couple months, what with the boyfriend gone now, but I still get to do things I enjoy. I see movies quite often, go out drinking with Leon, go out to restaurants with Heather, and go on the occasional field trip with her or hang out at her house and play Wii and watch movies. Next week she's taking me and Leon to a bathhouse at a hot spring in Gyeongju, which I'm really looking forward to. I was a bit apprehensive about the whole bathhouse thing for a long time, because it's such a naked place, but I think I can forego a little modesty for a real cultural experience.

This is probably the best place I've lived, despite missing American food, not getting any personal space in public, and being generally pissed about the faulty education and work systems in the country. Here I don't need a car, and can get pretty much wherever I want for cheap on the bus or train; I have a nice apartment that's free; people are friendly but they don't bother me (except for those retail workers who follow customers around); it's easy to travel both nationally and internationally; medical care is mostly cheap and easily accessible; and I don't dread going to work every day. And now I finally have a friend I don't have to travel 2-5 hours to see. It's miraculous.

Living abroad has had its ups and downs, but it's mostly decent. In any case, it's interesting, enough to make me willing to stay for an extra five months. Honestly, I'd rather be coming home in January, but because I'm not even close to my original goal of paying off the last $7000 of my private students loans (let alone the federal ones), I feel the need to stay longer and make some more money. I am strongly considering coming back to Korea, even Kate LA, though, after a summer back home visiting friends and family and relaxing a bit (I hope), so I'm definitely not sick of the place. It would just be nice to get a decent burger for once.

Miscellany

In Korea:

Envelopes aren't self-sealing. You have to glue them shut, or tape them. There are bottles of clear, liquid squeeze-glue at every customer station in the post offices.

Automatic doors require your nose to be about two inches away before they open for you. I used to feel like I was going to run into the stupid things before I got through. It's kind of like all those moments in the movies, like Independence Day, when the doors are closing and the ship has to turn sideways or something to get through the tiny hole. Then the pursuing ships all crash into the finally closed doors.

Many automatic doors require a button to be pushed before the open. I guess they no longer qualify as automatic doors, just futuristic easy doors.

Most doors have handles, not doorknobs. Bathroom doors seem to be the major exception, but not a consistent one.

Door locks can never be locked from the outside, that I've noticed. It's impossible to lock yourself out. The posh apartment buildings don't even give you keys. You get a high tech security-coded door with video surveillance on the doorbell. Shmancy.

People constantly spit on the sidewalk. Like loogey-hacking, too. A lot of foreigners find this annoying.

Loud eating is totally okay. Slurping and smacking are a normal part of the Korean meal practice. I read in a guidebook that it's understandable, because Korean food is spicier than our food, so that's just a way of cooling off the mouth.

Korean food is not spicy. THEY all think it is. They always warn foreigners about all this spicy food that is on the plate, and then we eat it and just laugh at them. The only food that I've had here so far that has challenged me was from an Indian fusion restaurant. I just want to shake this whole country of damn pansies. I'm sure there is spicy food out there, but it doesn't seem very common.

I've said this before, but most Korean food is either red, because it's soaked in that atrocious red pepper, or green, because it's seaweed or leaves. I haaaate that.

Koreans think EVERYTHING they do is good for your health, and everything WE do causes cancer. Leon told me today that a kid told him that bread causes cancer.

Koreans hold a grudge, communally. They haaaate China and Japan and most of them hate the US. All they ever talk about is melamine, imperialism (not their words), and mad cow disease. But they don't hesitate to use the products, play the video games, and follow that fashion. I guess that happens everywhere.

There are tons of old people permanently bent at a 90 degree angle from so many decades of strenuous field work.

Pedestrian traffic lights turn green for about two seconds, then start blinking, and the continue blinking for 20 or 30 seconds, or even a minute, then they turn red. So you never know, unless you understand the traffic patterns, if it's okay to cross, and people often hold up traffic or almost get hit, because they took a chance and were wrong.

Scooters don't have to follow traffic laws. Half the cars don't follow them, either, unless in high-traffic areas.

Public restrooms don't have hot water. I really wish that weren't so.

Small faces are extremely attractive, due to the novelty, I guess. Koreans often have wide faces. Everywhere I go, I'm told about my small face. Even Heather's four-year-old nephew remarked on it.

ANY body fat is entirely unacceptable, and many people are relentlessly cruel about it.

There are no cookie sheets.

They've never heard of pudding.

Music is piped out of loudspeakers in places it shouldn't be, like parks and parking lots. Some parks even have massive tv screens.

Cell phones come with two batteries, but no charger.

People's hips and groins are much more flexible, due to sitting cross-legged on the floor so much.

There are no napkins, only toilet paper and tissues.

Ceilings are wallpapered.

Sun exposure is practically forbidden to women over the age of 45 or so.

Doorbells play a mutilated Muzak version of Fur Elise.

You cannot write people's names in red, because that is only done for the dead.

Hospitals and some other buildings don't have a correctly labeled fourth floor. The word for "four" and "death" are the same, so superstition dictates that it's an unlucky number. Buildings that follow this supersition either go from three to five when labeling the floors, or call the fourth floor "F Floor."

There are two flower shops on every block.

Mailboxes in apartment buildings are not always locked, and in smaller buildings, each floor shares one mailbox.

Most of the websites that show tv programs that I want to watch are not supported.

More than half of Korean children wear corrective lenses, because they spend about twelve hours a day in class or doing homework, and in their free time they play video games.

An American Thanksgiving in Korea

I love Thanksgiving, so it almost killed me that I wasn't going to get to celebrate it in Korea. A couple months ago I thought of the idea to cook a dinner at Heather's house, since she lives in a posh enough building to actually have an oven. When I mentioned it to her, she got really excited, since she had a Thanksgiving dinner at her church while she was in the US, and I think she still dreams about it.

I invited a lot of people--Heather put me in charge of inviting, even though it was her house. I started by inviting three of the other teachers, plus Heather's nuclear family, her parents, and her brother's family. Then Kate's class found out about it and they all wanted to go, too. I mentioned it to Heather, because I thought it was kind of funny, but she really liked the idea. I ended up inviting my two most advanced classes, a total of 13 kids. If everyone had come, it would have been 28 people, including me. Heather suggested we do a rotation, so there weren't a million people in her apartment at once.

Shopping for this thing was a nightmare. There were a number of items I thought I wouldn't be able to find, and I had to make pretty much everything from scratch. Heather took me to an open market last weekend, where there was supposed to be a store with a lot of Western spices and such. But it's closed on Sundays. Those bastards. We went back this Saturday, and I found that all they had were jumbo jars of spices. All I needed at most was a couple teaspoons of each. But I had no choice. I'll just have to do a lot of good cooking from now on.

Here's the menu:

Deviled eggs
Fruit platter
Celery with cream cheese and olives

4 chickens (there's no turkey here, and the chickens are quite small)
Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes
Sweet potato casserole
Green bean casserole (with onion ring chips instead of fried onions--it wasn't too bad)
Cranberry sauce
Broccoli with white sauce
Dinner rolls
Eggnog


Chocolate cream pie (I had boxes of instant pudding sent from home)


I tried to make gravy from the chicken fat, but I suck at making gravy. I've only succeeded once. I was so pissed.

Getting all this involved the initial shopping trip, which wasted about an hour, but we got a couple things and went to a noodle place where they make the noodles from scratch while you wait. Then Saturday I was shopping from 10 to almost 3 with Heather, then Grace, one of the teachers. Heather took me back to the market to get the spices and most of the vegetables. Grace took me to Homeplus to get the baking stuff and the other food I couldn't get at the market, and a roasting pan, as that's not a common item in Korean homes. We also tried to get a cookie sheet, as I had a package of cookies from home (which I didn't end up making), and I wanted it to cook the rolls on, but they didn't have any. We then went to four cookware stores, with no luck. We finally tried E-mart, and even though they didn't have a cookie sheet, they did have a pizza pan, which was close enough. I also used it to cook the crusts for my pies, since I bought what I thought were disposable pie tins, but were actually just thin metallic serving plates. I just folded up the sides to make them higher and baked them atop the pizza pan. It worked out pretty well.

I didn't end up finding chicken stock for the stuffing, which totally threw me off. I had to boil chicken for a couple hours and make the damn stock myself. On Saturday, after over four hours of shopping, I spent over six hours making cranberry sauce, eggnog, sweet potato casserole, and pie crusts, and doing some prep work for the stuffing. Kate helped out. She had a ball. On Sunday, I made all the rest, with Heather and Kate helping as best they could. Even Wesley chopped some onions for me when he got there.

Heather said that she had thought American food was much easier to make than Korean food, but after she saw me do all that, she changed her mind. American food is much harder to make. I disagree, but I guess we all feel more comfortable with stuff we're used to making, or at least with ingredients we're used to. This was the first time I was making most of the food from scratch, so I felt like I was floundering quite a bit. All the stress made me completely flip out on a number of occasions.


Here's a picture of my feast, once I finally finished it:

Haha, just kidding (sucka). I got that from the internets. Actually, even though I brought my camera, I was so busy cooking that I didn't have time to take any pictures. Too bad. It would have been cool.

I had originally thought I would be done the first round by two or three, but we didn't end up sitting down to eat until about 4:30, which was shortly before the second rotation of guests was supposed to arrive. But even though I invited a couple dozen people, it ended up being just me, Heather's core family, Leon and Sue (teachers), and three students. Heather's parents showed up later and ate the remains of the meal, as well. Grace was feeling too tired from being sick all week, Heather's brother is always unreliable, and students are, too. Most of them had to go places with their parents, and the rest just didn't feel like coming, I guess.

The reactions to the food were funny. Leon, being British, is used to this kind of food at Christmas, although he'd never had eggnog before. It was his dream to try it. I think he's still dreaming about it, he loved it so much. Anyway, that's one happy customer, with the food too, it seemed. Heather and Sue also loved everything, and Heather's husband seemed pretty happy with most of it.

The kids were another story. I think Kate liked most of it, having had Thanksgiving and other American food before, but all Sally ate was broccoli (without sauce) and a roll, maybe some potatoes. Cindy didn't seem to excited about the food, but I think she ate more than Sally. I'm not sure how Wesley and Jiho (Heather's son) enjoyed it, as they ate in the other room, but I didn't get any compliments.

When Heather's parents came, they ate a lot of the chicken. Her dad picked the carcass clean, and his wife just forked it and put it on his plate finally. They seemed interested in the other food, but I'm not sure how well they took it. For those that didn't like the food, I think it was because some of it was too sweet (sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce), and some of it was too... creamy? (deviled eggs, green bean casserole, white sauce).

By the time we were ready for dessert, it was just Heather and her husband and kids, Leon, Wesley, and I, so we only ate one pie. That was fine with me. I got to take the other pie home. Suite. Although I didn't have to reheat the leftovers from the first meal for another bunch of people, I did have two more chickens that had been brining all day, and needed to be cooked. After eating for a couple hours, resting for a bit, having dessert, and trying to hook up my computer to Heather's huge tv with no success (damn you, HDTV), I got around to that. Then Heather's husband drove me home at like 10pm with two big boxes and two bags full of supplies, spices, tupperware dishes with leftovers, and cookware. I've rarely been so tired. I'm still tired.

I did get around to taking a couple pictures of leftovers that didn't look totally mangled by the time I got home. Here's the chocolate cream pie that we didn't eat:


Dessert was supposed to have been epic, with two pies, fresh baked cookies (the package Dad sent me), and brownies from a package Heather somehow got a hold of, but then Heather bought ice cream, and that and one piece of pie ended up being enough for everyone who was left by the time dessert rolled around.

Here's the cranberry sauce. I had to use dry cranberries instead of fresh or frozen, so I think it turned out much less saucy than it should have. I still kind of like it. It was probably the most expensive thing I made. I think it must have cost about 20 or 25 bucks, and that's only what I had to pay. About a third of the berries I used came from Heather's fridge, having been bought a long time ago, but never used.

Anyway, the grand total for the meal was somewhere around 150,000 won, which is about a day and a third's pay. I can't be sure of the actual total, as Heather did a lot of grocery runs when we ran out of something or I realized I'd forgotten something, or someone ate something I was supposed to use. She kept saying I should do this again for Christmas, as we have that off and she loved the food so much. I'm thinking about telling her I'll do it if she gives me Christmas Eve off to cook.

School Birthday Party

This year was one of those dreaded years when I actually have to work on my birthday. Most of the time, it falls during the Thanksgiving holiday, so I get it off. It fell on Thanksgiving proper this year, but since I'm not in the US, it didn't matter. Anyway, I was determined not to work on my birthday, even if I had to go IN to work, so I promised all six of my Thursday classes that I would give them food and we wouldn't do any studying.

Here's the amazing lineup of food for my classes:

1:40: Buns that taste like waffles with butter and syrup from Rotiboy (the "son" of Papparoti, a popular bakery chain) and mango juice

2:30: Cake (brought in by one of the students) and pastries from Paris Baguette

3:20: I bought french fries from Lotteria, Korea's own fast food joint, and one kid surprised me with pizza and soda for the whole class, and another kid brought three bottles of soda herself.

4:10: Fried chicken from Homisil (I think that's the name) and soda

5:10: Pizza from Pizza Etang (it means Pizzaland) and soda. These bastard fifth graders (well, it was really just Jack) begged me for as many pizzas as possible, since the boys could eat two and the girls could eat two. Since Pizza Etang apparently gives a two-for-one deal, I figured I'd just get four and make them happy without killing my wallet too much. They only ate one and a half of the pizzas, so I ended up giving a whole pizza to another class after I gave a piece or two to all the other teachers and staff members.

8:20: More cake from Paris Baguette, plus some of the leftover pastries from earlier, and soda.

Man, I felt fat after that. And I'm pretty sure I spent a whole day's pay on all that food.

I was really surprised at how the kids stepped up to the event. I got almost as many birthday presents as I did Teachers' Day presents, and three kids brought in food and drink of their own to share with the class. It was quite nice. All my kids were so happy that we had a party, and all the kids in other classes were wicked pissed at their teachers for not having a party, too. They could smell the food.

Here are my second graders, Danny (cut off), Melanie, and Michelle putting the candles on my first cake, which Danny's mother bought:

The cake says Lotte Hotel, which is kind of a funny thing to put on a cake. It was probably quite pricey, though, given the grandeur of the company.

Here are my second, third, and fourth graders, Jessica, Sally, Ava, Jenny, and Lucy is in the front:

From the same class, Patrick, Major, and Joey:

This is what my desk looked like after three classes:

My third, fourth and fifth grader class, John, Pam, and Jun, watching the Simpsons:

Any and Bunny, from the same class:

After the Simpsons was over, the kids just played Nintendo DS, Jun against Bunny, and the others watched:

That's Lauren in the back, there (she's always late on Thursdays):

My fifth graders watching the Simpsons. They listened to a CD by Big Bang, a terrible Korean pop band, afterward. That's Na-huin, Amy, Nancy, Sung-sik, and Alex:

Jack and Ji-ung:

This is the cake I bought myself for my last class of the day. It says "Congratulations," and I thought about asking them to write in frosting below it "You're old," but I'm sure they don't do that here. I had to get a big cake because Leon's class meeting at the same time are also all my students, but they don't see me on Thursdays. They begged Leon to let them come, and he'd take any excuse to not have class, so they all joined us.

I must note, though, that after eating three of my own birthday cakes and at least a couple other cakes since I've been here, I have found Korean cakes very much wanting. I have yet to find any flavor in any of them, especially the chocolate ones. They all taste like air, and they're kind of mushy. I had a conversation about this with my coworkers (at my special Thanksgiving, more to come), and everyone else said they liked the light quality of Korean cakes. I guess I'm just too American, too much buttercream, sugar, and whatnot.

This is Tina, one of my newer students. She got transferred into one of my weekly classes last week because she bullied another girl too much. Then the girl she bullied got transferred into my class the day of the party. Ummm...

Wesley, hamming it up, with Eric laughing at him:

Sally (different Sally from the one above) and Hanna, getting ready to take my picture on their cell phones:

And here they are taking the pictures:

My second cake came with streamers in little cones with strings. A couple of my studens pulled them, and then I ended up wearing one in my hair, and yes, the earrings were a gift. I would never wear earrings like that without obligation.

Here's Cathy with the streamer before she gave it to me:


Cathy and Emily:

Back at home, here are all my gifts:

I got a scarf and mittens set, another scarf, two pairs of gloves, two pairs of earrings, a set of two embroidered handkerchiefs, some roses, three nice pens (two Parker pens), two pairs of socks, some doughnuts, two candy bars, some candy-covered chocolates, a bottle of handcream, and two jars of Dream Cacao chocolate, 56% and 72%.

Here are some closeups:

Here is the birthday ceremony for my last class, plus Leon and his class. I demanded they sing to me, but they didn't put up a fight. Wesley loves Abba, by the way:

Birthday

I got a surprise birthday party today. It was funny. Heather said she would take me out to lunch today, even though my birthday isn't for another two days. Apparently her husband's birthday is the same day as mine, so she's spending time with him Thursday before work, and she said today we would do the birthday lunch.

We went to this huge gourmet buffet restaurant, and as we stepped onto the elevator from the garage, I saw Grace, one of the Korean teachers in there. I was like, what the hell, why is Grace in the elevator? I almost said it was a small world (because in Korea, it really is), but then Heather pointed out that Leon was right behind me and I realized what was going on. Then I noticed Grace was carrying a cake. In retrospect, I noticed she had a really guilty look on her face when we got in the elevator. One of the other teachers, Sue, showed up once we were seated, too, so it was a nice little group.

The surprise was a little botched, since I wasn't supposed to see anyone until we actually sat down, but that's okay. I noticed Heather was stressing about time when we were driving to the restaurant. I thought it was because it was so late in the morning and we had to be at work soon, but I guess it was because we were late for our reservation. Grace said we were about ten minutes late when I asked in the elevator, but I guess we were all running behind or they'd have been at the table already.

Heather said on the way to the place that this restaurant had "one hundred foods," according to her friend, and I think she was right. And almost all the food came in individual tiny dishes, each of which was a little work of culinary art. The food was really good, but sometimes it seemed the art had become more important than the food. For example, there were little wedges of avocado in one dish, with a ball of shredded seafood salad and a pile of tiny cubes of pineapple, but the avocado was so tough, I wasn't even sure it was real. I was really excited about that avocado, too.

Before we ate, they showed me the blueberry cake they'd gotten me and sang to me and had me blow out candles. We didn't have time to eat it at the restaurant, though, as we had gotten there with only about an hour before we should have been to school (I was five minutes late to my first class, haha). Leon got me some cheese as a present, which was awesome. I bet he paid a pretty penny for it, too. Sue got me a scarf and mittens set that happen to be the same color as my armoire, my sheets, and my bathrobe, all of which match by total coincidence. I think sea foam green is my destiny.

Foreign Ugliness Nearly Scares Toddler to DEATH

On Sunday I was walking through a store and I saw a little two- or three-year-old girl. She was at a coffee shop in the store, and hanging on to a low-backed bench, looking out the back. As I often do with little kids, I made a funny face. All I did was widen my eyes. This startled her enough, somehow, to lose her balance, fall backwards onto the seat of the bench, then start to slide head-first, on her back, toward the floor. Luckily, her father was close enough and alert enough (although he'd had his back turned on her before, naughty, naughty) to grab her and flip her back to upright. I guess I should check the balance and stability of toddlers before I look at them around here anymore.

Amethyst Caves

After the wedding last weekend, Heather took Leon and I to the Amethyst Caves, which weren't too far from the wedding hall.

This is the outside of the caves, with waterfall. They turned the whole place into a small amusement park, which you can kind of tell from the picture:


Here are the mountains nearby the caves:



The carousel and the base of the mountains. It was pretty cloudy and foggy back there:

This is inside the caves:

This appears to be a tree growing within the rocks, but I'm not sure if it's real or artificial:

The caves had all sorts of lame science shit, like this evolution of man exhibit:

Apparently man evolves into a cell phone-toting advanced primate:


Here's another exhibit showing Korean miners. It's freaky:

A group of people on the boat tour, which we also took later:


Amethyst, I assume:

Amethyst scattered within the walls:

There was an Egyptian exhibit for some reason. It was so lame I didn't even bother taking pictures of it, except for this mummy:

There was a circus inside the caves for some reason. Here are some shots and videos of the teenaged gymnasts from China:

Here's a video of our boat tour (yes, the boat was spinning around in a circle a couple times):

The whole thing was kind of boring, but it was still nice to see. It's funny, when Heather pulled over and asked some old guy for directions, he kept saying to her, what do you want to go there for? There's nothing to see. He was sort of right, but the boat ride was cool.

Oh, yeah, and because we were going there right after the wedding, I had a chance to feel very Korean. I had worn high heels to the wedding, of course, and then went trekking around caves and rode an inflatable boat, which I thought I was going to pop. Wearing heels totally inappropriately is the sign of a real Korean woman.

A Korean Wedding

Last weekend I went to a Korean wedding. Kristen, one of the teachers at my school, was getting married. Now she has to move to Seoul where her husband's job has been transfered and become a housewife. She's not too keen on that.


The wedding was largely like a Western wedding, with a few obvious differences. The first thing I noticed was that people didn't bring gifts. I brought a gift, which was a surprise to Kristen, but everyone else was dropping off envelopes with money at the sign-in desk. Just like in the Godfather, but with no pillow cases. There was also no guest book to sign, and seemingly no souvenirs at all for the bride and groom, save the clothes and the rings.

My favorite difference was that Kristen entered the wedding hall to the Star Wars Theme. I got really excited for a second, but they only played about 30 seconds of it, so I couldn't get my video camera out in time to prove it was really happening.



There were also these sword chicks involved with the ceremony. They were dressed in little red uniforms and the bride and groom walked under their swords. Heather says that's not traditional--it's just the way this wedding hall operates. Usually the swords are part of military weddings.


The whole atmosphere was much less solemn and serious than at Western weddings. It was actually treated more like a show than a ceremony. There was actually an emcee at the front of the room, announcing over the speakers what was going on through every step of the wedding (I assume that's what he was saying, anyway). The guests were pretty casual, too. Although everyone was dressed to the nines, not all of them chose to sit down, but instead stood up at the back of the room and talked the whole time. I felt the steady din was quite rude, but I guess that's what they do here.


After they were married, there was a quiz, which I thought was pretty cool. Wasn't there some newlywed gameshow that tested couples' knowledge of each other? Maybe that's where they got the idea. They had big cards with answers gotten prior to the wedding, and they had to answer the questions. Actually, I think it may have been only Kristen who had to answer the questions. I don't recall ever hearing her husband speak. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention...

Here is the wedding hall with the groom at the front, talking to one of the sword chicks:

These flower towers are an obligatory fixture at Korean weddings and other events. I see them all the time:

Here is Leon and I with Kristen before the ceremony. I read about a Korean superstition that if a bride smiles at the wedding, the first child is supposed to be a girl. I was curious to see if she put any stock in it, but I guess not.

Here are Kristen, some kid, and her primper:

This is the beginning of the ceremony, when the sword chicks escort the mothers to the altar to light candles:

The bride's procession with her father:

This is when the bride and groom first meet and bow to each other:





These are from the ring ceremony:

I took this from the back row, so my focus is off from the zooming, but here are Kristen and her husband after they were pronounced married:

Here is the cake cutting ceremony. I don't know what happens to the cake, because we sure as hell didn't get to eat it. Heather said only the top part of the cake is real. I did notice that some people were tipping the table at a 45 degree angle with the cake still on it before the ceremony began.

Here they are walking back up the aisle after everything was over, and that was the last we saw of them.

Korean weddings don't have a reception like ours do. They generally include a buffet for the guests, but the bride and groom leave for their honeymoon, or for home, immediately after the wedding. The wedding hall had a restaurant a floor above, where the buffet was served. Some people ate, some people went home. The only traditionally required food at a wedding, I've read, is noodle soup. There is a saying which goes, "When are we going to eat noodles?" It's a way of asking when someone is going to get married.

I think it's ironic that there's no reception after, and the whole ceremony seemed kind of isolated, with people just talking amongst themselves and not necessarily paying attention to the wedding. It seems antithetical to the whole community/family-oriented culture.