Food, Flowers, and Living as a Foreigner

Well... it's time for another post, I suppose!  It's tough coming up with new things to write about as life here is becoming normal.  Putting my garbage bag in the street rather than into a garbage can isn't that strange anymore... neither is the general lack of public trash receptacles.  There is an interesting system involving recycling paper products vs. general trash and the separate disposal of food waste but I'm sure that isn't the reason you're reading this right now.  Plus, I'm just a foreigner and I have no idea how it works...

Enough about trash!

One thing that is the same no matter which continent I'm on: mornings suck.

really... has anything good ever happened before 10 am?

The upside: I have an hour break from 9:20 to 10:20!  Hooray!  Most of that is lesson planning, but hey, there's no screaming kids on a computer, so I'll take it! Other than that, once I make it to lunch, I can coast through the day no problem!  We get fed lunch at school, which was a great surprise upon arrival.  I don't have to pack a lunch and I get an authentic Korean meal at least once a day!  What's not to love?

We call the cook emo.  Literally, it translates into "mother's sister" (that'd be an aunt for my slower crowd).  Let me tell you, emo is a fine lady.  She always makes me feel just like everyone else... I mean that in the sense that she only knows Korean, and that's how she talks to me.  It made it a bit difficult for the first week or so.  Once I learned masshiseyo, which means delicious, our relationship hit a whole new level.  Now emo hand feeds me kimchi and mandoo on a regular basis (not a joke, it happens).  

Masshiseyo!

This is a pretty typical lunch.  I'd bet my salary that 4/5 days we have both rice and soup.  The other day, just rice.  Other than that, there's 3 side dishes any given day.  One is usually some form of kimchi, which if you don't know, is spicy fermented cabbage.  It can also be made in the radish variety, which is my favorite.  The next side dish is a protein, either egg, tofu, or some meat.  The last side dish is a grab bag.  Sometimes its like what you see here... some kind of dried fish delight... other days it's little dried minnows that still have eyes!  Even yet, other days its dried seaweed wrap, which is actually a delicious salty snack.  Overall, lunch gets an A+ in Bradley Teacher's book.

Lets see... 

what have I done lately....

Well, we went to the Daegu Arboretum, which was great!  Its been rare to find a place where it's only nature, no white buildings.  I'll just throw some pictures up rather than blubbering on about it:

Crossing the river!  This is where I get to run, by the way!  Aren't you jealous?

We walked past this on the walk.  Neat!

cheeeeeese

There's a lot of neat landscaping.

The Daegu Arboretum is a great place to get away if you need to, so I'll definitely be going back.  

I've also kept up with my resolution to cook more:

ddakbokki

Ddakbokki is a very popular dish here.  You can buy it from street vendors for really cheap.  It's known for being spicy.  All thats in it is some cabbage, onions, carrots, ddak (rice cake), fish cake, and some good ol' fashioned gojuchang (spicy korean paste).

These... I did not make.  But they remain delicious nonetheless. 

and as with anything, peanut butter only improves the situation.

just a quick meal we threw together.

Ok, I've entertained you with pictures and stories, so now it's time for me to bore you with my thoughts.

Korea... oh, Korea.  

It's good here.  I feel as if I could go back in time to 60's or 70's America, it would be similar.  You know... when people could leave their houses unlocked at night...  When common sense ruled.  

Speaking of... I almost fell victim to a common sense smackdown the other day.  I was riding my bike down the sidewalk towards a cross street.  Just as I would in America, I peeked behind me to see if anybody was going to be turning and to check if I should stop.  There was indeed a car, yet my American brain told me: "Hey, this guy can clearly see that I'm intending to cross this street.  I'm on a bike.  He wouldn't hit a guy on a bike. I'm going for it."

And so I almost broke my face on the front of a hyundai...

Now, you'd want to think that he should stop for me, the pedestrian, but he's probably using his common sense: "Hey, this guy on the bike...  He just looked right at me.  He knows I'm crossing.  He doesn't look that stupid... he wouldn't pedal out in front of 2 tons of steel."  

Lesson learned: if it can kill you, don't bike in front of it.

One of the biggest things I've noticed is how Koreans take care of their bodies.  They are active.  They walk.  They move.  Every park has machines that the public can exercise on.  Now... this is amazing: they get used!  The one exception I've seen to this is that most Korean men smoke.  A lot.  I don't mind... It's better than obesity if you ask me.

Korea is going through an economical boom right now. There have been so many changes in the past decade alone.  Back then, there wasn't as big of a western influence.  Now, you can go to a department store and pick up a pair of Calvin Klein jeans, get a big mac, and drive home in your Chevy if you really 

want to.  Heck, we've even seen a Ferrari!

I wonder how this boom is going to affect the country.  Every car I see driving down the street was new in the last 5 years.  The side streets were not built with traffic in mind.  What I mean is, any street that isn't a main thoroughfare is only wide enough for one car.

Right now, its common to maybe have one car per family.  Definitely not more, but maybe one.  What happens when more people can start affording cars?  Where will they drive? 

This is all just observations from a waygookin who's only been here one month... so I wouldn't put much weight on them, but its all I've got right now...  

To all of those praying for me: Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  You are awesome, and your prayers are working.  

I like to play this game I like to call "Getting lost in Korea".  Its a single player game.  I play by leaving my apartment and walking one direction or another until I don't recognize anything.  Subways and busses are tools in this game, and a fun twist is to spot the top of a building far away and try and navigate to that building.  Bonus points if its after 2am.

The point of the game is to think, to get away, and to experience more of God's creation.  I find myself wondering why I don't do more of this when I'm at home.  Why do I live each stage of my life as if it were only preparation for "real life".  Why is it only when we're on some great adventure that we choose to improve ourselves?  Why does there need to be a problem for there to be change?  

I challenge you to get out... live like what you're doing right now is the most exciting thing you've done, because I can tell you that if you live your life in anticipation for the next exciting thing, you're going to find most of your life seems wasted.  This is real life.  LIVE IT.

"All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost." - J.R.R. Tolkien

Peace, love and all that other stuff.

Brad

One Month Deep

Today marks one month in Korea for myself.  How the time flies!  When I stop and think, it all seems like a blur.  I love it here, but I really do miss home.  Every once in a while, I catch myself whistling "God Bless America" at work... usually while I'm daydreaming about sweet sugar-frosted honey-coated deep-fat-fried cheese sticks... oh my sweet, sweet America... how I miss thee...

Ok, seriously though, there are many things I miss about Minnesota.  Most of which is my fiancee, family and my motorcycle.  The other big ones are:

Communicating with sales people in English.
Cheese.
Reading street signs.
Definitely cheese.
Good beer.
Good coffee.
The ability to buy clothes.
Open spaces.
Driving.
Cheese.
and many more things I can't think of right now...

I do miss cheese though.  Its not that I can't get it here, its just that it's really expensive and none of the Korean dishes have any cheese in them.  Its just one of those things I think longingly of...  I'll live.

The coffee here is straight rubbish.  You can get a nice watered down coffee at Starbucks for $5 if you must.  Other than that, "coffee" here is mostly instant packages of sugar and cream with a hint of coffee flavor.  Not a fan. Again, I'll live.

Beer.  Just like coffee and cheese... you can get it, but it ain't cheap!  The most popular Korean brands, Hite and Cass, taste like your typical crappy beer in the States.

Clothes for Bradley?  Nope.  Not a chance.  Most times when I'm just mildly browsing through a selection of textile goods, someone will approach me and say something to the effect of: "you size no."



The best part about my time here has been the new relationships that I've made.  There are four other teachers at the school with me, and it's been a blast to get to know them over the course of the past month.  I've finally started to figure out some of the things that I want to do while I'm here as well.  I plan to join an ultimate frisbee team, take a cooking class, take up amateur origami, and learn rock climbing.

During the week days, it really doesn't feel like I'm on a different continent.  I spend so much time at the school, and my neighborhood has become so familiar to me that it doesn't feel foreign.  The school is great, but just like any job, it has its problems.  Thats another thing I've realized... there is no perfect job.  There's always going to be things I don't necessarily like, or things that I would change, but really the only thing I can do is change my attitude.

The first week of teaching was really stressful because kids are loud and messy and just rowdy in general.  Most of these kids get to school at 9 and dont leave until 5, when they go to some other place where they learn to play violin, or tae kwon do, or go to soccer school, or a number of other things I can only imagine...  These are kindergarteners, mind you.  We don't really have any time at school for them to just be kids.  Unfortunately, a lot of what I do is help them get through workbooks, because thats measurable progress for the parents.  If they get through a book, they must have learned something, right?  That's not always the case, and I wish I could spend more time just speaking English with them, but no such luck.

My kiddos

So, the first week, I spent so much energy trying to turn them into these perfect little angels and then I realized that its going to be a lot easier if I just let them be kids.  Once I started to think like a kid, it made being around kids all day less draining.

After spending 2 weeks with these kids, its getting a lot easier to teach them.  My class for this year was put together from two different classes last year, so the kids are used to different teachers and different classmates.  Its hard to explain why this makes it difficult, so I'll just give you examples.  Half of my kids had an Australian teacher, so they only know garbage as "rubbish".   Another example: in the first week, I would ask the kids, "Are you done?" and they would just ignore me... it took a few days to realize that they didn't know what "done" was because their past teacher had always asked them "are you finished?".  Its simple things like that which make it a tough transition for both me and the kids.

The kids themselves are actually great, but their greatness is tainted when you need them to work and all they want to do is speak in Korean and play with toy dinosaurs.  They are each at very different levels, so keeping them all together is difficult.  One of them can't get over saying "me like ____",  while another student is able to articulate everything he did over the weekend in near perfect grammar.

Rocket Salad

Tom!

Eileen

All in all, I love my job.  Its getting easier and more fruitful by the day.  My mantra has been patience over this first month, and I'm finally hitting my stride.  Life is good.  I hope the same is true for you.

I'll leave you with one of my favorites from Korea... drinks in a bag!  

...to white russians!

Anything from apple juice...

Living Like a Local - Mt. Apsan and Cooking Bibimbap

One of my goals for this year is to try and immerse myself in the Korean culture as much as I can.  I still don't even know what that means, but I'm slowly learning about the people here and I'm enjoying it a lot.

weird ice cream is definitely part of the culture.

Yes, there is corn inside...

 One of the national past times in Korea is hiking, so last weekend me and a few guys figured we'd try our hand at Mt. Apsan, a popular park/mountain in Daegu.  Here's a little reference map for you to show you how close this is to my apartment.

Click on the picture.  It will get bigger.

Just fyi, in case you wanted to know EXACTLY where I am in the world!

So Apsan is pretty big.  There's a few entrance points with trails that lead to the top.  There are several points and a ridge connecting all of them.  There are several buildings on the top of this ridge used for different things... the only one I know is the restaurant!  Here's the view from near my apartment.

Thats it. 

The park scenery is really nice.  Then begins the long hike...

On my two hiking trips so far in Korea I've noticed that when they make a trail up a mountain, they literally make a trail straight up the mountain.  It gets the heart rate going.

Up a little ways we found an old buddhist temple

It was built sometime in the 900's.

Very ornate.

Me.

...and the hike resumes.

The top!

The view is fantastic.

We made it!

This is the restaurant at the top.  We got some Korean pancakes.

Koreans are some of the friendliest people.  The table next to us bought us some strawberries!  

Since I've arrived, I've witnessed the friendliness of Korean people over and over again.  Whether it's someone helping us out when we look lost, or giving us free food, or simply just not laughing at us... the Korean people have been very hospitable to us.

So, we dominated Absan... no big deal.  Anybody can do that.  

One of the things that I desire most for my time here is that I develop my cooking skills to where I can come back to MN and give my friends and family a taste of my time in Korea.  I've only had my apartment for about a week but I was feeling the itch to get started on my Korean cuisine adventures...

Luckily, Aaron, one of my co-teachers, is somewhat of a culinary guru and has the spices and the know-how to guide my crash course.  I set out to find a recipe and for no good reason at all, I settled on bibimbap (thats bee-bim-bop).

What is that???

It means something like "mixed meal".  Bap means rice in Korean.  So I'm guessing the first part has something to do with the other ingredients or the nature of the meal.  If you're that curious, google it. :) 

So, we acquired the necessary ingredients: sesame oil, bean sprouts, onion, mushroom, zucchini, spinach, carrot, garlic, and of course gochujang (korean red chili sauce).  Basically you can make it with whatever vegetables you have, but this is just what we got.  

I cooked each vegetable differently.  Some of them sautéed, some boiled, some with garlic, some not, ect... they get placed aside until a later time.

some of the veggies finished.

bean sprouts.

gotta have the bap.

Rice cakes!

When the ingredients are cooked, you put cooked rice in a frying pan and make a sort of rice pancake by browning each side.

Then you break it up.

In the meantime, Aaron is making Kimbap, which you know about from a few posts ago.

Our excellent kimbap

Back to the bibimbap!  Once the rice cake is made and separated, I put the rest of the rice on top and placed the vegetables into a pizza-like arrangement and then spread the carrots out on top.  Then you let it sit cooking for about 15 minutes.  That lets all of the vegetables heat up again.  When its ready to serve, mix it all up, add your gochujang and you're set.

Kimbap.  Bibimbap.

family dinner.

Mmmmmm.

I must say it was spectacular.  Its such a bonus that this meal is so healthy too!  No wonder Koreans are so skinny...
For my first Korean cooking experience, I have to say that I am very pleased!  We'll see if I can duplicate these results next time I try!

I'll send you off with some other pictures from this last week.

The view from my co-teacher's apartment.

The main drag right by me.

Reach for the stars, little blue truck.

A street downtown.

My favorite food here so far: Jjimdak (Jim-duck)

Free desert!  Start with a layer of snow-cone-like ice, top it with some corn flakes and beans,
and add some fruit and chocolate to top 'er off.  

Daegu Tower

Hiking along the ridge