Christmas in Korea

We've been trying to keep busy here which is hard to do since we're in this small town...anyway, Santa paid us a visit on Friday evening and left us some presents as well as a very non-traditional Christmas dinner. Then we went out to the karaoke bar and sang some very non-Christmas-y music. The next night we went out with Misty and Brian to play some pool and had a great time! The Koreans are really fond of billiards but they don't have pocket holes. The pool hall has bright lights, no music and many older, Korean men pushing balls around on a table. They'll wear special gloves, drink and smoke. Anyway, there was one regular pool table so we played, or tried to play there.

The next time we post may not be until 2010 as we leave on Friday!!!!!! So we wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Deagu Part Two

We went to Daegu on Saturday for the day to do a bit of shopping and just to get away from Pohang. It was a fairly chilly day, but sunny. We arrived at about 11am, had some coffee and then headed to the shopping area. Compared to last time, we found way better deals and we now know the stores that we like and actually look forward to going inside them. There are certain stores here which you can tell are supposed to be the equivalents to GAP, Old Navy, Abercrombie, etc. The insides of the stores look and even smell the same as certain stores at home. Anyway, we sometimes joke around with each other about clothes we've bought, like "Oh my god! Is that coat a COAX?" "Sure is." "And it's not a knock-off?" "Nope. It's the real deal." Obviously, it's the small things that amuse us here in Korea.

We went out for lunch at the best pizza place we've found to date. Most of the pizza here tastes a bit off...with globs of mayonaise, large chunks of mashed sweet potatoes and other curious things for pizza. This restaurant was called Poppa Johns and tasted almost identical to pizza at home.

In the evening, we went to see New Moon which we thought was really good, but not great. This was probably mostly due to the crazy foreigner who sat beside me and kept staring at us every time he laughed. At one point he turned to me and said "do werewolves eat vampires?" to which I replied "I'm not really sure." He smirked and said "cause I never learned this in high school." There is something to be said about foreigners who choose to stay in Korea for longer than a year. They all seem to be crazy!

We headed back to Pohang at about 10pm on a bus which was about 150 degrees. The Koreans seem to prefer extremes when it comes to everything and temperature is not exception. A room will either be freezing or unbearably hot.

Anyway, it was nice to break up the time between now and Thailand. 11 days and counting!!!

Conversations with Koreans

Yesterday I asked my high school student about Christmas.
Me: Do you celebrate Christmas in your family?
Student: Yes
Me: What are your Christmas traditions?
Student: I play with my friends
Me: Oh...okay. Do you have a Christmas tree?
Student: No
Me: Do you exchange Christmas presents or have a special dinner on Christmas?
Student: No
Me: Oh. What religion are you?
Student: I don't know.
This is the part where I switch to another subject trying to get more responses. Usually in my high school classes, the only noises are the sound of my own voice and the ticking of the clock.

Also yesterday, I was talking with my grade 5 class about how food gives us energy and how some foods can give us energy in a very short amount of time. They were having trouble thinking of what types of foods these might be so I said "these are foods that kids REALLY love, but are usually not allowed to eat often." Several children shouted out: "Meat!"

Two Thanksgivings in one week?!

Yesterday was the American Thanksgiving and we were lucky enough to have two turkey dinners in one week! On Saturday, Dan and Nicole made a turkey dinner which in Korea, is very difficult to do. You can't really buy turkey here as it's not popular, not to mention stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, etc. They had a turkey delivered to them and then heated it up on a large toaster oven since nobody here has an oven. Everything was made from scratch including the pumpkin pie. It was SO delicious and we had an amazing time!

Yesterday, our school took us for another Thanksgiving meal at Postech which is the University here. It was buffet style and had everything from turkey to sushi to kimchi to fried rice. We went for lunch and everyone had to teach afterwards so we spent the rest of the day feeling so full. Nicole came to the Thanksgiving lunch even though her due date was yesterday.




As you can see from some of the pictures, it was a very different kind of Thanksgiving meal, although still very tasty. One dessert was a piece of cake with a large piece of zucchini stuffed on top. The stuffing inside the turkey was a mixture of eggs and bread. It was really interesting to see what the foreigners put on their plates as opposed to the Koreans. We took up two large tables and there were 8 foreigners and about 15 Koreans. The Koreans put WAY less food on their plates and mainly took things like vegetables, raw fish and fruit for dessert while the westerners piled up turkey, meat, fried foods, etc. The same thing happened when we went to a sushi buffet with my adult class. They all took very, very small portions and mainly things like vegetables. All of the westerners wished however that we had worn elasticated waistbands and desperately wanted a nap after our meals!

Hiking

We went on our first hike last week and it was really great. It's about a 2km hike to the top of the mountain and the incline was much steeper than we had imagined. The weather here goes back and forth between winter and fall weather. Yesterday it was 16 degrees and a few days before it was 5. It's been consistently really sunny though which is great and we're only about a 2 minute walk to the mountains so we plan on going once a week. The Koreans take mountain climbing very seriously. They're always decked out in the proper gloves, walking sticks, jackets, hats, shoes, etc. We met a foreigner at the top who told us he had once been chased down the mountain by a dog. There is apparently a dog farm (and by dog farm, I mean slaughter house) on your way up to the mountain so we were a bit scared that we will run into one next time we're climbing. Some other people told us though that we shouldn't worry as they take their dog to the mountains all the time and the other dogs would not hurt people.

Anyway, we're just about to have a Thanksgiving meal with our school so we will be sure to post pictures tomorrow!!!

As promised....

here is the link for our new movie, "Cooking With MaryAnne Enjoy!

The weekend...

It was a rainy Friday, but we ventured downtown anyway to do a bit of retail therapy. We found a few nice things at really great prices. The weather has all of a sudden turned really cold (and very windy)! Friday night, we helped a co-worker bring in things for her classroom and then went out for dinner for some very bad pizza and panini. The pizza had raisins, sweet potatoes and some other unidentifiable ingredients and tasted like it had been microwaved.





Saturday night we had friends over for the first time since moving to Korea. We moved back in the couch and the chair and made a very non-Korean meal (hamburgers, fries and salad). It's sometimes a bit of a challenge cooking because we don't have an oven so we have to do everything on the stovetop. It was really nice to have people over. Dan and Nicole are expecting their baby in just over a week and we will be taking care of their dog, Tong (Korean name for dog soup -- what Tong would have become had he not been rescued) while they're in the hospital. He is a VERY sweet dog, but so nervous. It takes him a while to warm up to us but we think we've won him over. He didn't want to leave and Dan had to (literally) drag him out of our apartment.



This coming weekend we are celebrating Nicole's last day of work and having a Thanksgiving meal. The U.S. Thanksgiving is next week so our school is even having a Thanksgiving dinner, so two turkey meals in one week??? We thought we wouldn't taste turkey until we were back in Canada!

November 11th in Korea

While other countries remember soldiers who died in the war, Koreans celebrate "pepero day" on November 11th. To those of you who are not familiar, pepero, often called "pocky" at home is basically a tall, thin breadstick covered in chocolate. Sometimes it's covered in strawberry, vanilla, sprinkles, etc. Because the pepero resembles the number one, friends, spouses, etc exchange these treats on 11/11. Apparently the tradition began in the 90s when students would give each other pepero as wishes to become tall and thin. So there you have it. Happy Pepero Day from a country obsessed with appearances.

Seoul!

We finally made it to Seoul! The bus drive took about 4 hours. We decided to stay in an area of Seoul called Itaewon which is the foreigner section. We were REALLY surprised by how nice our hotel was!! We were expecting a sort of middle of the road Holiday Inn type of hotel, but we really lucked out! We felt really spoiled by how luxurious the hotel was and wish we could have stayed there longer! That night, we went to some foreigner bars in Itaewon and met a new friend from Michigan (so far we have met four people from Michigan -- is there something really undesirable about this state or something?!). The bars were really fun and we saw a show at one of them. We headed back to our hotel for (a very short) sleep and woke up early the next morning. We wandered around Itaewon a bit...it was so bizarre because SO many people were foreigners, children, senior citizens, babies, you name it. A lot of people looked like they were there on vacation and of course, there's also a large population of military people who stay in Itaewon.

We took the subway to Miyungdon which we had heard was a really popular area for shopping. It was so unbelievably crowded. I guess that's what happens when you have such an enormous population crammed into such a small geographical area. The shopping was good, but the crowds at time were really overwhelming, especially because we've spent three months in a small town with a population of 500,000, but feels morel like 50,000.

We went to an amazing Chinese restaurant for lunch/dinner and I don't think either of us have ever eaten so fast and enjoyed a meal so much! It was such a nice treat and change from the Korean food we've been eating. We walked around for hours and hours until our feet fell like they were going to fall off. We shopped ourselves out but really didn't buy too much! There was a forever 21 in Seoul as well as some other American stores, but the crowds in the stores, the temperature (Koreans seem to really like hot, hot temperatures inside) AND how overpriced many of the things were deterred us from buying too much.

We took the 9pm bus back to Pohang and got here around 1am. We really love Seoul, but there is SO much to see and do. It's definitely a place we will need to come back to several more times in order to really see and do all there is to do. We got a little taste of it and it was really refreshing to get out of Pohang. Now we're less than 6 weeks away from our trip to Thailand. The countdown begins!!!!

Fun weekend!

This was a really fun and busy weekend! Friday night we went out to a restaurant with new friends, Misty and Brian. They're a couple from Atlanta and have been in Korea for a year and prior to that, they taught in Spain. After dinner, we went to a hookah bar and had a little too much seju. Seju is very similar to soju, but the taste is a bit sweeter and tastes less like rubbing alcohol. After a couple hours, we headed over to the noory bar and belted out a few songs. We won't torture you with any videos (although there are plenty) except for our 10 second dedication to Ellen with our (very poor) rendition of Tomorrow. We can't wait to come home and go to the noory bar with all of you. It just might be one of our new favourite hobbies!

Saturday night we went to a Halloween party at a foreigner's apartment and then to one of the foreigner bars downtown. We only stayed at the bar for about 10 minutes, mostly in part because of my paranoia that we would win best costume. One of the bartenders had come around and asked for our names. Then some guy got on the microphone and called out the nominations for "sexiest costume." Four girls were chosen and had to stand on a table and the audience had to cheer for which costume they thought was best. Because the audience cheered equally for all four of them, the girls had to do a dance-off. For MaryAnne this would not have been a problem, but there's not enough sojo OR seju in the world that could get me to do that.

Today, we went to the grocery store and bought all of the ingredients to make a Korean traditional stew. MaryAnne has been become quite a fan of this Korean chef on YouTube and is in the process of making the dinner right now. We realize we've been really negligent in making videos, but there is now new inspiration with MaryAnne's adventures in Korean cooking.

Today is November 1st and I am covered in mosquito bites and still wearing shorts and tshirts. It's very strange.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

For Ellen...

You can barely see us, but you can sure hear us! We did this song for you, Ellen! Happy Halloween!! We miss you so so so so much!!!!!!

Limited Desaturation

We've been playing around a lot with photoshop and love the look of these photos! We actually use a program called Pixelmaker and it's really easy to do, but so much fun and kind of addicting, especially because we've really started to enjoy taking photos! I guess this is what happens when you only work 20 hours a week...we're also going to try an experiment when our groceries run out: No Western food for one week, only Korean. We will either start to really enjoy Korean food or we'll lose a lot of weight! Stay tuned for the results!!!

Halloween in Korea?

We are trying to think of Halloween costumes for a party on Saturday. Koreans don't celebrate Halloween so costumes are really limited. If you have any ideas, please send them our way!!

Getting a Colonoscopy in Korea...Viewer Discretion is Advised

You're looking at some lovely colour wallet-sized photos of my colon, which is normal and healthy with the exception of a few hemorrhoids (I said viewer discretion was advised!). I got to the doctors to have the usual pre-op stuff which included blood pressure and checking my heart. I've had this done at home before where the nurses put a small suction, bandaid-like thing on you for a couple minutes. The only thing I can use to accurately describe the "clamps" placed on my ankles and wrists are car jumper cables. This was the 1st sign that the quality of care I'm used to at home may not be the same here.

Next, I was given these short pants with a trap door in the back and told to lie on a bed where my feet dangled at the bottom (the beds were either very short or I have grown since being in Korea). The nurse placed an enema inside and instructed me to wait 5 minutes and then go up a flight of stairs and I'd find the bathrooms. The public bathrooms I was using weren't even connected to the doctor's office in any way. They were also really dirty and (obviously) smelled like sh**! It didn't help that I could hear a grown man grunting and farting in the room beside me or the woman in my room grunting every minute.

I was finally taken to the operating room and placed on a bed with a leather blanket and leather pillow. That's a first. The nurse then put a tight elastic around my head and stuffed this piece of plastic into my mouth. She said "to help breathe better." It actually has the opposite effect and I felt like I was in some 1950s psych ward.

Anyway who knows how coherent this will sound in an hour. I have already made several typos because I'm writing with one eye open -- think that means its' time for the night nightsl

Liquid Diets in Korea....gag me!

I am currently on a "liquid diet" in Korea because I'm getting a colonoscopy tomorrow. Korean food has not been very kind to my colon these past three months so hopefully after tomorrow, we can figure out what the problem is! Anyway, I'm supposed to be eating liquids and the doctor recommended something called "jook" which translates to porridge but tastes nothing like it. Imagine small pieces of overcooked rice mushed into baby food with a fishy sort of taste.

Soup is very common in Korea, but unfortunately, clear soup broth is not! All the soups are cream based so I think I will stick with fruit juice and try to choke down this jook, although it is honestly one of the most repulsive things I have ever tasted.

Seeing a Korean doctor whose English is very limited is a unique experience! He had to look online several times to translate an agreement which I had to sign.

This is the most vile food I've ever tried and am really just writing this blog as an effort to distract me from actually eating it. I think I may just have to stick to fruit juice

Action Shots

Our New Favorite Place....

It's called Max Rider 4D and it's basically a virtual roller coaster, but there are 12 different options. Last night we went on an adventure of the South Pole with our new friend Whit who we met on the street one day. It was only $3 per person and it was SO much fun!

We also booked our tickets to Thailand for Christmas and we are counting down the days until December 18th!!! We fly into Bangkok on the 18th and leave January 2nd.

We will post more pictures soon...last night we went to our friend's birthday party at a foreigner bar downtown. It was sort of creepy to see so many white people.

Glamour Shots