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.