This morning, Riley and I took a jog/ride. Since Riley is a much faster runner than I am, I usually fall way behind when we run together, but today we had the idea that I could ride my bike and Riley could run. It worked really well and I wanted to tell you what we saw on our ride.
We went to the river near our house that has biking and running paths all over it. It is really pretty because there are bridges for people that are just square rocks in a line with plenty of room for the water to go between. The river is also always full of white egrets.
So, we pasted (or rather got passed) by some serious bikers. In Korea, when you take up a hobby, you get the who outfit. These guys (girls?) wore biking pants, jackets, gloves, bandanas, hats, and sunglasses. We also passes families with children on training wheels, children just off of training wheels, and people just biking leisurely along the river.
Next to the river there is a flat grassy spot where we passed students playing baseball. It seems whenever we pass Korean students around middle school age, they love shouting out "Hello!" or "Good Morning!" to practice english. Most of them were playing baseball. (Koreans love baseball!) After we passes the baseball-playing students, we passed some tiny Koreans playing soccer. They were probably 6 or 7, but I think they were better than me. Then we passed a group of people practicing a flag routine. It reminded me of my marching band days. There was also a group that I think was a drum group, but they were just standing around. There was a huge stack of drums nearby though. Under one of the bridges there was an official soccer/volleyball game going on (they even had a referee). It looked almost exactly like volleyball, except they were using their feet and the net was a lot lower.
Today was a wonderful day to be outside! Its perfect autumn weather. It makes me miss pumpkin pie! You can get pumpkins here, they are just little and green. Actually, Koreans call all squash "pumpkins." I'm not sure what all will happen in a Korean fall, but the weather is just like at home! And, we get to celebrate 3 Thanksgivings this year! Korean, American, and Canadian! If I can just figure out how to make pie crust, maybe I can make a Korean pumpkin pie...
Anyways, right before we turned around, we passed a golf driving range someone had set up next to the river. It looked like a kit you could set up anywhere. People had their drivers ready and were wearing their golf outfit.
We came back the way we went, so it was just more of the same. More "Hellos" from the students. Riley ran through a flock of pigeons and almost caught one! We passed more packs of students on bicycles and more families out enjoying the beautiful day.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Korean Diet
Exciting news, Riley's lost 10 lbs! Korean food is very healthy. Cheese and butter are expensive here and are not used much in any restaurant. Even pizza doesn't quite have the amount of cheese you would get, and its not as greasy. Pizza here also has another Korean twist. You know how in high school the cafeteria always served pizza with corn, here they do to except that the corn is on the pizza. All pizzas, even cheese. Another strange Korean food. Riley got an ice cream sandwich the other day. It was actually ice cream with bread around it. You can also get ice cream here that is not in a waffle cone, but actually on a waffle (a normal breakfast waffle that is not eaten for breakfast). Riley doesn't understand why waffle ice cream wasn't developed in the US because he thinks its amazing.
What Koreans eat for breakfast is actually a good question. I have yet to see a restaurant which serves breakfast. Coffee shops here don't even open until 9 in the morning. They don't have biscuits!!!I have yet to see oatmeal. When you ask a korean what they eat for breakfast, I think they think you are joking. The reason is, they eat for breakfast what they eat every other meal of the day: rice, soup, vegetables, meat, and kimchi. We just got back from a church retreat, and I couldn't bring myself to eat the kimchi for breakfast, I just stuck with the rice and the soup. Sometimes Korean do just eat cereal though.
So, with our new diet of cheese being so rare and expensive that we cannot afford much, and butter not being common, Riley now weighs what he did in middle school!
What Koreans eat for breakfast is actually a good question. I have yet to see a restaurant which serves breakfast. Coffee shops here don't even open until 9 in the morning. They don't have biscuits!!!I have yet to see oatmeal. When you ask a korean what they eat for breakfast, I think they think you are joking. The reason is, they eat for breakfast what they eat every other meal of the day: rice, soup, vegetables, meat, and kimchi. We just got back from a church retreat, and I couldn't bring myself to eat the kimchi for breakfast, I just stuck with the rice and the soup. Sometimes Korean do just eat cereal though.
So, with our new diet of cheese being so rare and expensive that we cannot afford much, and butter not being common, Riley now weighs what he did in middle school!
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Happy Chuseok!
We just had a great holiday over here in Korea. Its called "Chuseok" and its basically Korea's Thanksgiving. To celebrate the harvest, Koreans go back to their hometown and visit their ancestor's tombs. The graves here are mounded up and on hillsides, so people go out in the morning and clean off the mound of their parents or grandparents, and so on. Then they go back home and have a big meal. The cities feel almost deserted when everyone leaves because most people came from somewhere outside the city. We heard the traffic jams were brutal.
For our Chuseok, we slept in and ate a lot of food. Koreans feel sorry for the foreigners who can't go back to thier hometown, and most of the restaurants close for the holiday. Therefore, lots of people feed foreigners on Chuseok. We had lunch on Saturday with the former provost of KAIST who gave us pizza (with real cheese and no corn or sweet potatoes!) and a bag of Chuseok goodies. The traditional food of Chuseok is "dok." This just means its some concoction of rice flour and sugar. They also eat a lot of fruit (their traditional dessert, very healthy but it makes me miss chocolate sometimes). We are still eating on it!
Sunday we always are fed by our church, so it was the usual feeding. It was very empty since all the koreans were gone, but our english service was normal. I will dedicate a post soon on our church and church activities (we are already very involved!).
Monday we were feed lunch by a very nice pizza lady who didn't want the foreigners to starve. She even turned away Koreans to only feed foreigners. Then we had a surprise invitation to dinner by one of our Korean friends. He invited 6 of us to his home where his mom cooked us supper. It was soooo good! She cooked some sort of stew that tasted just like potroast! She also had tofu wrapped in bacon!! It tasted just like bacon and eggs. There was fish and kimchi and fried vegetables in egg! You may just have to look at the pictures because it was all amazing.
After dinner we went to a Nori Bang. Its karaoke in a private room with just your friends. It was pretty neat. They had a bunch of songs, even in english! Riley and I discovered that the songs we like the most are really hard to sing.
Monday was the real Chuseok, but our church had a Chuseok dinner for foreigners on Tuesday. We had a sort bible study and went to a HUGE apartment of an older couple from our church. It even had a bathtub! Of course, in america it would be a normal-sized home, but for Korea it was large. She had a normal sized oven too! We brought winter squash with brown sugar and cinnamon. A guy from Colorado made lasangna (gooood lasagna), and a girl from south Africa make shepard's pie. there was rice, kimchi soup, and, surprise, kimchi. One of the best parts what making a type of dok called "sampyong." We started with the dough that felt like crumbly paydough, then we made little balls, filled them with a mixture of sesame seeds and brown sugar, and pinched them closed. Then they were steamed over pine needles to help them not stick and to give flavor. They were good! After dinner was fruit, cheesecake (chesa-caku in korean), and singing.
For our Chuseok, we slept in and ate a lot of food. Koreans feel sorry for the foreigners who can't go back to thier hometown, and most of the restaurants close for the holiday. Therefore, lots of people feed foreigners on Chuseok. We had lunch on Saturday with the former provost of KAIST who gave us pizza (with real cheese and no corn or sweet potatoes!) and a bag of Chuseok goodies. The traditional food of Chuseok is "dok." This just means its some concoction of rice flour and sugar. They also eat a lot of fruit (their traditional dessert, very healthy but it makes me miss chocolate sometimes). We are still eating on it!
Sunday we always are fed by our church, so it was the usual feeding. It was very empty since all the koreans were gone, but our english service was normal. I will dedicate a post soon on our church and church activities (we are already very involved!).
Monday we were feed lunch by a very nice pizza lady who didn't want the foreigners to starve. She even turned away Koreans to only feed foreigners. Then we had a surprise invitation to dinner by one of our Korean friends. He invited 6 of us to his home where his mom cooked us supper. It was soooo good! She cooked some sort of stew that tasted just like potroast! She also had tofu wrapped in bacon!! It tasted just like bacon and eggs. There was fish and kimchi and fried vegetables in egg! You may just have to look at the pictures because it was all amazing.
 |
| Korean Chuseok Meal |
After dinner we went to a Nori Bang. Its karaoke in a private room with just your friends. It was pretty neat. They had a bunch of songs, even in english! Riley and I discovered that the songs we like the most are really hard to sing.
Monday was the real Chuseok, but our church had a Chuseok dinner for foreigners on Tuesday. We had a sort bible study and went to a HUGE apartment of an older couple from our church. It even had a bathtub! Of course, in america it would be a normal-sized home, but for Korea it was large. She had a normal sized oven too! We brought winter squash with brown sugar and cinnamon. A guy from Colorado made lasangna (gooood lasagna), and a girl from south Africa make shepard's pie. there was rice, kimchi soup, and, surprise, kimchi. One of the best parts what making a type of dok called "sampyong." We started with the dough that felt like crumbly paydough, then we made little balls, filled them with a mixture of sesame seeds and brown sugar, and pinched them closed. Then they were steamed over pine needles to help them not stick and to give flavor. They were good! After dinner was fruit, cheesecake (chesa-caku in korean), and singing.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Our Apartment
On this rainy Saturday afternoon I am going to give you a tour of our apartment. The whole apartment is a long rectangle about 3 meters by 7 meters. When you come in the front door you are faced with a little tile floor before the floor suddenly rises about 4 inches. This is very common in Korean apartments and restaurants. This is where you take off your shoes. Its to keep the floor clean enough to sit on. Our apartment even came with a cabinet specifically for storing shoes.
Once you are on the main floor, our bathroom door is to the right. The bathroom is lower than the main floor, but level with the entry way, and it is tile. Another reason the floor is raised is to allow the pipes for heated water to go everywhere. This means the bathroom floor will not be heated in winter. burr! Our bathroom is normalish. It has a towel rack, a toilet with a cushy pink seat, a large medicine cabinet, and a sink. There is a drain in the middle of the floor. The main oddity is that the shower is just one of those handheld ones in a holder on the wall over the sink. It is connected via tube to the sink and you turn a handle to switch from sink to shower. It sounds weird, but its really easy to use. The water isn't sprayed hard enough to reach our towel in the opposite corner. The only downside is forgetting to turn the handle after your shower the night before. Then you get a nice unexpected morning shower. The big medicine cabinet is to store everything you don't want to get wet, and even the toilet paper holder always comes with a metal flap to keep the water off.
Past the bathroom door is our kitchen! We have a mid-sized refrigerator, somewhere between a mini and a small full sized. We also have a 3 burner stove, a tiny oven that is really just a broiler/toaster, a drainboard/counter, and a sink. We do have a lot of cabinet space, but this may be because we don't have enough stuff to fill it up. We do only have one drawer. Thats our kitchen, we have finally accumulated enough pots and pans to cook our dinners here. We've been eating a lot of rice here...
Then you go through a door into our main room. Its the biggest room in our apartment being about 3x3.5 meters. We have a twin bed (we've been offered a double, but I'm not sure how it would fit), a tiny desk, and our new addition, a table! Of course, the desk and table are about a foot off the ground, but that's what the floor is for! Our bed doubles as a couch and we are still living out of our suitcases until we find/buy a chest of drawers. Apparently, Koreans as a society do not generally have thrift shops due to the belief that used items take in some part of the owner and have a lingering spirit. Therefore, people just put out old furniture on the street for the trashman and foreigners who don't mind lingering spirits!
Last but not least, through a double sliding door (one clear, one opaque) we have a little low tile room. Its about one meter wide and holds our hot water heater, air conditioner condenser, washing machine, and dry rack. Its sort of like having a back porch because most of the back wall is a window. We can't sit out there though. We do have our sliding doors open a lot. Our view isn't very inspiring. We are only on the second floor, and we live in a restaurant district. So all we can see is the roof of our neighboring restaurant and into a restaurant on the second floor of another building. We do have lots of nightlights, but we can close the sliding doors and lower a screen to keep out most of the light and the partying people who go to the pubs around our neighborhood. Its a good neighborhood, there isn't any crime or violence, but its the nearest set of restaurants and pub to the KAIST dorms.
So that is our tiny apartment! We are enjoying it a lot. It feels right to have a tiny apartment with few possessions after just getting married. Now we have stories about how we flooded our back porch and how we keep forgetting to turn on the hot water before getting into the shower. The biggest plus is that we only spend 300,000 Korean Won ($300) a month on rent!!! That's amazing for an urban area.
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| A Drawing of our appartment. Look at our web album for actual pictures. Heated floor space is colored brown. Note: The floor is the heat. (Click it to see a bigger version) |
Past the bathroom door is our kitchen! We have a mid-sized refrigerator, somewhere between a mini and a small full sized. We also have a 3 burner stove, a tiny oven that is really just a broiler/toaster, a drainboard/counter, and a sink. We do have a lot of cabinet space, but this may be because we don't have enough stuff to fill it up. We do only have one drawer. Thats our kitchen, we have finally accumulated enough pots and pans to cook our dinners here. We've been eating a lot of rice here...
Then you go through a door into our main room. Its the biggest room in our apartment being about 3x3.5 meters. We have a twin bed (we've been offered a double, but I'm not sure how it would fit), a tiny desk, and our new addition, a table! Of course, the desk and table are about a foot off the ground, but that's what the floor is for! Our bed doubles as a couch and we are still living out of our suitcases until we find/buy a chest of drawers. Apparently, Koreans as a society do not generally have thrift shops due to the belief that used items take in some part of the owner and have a lingering spirit. Therefore, people just put out old furniture on the street for the trashman and foreigners who don't mind lingering spirits!
Last but not least, through a double sliding door (one clear, one opaque) we have a little low tile room. Its about one meter wide and holds our hot water heater, air conditioner condenser, washing machine, and dry rack. Its sort of like having a back porch because most of the back wall is a window. We can't sit out there though. We do have our sliding doors open a lot. Our view isn't very inspiring. We are only on the second floor, and we live in a restaurant district. So all we can see is the roof of our neighboring restaurant and into a restaurant on the second floor of another building. We do have lots of nightlights, but we can close the sliding doors and lower a screen to keep out most of the light and the partying people who go to the pubs around our neighborhood. Its a good neighborhood, there isn't any crime or violence, but its the nearest set of restaurants and pub to the KAIST dorms.
So that is our tiny apartment! We are enjoying it a lot. It feels right to have a tiny apartment with few possessions after just getting married. Now we have stories about how we flooded our back porch and how we keep forgetting to turn on the hot water before getting into the shower. The biggest plus is that we only spend 300,000 Korean Won ($300) a month on rent!!! That's amazing for an urban area.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Nature in Korea
At last! The long-awaited post from me (Margaret) about what plants and animals we have encountered in Korea. I have been making observations all along, but until today I had not experienced wild Korea. Due to a change in plans, this was out first free Saturday in Daejeon to explore things. After examining the map (which is actually in chinese since they didn't have any english tourist maps of Daejeon where I got this one) we decided to check out a Nature Park just outside Daejeon.
To get there we had to take the subway. The subways here are pretty much just like the ones in the US, but since I hardly ever have ridden on them it was fun. Especially the random saxophone concert complete with stage and chairs. We rode to the south of the city and walked to the beginning of the trail. Its harder to find a trailhead when you don't know what the signs say, but there were a lot of people taking advantage of the nice day. We followed a well-traveled route, stopping halfway for ice cream where the trail crosses the road at a fitness park.
these fitness parks are like outdoor weight rooms. Most of the equipment you find in a weight room is streamlined into simple machines that are scattered across the city. Some of these devices are not related to any exercises I have heard of, especially the one that's only purpose seems to be making you spin in circles. we've tried all the ones we have found so far. Also, our ice cream was interesting. Riley's was honey dew flavored and I decided to be adventurous and tried a red bean milk one. It had red beans in it and was very creamy. Surprisingly good!
Mountains here are very steep. Either the land is very flat, or very steep, there doesn't seem to be much in between. After lots of stairs we found out where all the people were going. At the top of the mountain was a beautiful gazebo overlooking the whole city of Daejeon! It was amazing. We could also see into the parts of Korea we haven't been yet. Lots and lots of mountains upon mountains!
Plants I have seen (I'm using the name we call them in the US, they might just be a very similar species): Kudzo (lots of kudzo, but most of it under control), Locust, a species of white pine, mimosa, japanese chestnut, Japanese maple, another pine, fir, sycamore, ginko, and dayflower.
These are just the ones I recognized.
Animals: A dark brown squirrel with a slightly fluffier tail, a herd of cats that lives near the student center on campus, lots of snowy and great egrets (I think), Great Blue Herons!, miscellaneous ducks and geese, a black and white striped butterfly, a swallowtail butterfly, a bird that acts like a crow called a "ggachee," flocks of some tiny brown bird, a insect that looks like a red and black moth but acts like a hopper, and various sealife in tanks in front of restaurants.
I will keep a look out for more and hopefully we will find a field guide to help me ID more.
The trip back was fairly uneventful. We stopped in an E-mart Tradders which was like Sams Club except not a club. We got a few things, but things were so bulked it was hard to get a reasonable amount of anything. I think we will stick to Home Plus and Lotte Mart. By the way, if you are planning to visit and have a Costco card, there is a Costco here and your card from America will work here too!
An-young-ee-kaeseo!
To get there we had to take the subway. The subways here are pretty much just like the ones in the US, but since I hardly ever have ridden on them it was fun. Especially the random saxophone concert complete with stage and chairs. We rode to the south of the city and walked to the beginning of the trail. Its harder to find a trailhead when you don't know what the signs say, but there were a lot of people taking advantage of the nice day. We followed a well-traveled route, stopping halfway for ice cream where the trail crosses the road at a fitness park.
these fitness parks are like outdoor weight rooms. Most of the equipment you find in a weight room is streamlined into simple machines that are scattered across the city. Some of these devices are not related to any exercises I have heard of, especially the one that's only purpose seems to be making you spin in circles. we've tried all the ones we have found so far. Also, our ice cream was interesting. Riley's was honey dew flavored and I decided to be adventurous and tried a red bean milk one. It had red beans in it and was very creamy. Surprisingly good!
Mountains here are very steep. Either the land is very flat, or very steep, there doesn't seem to be much in between. After lots of stairs we found out where all the people were going. At the top of the mountain was a beautiful gazebo overlooking the whole city of Daejeon! It was amazing. We could also see into the parts of Korea we haven't been yet. Lots and lots of mountains upon mountains!
 |
| The view from the top! |
Plants I have seen (I'm using the name we call them in the US, they might just be a very similar species): Kudzo (lots of kudzo, but most of it under control), Locust, a species of white pine, mimosa, japanese chestnut, Japanese maple, another pine, fir, sycamore, ginko, and dayflower.
These are just the ones I recognized.
Animals: A dark brown squirrel with a slightly fluffier tail, a herd of cats that lives near the student center on campus, lots of snowy and great egrets (I think), Great Blue Herons!, miscellaneous ducks and geese, a black and white striped butterfly, a swallowtail butterfly, a bird that acts like a crow called a "ggachee," flocks of some tiny brown bird, a insect that looks like a red and black moth but acts like a hopper, and various sealife in tanks in front of restaurants.
I will keep a look out for more and hopefully we will find a field guide to help me ID more.
The trip back was fairly uneventful. We stopped in an E-mart Tradders which was like Sams Club except not a club. We got a few things, but things were so bulked it was hard to get a reasonable amount of anything. I think we will stick to Home Plus and Lotte Mart. By the way, if you are planning to visit and have a Costco card, there is a Costco here and your card from America will work here too!
An-young-ee-kaeseo!
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