Cousin?

I have discovered that when I mention a relative such as aunt, uncle, or cousin, people want to know exactly how they are related to me.  Then I have to try to remember how second cousins and removals work and describe the relationship.  This is because in Korean, every type of relative has their own name.  Your mom's sisters are a different name than your dad's sisters.  "Cousin" is not even a word they can really understand since your aunt and uncle's children have a different name depending on you mom or dad's side.  I don't know how second cousins work, but I suspect they have their own name too.  I have not memorized these at all since none of my family is Korean and I just use to opportunity to describe my family.
Another confusing aspect of naming relatives specifically comes in siblings.  Since I am a girl, I would call Laura (my older sister) Unni.  If Laura was Riley's older sister, she would be Nuna.  To Ruth, Riley (her older brother) would be Oppa, and if she were a boy, he would be Hyung.   Younger siblings are less important, so they are usually just called by name. 
If you have a friend more than a couple years older than you, you are supposed to call them by these names as well, not by their actual name. 
This gets very confusing.  I miss just calling everyone "kinfolk."

Rainy Season

A couple weeks ago I was woken up at 5 in the morning to FLASH! BOOM BOOM RUMBLE RUMBLE...  Welcome to the rainy season!  Even though that has been the only loud thunderstorm thus far, it rains almost every day.  Its one of those steady rains that is less than a downpour and more than a drizzle. 

The good thing about all the rain is, its almost always cloudy so the sun doesn't come out a lot to make the world into a sauna.  There are breaks in the rain.  Yesterday we woke up to a steady rain, but by the time we were ready to go to work it had stopped.  Then, it rained again that evening, stopped for a while, and started raining again this morning. 

It also doesn't help there is a typhoon on the way here weaving its way around Japan to hit only Korea.  Daejeon is in the middle of the country, so we will just get more rain and probably won't even notice its a typhoon.

The rivers are very happy and some of our rock bridges have disappeared.  But even then, its not as bad as we were expecting, we just take our raincoats with us where ever we go.  Raincoats are not the fashion here.  People only use umbrellas, they even bike with them.  Koreans get very concerned when we start to walk in the rain with only raincoats.  I think historically the rain may have carried bad things in it during the war, and this idea carried on in the minds of the adjumas and adjushies.  The rain is fine now, but raincoats are still "American style" rain protection!

Middle of Nowhere

Last Saturday I got the opportunity to join a group from my church and travel to a corner of Korea to help fix a floor.  Our church had a mission training course that Riley and I attended for the past 11 weeks.  Also in attendance was the pastor of this small country church.  When our church found out he needed help getting a new floor down, they organized a group to go fix it.
We drove 2 hours, 1 down the highway and the other weaving around mountains.  As we got closer, we went up and around a mountain, and a beautiful valley appeared.  It was a drizzly day and everything was green, it looked like a cloud rain forest with rice fields. 
We tackled the floor by putting plastic squares down to raise the floor so the damp wouldn't get in.  Then we layered it with plastic and vinyl and put all the furniture back.
They fed us delicious home cooked Korean food for lunch that had lots of fresh vegetables like zucchini (know here as "green pumpkin"). 

Misty mountains over rice paddies.

Just being in the middle of nowhere was so beautiful.  I got to catch little green frogs too!  I don't know how to get back there, but if I had a choice that was where I would live in Korea.

Kam Ja Tang

Kam ja tang

I have tried a new Korean dish lately and thought I would share.  Its called "Kam ja tang" with "kam ja" meaning potato.   Its main feature is the meaty beef backbone that is boiled with potatoes, mushrooms, dumplings, and greens (I think these were radish tops).  It has a soup in the bottom that is delicious, but the dish can't be called a soup since the food sticks up over the top of the bowl.  You get a mixture of wasabi and soy sauce to dip the meat in.  I like the potatoes dipped in it too. 
Yay for Korea to create a delicious dish out of leftover parts of meat!