Turkey & Kimchi

11-30-2010
Day 266 of 365: First off, I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a happy belated Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Actually, Thanksgiving and Black Friday are cool, but Cyber Monday kinda sucks. Why does it exist? Secondly, it's hard to believe that I only have 99 days left in Korea. The last few months have flown by, and with the end of the school year fast approaching, I know these next 3 weeks will be a blur. It's been hard to carve out the time to write lately because of how busy I've been, but I just wanted to tell everyone a little bit about what Thanksgiving is like for Americans living in Korea.

Let me just start by saying that the beautiful turkey you see in the picture above is one of very few in the entire country of South Korea. They don't raise turkeys here (this one is actually imported from New Zealand), and so it's just not a part of their diet. As a result, many Americans don't have a traditional Thanksgiving meal in Korea. I asked my kids at school if they'd ever eaten turkey, and only about 5% raised their hands. After discovering this, a few American teachers and I went on a quest to find our bird. On the positive side, we only had to search as far as the Costco in Seoul. However, once we found the turkeys, I was quickly mortified when I saw that the average price was around $80! After all, we had this thing called a budget, and an eighty dollar bird wasn't in it. At that point I was more than willing to re-enact that scene out of A Christmas Story and just go for roasted duck instead, but there were some in the group who just didn't think there could be Thanksgiving without a turkey, so the four of us split the cost. It was a 19lb., $85 bird named Tom (by Ashlee and Soo). As it turns out, we didn't exceed the budget as much as we thought since we couldn't find many of the traditional Thanksgiving foods and ingredients we were searching for.

Since Korea doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving and therefore doesn't give any days off from work, we found it a little difficult to have the dinner on Thursday, so we had it on Friday instead. I also caught word of many Saturday dinners taking place. Ashlee used a "personal health" day to cook the turkey and most of the side dishes. For my part, my parents had mailed a TG relief package full of the traditional ingredients and recipes, but I was sad when the package was delayed at the post office and we had to do without some of my family favorites such as cranberry sauce, mandarin orange salad, and onion dip with potato chips ( more for watching football before dinner). Stuffing and sweet potatoes were also in the package, which arrive 5 days later (not even close), but we were able to find the ingredients for them here.

Despite the setbacks, omissions and substitutions, we had a very successful night. The lineup included mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, homemade stuffing, peach-mallow salad (I improvised), kimchi, rice and of course, the turkey. We had a Costco apple pie for dessert. Ashlee did an amazing job with all the cooking, but especially the turkey. We had over 20 guests at dinner and nobody went home hungry. It was a great night.

Although I was missing my family and football, I had plenty of food and friends to help make my Thanksgiving a happy one. I am very thankful for the people I've met, the friends I've made, the experiences I've had, and the opportunity to live and teach in South Korea. The last 9 months have been a unique period of time for me, and I am excited about the final 3 months. I am still unsure about whether I will sign on to teach for another year, so I am continuing to do, see and learn as much as I can while I'm here. It's been an amazing experience. Now if only the Cowboys and Longhorns didn't suck so bad this year...