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...

My Neighbor Pepero

11-11-2010

Day 247 of 365: Today is a special day for the kids of Korea (in spite of the adults): it's Pepero day. What is Pepero, you ask? A Pepero is essentially a cracker stick that is covered in chocolate. If you want to move up a level, you can cover it in almonds. Anything beyond that is just getting fancy, as the image to the left shows.The next question you might be asking is probably along the lines of, "Why in the heck does a Pepero get it's own day?" and, "What do you do on Pepero day?". The origins of Pepero day are simple. The date November 11th, or 11-11, stood out to some Korean kids somewhere and reminded them of the Pepero treats, so they began giving them to each other as signs of friendship. Later it also became akin to Valentine's day, where significant others now exchange the treats to show their love. Any reason to eat more candy I guess. The tradition quickly caught on and soon kids all over Korea were doing it. However, parents and teachers have conspiracy theories of a more sinister plot that Lotte, the Walmart of Korea, started the holiday to boost sales and, in fact, more than 50% of yearly Pepero sales can be attributed to Pepero day alone. It's the "Black Friday" of Pepero.

To combat the faux holiday, many teachers in Korea have united in banning the chocolate covered treats from their classrooms, instead opting to have their students write letters to their friends and loved ones to tell them how much they appreciate them. Being a newcomer to the whole phenomena, I thought it was cute to see kids walking down the halls with Pepero of various shapes, sizes and flavors. I felt very popular, receiving more than twenty myself. However, after eating about three, I was already sick of them and gave the rest away to others, including to some of the teachers with the self-imposed ban.

All in all it was a fun break from the norm, and it gave me some new introduction material for a few days in class. My only question now is, "What will Pepero day be like next year when it's 11-11-11?". Surely it will be the Armageddon of all Pepero days, and definitely worth sticking around for another year in Korea to find out.

Thousand Islands

11-08-2010
Day 244 of 365: After not having access to my account for a couple weeks, I'm back. Long story short, I switched my OS to Windows 7...mayhem ensued. Nothing too catastrophic, just some lost passwords, cookies, computer functionality, etc. Anyway, I'm back now and have some catching up to do. Last week I traveled with some teachers and staff from my school to the southern tip of South Korea and caught a ferry from the city of Mokpo to Hong-do, or Hong Island. Hong-do, which is more than two hours from the mainland, is 1 out of 1004 islands in the Korean waters to the south. Most of them are uninhabited chunks of rock jutting out of the ocean, but Hong-do, which is largely a fishing community, has a population of 300. The ones who don't make a living from fishing most likely are in the tourism business. Even though there are few people living on the island, there are many hotels, motels and restaraunts in the village, as well as many types of guided tours available.

Apart from Jeju-do, Hong-do is considered to be one of the more scenic islands that Korea has to offer. It's not tropical with beaches and palm trees, but the natural beauty around the island, including 150 water formed caves and rock formations, give it a unique and mysterious feel. Personally, a city boy like me couldn't imagine living on a rock, eating fish and seaweed, and looking at the same 300 faces every day apart from the tourists. Actually, when I looked at the faces around the island, many of them were weathered and wrinkled beyond their years, making some of the people look extremely old. No doubt they live a hard life there, but for some reason they stick around. Being on a trip with my school, we visited the island's elementary school. They have four teachers and 23 total students. I saw six of them throughout the day. The dirt playground/soccer field, which is standard in every Korean elementary school, was the only flat area I saw on the whole island. The rest of the town is on a hill. The multiple levels actually enhanced many of the photos I took, giving me lot to look at in a small area.

Although it was pretty cold (probably high 40's), we took a two hour boat tour around the island to see many of the beautiful rock formations I mentioned before. Supposedly the tour guide was telling legends about the island and stories of pirates and treasure and all sorts of things, but I didn't catch any of it in detail because I still don't understand too much Korean. At one point a smaller boat pulled up alongside of us (no, it wasn't a pirate ship) and some fisherman began selling fresh sushi from fish caught just moments before. Three guys were cutting up the fish in front of us while another man was handling the transactions. Koreans love the raw fish. Needless to say, this was the freshest sushi I've had in my short 8 month career. It was pretty expensive - about $40 for a small plate that 4-5 people could snack on. However that didn't stop about fifty people from lining up to put in their orders. Our group of twenty shared two plates, so it went fast. I asked what kind of fish it was, but again I was at a loss for not knowing Korean. It happens a lot.

Overall it was a fun two day trip, fully payed for by the school. I appreciate the fact that our school frequently has outings like this to take care of the teachers and staff. It allows me to do things in Korea that I would have never known about or done on my own. Even today, we went on a two hour mountain hike followed by dinner with about thirty teachers and staff. Though I still don't speak much of the language, I feel like I fit in because we do things together, which is afterall, how Koreans do things.