How to make a pizza....

OK! This blog contains an array of thoughts…have fun (good luck) following along, yeah?

- So…if you hang around foreign teachers long enough here in Korea, you’ll hear them begin to discuss the very interesting/messed up things they teach the children/adults of Korea. The authors of these books are usually English speakers who spent some sort of time in Korea and think they know what they are doing. But actually don’t. haha! One friend had an example that went something like this:

Lol, oh my.

Recently, two examples in my book caught me completely off guard and I fumbled around trying to pick my scattered thoughts up off the floor and explain what they meant. Here they are:

1. A. How long have your children known about the birds and the bees?

B. they’ve known about the birds and the bees since they were 9. (Say WHAT?!)

2. A. How long have Dan and Jan been nervous?

B. They’ve been nervous since they got married a few hours ago. (I..just…don’t even know why someone would put this in here. Is it some sort of JOKE?!)

- There are several students that attend our school who all work for a bread company called Samlip. One started coming, told his friends, and now there are about 10. I have one of the bosses in my free talking class, and the other day, he was lecturing his co-workers about how “Kaley has good pronunciation, so take this opportunity to learn English because you cannot understand English speakers this well usually.” Uhh…..thanks?

- Mr. Kim and his wife went to the west coast recently. Before they left, he promised to bring me back some oysters. I had no idea how I was going to eat them but I don’t pass up free food, alright?! So, thinking I would be receiving three or four oysters, I was completely unprepared for the large SACK that he handed my way the next Monday. Wha…how….can….do….eh? He said, “steam them, but wash them first.” Hmmm…..I then carried them home like the Santa Claus of the sea and dumped them into my sink. I stared in amazement at the dirt and clumped together oysters that I needed to separate and clean. Do you know how oysters are grown? I’m sure you do…but just in case, and to drive the details of the wreckage in my sink home, I’ll tell you. The seed (or spat, if we are getting technical) is placed just above the bottom of the brackish water, which is why the west coast is good for oyster farming, and not, swimming…ew. After the oysters have fully matured (taking several years) they pull up the oysters and detach them from racks, bags or cages, whichever that particular farmer used. What does this mean? Well…it means that our oysters, were still connected to the strips of plastic that they grew on. Do you know how difficult it is to detach them from what they grew on? Dang near impossible to remove…so I stopped trying to pry them off after the first oyster’s razor sharp shell tried to slice my hand off. (a tad over exaggerated, I must admit) As I was sifting through the mess, attempting to find a few that might have fallen off the plastic, I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, some movement. I had to ask myself…now…why would there be something moving in here? I am not an individual that screams when becoming frightened, but I have no problem admitting that when I glanced over and saw what I thought was a large, malevolent, nasty, abhorrent, appalling, dreadful, ghastly, hideous, repulsive, vile, long legged, spider (I hate spiders, can you tell?) I yelled and jumped several feet away from the sink, sending dirty oyster water all over my counter and floor (…longest sentence ever). After a closer inspection, I realized it was only a small crab that had the misfortune of choosing the wrong crowd to hang out with in the sea. After spotting seven or eight more crabs, and not being able to get over the fact that they still looked like spiders, I decided that my four oysters were enough, and placed everything else back in the bag. After steaming the oysters, the next task was trying to get them open. I think they are supposed to pop open if you steam them correctly…but that’s just a guess. One was open and I can now say I’ve eaten a Korean Oyster (not bad), but just one, because the others proved impossible to get into as well. Yikes.

- The word nauseous needed to be explained in class. I said, “It’s when you feel sick, like you could throw up.” A student then said, “Ohh! Like you could make a pizza!” and pantomimed the throw-up action, complete with the throw-up landing on the floor in the shape of a pizza. A very good comparison, which I now use on occasion, as in “Oh that’s gross, I think I’m going to go make a pizza.”

- My sister left me a 10 minute skype voicemail. It was fantastic! About halfway through, I forgot I wasn’t actually talking to her, and began to respond to it…before remembering I was talking to a machine. Thanks Hope East. :)

- Yongsan. It’s a suburb of Seoul, with a very nice theater. Outside the theater, is a very nice Crepe stand. And by very nice, I mean fantastically delicious, and that’s an extreme understatement. I ordered a chocolate banana crepe and watched in amazement as it was made. I must come clean and say that a Coldstone Creamery was spotted before the crepe stand…therefore, a snack of ice cream came before the crepe. And though the phrase “fat cow” was thrown around (in a joking manner?) I did not care in the least, because I was eating a piece of sunshine dust. (NOT Marjory Stewart Baxter…)

- Riding on the subway is always an interesting affair. As we live on the end of the line, we can usually nab a seat before the next few stations when they fill up…but we’ve never been on a totally empty train before. Once, after we first met, Holly said to me, “Kaley, someday, the train will be empty, and you’re going to hang from the bar by your knees.” I was in agreement with this awesome plan, of course! That day finally came when we were headed for our hike. We had an amazing time acting like we were 12 years old. Here are some pictures:

- As I don’t drive a vehicle here, I don’t pay much attention to the rules of parking a car and where they can be parked, but even I can’t ignore the fact that many cars double park. How do the other cars get out? Do people get angry? What is GOING ON?! I soon found out two things: 1. people place their phone numbers in the window so if they are in the way, they just call the stranger up and ask them to move, or my personal favorite: 2. They leave their car in neutral…so it can BE PUSHED OUT OF THE WAY. How crazy is THAT?!

- Think of Korea. Think of the word Earthquake. Do they go together? No, but you better believe we had one. I was sitting in class, tutoring Mr. Kim’s wife, when the building started to…well, I guess, rumble, is how I will describe it. It lasted for about 8 seconds and Cindy and I just looked at each other in confusion. I then worded out loud the obvious question that I knew we were both thinking…”what was THAT?!” but her response was NOT what I expected…. “Maybe Mr. Kim jumped?” A crack at Mr. Kim’s weight…oh my. Haha. Mr. Kim then came in and told us that the Korean news website was saying it was a 3.0 earthquake that was felt all the way into Seoul…but actually originated from pretty much where we were standing. Siheung was the epicenter…weird.

- This next paragraph is about my bike wreck…but first, I’d like to preface this story with a disclaimer: It may seem like I have many accidents here in Korea….but you don’t need to worry…I’m always this clumsy, I’ve just never blogged about them before. Don’t get me wrong…I’m not trying to bring my clumsiness to everyone’s attention, it’s just who I am, but most of you know this I think. Moving on…Last Thursday it snowed, but it was a very wet, heavy snow that pretty much turned to slush right away. When it snows, I don’t ride my bike, because, that’s just asking for trouble. On Friday, the snow had all but melted away, and as I was leaving work, I decided that I might need my bike for the weekend so I grabbed it. As I headed for Holly’s to eat breakfast, I started to go down a ramp onto the parking lot, but a car was blocking the ramp, so I just went off the curb instead. What I didn’t see…was that tricky black ice, sneakily awaiting my back tire to connect with the ground at an angle mathematically perfect to complete the equation of “slippage to the tenth power”. Before I knew it, I was flat on my face, and I felt like I was Calvin when his bike attacks him in the Calvin and Hobbs cartoon. I then arrived at the universal decision that sometimes plagues us as human beings, you know, the laugh or cry one? I’d rather laugh…and laugh I did…for about 10 minutes straight. As I picked up my bike and walked it the rest of the way to the apartment, I heard someone from 9 stories up exclaim, “Are you OK?!” Turns out, Holly happened to be on her porch at the exact moment I rounded the corner, and had seen the whole thing. I shouted, between laughing fits, “did you SEE THAT?!” Well of course she had. Which made it even more hilarious. The damage? A lovely bruise where the handle had hit my leg, bruised hands and knee, a bent bike pedal that now clicks on the back bar and a memory that make me laugh every time I think about it. Thanks Korea.

- I went skiing again last weekend…two times in one year…I could get used to that. It was the same resort as last time, but a different group of people. It was so fun! I tried more runs this time, and found out that a black diamond here isn’t like a black diamond in Colorado, but challenging for me nonetheless. The slopes were so steep, that when I fell, I usually didn’t stop sliding (on my back, head first) for at least 50 ft. Luckily, my skis stayed on so I didn’t have to try and chase after them. Though, for the first time ever, I was that one person who dropped their ski pole off a lift…SHOOT! It was close enough to the beginning that it could be retrieved but I still felt like an idiot. Holly and I met a great couple named Pete and Kelly, who we will be hanging out with more here in Korea. Pete had never skied before and took to it swimmingly. Holly did great too, especially since she hasn’t been in 6 years. I thought about throwing her down a black diamond with me…but…she would hear none of it. The weather was beautiful. It snowed the first day, covering all the trees with wonder, and was a perfect temperature the 2^nd day. Here are some pictures from this trip:

Love!

Stairs for giants...

A few weekends ago we went hiking. Having said that, let me back up and fully explain the details that preceded the hike. A couple months after I arrived in Korea, I was notified of a facebook group that goes on hikes throughout the year. I joined the group and then, because winter was coming and no one was setting up any hikes, I forgot that I had joined. When I received a notification from the group two weeks ago I thought “what is this? Oh yeah, that hiking group.” Intrigued, I checked out the details. This is exactly (no really, exactly) what was written about it:

theme:
- urban hike and trekking
- 12km(around 8 miles), 6~7hours
- novice, everybody can join and enjoy trekking. if you want to walk, then you can make it.
- walk along the fortress from Dongdaemoon(east gate) to Namdaemoon(South gate)
- some part of trails will be road, pedestrian crossing
- 3mountains Naksan, Bukaksan, Inwangsan - mountain(most of part are well arranged and some part with stairs or fences)
- you don't need any hiking gears but hiking boots and pants would be good.

It looked fun and Holly and I decided it was a good way to spend the weekend; (semi-colon used correctly? I’m thinking, no.) free leisure activitiesssss….I’m in. So early Saturday morning found us packing a bag and heading to the station for our two hour subway ride to the meeting point. When we got there, our guide, Warren, who we had never met before, greeted us with an excited hello and a warm hug. There were only about 6 people there when we arrived but soon our ranks grew to about 30, with an array of different nationalities. Our friend Laura met us there as well. Warren, full of energy, said “Ok, let’s all get in a group and STRETCH!” We all looked at each other and said…”uh, stretch?! We aren’t stretching.” …We should have stretched. Piece of advice, when Warren says stretch…he’s not messing around, do it. *serious nod* Then we were on our way like the Travelocity gnome! “I’m on my wayyyy.” Get it? No? Ok. We started in the middle of many businesses so we had to wend our way through the town to find the path along the fortress wall. The wall was very interesting because you could tell which part was old, and which was newly rebuilt. The lower part was some 500 years old while the top was obviously very recently repaired. Here’s a picture for you visual learners:

Warren, Holly, Laura, and I pretty much lead the pack the whole way. Apparently we are fast walkers. Part of the trail was icy to begin with. What part? Why, the downhill part of course. We had to walk off the path on the few spots where dirt showed through. I did take this opportunity to try my hand at some downhill ice-skating though. It was pretty out of control, and fun. Here is a picture of this particular icy part, the railing was handy to grab when sliding too fast..haha!

We had some characters on the hike, a few names we remembered, but others we had to make up based on their physical attributes or clothes: a guy from New Zealand who Holly lovingly dubbed “Pinstripes,” because of his choice of pants, he was ornery and oddly dating a girl named Kaley, and “Red beard” who wasn’t a pirate, but did in fact have a red beard. The hike turned out to be pretty intense. Some parts were amazingly steep and made us question the “novice” label of the hike. Much of it was covered in stairs…but these weren’t NORMAL stairs…they were very inconsistent in their spacing and at one point the exclamation “what are these, stairs for GIANTS!?!” may or may not have been shouted between gasping breaths. The view from all three mountains was spectacular and made the sore limbs totally worth it. We felt like we had hiked along side Korea’s equivalence of the Great Wall.

Afterwards Holly, Laura (I’m omitting that Oxford comma…only because it’s a pet peeve of someone I know…take THAT Kanga!) and I went to Kraze Burger and had pretty much the MOST DELICIOUS burger known to man kind. We had the opportunity to join some of the other hikers for some Korean pancakes, but I decided to opt out; I wasn’t feeling like eating squid at the time, or ever really. We will be doing another hike with the group in a few weeks. This one is located near the east coast in a National Park. It’s supposed to be a beautiful hike during winter. We were supposed to hike it this weekend but, in the words of a fellow hiker, it experienced a “snow obliteration,” and the government actually shut it down until they can get some trails cleared. This time we will have learned our lesson and we’ll make sure and stretch. J love you guys. Another blog soon. Very soon.

Holly, Warren and I on the top of one mountain. Oh Warren. lol. And Laura looking out over the scenery.

Laura and I scaling some rocks. Who needs a ROPE?! Come on!

A tree that they built the stairs around. Amazing.