Lack of posts

Hey all (any) who might still be checking it. I haven't been posting anything lately, likely due to my "Autumn mode" kicking in. Those of you who know me well probably know by now that I kinda vanish off the radar for short periods in Spring and Fall.

SO anyway, without further ado...

This morning I was discussing food with Sarah, one of my adult students. She asked if roasted chestnuts were popular in Canada. I'm not sure how popular they are in other parts of Canada but, to the best of my knowledge, they're a bit of a rarity in Newfoundland. We have chestnut trees, but I don't think the nuts are edible. Anyone care to comment on that? She went on to talk about acorns (dotori) and something called dotorimuk, acorn jelly, a popular food here. I've seen it in the open air markets but had no idea what it was. It looks kinda like a cross between jello and tofu. I still haven't tried this delicacy but we're going to a Korean buffet next week which apparently has all manner of Korean food to sample. That should be an interesting day!

Koreans also eat a kind of rice porridge (jook) which is similar to Chinese jook or congee, but made with short grain rice. They add ground pine nuts to one variety of jook, I'll have to see if I can find a place that makes it. I've given up cooking much at home because my fridge is ridiculously small and things go bad or just fill up the fridge without getting used very often.

Today I finished off the last of my Christmas shopping, which is damned early for me, but still probably too late for the packages to get back to Canada in time. Hang in there, you'll have a second Christmas!

While I was shopping in some distant corner of the market I picked up a wooden plane almost exactly the same as the one in the picture at the top of the wikipedia article. I paid about $10 for it, a better price than I've found anywhere else. The best part was when I turned to leave and the older man who sold me the plane stopped me, took the plane from me, removed the cutting blades and ground and honed them. He then checked the "true" of the plane bed and, using a sharp cabinet scraper, proceeded to make the base perfectly true (no bumps or hollows.) When he was done, he showed me how to properly adjust the blade (done with a small hammer or mallet, by eye, there are no screws) and wrapped it up, bowed deeply and handed it back to me. I'm a shopping addict and a packrat, I know the markets inside out and how to shop pretty well here; Korean shops usually have decent service but this had to be the best $10 I've ever spent on anything. Not only did I buy a decent hand-made plane but I got a valuable lesson in the care and feeding of it.

monk

Pinkeye and swearing

One of my adult students told me that both his sons have conjunctivitis. I remember hearing last week that there's a big epidemic of it in Busan right now. This means that within a matter of days I will have pinkeye. Y A Y! Working with kids is fun and interesting (not for everyone, I know, but I enjoy it) but catching every contagious disease that goes around gets old very quickly.

This morning I taught Kyang-eun the appropriate use of the expression "fuckin' A!" Kyang-eun is a riot, she looks very innocent but has a very dark humourous nature. She always wants to learn more about how to swear in English. I was going to write up a sheet on the usage and etymology of "fuck" but I was afraid (knew) that the kids would get hold of a copy of it.

The End of Hell, er, Summer

Well now, I must apologise for yet again not having posted anything in many weeks. It is not, I assure you, due to my untimely death or lack of activity (well, some lack of activity, but nothing abnormal.)

Summer is finally over and the temperature is now a comfortable 20 celsius every day. I'm told that fall lasts only one month, which makes it about the same length as our summer (and about the same temperature.) Summer was a living hell most of the time, it was just too damned hot, it was pretty much like a Toronto summer from what I gather. Hot, sticky and hot. Looking forward to a bunch of coolish weather between now and November when it gets cold.

This past week was the Chuseok (choo-suk) holiday. It's the Korean harvest festival (Thanksgiving.) Most people go to their hometown and elder sons must present an offering of food to their ancestors. This apparently is a hellish time to be a housewife in Korea because the wife must cook, clean and do everything not just for her husband but also for the rest of his family. Anyway, I just had a five day weekend, which was nice, but I also had a really horrible head-cold, which was not-so-nice. The kids I teach walking biological weapons but I imagine it's the same for anyone anywhere who works with children. So I spent 4 days lying around and drinking soup (and sometimes OJ, sometimes with a little vodka in it ;) ) so it wasn't a totally bad holiday. If I'd had to work in the state I was in I'd have felt ten times worse.

I havent been out of my neighbourhood in a few weeks and the whole cooped-up-with-a-cold thing made me stir crazy. So I sent a text message to my buddy Keith and his new girlfriend and dropped up to his neighbourhood for roast chicken. I also ordered a pot of dakdoritang (chicken pot stew.) Brilliant!! It's a chicken hacked into pieces and cooked in a big pot with hunks of root veggies and onion, like, well, stew, except that instead of gravy they use about 31 litres of Korean hot pepper sauce. I haven't been eating quite as much spicy food lately so this dish was an absolute scorcher but, as with most spicy dishes (almost all of them) in Korea, they manage to make it delicious enough to make you not care that your teeth are melting.

Anyway, I'll post again later. Time to teach my telephone students.

A cool breeze

The temperatures here for the past 3 or 4 months have been hot enough to cook most Newfoundlanders alive. Daily highs range from 35-40 celsius with high humidity, if it weren't for the air conditioner in my apartment and at the school I'd have perished weeks ago. Plans for outings and dining are partly based on the selection of places with good "aircon". I've gotten somewhat used to it by now so the air conditioner is set at a chilly 25 celsius, I can see that when I go home to visit I'm going to be wearing winter gear in June.

Yesterday we had a bit of rain, not the torrential downpours that have occurred during the summer rainy season just a little lightning storm. The temperature dropped to an almost livable 25 celsius. I can wear long pants again without turning into a walking steambath!

Strange days

Okay, this has not been an average week (more about that later.) I've been feeling a bit out of place this past week, sort of like a foreigner in a strange country, ha ha! Very unusual for me though, I haven't felt homesick or anything like that since I left Newfoundland last year and this is past my 6 month mark now. I was starting to think that I was born to live out here, somewhere else.

This week has been a bit different. I felt kinda alien this week, strange customs that don't usually bother me here started to rankle, kinda like in the Doors song "People are Strange".

Last night, at the height of this feeling of strangeness, the lady who runs my neighbourhood convenience store, and her friends, invited me to sit and eat with them in front of the store. It was completely unexpected, interesting, strange and touching. I dined on the curb outside the convenience store with three ladies who spoke no English and felt I was finally part of the neighbourhood. I know I'm one of very few foreigners in my neighbourhood that's seen by daylight (again, more on that later.)

Thus began a whole cycle of even more strangeness so far today. A feeling of blissful, near-perfection that is almost unbearably easy but yet, somehow, unnerving. I know that I probably shouldn't question this strange grace that I feel today, but it's so calming that it's making me worry. This morning I was the first teacher to arrive at school.

Actually now that I think about it, the whole cycle of difference really began yesterday morning when I walked part of the way back home with the Korean teacher who teaches Chinese language classes, I've been here for six months and I didn't even think she could speak very much English (and my Korean is still too piss-poor for conversation beyond buying lunch), but yesterday we walked and had had a conversation for about 20 minutes. She just dropped by now and got my name and phone number, I'm not sure why but it's all part of the strangeness of this thing.

Jirisan National Park

This past weekend Keith, Duane and I took a bus to Jinju, a nearby small city (the size of St. John's.) We wandered around a bit and got rooms for the night in a yeoinsuk, very cheap, $10US including a fan and a TV. The rooms are bare concrete cells with a thin mat to sleep on, which is actually pretty good for the back. The only problem is that with no air conditioning the room temperature was around 40 celsius. Turning on the fan made it feel like a convection oven! A couple of times sleepy folks rattled my doorknob looking for their own room, so I never did get much sleep.

On Saturday we got a bus to Ssangyesa, a Buddhist temple that sits at a trailhead for a mountain peak. The hike up the mountain is about 7 km of upward climbing, the hardest part is the giant manmade stairs made of boulders for the first part of the trail. I was exhausted at about the 4.8 km mark, the lack of sleep and proper breakfast took their toll, and so I stopped to make tea while the others went on ahead. They came back shortly because the trail to the peak would have taken too long and we'd have missed our bus back to Busan.

Korean hikers are friendly and they usually say hello or sometimes stop for a chat. It's a nice change of pace from the daily insanity of city life. Next hike I'm going to carry an extra mug in case we have a guest for tea.

Snowboarding, hiking and blogger truancy

Hey all,

I've been running around doing stuff outside in the hot, sticky summer air. I've been up and down Geumjeong mountain 5 times now. Geumjeong is the biggest mountain in the city and has some great scenery. I've been taking photos but my laptop crapped out and I have no easy way to upload them, I'll work something out.

On Monday my friend Seyoung (a lovely girl who shares my birthday) took me snowboarding at the new indoor ski hill. I never thought I'd enjoy seeing snow so much! Of course, snowboarding for the first time was a great laugh, I spent most of the morning on my ass. My buddy Duane told me that I should pad my tailbone to prevent some agony later. I didn't heed that advice but luckily I only landed badly a couple of times. The surprising thing is how stiff I was a couple of days later, I need more exercise than walking, I think.

This coming weekend I'm off to climb Jiri mountain with some buddies, I was supposed to go last weekend but I woke up at 0630 thinking that I was late for work and jumped in a cab and went there (not a first for me :) .) So, I missed the bus and didn't go. This week we leave on a Friday night and do an overnight hike. Should be a great trip!

Sorry for the infrequency of posts, I really should post more often but I've been running around like a mad thing the past couple of weeks. I'll get some more photos up soon, promise.