"You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place." -Miriam Adeney
Well I think I'll start this post announcing that after a lot of stress, soul-searching, and an online magic-8 ball, I decided to come home in March rather than stay another 6 months/year. I can't really explain my decision, other than I just now feel that it is the right one. Don't get me wrong, this experience has been and continues to be truly incredible! I'll write more about this when I do my goodbye Korea post...in about 3 months. Bittersweet is one of the most difficult emotions, I find, and I'm currently swimming in it.
I suppose that many of you are wondering how we spent Thanksgiving here since Korea clearly doesn't celebrate it. I was particularly sad and missing my family (and the 4-day weekend), but a little gesture by Froebel school turned my frown upside down. The school brought in a special turkey lunch for everyone! Turkey, roasted vegetables, dinner roll, etc. It was great to talk to the kids about how in America, teacher eats a big funny looking bird and pumpkin pie with her whole family once a year. They didn't really get it, but they saw how excited I was and just kinda fed off that, and with a mouth-full of mashed potatoes, that was good enough for me!
That night I went out for probably the farthest thing from turkey you could eat...octopus. Frank and I went to the fish market armed with a camera, and a text message from a friend telling me what this dish was called in Korean (산낙지 - Sannakji). We went to the restaurant inside the market and I showed the server the message and within about 10 minutes, we had our live, squirming, chopped up baby octopus. A little sesame oil and red pepper paste and voila! I also faced my fear of eating eyeballs. Eyeballs have always been one of the things I couldn't bring myself to eat...and it just so happened our little baby octopus dish had about 4. Determined to "own" this challenge, I picked up an eyeball and just kinda looked at it. Then, it winked at me. No. freaking. joke. I just looked at Frank like "can I REALLY eat an eyeball that just winked at me?!" Then without further adieu, I dipped it in a bit of sesame oil and ate it. Mission accomplished. I can tell you it probably won't be happening again, but as always, I'm glad I did it! We also had some delicious seafood soup. So not the most traditional Thanksgiving dinner ever, but if I'm in Korea, I'm going to go for it!
The next week we had a flea market day at Froebel. The kids had been earning "dollars" for good behavior for a few weeks and brought in some toys to "sell" at the market. It was really cute to see them buying these toys and role-playing the customer and the sales rep. Everything was supposed to be a dollar, but Joshua and Chris de
cided to scam their classmates out of money, haha. I overheard Kevin ask them "how much is it?" and instead of replying "one dollar," Joshua looked at Chris for a second, then looked back and said "six dollars." And to my amusement, Kevin pulled out six of his dollar bills and handed them over! I had to hand it to Joshua and Chris, but I felt bad for Kevin and intervened haha.
Since we were spending all day with Elgar class and it was a special flea market day, I thought it would be a good day to bring Frank to school so he could see what a hagwon (private school) was all about. Elgar class of course asked him all the usual "do you like..." questions (poison spider, tiger, apple, etc), but then one caught us both by surprise. "Do you like men?" I lost it. It was so so funny and obviously a completely innocent question but I couldn't help it. Franks face was priceless as he tried to figure out how to best answer...I think he ended up with "I like everyone" or some other generic and rainbow-esque answer. Hey, at least Elgar is expanding their vocabulary!
Recently, Rach and I made our occasional trip to Costco to load up on some good stuff (best find: Quaker oatmeal made in a coffee mug). Since they serve some good food we decided to eat dinner there. Nothing unusual, just hot-dog and pizza kind of food really. I went over to put some of the little chopped onions on my hot dog (its not a hot dog w/out mustard and tiny onions!), and had to wait in line....for a while. In my own world I had failed to notice until I was near the front that people were taking MOUNTAINS of these t
iny chopped onions. Looking around I then realized that there were a lot of people that had a plate of these onions, topped with ketchup and mustard, to go along with their main dish. By the spoonful they eat them. Just a noteworthy observation that will forever change the way I see the hot-dog condiment area.
This past weekend we celebrated a dutch holiday called "Sinterklaas" with the guys we met on Ulleungdo and some of their friends who are also students here. It celebrates the name day of Saint Nicholas. In the Netherlands, Saint Nicholas' Eve (December 5) is the chief occasion for gift-giving. The evening is called "sinterklaasavond" or "pakjesavond" ("presents evening"). So Saturday night, everyone gathered together with 3-4 wrapped presents and played a dice game - I have played it before so some of you may know it but basically it has 3 rounds. 1st round you roll the dice to see if you get to take a gift from the middle or not, 2nd round you can steal other peoples presents and 3rd round, all the presents are opened and you can steal them fro
m each other if you roll the right number on the dice. It gets pretty intense and turns out the most coveted gift of the evening (at our table) was a "Hello Kitty" soap dispenser. After a fight to the death, Frank ended up with it and couldn't have been happier about it :P One of my presents was going to be my fishbowl since I don't need it after my pet fish "gimbap" died :( As Rach and I were walking to the subway to meet them for the Sinterklaas game, the bottom of my bag gave way and my fish bowl shattered all over the pavement! Rach and I just looked at each other and started laughing. This WOULD happen to us. It was even more humorous as a Korean couple walked by and started laughing with us when they put together what had just happened. Also, the crash was so loud that a little old lady in a small dry cleaner popped her head out in alarm to see what had happened. Ah, good times.
Anywho - in 2 weeks from this Thursday we head out to Cambodia and Vietnam for our Christmas vacation!
Also, this weekend we will be seeing a play we've been wanting to go to for a long time called "Ballerina loves a Bboy" about a ballerina who, well, falls in love with a street dancer. The dancing is supposed to be excellent so we are pretty excited! Then next weekend we are going to see a performance of "The Nutcracker." Life is pretty good :)
I suppose that many of you are wondering how we spent Thanksgiving here since Korea clearly doesn't celebrate it. I was particularly sad and missing my family (and the 4-day weekend), but a little gesture by Froebel school turned my frown upside down. The school brought in a special turkey lunch for everyone! Turkey, roasted vegetables, dinner roll, etc. It was great to talk to the kids about how in America, teacher eats a big funny looking bird and pumpkin pie with her whole family once a year. They didn't really get it, but they saw how excited I was and just kinda fed off that, and with a mouth-full of mashed potatoes, that was good enough for me!
That night I went out for probably the farthest thing from turkey you could eat...octopus. Frank and I went to the fish market armed with a camera, and a text message from a friend telling me what this dish was called in Korean (산낙지 - Sannakji). We went to the restaurant inside the market and I showed the server the message and within about 10 minutes, we had our live, squirming, chopped up baby octopus. A little sesame oil and red pepper paste and voila! I also faced my fear of eating eyeballs. Eyeballs have always been one of the things I couldn't bring myself to eat...and it just so happened our little baby octopus dish had about 4. Determined to "own" this challenge, I picked up an eyeball and just kinda looked at it. Then, it winked at me. No. freaking. joke. I just looked at Frank like "can I REALLY eat an eyeball that just winked at me?!" Then without further adieu, I dipped it in a bit of sesame oil and ate it. Mission accomplished. I can tell you it probably won't be happening again, but as always, I'm glad I did it! We also had some delicious seafood soup. So not the most traditional Thanksgiving dinner ever, but if I'm in Korea, I'm going to go for it!
The next week we had a flea market day at Froebel. The kids had been earning "dollars" for good behavior for a few weeks and brought in some toys to "sell" at the market. It was really cute to see them buying these toys and role-playing the customer and the sales rep. Everything was supposed to be a dollar, but Joshua and Chris de
cided to scam their classmates out of money, haha. I overheard Kevin ask them "how much is it?" and instead of replying "one dollar," Joshua looked at Chris for a second, then looked back and said "six dollars." And to my amusement, Kevin pulled out six of his dollar bills and handed them over! I had to hand it to Joshua and Chris, but I felt bad for Kevin and intervened haha.Since we were spending all day with Elgar class and it was a special flea market day, I thought it would be a good day to bring Frank to school so he could see what a hagwon (private school) was all about. Elgar class of course asked him all the usual "do you like..." questions (poison spider, tiger, apple, etc), but then one caught us both by surprise. "Do you like men?" I lost it. It was so so funny and obviously a completely innocent question but I couldn't help it. Franks face was priceless as he tried to figure out how to best answer...I think he ended up with "I like everyone" or some other generic and rainbow-esque answer. Hey, at least Elgar is expanding their vocabulary!
Recently, Rach and I made our occasional trip to Costco to load up on some good stuff (best find: Quaker oatmeal made in a coffee mug). Since they serve some good food we decided to eat dinner there. Nothing unusual, just hot-dog and pizza kind of food really. I went over to put some of the little chopped onions on my hot dog (its not a hot dog w/out mustard and tiny onions!), and had to wait in line....for a while. In my own world I had failed to notice until I was near the front that people were taking MOUNTAINS of these t
iny chopped onions. Looking around I then realized that there were a lot of people that had a plate of these onions, topped with ketchup and mustard, to go along with their main dish. By the spoonful they eat them. Just a noteworthy observation that will forever change the way I see the hot-dog condiment area.This past weekend we celebrated a dutch holiday called "Sinterklaas" with the guys we met on Ulleungdo and some of their friends who are also students here. It celebrates the name day of Saint Nicholas. In the Netherlands, Saint Nicholas' Eve (December 5) is the chief occasion for gift-giving. The evening is called "sinterklaasavond" or "pakjesavond" ("presents evening"). So Saturday night, everyone gathered together with 3-4 wrapped presents and played a dice game - I have played it before so some of you may know it but basically it has 3 rounds. 1st round you roll the dice to see if you get to take a gift from the middle or not, 2nd round you can steal other peoples presents and 3rd round, all the presents are opened and you can steal them fro
m each other if you roll the right number on the dice. It gets pretty intense and turns out the most coveted gift of the evening (at our table) was a "Hello Kitty" soap dispenser. After a fight to the death, Frank ended up with it and couldn't have been happier about it :P One of my presents was going to be my fishbowl since I don't need it after my pet fish "gimbap" died :( As Rach and I were walking to the subway to meet them for the Sinterklaas game, the bottom of my bag gave way and my fish bowl shattered all over the pavement! Rach and I just looked at each other and started laughing. This WOULD happen to us. It was even more humorous as a Korean couple walked by and started laughing with us when they put together what had just happened. Also, the crash was so loud that a little old lady in a small dry cleaner popped her head out in alarm to see what had happened. Ah, good times.
Anywho - in 2 weeks from this Thursday we head out to Cambodia and Vietnam for our Christmas vacation!
Also, this weekend we will be seeing a play we've been wanting to go to for a long time called "Ballerina loves a Bboy" about a ballerina who, well, falls in love with a street dancer. The dancing is supposed to be excellent so we are pretty excited! Then next weekend we are going to see a performance of "The Nutcracker." Life is pretty good :)
Also - new pictures and 2 videos posted HERE
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