Merry Christmas

I just wanted to hop in and say Merry Christmas!

Feeling a bit homey

For some reason I've been lacking the motivation to make another blog post. I think I want to blame it on this busy time of year.

We will be moving soon. Our housing is taken care of by Isaac's company, so at least for the most part we don't have to handle the paperwork and coordination. We have looked at 5 different apartments within a 10 minute radius of our current place, and finally seem to have found one that will work out.

Looking for a new place was kind of funny. All of the apartments we looked at were in high rise 20 story buildings like ours, and even had the exact same layout of ours, with only minor changes like a mirrored floor plan or no closet. I felt like I wasn't quite sure what I should be checking out in these places. They all looked so similar to our own, just filled with other peoples' junk. Luckily Isaac and our company's real estate person were there to assess important things while I got distracted by photographs, friendly children and pets.

Our new place is only a 10 minute walk from where we are now, but boy does it seem far after settling into our current apartment. Isaac and I catch ourselves being sentimental, admiring how nice it is that our home overlooks a busy street corner, with so many businesses just outside our front door.

This is our street corner. In the top right corner is our apartment building, and although this picture is blurry, perhaps you can tell or imagine that there are plenty of resources nearby for whatever we quickly need or want to grab. Next to our apartment building you can see the headlights of several waiting cars. If you walk ten minutes up that street, you will reach our new place. So it's not such a long ways of course, but we have gotten a bit spoiled I guess. Our new place will be on the 19th floor so it has quite the nice view, and we share the elevator with less than half as many units as we do now, so that's wonderful too.

While I'm talking about areas that have begun to feel like home, I'll mention this place too. Yeongtong is a comfortable 20 minute walk from our house now, and this distance may decrease slightly once we move. It's where you go if you want to "go to town", having a movie theater and two large brand department/walmart/mall type stores. I don't know what you call these kind of stores, but they remind me of all three of those, having a little bit of everything.

Here's a shot of the main road through Yongteong. On the right is Home Plus and on the left (behind the building with trees on top, has a slanted odd roof) is Lotte Mart. These stores usually have one floor that is a large grocery store, another floor with a food court and other floors that feel like department stores with small sections and overly eager staff. Customer service tends to be outrageously good and attentive in South Korea, to the point where it is sometimes annoying.

The Lotte Mart on the left is where the movie theater is that I mentioned before, and its glowing red sign is visible from the 19th floor of our future place. On my recent trips inside these big stores, I took just a few photos of things that are a bit different.

Sloped escalators are the standard way to traverse between floors. When you push a big shopping cart onto it, the wheels automatically lock up, preventing them from rolling forwards or backwards.

These stores are so big, and there is such a large variety of many things. But the bread aisle is just sad. It's a little less than half the length on one side, and even of that, only a third is what I would consider "normal bread". If you look in the picture, what is closest on the left and bottom looks most familiar. Mostly, breads are sold in smaller loaves and packets, and they are more Asian style breads made with rice flour. These tend to be very fluffy, light and sweet, but not what I hope to find on a bread aisle. I've given up the search for finding whole wheat bread, I just don't think it's going to happen.

Now the instant noodle section is no joke! There are one and a half aisles (three sides, hope that makes sense) full of more speedy meals than you can ever imagine. The store was quite crowded this day, so I tried my best to only take shots where people weren't standing. But take my word for it, there are a lot of noodles.

I took a shot of the candy aisle just because it was so bright and cheerful. It is multicultural as well, having a wide selection of candies from all over the world, especially Japan, Europe and America. I guess people can compromise on other foods, but they need their comfort candy from home.

It wouldn't be Korea without aisles full of potted meats and special displays of Spam. It still seems odd to me that Spam is so popular here. Around Korean Thanksgiving back in September, I even saw special gift sets of Spam, decorated cans carefully laid in red velvety cases. We speculated before that it is because of the Korean War. The land and people were in a poor state back then after so much war and harsh occupation; food, especially meat, was scarce. American troops and their Spam must have been a welcomed sight. Please let me know if you know more about this. I'm very curious! It is such a quaint western influence, I can't help but think we have better things to offer the world than Spam.

The meat and fish sections of these stores are no joke either. Next time I go with Isaac I'll try to work up the courage to snap a few pictures to share. One more detail, since we were shopping.

I still struggle with quickly pulling out the right change at the register, the extra tens place still throws me off I guess. 1,000 won is a little less than 100 cents. So if my total is 8760 won from buying a few fruits and veggies, I've got to find 760 won in coins. Not a big deal, just a bit awkward after being used to credit cards and cents. I do like the simplicity of the coins. They say the amount on the face, like "five hundred won", and just say "Bank of South Korea" on the back.

I'm sorry if this post was kind of rambling. December has a way of scrambling the brains. I think our upcoming move and the holiday season has us feeling a little off kilter. I'm holding out for a white Christmas though, just over a week away from the big day and it's not an impossibility. I guess we'll see.

Memory Trick

WARNING: This is basically just a book report. If you stop reading, I'll understand.

One thing I have done a lot of these past few months is read. Of course pictures of Korean adventures are more exciting, but I am also experiencing new things with each book I read. So since this blog is about keeping in touch and what I've been up to, I feel like it's okay to share this type of thing every now and then. I just can't stop talking about this book, and Isaac is probably about sick of the snippets and random facts I keep sharing.

So the book is Joshua Foer's Moonwalking with Einstein. It is unique because it is: so interesting that it's hard to put down, non-fiction AND teaches a practical skill.

Basic summary: Joshua Foer is a journalist who was given the assignment to cover a memory competition. He became entranced by these mental athletes, who could memorize strings of meaningless numbers, poetry and decks of cards in record time. Even more surprising to him was that those he interviewed seemed and even professed to be utterly average people. Beneath the wings of a memory champion, Joshua began a year of training to become a mental athlete himself and went on to win the American memory competition just one year after entering this strange culture. This book tells his story and recounts his research all about memory - our brains, history of methods, society's changing perspectives and human anomalies.

This book challenged my ideas about memory and what it means to memorize. I have heard many criticisms about schools requiring memorization. Over the past two years in my teacher's education program, I developed a wrinkled-nose-smelling-something-bad sort of face in reaction to the word "memorize". This book showed me that such negative views towards memorization are a result of our current culture's misuse and misunderstanding of this lost skill.

Contrary to what I have always heard and often thought myself, memorization does not have to be a mindless, robotic task. Effective memorization, as employed by many generations of great thinkers before internet and books were around, is done using wild creativity and imagination. The basic idea is that you create an outlandish mental image which will help you retain whatever information desired. For this is how our memory works naturally. The reason any American can tell you what they were doing on September 11 is because it was an abnormal and surprising day.

So using this method, memory is the ability to paint strange mental snapshots. The more senses you can imagine, the deeper, more memorable the image will be. That sounds much less intimidating than the memorization I tried in school, repeating lines of poems and definitions again and again.

Another aspect that helps our memories is location. Foer and the mental athletes refer to memory palaces, which are locations very familiar to you which you can comfortably walk through in your mind and insert the crazy snapshots you form. Popular memory palaces places like your childhood home or old high school.

This idea is the basis on which world-class mental athletes do much of their performing. To memorize numbers or playing cards, they create a system, assigning an atypical and specific image to each number or card - which can then be combined to create strings of images just like my walk up the driveway, allowing them to recreate the correct order of a string of numbers or cards.

Although memorizing the order of a deck of cards is a cool party trick, I wanted to try out this method on something a bit more useful. So I have begun to memorize Korean vocabulary words, imagining fun and unlikely images and inserting them in my childhood home. I thought I would share the first few just to give you an idea. And because I can't stand to have no pictures, I did some doodles on my cellphone just for fun.


가까스로 ga-kka-seu-ro | adv. barely, nearly
My list starts with me turning off the engine of my car in the driveway. There is a giant crow on the windshield violently pecking at it, yelling "ga! kka!" as cracks spread across the glass like a spiderweb. I know the verb form of this Korean word means to be close, so having a crow pecking close to my face just barely not breaking the windshield makes this image vivid and connects it to the specific word.

세다 se-da | v. to be strong, severe

I get out of the car, assume an impressive martial arts pose, yelling "se" in my best Asian accent. Then crying "da!" I leap through the air to kick the bird. This word was totally new to me, but imagining bashful Betty yelling and furiously jumping seems so ridiculous that I easily remember it.

고르다 go-reu-da | v. to choose, to make level

I walk towards my house, still in the gravel driveway when our dog Rocky appears beside me. On top of his high, broad back there is a silver tray holding two drinks, pink lemonade and regular lemonade. I hesitate, trying to choose which one I want and impressed at Rocky's balance.

I'll stop now, because as you can see, there is nothing miraculous about this process. But I think that is the beauty of it, that it is so simple and doable. Without much effort, maybe 15 minutes daily over the past week spent imagining silly scenes, I have memorized 60 Korean words and their meanings. If I can't sleep or when I am bored, I can walk through my memory palace and check on each word and its definition to see if anything is fuzzy.

It has been a fun and useful exercise to try this memorization method. I am beginning to recognize the words I learned in conversation, like Isaac's father telling me last weekend to choose where we would eat dinner. "Betty-a, gol-la!" That's the conjugated form of the third word on my list.

So if you've made it far, thanks for sticking with me! I hope you found this interesting, and maybe even feel inspired to pick up the book or try this method too to remember something, whether it's a new acquaintance's name or your to-do list.

November Holidays

November is almost gone! There were two holidays this month that stick out in my mind:

11.11 Ppeppero Day (Veteran's Day)

About a week prior, special displays started popping up in the grocery stores featuring the stick shaped ppeppero cookies. Long skinny cookies dipped in chocolate or sometimes other sweet flavors like strawberry yogurt. On Korean Valentine's Day, you give these treats to those you love.

So Isaac and I seized the holiday as a reason to go to the movies and check out the new James Bond flick. The theater near our house is a comfortable 20 minute stroll through parks on a brick-paved walkway. The place is so nice, so I snapped a few pictures of the theater to share.

Cinemas usually occupy the top floors of buildings in Korea. Isaac and I went to one theater that took up the 18th, 19th and 20th floors! The theater near our house, called Mega Box, takes up the 5th through 7th floors of the building, I took this picture of the floor index below.

The bottom floor is the main hub, where you buy tickets and snacks. There are also several other attractions on these three floors, including an arcade, TGI Fridays and a fruit smoothie shop.

Here's some shots of the main floor. The elevators and escalators are to the left of this photo, TGI Fridays is to the right. The glowing white wall is above the ticketing office, about in the middle are the concessions and on the left side is a cafe.

As soon as you arrive on the floor, the scent of caramel popcorn possesses your soul. It's warm and fresh; salty with a thinner shell of caramel than the classic Christmas tin variety. I've never been a fan of caramel popcorn, but I am now a convert. Caramel popcorn at the movies is a necessity.

Oh, and there is always some cute gimicky cups they try to rope you into buying. I couldn't resist and we got this cute set based upon a kids' cartoon show called canimals. Sometimes we catch this show on the weekends. There are no words, just the animals grunting and doing cute things, so we can both fully enjoy it.

Our theater was very nice too. Isaac paid a little extra for this deluxe style theater. It had wider, more comfortable chairs which were also cute rainbow colors.

Below I was trying to show perspective of the screen size. In the bottom right is golden light, the exit of the theater with someone walking out. It's too hard to see, huh?

11.26 Thanksgiving

Nothing about this past Thursday felt especially Thanksgiving-ish. It's no surprise that Korean stores are void of any turkey day memorabilia since it's an American holiday. But it still felt a little odd that it passed almost without notice. I don't have an oven to bake holiday dishes. Which is a wonderful excuse for me and my amateur cooking skills, but also means I have to do without my favorite sweet potato casserole.

But one thing made Thanksgiving very very special, from the moment we woke up.

Wow-wee! What a surprise! My first ever White Thanksgiving. The entire day prior had been dark and rainy. Yet overnight the air had become just perfect for forming lovely snowflakes. Thanksgiving day's weather was a high of 33 degrees F, a low of 23 degrees F.

I ran out with Isaac, walked him to his bus stop and then took off to explore the winter wonderland that had formed overnight.

I walked the familiar paths between apartment buildings and parks. Everything seemed so beautiful and new. It was hard to believe that just last week I was admiring the fall colors here.

Well, there were still a few colorful trees trying to hang on to their leaves despite the chill.

When you saw the picture above, didn't you imagine putting colored lights on that perfectly shaped Christmas tree? I know I did. And every other similarly shaped evergreen.

I went to my favorite mountain park. Gorgeous. Who wouldn't want to get lost down this snowy path?

I just can't get enough of these steps.

By the time I returned home, my fingers were barely functioning from all of my enthusiastic picture-taking. Remember, the high for the day just barely scratched above freezing!

But what a beautiful treat! The wonder of our White Thanksgiving was a sort of ice-pack (teehee couldn't resist), easing the ache of being so far away from family back in America. We missed the sitting around and eating with loved ones, followed by naps and then more sitting around and eating. But our first Thanksgiving together was still very memorable and special thanks to the snowy weather.

I feel like these snowy trails need a good poem to do them justice!

Very Fresh Fish

Ever since I learned I would be moving to Korea, I've tried to assemble a mental bucket list of things to check out while here. One of those items got crossed off my figurative to do list without effort, the result of a wonderful dining suggestion made by Isaac's dad.

So here is the seafood restaurant. It does not have any special curb appeal, but I guess often the best hole-in-the-wall places are this way. You walk inside and are greeted by your dinner. The various menu options are swimming around in their tanks. There were many different fish, squid, octopus, sea anemone and some other things I didn't want to think about eating.

So it's simple. You decide what you want, get in line and then place your order.

The man retrieves the fish from their tanks and puts them in a red bucket just for you. Isaac's dad decided upon two of the fish from the large blue tank above. This particular fish is in season now so it should be extra delicious.

After you pay, you go upstairs and are seated at a restaurant and the fish you just chose are served to you in whatever way you want. We saw some people cooking shrimp at their table, a cooler beside them with the live shrimp and a gas burner and pot before them.

That is the fishy kitchen in the top left corner of the picture above, where many heads are looking down busily prepping seafood.

There are our two fish awaiting their turn with the chef. And a shot of the restaurant. It looks like a typical Korean sushi restaurant, you take your shoes off at the room entrance, where the sliding screen doors are, and then sit on a heated floor upon little square cushions.

Bring on the food! Korean food is famous (and wonderful) because of the many side dishes that are given for free with each meal. Casual restaurants will often serve only one or two basic side dishes like kimchi or pickled radishes. Going to specialty restaurants like this seafood place is always fun because you're sure to encounter different side dishes. Here's what we received.

So just for fun, that's: steamed pumpkin, soybeans, egg hotpot, potato salad, fried vegetables, assorted sushi, grilled fish, small sea snails and salad. I think I listed everything. The small sea snails (in black pointy shells) were neat to try. You just hold it by the end, press your lips to it like a straw, suck and a tiny salty bit shoots into your mouth. The pointy tips of the shells are broken off to ease the process.

There was a moment, just before I took the last picture shown above, when I felt a little overwhelmed. My stomach already felt full, and I had leaned back against the back wall for some digestive support. I asked Isaac "So they brought out one fish grilled. Will they bring the other fish out raw, as sushi?" Isaac responded by telling me that we had yet to receive either of our fish, and that all of the above were just the free side dishes provided.

And then this appeared. There was more meat on the fish than even Isaac's dad anticipated, and we all felt a little overwhelmed. Piece by piece, we dug in.

So below is my preferred method of Korean sushi consumption. Fish, garlic and dwoenjang paste. Dwoenjang is one of the essential tastes of Korean food. It's made from fermented soybeans and has a unique flavor that I can't describe. It is a magical substance with many health benefits, perhaps most famous for flavoring stews. It always leaves you feeling refreshed and it is quite addicting. This particular leaf is my favorite too. I still remember the first time I tried it at Isaac's aunt's house. It is very fragrant and reminds me a bit of licorice. It's shaped like a jagged heart and its Korean name sounds a lot like "cat nip" which is cute too.

You ball it up and stick it in your mouth. It's a sign of affection to make leafy wads of meat and flavors for loved ones. So I can fix one up and then shove it directly into Isaac's or Apa's mouth and it's totally okay.

We ate about half of the raw fish and felt defeated. But with this type of dinner, it is customary to have a stew afterwards. If you notice, of everything we have eaten so far, there is very little carbs, just mostly vegetables and meat. It is pretty nice because you get full slower and can eat more. But still, we were already stuffed. For obvious reasons.

So after eating sushi, we were served maeuntang, which is literally means spicy soup. They put the leftover bits of the fish not served as sushi in the soup and it gives it a rich, complex flavor. And of course it is pretty spicy and always makes my nose run.

Isaac came up with a battle plan to finish all of our fish. He dumped the remaining fish meat into our spicy stew and cooked it.

It was the best maeuntang I've ever tasted. I couldn't believe it, but we ate all of the fish.

As we stood up to leave, I took a final shot surveying the overall damage.

This type of traditional style meal is one of the best experiences of Korean culture I've enjoyed. You will surprise yourself with how much food you can consume, and there are countless different flavor combinations to enjoy so it never gets boring. Korean people have many good reasons to take pride in their traditional foods.

I feel pretty confident saying that eating is one thing at the heart of Korean culture; in a similar way to how people associate Italian culture with their food. You spoil those you love with good food, expressing your care through cooking for them or treating them to a tasty restaurant.

This Saturday night, at this seafood restaurant, I was feeling the love as I leaned back against the wall, face flushed and thoroughly stuffed.

More autumn leaves at Dobongsan

I seized a Wednesday and went to Dobongsan, part of the large Bukhansan National Park that sits just above Seoul. It is nice location to visit because I can take the subway all the way there. I hopped on the subway which is a two minute's walk from our apartment, and bought a one-way ticket which is just over $1. I had to switch trains only one time, and two hours later I arrived at Dobongsan station.

From the station it was about a 15 minute walk to the mountain. The way is easy to find, just follow the stream of people in hiking gear and the line of shops selling hiking equipment. Since I went on a weekday, the place was wonderfully not crowded, so I snapped a few photos of the walk from station to park.

I don't think I've properly explained yet how much of a "thing" hiking apparel is in Korea. It has its own style category, and people carry the hot accessories like bags and poles even if you're only doing an easy, paved hike. It seems like as soon as November arrived, half of the ads on television became celebrities wearing hiking jackets.

There were several familiar brands like Merrell, Columbia and The Northface. And also some I've never heard of, including my new favorite, The Redface.

Onto the hiking! I hiked for a total of 4 hours, up to the mountain top and then on the trail that runs along the ridges of several mountains, then down again. It was that wonderful mixture of rigorous and rewarding.

Of course it wouldn't be hiking in Korea without passing a few Buddhist temples. I passed 5 on my loop, and although I didn't explore them, they were very picturesque.

The temple in the last picture was brand new (or else getting major renovations!), and parts were still being finished. You can see how the white stone seems so perfect, almost glowing. I purposely didn't include the construction work going on to the right of this scene.

The mountain trail started wide and smooth, and it snaked alongside a stream for a while.

The further I walked, the narrower and steeper the path became. I especially liked how the trails were kept as natural as possible, using tree roots and litters of stones as steps. Some places were very steep and railing or ropes were provided to help you climb up and drop down easily. Below are a few shots of the trail I took. Just as beautiful as the trees, so were the leaves scattered between rocks. I spent a lot of time looking down at my feet, taking careful steps, so it's a good thing the ground was pretty too!

The shot just above to the left, with the rope in it, was the final ascent to a very satisfying vista. I would say it was breathtaking, but truthfully my breath was already gone from the trip up.

This panorama shot above was wider than 180 degrees. Very lovely.

So many buildings tucked in between strong, towering mountains. What blows my mind about the photo above and the city within it is that I don't even think this area is considered Seoul. It's some smaller city. I'm looking out to the east, and on any map Seoul is labeled directly south of this park. Also if you look along the horizon, in the distance you can barely see the blue shadows of some even taller mountains. Over in that direction is where the next Winter Olympics will be held.

I chose this rock facing west to rest on and eat my peanut butter sandwich. The wind was fiercely cold, even though I had a heavy jacket, it still stung my face and hands. But I was determined to enjoy the view.

This shot is of the trail along the top ridges of the mountains. I love these scraggly windblown trees that sheltered me on both sides.

The Korean word used for the colorful autumn leaves is 단풍, "dan-poong." This word is also the name of the type of maple tree in the picture above. Everywhere we have gone to see 단풍/fall colors in Korea, these red maples live up to their name and shine so brightly. It is no wonder that the tree is synonymous with fall colors.

Footnote from the "reckless" youngest child of a family: Yes, I went to the mountains alone and felt safe and nothing bad happened to me. Due to the concerns of those close to me...No, I will not go out alone again. :)