Scone saga

I love baking. Baking is my favorite thing to do in the kitchen. Looove it.  Unfortunately, most Korean apartments and houses do not have ovens. This meant that even though I know how to make wonderfully delicious baked things, I was not able to.

Until now.

My parents decided to be awesome and get me a toaster oven for Christmas. A large one. My mother also included my pastry mixer and scraper along with some measuring spoons in my Christmas box, which made me feel much more at home in my kitchen. Since then, I have been on a search for all the necessary ingredients for scones. Baking soda and baking powder were a bit of an adventure, and buttermilk was all but impossible. White vinegar to add to milk for a buttermilk substitute was also a pain, but eventually Costco came to the rescue. Today the final piece came together: baking sheets.  The trip out to a supposed "baking street" was a bit frustrating at times, but eventually very rewarding.  I now know of multiple stores with baking supplies, from cookie cutters and loaf pans to melting chocolate and food coloring.  On the way back to the subway, I even ran across at least a dozen shops selling yarn - talk about a bonus!

Immediately upon returning home, I began my endeavor of making delicious little treats with (mostly) unfamiliar equipment.  Preparing the dough was reasonably easy, except for the part where my mixing bowl was too small so I spilled flour all over myself. I always spill flour on my shirt. Always. This time, however, it got on my shirt, pants, floor, and counter. Whoops.

Unfamiliar ovens are always scary. There is no way of knowing if you'll accidentally overcook or undercook your food because it could be finnicky. Also, Fahrenheit to Celsius is a problem. So is the fact that my oven's instruction manual was all in Korean. 

MY SCONELESSNESS IS FINALLY OVER!!!!

 

The only casualty of the evening was the oven mitt that came with my oven. All I did was try to grab the baking sheet that the scones were on, and this happened. Apparently this oven mitt was not designed to be used with hot things, which begs the question of what exactly it was designed to do. Look pretty hanging on a hook? Thanks, I'll get a functional one that does the same thing.  Luckily I had a clean hand towel, so I was able to use that to handle the baking sheet.

My scones ended up darker on the outside than I typically make them, but the inside was perfect. I'm really looking forward to learning more about this oven's nuances and trying some new things~

Boo cold :(

I hate cold. Hate hate hate. If hell exists, it is not fire; it is ice. I spend most of my evenings wearing the warm pj pants and socks my grandma made for me and drinking tea. Going outside is kept to a minimum.  It doesn't help that my hat, which is super warm, is also kinda tight on my head and therefore irritates my cartilage piercing. Those suckers take for-freaking-ever to fully heal, and mine is at the point where I forget about it except when I have to put on a shirt with a tight collar, accidentally get too close with the hairdryer, or some idiot at the club isn't looking where he's throwing his arms and elbows me right in the ear. That last one really did happen a couple weeks ago and it made my ear bleed a bit. Grumble grumble. I had plans to change my earring the next day, but NOPE. Not gonna happen when it's sore.

Ahem. Anyway. Cold.

I've also been getting the sniffles, which I've been keeping largely at bay with vitamin C supplements and a number of cups of tea per day that I would rather not disclose out of possible-though-unconfirmed embarrassment. I will, however, say that I might need to order tea again sooner than I expected, even though I steep my loose tea 2 or 3 times per portion. I will also admit that the (partially-used) box of fillable tea bags that my mother included in my first care package has been entirely used up. Whoops. I am now down to my reusable infusers and the full box of bags I brought with me. No comment on how much tea is left.

Today was the first sticking snow in my part of Seoul. I think I remember hearing something about snow in other parts before now and there were definitely flurries sometime last week, but the snow today actually turned things white. It was a dusting, but it turned to ice once the sun set and I nearly slipped and fell when I went out to get my pizza from the delivery guy.  My current shoe options are heels or old and worn-out Converse. Tomorrow I have a haircut in the morning and a birthday event in the evening, so I plan on getting myself some fur-lined snow boots sometime in between. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up some HeatTech as well. I already have hot packs at the ready. I DON'T PLAY AROUND WHEN IT COMES TO COLD, GUYS.

I also have been wanting to go geocaching lately but haven't been able to because screw going out in the cold and wind by myself to search for itty bitty microcaches. I do think I converted one of the Korean teachers by accident, though - she seemed utterly fascinated when I was explaining the concept after she overheard me talking about why I wanted a trackable something-or-other to one of the other English teachers. I might have to brave the cold just so I can take her out to find a couple caches and show her how much fun it can be.

More food~

I love food. A lot.  Which is why the majority of these pictures are not of the food as pretty as it is when it comes out.  They're from the middle of the meal when I go "oh crap, I should have taken a picture of this to show people back home."  Food pictures and selfies do not come naturally to me.  Nor do hashtags. This is probably why my Instagram has practically nothing on it.  #failing

Anyway, food!

Spicy seafood soup with tofu. Don't know what it was called, but it tasted good even though I had to eat around the shellfish and little bits of octopus/squid tentacle in it.

Barbecue may or may not be my weakness. Pork belly, rice, and side dishes? Yes please.

 

Mix it up on occasion and go with beef...

I also went to a barbecue buffet - all you can grill and eat in an hour in a half, but don't leave leftovers or you get charged - and it was wonderful.  Didn't think to take pictures until the meal was pretty much over :(

Kimbap, a wonderful picnic food or snack.

 

부대찌개/budaejjigae, roughly translated as "army stew." So delicious.

  

닭갈비/chicken galbi, with added rice and 떡/ddeok

라볶이/rabokki, ramen plus 떡볶이/ddeokbokki (떡/ddeok in a special spicy sauce)

 

See all the red/orange in the last few pictures?  That's because a lot of Korean food is spicy and it's awesome. Spicy food for life.  (Though people who hate spicy food can definitely survive here - there are options for you.  I just usually don't choose them.)

This next one I made in my itty bitty kitchen using my new not-crappy, nonstick skillet~  Kitchen sink rice is my go-to meal.  What's in it?  Some kimchi, some veggies, some sausage...everything but the kitchen sink.  I really should start taking more pictures of my home-cooked meals to prove that yes, I can survive with one burner, no microwave, no oven, no toaster oven, a mini fridge, and no dishwasher.

 

I also made macaroni and cheese. It wasn't anything particularly delightful, but I used sliced American cheese and a couple slices of Gouda and it tasted almost exactly like I made it with Velveeta. It wasn't super-pretty, so no pictures of that one.  Same goes for my chicken and rice soup and my potato soup. The soups were pretty fantastic, but I'm not a food photographer so I couldn't capture the deliciousness of them. 

I can make Korean food too! This one is 된장찌개/bean paste stew, which I actually made for the first time back in the States. It tastes much better here, though. Also, the bowl of rice makes every single Korean soup I ever attempt taste better. Korean soups need rice with them. Fact of life. 

 

Caramel popcorn and vanilla soft-serve. Don't know why. Tasted pretty good, though.

 

Hehehe...back to barbecue. This restaurant has the best kimchi I've found anywhere...so far.

Strictly speaking this next one isn't food, it's tea. 오미자차/omijacha, 5-taste berry tea~ It has a bit of a strange taste, but I love it.  It's fantastic cold or hot and I need to get my hands on it so I can make it at home.

I've also finally branched out into delivery food.  There's an app - all in Korean - that lets me order without having to pick up the phone and call a restaurant. Score. I hate talking on the phone in any language. Text? Sure. Email? Sure. Skype? Sure! But phone? No thanks. I put off my hair appointments because it involves calling the salon on the phone.

So this is my first adventure into the life of "it's too cold to go out and I don't feel like washing the pot so I can cook":

It was actually really delicious. I ordered a preset pizza - I didn't pick my toppings - and got potato slices, bacon, corn, onion, and mushroom.  I picked the onion off for the most part, but I did eat some of it.

More food to come! (Eventually)

Best day in a while~

Not that I dislike my life here or anything. Life just always gets harder in the winter.

But this morning I went out to Itaewon in search of an English bookstore.  I got breakfast at a place with okay pancakes but wonderful blueberry topping and a cup of Earl Grey that was easily the best tea I've found in Korea.  The bookstore was great and I bought more books than I really need, especially considering how many I have left on my Kindle to read, but BOOKS. Then because there was extra time, my friend and I hit up this shop that she passed last time she was in the area.  It was a wonderful decision - I got a ton of baklava, and when I got home and tried it I just about cried because it was so delicious.  At work, one of the other classes had an open class today and one of the parents brought cake for all of us, so there was a random cake in the staff room. Very very tasty cake.  My box from my grandma arrived today with warm pajama pants and socks (I'm wearing some of them right now because they're waaaaarm), and I've been anticipating it for a while now.  Plus I bought flour yesterday, so I finally forced myself to make potato soup for dinner tonight. My first thought was why didn't I do this earlier. I love love love a good potato soup.  I guess it seemed like a lot of work...but I tend to keep most of the ingredients around anyway. I was out of bacon, too lazy to defrost the one box of sliced ham I have, and couldn't find cheddar cheese, but a slightly heavier hand with the spices gave the soup plenty of flavor and cheese slices work just fine if you chop them into strips first.  Plus I had part of a carrot left over from my chicken noodle soup the other night, so I threw that into the mix...and it is just too perfect of a fall/winter dish. It even has that touch of home.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have another mug of tea, finish my chocolate and walnut baklava that has an absurd(ly delicious) amount of honey in it, and start reading one of my new books.

Seoul Lantern Festival

I accidentally ran into this festival while I was out studying (and waiting for Ingrid to finish her walk-a-thon that I managed to worm my way out of by saying I needed to study) and got restless. I left the cafe I was in and wanted to get some fresh air, so I wandered down to nearby Cheonggyecheon (one of my favorite places in the city) and stumbled on an event that I completely forgot was happening.

Other than that random moment of good luck, I have had terrible luck with this festival.  I got some great pictures the first time around despite the crowd, but I really wanted to head down again to try to get a few more.

Attempt number 1: I went out with Ingrid late one night after work and dinner because we both wanted to see the lanterns without all the crowds.  It was below freezing, and when we got downtown it was raining. It was around midnight when we got to the stream, and all of the lanterns were either turned off or gone.  We froze and took a bus home, disappointed.

Attempt number 2: Ingrid and I went out right after work, got dinner together, and headed downtown...but accidentally took the wrong train and then missed our connection once we got going the right way. We got there around 10:55 and found out the hard way that they shut everything off at 11. I did get a few really nice pictures of the fish lanterns, though.

Attempt number 3 is going to be tomorrow after I do some studying and find out where on earth my exam is.  I'm not sure yet if Ingrid will be joining me - she's going to a concert with another friend and might be too tired to make another attempt.

Baby steps

Becoming a "real adult" is a slow process.  I don't know why I thought it would be quick once I got here...maybe because adapting to a new country seemed much more difficult than learning to live outside the dorms or function outside of college.

Staying on top of my chores is really hard.  I used to have a friend who would frequent my apartment so I felt a need to keep it presentable, but we've grown apart and now I don't feel like I need to keep up appearances for anyone. I've gotten super lax about doing the dishes and putting away my laundry, and I was never exceedingly on top of those things to begin with.  Dishes seem like such an ordeal, and laundry is just so much more convenient on the drying rack than on my clothes rack.  I sweep my floor reasonably frequently and scrub my bathroom often enough to keep it from looking gross, but that's all I really keep on top of as far as housework goes.

I am trying, though. I forced myself to wash all the dishes in the sink tonight, not just the ones I need or the half on the left or right side of the sink.  I took my trash out last night as well, which is impressive because even though we have three trash days in a week I always manage to forget to take mine out until the next day. However, living by myself does mean that my trash doesn't pile up super quickly, so it's not really a disaster until my food trash bag gets too full for my freezer.  I even have a load of laundry going right now, and it's really important to stay on top of laundry here because I don't have a dryer.  The only way tonight could feel more adult-y would be if my dinner hadn't turned out ridiculously bland despite the two full spoons of curry seasoning I threw in, but I guess I can't have everything.

The only thing I feel like I'm doing reasonably successfully is my budget. It's a bit tight, but I'm putting away a decent portion of my money every month toward savings and another decent chunk toward student loans.  Dad may not have been able to make me into someone who can't stand a messy living space (sorry), but he has managed to teach me decent spending habits pretty successfully.  I have had a couple conversations with him since getting here that basically started with me going "DADDY HOW DO I BUDGET ON A NON-STUDENT PAYCHECK HAAAALP PLZ" but I think I've settled things reasonably well. Finally.

So, like the title says, I'm just focusing on baby steps.  Tonight, the dishes and some of the laundry. Another night this week, I'll tackle the pile of clean laundry and notebooks that have accumulated on the side of my bed I don't sleep on. In my free time, I'll work on crocheting my window decoration to make the place look less like a generic apartment and more like home.  Maybe eventually I'll be able to get things to a state where I can take pictures to send home/post here.

Home base

There's not a whole lot to update on at the moment. I've mostly just been in my work routine and haven't been doing anything super exciting lately. But here's a general update anyway!

The last month has been full of ups and downs as far as adapting to my new home goes.  I've had a rough few weeks as far as my language skills go - people have been talking really quickly and I've been unable to spit out the words that I need - and the weather is getting colder, which is really bad for my social life. I can't handle cold very well, so in winter I tend to shut down and not leave my room except for necessary things. I fulfill my obligations, like school or work, but for most of the rest of winter I just hole up in my room and don't go out to do things with people. If I had gotten here a month or two earlier, I would have been able to do a lot more out in the city because I would have been happy with the weather and willing to go out by myself. Now I need the push of an obligation to someone else in order to force me to leave my room.

On the other hand, I've been randomly struck by a desire to go back to London.  My first reaction was that I shouldn't be wanting to leave so soon after getting here, so something must be wrong.  But I've been forcing myself out into the city more despite the cold, and every time I'm reminded of how much I love it here. I thought about it, and I've realized that I want to leave because I've established that Seoul is my home base now.  I have a routine, I have my regular bars/clubs/restaurants/stores, and I'm familiar enough with things that I feel completely comfortable most of the time.  The language barrier keeps me on my toes, but it still feels like I've actually settled in.  And once I feel comfortable, I feel the need to do something that throws me out of my comfort zone a bit.  I don't want to go to London and then go back to the States. I want to go to London and then come back here.  I'm going to say that wanting to travel now is a good thing, because it means that I feel like I have home base set up here.


The minor news:

• Be on the lookout for a post about the Seoul Lantern Festival, which is going on for the next couple of weeks.  I'm not sure when I'm going to head out to see it, though.
• I have almost all of my usual tea-making supplies again (why can I not find a good teapot???) and have been very happy ever since my tea order got here because tea is important.
• I've pretty much completely transitioned to PC gaming, but I'll always miss my xbox to some degree.
• I'm pretty sure I have an addiction to notebooks - I can't resist buying one or two every time I go out to a stationery store. They're just so cute! (and useful)
• The TOPIK is coming up in 2 weeks and I'm nowhere near ready for my brain to be that fried.

Learning Korean

One of the big reasons I wanted to come over here was because I wanted to improve my Korean skills.  I had heard that one of the problems with coming over here as an English teacher is that it's extremely easy to just skate by with English plus whatever survival Korean you pick up.  I didn't understand that - it's a total immersion environment.  How can you not learn?

Now that I've been here a little while, I understand why so many people leave here knowing basically no Korean.

On a daily basis, I speak little to no Korean.  At school, I'm not allowed to use Korean at all.  It's not a super strict rule, but my students aren't even supposed to know that I speak even a little Korean.  It's really hard to lie to the younger ones sometimes because they really want me to know Korean, but if they know I can use it then they won't use English in the classroom all the time.  Some of my older students know because I compared English to Korean in order to explain a pronunciation pattern or because they kept arguing that they weren't using Korean.  (Dude, I know that wasn't the Koreanized pronunciation of an English word because I understood what you said. Nice try.)

Outside of work, the only native Korean that I talk to on any kind of regular basis is my conversation partner, and we meet once every week or two.  I'm a shy person, so I'm very slow to make friends.  On top of that, I don't really know how to meet people here.  It's gonna take me quite a while to build up a group of people I can use Korean with.

If I want to learn Korean, I have to be really motivated.  Out of all the foreign teachers at my school, one or two would like to learn more but have no time, three (not including me) are actively trying to study but have varying degrees of dedication, and the rest just don't care if they learn Korean or not.  Classes don't really work with our work schedule, so anything we do has to be self-study.  I'm extremely lucky in that I have enough of a foundation that self-study should be totally fine, but one of my coworkers is starting from scratch.  I'm helping her as much as I can, but she could be progressing a lot faster if she were able to take classes.

I have two TOPIK study books and plan to get an advanced grammar book within the next few weeks.  I also have a few books on hanja, or the Chinese characters used in some Korean writing.  They're fading out of use, but they're super helpful for word roots and finding connected words.  Also, if I want to read older texts, I'll need to know them for that.

My main method of studying is actually reading. I should be reading the news, but I can't motivate myself to look up articles, translate all the vocab I don't know, and then study those words.  They're boring words.  Instead, I've picked up a couple of novels - one is a translated book by a Swedish author, and the other was originally written in Korean - and have been working on reading those.  I've tried this before with World War Z, but it was a massive struggle to get through that with all of the military terminology involved.  Right now, I'm reading The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (by Jonas Jonasson) and it's much easier to understand.  I still don't know a lot of words, but I'm able to pick up some of them from context and I can still get the gist of what's going on even before I look up vocabulary.

I'm also trying to use lang-8.com a lot more.  Lang-8 is a website where you can post journal entries in your target language and native speakers will correct them, while you correct journal entries in your native language.  The writing level can be super basic self-introduction stuff or more difficult things like political issues or summaries of news articles.  I'm hoping to get myself to the point where I post blog entries here in both English and Korean.

Changdeokgung cultural event

This weekend I went to another cultural event through my school.  The director hears about a lot of these opportunities and promotes them to the foreign teachers.  I really wasn't feeling going to something that started at 9am on a Sunday, but my director caught me while I was developing a video-based course and I was caught off guard so I wasn't able to come up with a reason why I couldn't go.  A few of other teachers got roped into going too, so I wasn't the only one she managed to catch off-guard.

So, at 9am on a Sunday, I was at Changdeokgung Palace (창덕궁).

The event was three musical performances at different locations in the "secret garden" of the palace.  The palace itself was absolutely beautiful, but the secret garden was even better.  Admission to it costs extra, but I highly recommend it. (I got in for free because of the program, though~)

The first performance was near Buyongji Pond (부용지).  We listened to pansori (판소리), which I absolutely love. (If you're interested in listening to a short selection, here's a good one on youtube.)  The piece we listened to was an excerpt from the story of Chunhyang.  There's actually a movie made from the pansori piece, which you can watch with subtitles on youtube.  It includes parts of the song in the movie, which is really cool.

This is Buyongji pond. It's probably a lot prettier in summer when there are plants growing in it, but it was still really beautiful.
 

The pansori performance:

After that, there was a daegeum (대금) performance.  I tried to upload the video that I took, but it's too large for this blog. Here's a youtube video of the same piece by a different performer instead.

I've heard traditional music before, but the only instrument I knew by name was gayageum (가야금). I'd never heard a daegeum solo performance before, and it was really interesting.  I was expecting the clear sound you get out of a metal flute, but there were actually some harsher, buzzier tones as well. 
Once I got over my initial surprise at the change in tone quality, it was actually very beautiful to hear how each different kind of sound was used in the song.

The last performance was a court dance with a musical ensemble.

Surprisingly, the smallest flute was the loudest. Go figure.

After the performances and the tour were over, my coworkers, school director, and the woman from Korea Tourism Organization (the same one who ran the Namhansanseong trip) all went out to lunch in Insadong.  Definitely found a great restaurant to take people to when they come visit!

Overall, even though I had to get up really early in order to do this today and didn't really want to sign up in the first place, I had a great time.  I'm a bit sad that I'm not going to the next event, which is a walk-a-thon in November, but that's right around the time of the TOPIK exam and I'll probably want to do some extra studying.  There will be plenty of other events though~

New page!

Check out the helpful tidbits page for exactly what it says - helpful tidbits!  Things that I might not fully explain in a post or things that will make reading the blog in general a bit easier, some cultural and lifestyle differences that don't need a long explanation but are worth mentioning, things like that~

September --> October

My first full month has drawn to a close, and I'm really happy to be drawing closer to my first paycheck.

The hardest part about living here so far has definitely been that I got here in mid-August but won't get paid until mid-October.  I was warned that it would be a month before I got paid, but I thought that meant mid-September.

I've been living out of my savings so far, and that's been super stressful.  Trying to set up a living space from money that I set aside for other things (like student loans and emergency plane tickets home) is difficult, so I've been doing the minimum.   I don't have enough storage containers for all my things, so I don't have a place for everything yet.  A bunch of stuff is just kind of eternally being shuffled around on my table.  I don't like that I've never seen my apartment with all my stuff fully settled in it.

My first paycheck will be larger than normal because it will include training as well, but I'm still going to be on a slightly tighter budget than I hoped for the first few months to make up for everything I've had to spend so far.  Grump grump grump.  At least it's almost over - I get paid in a week and a half.

But the nice thing about living in a big city is that there's plenty to see and do for cheap or free, so it's not like I'll be unable to enjoy myself.

As for teaching, some things have gotten easier while some things have gotten harder.  I have some unruly students and a couple classes where I'm hard-pressed to keep my students from speaking Korean all the time.  However, I have figured out what certain classes of students do and do not respond well to, so I've been able to tailor lessons to their needs a bit better as time has gone on.

The weather is definitely getting chillier here, but I haven't seen leaves changing color yet.  I'm sure that will come soon enough~  I'll post pictures when it happens.  I'll also post pictures of my apartment when I eventually get everything settled, but that's still a bit away.

Costco and Namhansanseong~

This weekend was a tad on the expensive side...but worth it.

Friday night after work I went out clubbing in Gangnam with some friends.  We ran into Ashley, which was nice. I picked the club because she said she would be there and that it was a good place to go.  It was an extremely fun club, and most of us (including me) even got in for free because there was some random dude outside that gave us some bracelets for free entry.  We were out all night - I saw the sunrise on the cab ride home.

Saturday was Costco.  Glorious, glorious, crowded-as-hell Costco.  I was really hoping to find Goldfish or Cheez-its, but I found neither.  I did find some lunch meat, which I am super happy about.  Meat can be a bit expensive here, so I also ended up with some bacon and some chicken breasts.  Pickles are another thing that I got really excited about.  You get pickles as side dishes rather frequently, but they're always sweet pickles. Always. No exceptions.  So when I saw jars of dill pickles, I couldn't resist. My other purchases included enough cheese for an army (I got a little overeager. Oops. I see plenty of grilled cheese in my future) and a giant box of Swiss Miss.

I told myself that I wouldn't be the person who insists on only eating American food, but as I'm writing this post, I'm enjoying a ham and cheese sandwich with some pickles and apples (they were on sale at Emart).  Don't even care.


On Sunday, Ingrid and I went on this touristy cultural thing-a-thing that we signed up for through our school.  UNESCO designated Namhansanseong (남한산성) a world cultural heritage site this past June, so the Korea Tourism Organization set up an event for foreigners.  They took us there by bus, gave us food, and set up events for us to do.  They overbooked it, though, so they asked for five volunteers to separate from the main group and do something else. After some debate, Ingrid and I volunteered.  While what the other group got to do looked like tons of fun as well, we had a great time.


We wore more elaborate hanbok than the ones we tried on at the cafe in Insadong, which was really cool.

 

For comparison, the basic ones we wore in the cafe during Chuseok:

 There were lots and lots of group shots wherever we went.

 

I got to sew a book together, but I still haven't figured out what I want to write in it.

Here we're standing in front of what we would have been doing if we hadn't volunteered to split from the main group.

 We learned about traditional tea ceremonies from these two lovely ladies.

The weekend was an absolute blast, but I was exhausted at work today.  I made it through the day and even forced myself to make a trip to Emart so I could finally get myself a laundry basket.  I'm still working on building up my storage containers and setting up my apartment, but I can definitely see progress being made.