I’m going to Jeju, to buy a heat magazine.

Hello readers and lookers at pictures that I took or stole,

I have a new addition to my top favourite foods here in Korea. It is called Shabu Shabu and it’s a meal that transforms as you eat it. The first step is boiling vegetables (mushrooms, leek, lettuce, assorted leaves, etc.) in a nice tasty broth. Add some meat and eat.  The lady cooking for us was surprised that I had eaten the leek… more of a broth flavouring than an edible veggie apparently. Ain’t nothing wrong with chompin’ on a leek.

 After finishing eating this, noodles are added to the broth. In the restaurant I visited recently, the noodles were bright orange (pepper noodles) and green (chlorophyll something or other noodles).

Noodle Eating 101

Step one: Pick up noodles. Look somewhat worried.

Step two: Look at noodles. Look somewhat more worried.

Step three: Go for it. Throw as many noodles as possible in your mouth. Worrying still on the increase.

Step four: The difficult part. The slurp. The main idea here is to slurp without flicking noodle juice everywhere. At this point worrying is at its height.

Step five: You did it! You ate almost three whole noodles! Congratulations! Now for the rest of the bowl....

Silly little scared rabbit. You will discover more about him later, but I find his facial expression is pretty on par with the feeling of looking at how many noodles you have left, and considering if you will reach the bottom of the bowl or if your worry overdrive will kick in before then, leaving you a nervous, blubbering, noodle juice flicking mess.

Back to the transforming dinner. After slurping up the noods and/or drowning in noodle juice flickings, rice is thrown in, as well as an egg, it is beaten rather viciously and the broth turns into a rich and tasty rice porridge.

D-E-LICIOUS

Good Brekkies!

Another food related challenge I have tasked myself with these last two weekends has been to make nice breakfasts.

The first of these was a Full English:

Hot dog, Egg a la scramblee, Bread a la eggy, Egg a la friedy (not to be confused with egg a la friday), bread a la friedy (also not to be confused with the friday variety of bread), mushrooms, samgyeopsal (pork belly), fried chicken with honey sauce (was improvising a bit by this point) and one lonely rice cake. Drinks were juice from an apple and juice from a teabag. Oh and tomatty sauce.

Week Two was easier, being a continental breakfast:

Croissant, pain au chocolat, apple jammy jam, strawberry jammier jam, strawberry yog, chocobananaballs and a cup o' coff (not to be confused with the equally delicious cup o' cough)


















Jeju Bound


Tomorrow I will be embarking upon the first of two upcoming trips to Jeju Island, this time as part of a school trip. We are going for two nights and three days. I translated the itinerary into English and one of the highlights was ‘answering ambiguous questions about dinosaurs’. I haven’t done my research yet, or completed the section of my Korean textbook relating to dinosaur conversations, but maybe my experience of actually being a velociraptor will be enough to impress and answer some of the more difficult dinosaur questions. Other things on our schedule are horse riding, another trip to the miniature statue park, hiking and probably a fair bit of wandering around looking lost and confused (the latter is on my itinerary only).


A patch to call my own, maybe.

I turned up to school last Wednesday, expecting to co-teach a class. Arriving at my classroom, I found it empty. It reminded me of a time in high school where I turned up for school an hour early and wandered around wondering where everyone was and if they were all playing a joke on me (all one thousand of them). This time was different, I turned up on time and after a quick wander around school I was pointed to a mysterious section of the school grounds. Arriving at said mysterious section, I found the whole school body, armed with shovels and garden tools attacking a horde of zombies tending to the school garden. I was promptly given a shovel and started shifting earth, not quite knowing what I was doing. This went on for a while. I think I might have my own patch of land for growing vegetables now. Exciting!

I'm being helpful.. promise.

Jeonju Zoo

How do you do?

Twice in the past three weeks I’ve been to Jeonju Zoo. I learnt that it is the only place in Korea where eagles and chickens live in the same area and are actually friends. Pigeons and rabbits also share an enclosure. Yup. That’s Jeonju Zoo.

Chickens are friends, not food.

Pigeon/Rabbit enclosure

And here is one of my newest friends of the animal variety. His name is, as you read earlier, Silly little scared rabbit.

He did not move from this position at all, making it quite easy to take a photo.

 <--  *tremble tremble*  

  *TREMBLE TREMBLE* -->

                                                           

My most recent trip to the zoo was with the very kind Jeong In-Soon, who was a supply teacher at my school last year and is a talented artist. My wall is home to one of her creations! We ate seafood soup at a well-being restaurant, and it was tasty. After dinner, we headed to aforementioned zoo, looked at the animals and plants, before grabbing a coffee and relaxing in the park. Looking forward to meeting up with her again!

 Here we are hanging around Deokjin Park, making trouble, pushing people into the lake, and spray painting some graffiti.

Gamsahapnida for reading,


Alan Titchmarsh

P.S.

Three K-pop entries this week:

1)      Oops! By G.NA

Daniel, will your mom like this one?

The chorus probably, if she manages to make it through the opening rap.

2)      Michigo by G-Dragon

Daniel, will your mom like this one?

No.

3)      Turtle by Davichi

Daniel, will your mom like this one?

Probably.

Welcome back

Handsome guy.

Good morning/afternoon/evening,

I regret to say that it has indeed been another long while since I wrote here. I'll write now about some things that have happened.



Home stay

I've had a little work done.

In February, the kindergarten teacher at my school invited me to stay with her and her family for a night in Jeonju. Over the course of the weekend, we ate a lot, visited a temple and I won around 4000 won in bets with her husband. Pictured above is the family minus her husband's mom who also lives with them. She was sweet and would occasionally appear out of her room and gesture for me to eat a lot. I took her advice of course, not that I needed to. In the photo, from left to right: Mi Gyeong, the kindergarten teacher at my school, and next to her, her daughter Erica who has just returned from a study abroad program and is fantastic at English. Taking centre stage is Won Kyu, her husband and seemingly my employer for the weekend. Next to him is Simon, who I shared a room with during my time there. In his sleep he punched me in the head a few times. They were a really sweet and lovely family and I am looking forward to the next time I get to meet up with them all!

Below is another picture of me and Mi Gyeong while picking strawberries on a spontaneous school trip (something I think probably illegal in England but here they just do it). One of my kindergarteners held my hand for the most of the journey to the farm, and if she did decide to leave me for a minute to chase one of the other kids, she'd always be back, holding out her hand expectantly. What a sweetie.

This was attempt #3. Attempt #1 was in a dark karaoke room, and attempt #2 was in a dark area of the strawberry farm. Who knew you need light to take a photo!?

Teaching three lovely little ladies

Me and ma bezziez.

Pictured above are my incredibly sweet kindergarten class. This photo was taken at the end of a class that goes like this: I walk in. I discover they are hiding from me. I spot them within 3.5 milliseconds. I pretend I haven't seen them and look around the room for a while. Eventually, I tell them I've found them. They scream. They run away from me. I chase them.

On the day of the photo, they had tied their hair on top of their heads when they jumped out and ran away. On a slightly related note, they sometimes say I have gorilla hair. Recently they've taken to putting their faces actually on my face to look at my eyes as close as possible. Anyway, they are really sweet and they are the one thing that cheers me up after one of my more challenging classes.


Slow gym dog

This is a tiny little dog I met in the foyer of the gym in Sunchang. It is, by far, the slowest little doggy I have ever encountered. It's tiny little legs moved it at just a little over snails pace, and wanted to be stroked so badly. It's a shame it has to expend so much effort for a little love.

After extensive tests, it has been determined that this dog is not suitable for running machines.

Friendly Temple Dog

This is me, a new Sunchang English teacher called Evan, and some random guy in a red jumper. HAR HAR.

Really now, this is a wonderful little post-pup called Homer who calls a local mountain temple home. Her Korean name is Gom (곰), meaning bear I think. Perhaps the owners are confused as to what animal they are taking care of. On my latest trip , his owner, the monk in charge of Jangdeoksa buddhist temple, invited us into his home for SO MUCH tea. It just kept on pouring, and I was rather eager to use the facilities by the time that we were leaving. She has a particular liking for a working glove that's near to one of the statues, which she has picked up and played with on both of my recent trips.

Selling myself

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a date auction. Originally, I wasn't going to take part, but then the dangerous part of me that thinks 'Why not!?' took over. After a self introduction and Q&A session, I was sold for 75,000 wonzillas. All for charity... AIN'T I NICE EH!?

I went on the date yesterday, and we ate duck stew. It was tasty.

Hi, I'm Dan, and I'm a velociraptor. MLYARRRRRRRR

감사합니다 for reading,


Kindergarten Cop.


P.S. K-pop this time by G-Dragon and Minzi, performing 'Missing you'.

I hope you enjoy this one as much as the rest of them, mom.