Adventures in Hong Kong, and in my belly.

Happy New Year! 

For the Christmas part of the festive season, I journeyed to Hong Kong to visit the lovely Perdy, a friend from university who I hadn't seen for two years previous. The journey there was long and not fun. The meals on the plane were fine except for a mysterious article which I suspected was cat food. It was jelly, in a tin shape, with bits of meat in it. Of course I tried it. This was setting me up for a week of new culinary experiences, which you will read about soon enough unless your computer decides to install updates or you get bored. Anyway, it was cat food in taste as well as appearance. In conclusion, it was cat food.

Over the next four days, I travelled by:

• Foot
• Car
• Cable Car
• Speedboat                                                
• Ferry
• Bus
• Train
• Subway
• Mini-bus

Hong Kong was overtaken by 'Hong Kong WinterFest', a city wide decoration festival and they were really creative in ways to make your average Christmas tree unusual and interesting:

Christmas Day

On Christmas day, Perdy and I met up with her mom for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. We (me) ate A LOT at this dinner, and everything except a fish stomach was delicious. 

Alice, Perdy and I.

This is called a century egg, because it's been encased in clay which makes the egg more alkaline and it goes black, green and blue and solid without having to even cook it, after weeks to potentially months of sitting waiting in its clay home. This was one thing I REALLY wanted to try on my trip, and coming in a pork rice porridge soup, it was tasty and something I'm glad I tried. I'm not sure how many of you will be convinced. It's like you don't want to eat old eggs!

Another course in our feast was chicken feet. There's an interesting and quite invasive method of eating these. The trick is to suck the meat off the knuckles until you break them off, and then move onto the next knuckle down. Not much meat on them (look at your own fingers, about that much) but they were tasty!

Cake a la Hong Kong.

Some tasty beefy balls.

Some tasty porky balls. The pork was similar to that which you get in a pork pie.

Afterwards, me and Perdy wandered round the markets, a railway museum and then went to meet her friend Blueky at his family's Hong Kong Style barbecue. See below:

Afterwards, we drank wine and played a board game (Mahjong... better described as a game on a board). This combined with the ritual stuffing of myself with lots of food actually gave way to a traditional style Christmas, just on the other side of the world.

Miscellaneous Food

On display here is beancurd 'sauce' (chinese cheese) covered green beans, deep fried oyster and pork in rice in a hot stone bowl, making the rice nice'n'crispy. Following this we ate snake soup. 

This was my final meal in Hong Kong: Breakfast. It included French toast, noodles with sauteed beef, pineapple bun with butter (not cheese, although it looks like it in the picture) a sausage keeping warm under a lovely ham blanket, egg and a piping hot cuppa tea.

And so, after my culinary journey of Hong Kong, it was time to say goodbye.

Goodbye.

Photo Challenge

Moving onto more festivities, a few friends and I spent New Years Eve celebrating in Seoul. It was fun. I stumbled across a photo challenge on fatmumslim.com.au for the new year. Each day, I will take a photo, as according to the list:

I'll be uploading my photos here (hopefully daily) so keep on checking back.

Day 1: Me

This was very early in the morning of January 2nd, so I'm already not doing it to the rules, but it was at this time I found out about the challenge. You can see my little froggy friend in the background.

Day 2: Breakfast

I didn't have time to grab anything more substantial, so a tasty cold caramel coffee had to do. I was not disappointed.

Gamsahapnida for reading and check back tomorrow,

Cat Food Connoiseur.

P.S. K-ballad 'Don't Forget' by Baek Ji Young.

People are looking at me.

I am writing this post from a pagoda in Incheon intl. Airport. For once I didn't have to climb a mountain to reach it... although I did opt for the stairs over the escalator as it is healthy just like the large tiramisu mocha I'm about to down.

I have around an hour to make my transfer from Beijing to Hong Kong so I expect many people will be approached by a frantic foreigner (potential blog name if any of you are in the market for one... 50wonzillaz please) asking them for help.

I need to wander around and look suspicious now. Oh the joys of turning up to the airport three hours earlier than required.

Gamsahapnida for reading,

Sniffly

Update: evacuated from pagoda.

A feast for your imagination, Christmas folk.

'Tis the season of eating and drinking (more so than other seasons), and being on the other side of the world (to some of you) it's difficult to find some holiday season comforts, either in their entirety or at a reasonable price. An attempt at trying to find the baileys proved useless and there's not a mince pie in sight.

So, in an effort to make those of you on more roast potatoey (it's a word) shores jealous, I will prepare an imaginary feast for you, made up of only my favourites of the wonderful Korean cuisine. There isn't so much a starter, main course and pudding setup in Korea but I'll adapt my menu to this format.

So for starters on this fine day, I will have Sundae. No it's not an ice cream but a Korean variant of one of my favourite breakfast items, black pudding. Who am I kidding? ALL of the breakfast items are my favourite breakfast items! This variant however is much more, intestiney, mmmm..... but DELICIOUS.

I am intensely (intestinely) fond of this dish. HAR HAR HAR

Onto the main course(s) of a) bibimbap, a dish native to the region in which I live, Jeollabuk-do, consisting of rice, vegetables egg and spicy gochujang (red pepper paste), b) galbitang, or short beef rib stew, with glass noodles, egg and spring onions as well as the more ordinary white onion (throw some rice in there too) and c) bossam, boiled pork thrown onto a leaf with some ssamjang (spicy soybean paste) and other assorted toppings. Here's some photos that will hopefully make your mouth water.

Bibimbap: Mix it all up and then gobble it all up.

Bossam: Wrap it up and throw it down your throat.

Galbitang: Take your time with this one - it comes hot.

'And what about dessert!?' I hear you cry. 

This is a red bean fish. A fish shaped pancake filled with mashed redbean.

And this one is a red bean fish ice cream. Wafer cone filled with ice cream and red bean jam.

Yummy.

On Friday I'm flying to Hong Kong for Christmas, and I expect the food there to be delicious.

Gamsahapnida for reading,

Red Bean Fisherman

P.S. This issue's K-pop performed by Wonder Girls and Akon.

The teachery activities of a teacher

Please, take a seat.

I should start off by saying: I've extended! If granted, I will be staying in Korea until (at least) next August. I'd kind of made my mind up about this before I even got on the plane to come to Korea on my initial six month contract, so it was an easy decision to make.

A couple of weeks ago I went to my first thanksgiving dinner, and we had quite the feast, including but not limited to: three chickens (not each) with all the trimmings, fried crispy seaweed, deviled eggs, pumpkin pie, fruit crumble, ice cream and other tasties. It was very nice and a good excuse to have a Christmas dinner a month before Christmas.

I've been doing lots of teachery activities recently, to be detailed below:

• As part of the school curriculum, students and staff alike are required to do some kind of voluntary service. This time it was visiting an old people's home and putting a show on for them. The kids did a few performances including an orchestra set, a drum (samulnori) show and a couple of song and dance routines. In the last post I wrote about being asked to sing a song with the teachers, but in reality I just had to dance along. It was a hit and staff, students and the elderly alike cried 'ENCORE!' to us, and of course me and the lads obliged. Below is an excerpt of our dance:

• Me and the teachers played some 'Tee-ball' last Wednesday, which is basically rounders.

• Team Jeokseong also visited Dongae Elementary for the tri-school volleyball final. Of course I was hideously overdressed in smart shoes and a shirt and still ended up being picked to play. Fortunately for me and my gripless shoes, a new player appeared and my services (or disservices as my last volleyball game made it known) were no longer required. So I stood on the edge talking, cheering and eating chicken and fruit. It was like PE at school except this time I didn't have to forge a letter from my mom saying I'd hurt my foot and couldn't take part. (Hi mom, I'm sorry you had to find out this way, but yes, I did that.)

• I'm also learning to play the changu, a Korean drum. I hope there's a K-pop niche for that.

Onto other K-pop related news. A couple of days ago my students asked me what music I liked and when I replied with 'BIGBANG' one of my students got very annoyed with me. She told me that I needed to say I hated them because they were 'hers'. I said no. She cried. I'm going to see them next month hopefully. I'll be sure to take lots of photos for her.

The snow hit Korea on Wednesday in full force, and yesterday I climbed the Sunchang mountain. Below are some pictures from this little excursion that I took with my neighbour Ekta.

Good morning, snowy mountain.

A little something refreshing to help on the climb.

 Snow Temple.

I also went to Skyrim.

Don't eat yellow snow or shake strange trees hands.

Gamsahapnida for reading,

Cold person.

P.S. This installments dose of K-pop isn't K-pop. It's a 'traditional style' song taken from a film I watched, 'A frozen flower'. It was very good but don't watch it with your parents or your children if you have them. You have been warned. The clip below is harmless, don't worry. Watch it with the whole family if you so desire.

Lucky poo.

It's been a bit of a while hasn't it?

Anyway, onto better things.

A few weeks me and two companions (Anna + Becky) made our way to the Sunchang Gochujang (Red Pepper Paste) festival. It was quite small and I didn't see much gochujang but what happened there was very amusing and made for a day to remember. Here's a quick rundown:

• Anna got a bit (a BIG bit) of pancake put in her mouth by a lady.
• Anna shook a man's hand in confusion when we think he wanted her to take his photo. We realised this a few hours later. He looked confused.
• I danced with some 'ahjummas': 

Two days later, the Jeonbuk TaLK scholars, accompanied by staff from the education office and I, headed for Jeju Island for the 9th Generation Cultural Trip. While there, we went to some theme parks. While you might be thinking 'Alton Towers' or 'Disney Land', it is something entirely different. Instead of being a theme park, they are in fact parks with themes, yet while still fun don't leave you screaming for your life. That's something I'm saving for the bungee jumping tomorrow.

We went to a miniature building theme park:

A sex-statue theme park:

Also we saw some teeny-tiny horses:

Upon my return, it was time for the school festival. It was fun and I got to see just how talented my kids are, especially when playing any of a great number of instruments. Afterwards, I wandered around looking lost for a bit until it was lunchtime - BUFFET! After this, I headed home for a while (I trod in dog poo on the walk home which is supposedly lucky. I certainly felt lucky.) and went out to meet the school staff for hweshik (staff dinner) which involved food (raw fish yum) and then noraebang (karaoke). I sang two songs, and I think they actually went down pretty well. Some of the teachers have asked me to perform a song with them at a care for the elderly concert next week. I'm not sure what song it is and I'm almost certain it's going to be in Korean, so I guess I'll be spending a good amount of next week singing in Korean alone in my apartment.

Also, sometime in the near future I will get to showcase my volleyball skills again in the finals. That's another thing to practice.

Gamsahapnida for reading!

Upcoming K-pop star.

P.S.

TWO K-pop songs for you this week...

Lipstick by Orange Caramel

Sexy Love by T-ARA