Gimbap!

On Julian’s birthday we went to Lucy’s (my co-teacher’s) house to learn how to make gimbap and to meet her family.
She lives on the 13th floor of a huge high-rise apartment block in Sangju: She and her husband (Jeong Cher – an engineer) have a lovely big apartment with huge windows and a great view over the rice fields and hills surrounding Sangju.
Lucy claims he sister is a better cook than she is, so her sister was the chef instructor in the gimbap-making lesson.
Gimbap is the Korean version of sushi: it is a roll of rice covered in seaweed and has various combinations of veggies, seafood and meat in the centre. One then cuts this roll into slices. It is of course, eaten with chopsticks, and usually dipped into soy sauce, soybean and red pepper paste or wasabi (hothothot!).

They had prepared all the meat and veg and rice, so when we got there we just had to roll and cut, well, not JUST…

Some of the ingredients: crab strips (pink), ham strips, some brown root vegetablein strips, and fish meal strips (this is a kind of pancake made from fish meal and cooked in soy sauce, surprisingly tastes quite good!) We also sued cucumber, carrots, pickled radish, and (processed!) cheese for the gimbap.

The rolling is a bit challenging: one has to be careful not too make the roll too fat otherwise one can’t get the gimbap slices into the mouth in one bite! And if one doesn’t roll it tightly enough (one uses a bamboo mat, like a placemat) then it falls apart when one cuts it!

The finished product! The children made mini-gimbaps (in the middles), very cute! :)

So we managed to roll relatively good gimbap rolls and cut them up. We then showed them how to cook a pasta dish – seemed so boring in comparison! – and we shared our meals together. It was a really lovely afternoon. Lucy’s family are such warm, open people and her husband and sister both speak relatively good English: Jules and I enjoyed having conversations with them. Jules sat on the couch with the men watching baseball – a big favouriote here, there’s a very serious national league! Lucy’s niece is a real cutie: her English name is Alice (I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember her Korean name!) and she speaks really good English too: she was very excited to show me her room (they live in the apartment below Lucy’s) and she’s got loads of English books and flashcards: lucky girl! And she really seems to enjoy learning English.

Lucy and Alice with our gimbap!

So gimbap is the first Korean speciality which we have learned to prepare ourselves: we are yet to try it out at home, but will do so soon! It’s really tasty and I think probably not too expensive since all the Ingredients are Korean-made. We have found any food which is vaguely western is very expensive: once we have settled in, we will have to start cooking more and more Korean! I’m sure gimbap will remain a favourite.

Lucy and Jeong-Cher had very kindly bought Jules a cake for his birthday - a real beauty from 'Paris Baguette' a bakery which is a chain/franchise all over Korea and very popular for baked goods, especially these very creamy very decorative cakes - which are more beauty than brains ;) But add fun and excitement to an occasion nonetheless!

Noraebang

This is one of those (yup, yet another!) unique Korean experiences which is difficult to share – but I’ll give it my best shot none the less.
Noraebang is the Korean word for a singing room. This is not your regular Karaoke experience, think again, think like this: You have your own room, just for you and your friends, it is conveniently sound-proofed and so you (fortunately!) cannot be heard beyond ‘your four walls’ and cannot hear anyone else at the venue.

The room comes fully kitted with psychedelic flashing lights, comfy couches and two fat files/albums full of songs to choose from, cymbals, a hi-tech, very complicated, all-in-Korean remote control to control the high tech screen on which the song lyrics and very odd and super-kitch Korean-style music videos are shown and of course complimentary soft drinks and sweet treats (you think these are chips or cheese snacks but they are in fact sweet, ugh!).As for the soft drinks, BE WARNED! One deep sip and you get a throat-full of mini jelly cubes, I spat it all out on reflex, thinking I had swallowed a fly! Anyway, the soft drinks are mostly unpalatable, as they are incredibly sweet, full of energy-boosters (like red bull but much sweeter) and highly coloured. Oh dear, that leaves only one option: Maekchu! Beer! In 1 litre canisters! To oil those vocal cords! “Maekchu chuseyo” (beer please), at numerous points during the evening! Oh, and I almost forgot: at the foyer of the Noraebang we were offered all shapes and sizes of masks and wigs, oh yeah!! Oh, and let me not forget, there are of course microphones for you to sing along on.

So we had a ball. This was our celebration of Jules’ birthday, and we went out to one of the many Noraebangs in Sangju with James and Barbara (J&B)(our ‘westerner’ neighbours and new friends) and Brad who is an American also teaching in Sangju. We sang and sang and sang ‘til our voices were hoarse! We had a great time. This Noraebang (according to J&B) is one of the more stylish ones in town, and had quite a large collection of English pop and rock songs. So we had all sorts of old favourites “Do you love me?”(Dirty Dancing – Lol and P!), many a Queen hit, “Hello Dolly” (Louis Armstrong – reminded me of my Granny Affie!) “Eye of the tiger”, BeeGees hits (Dan!) Phil Collins etc etc.

A great time certainly was had by all and we can now ‘tick off’ one more Korean must-have experience...one which I’m sure we’ll tick off many more times! Enjoy the pics!

P.S. Almost the best part of the evening was Jules in a Goldilocks wig, “priceless”! (Beat that, Mastercard!)

Gotta love the ‘regalia’!

Brad – a.k.a. Desmond Tutu? We thought so… (the hair is a wig, he’s actually bald!)

Noraebang!!

As I said, Goldilocks – priceless!

This little piggy went to market (and took lots of pics!)

I've been meaning to post these photos since last weekend, so here they are! I've tried to place them in some kind of logical groupings or order...the market is such an interesing place! The live fish and eels are the biggest 'weird' thing...but as I was saying to Jules: on street corners in Greytown there are goats tied to lampposts nd chickens in cages being sold so maybe it's not as weird as one first thinks!

Enjoy!


General view of the market: one can buy anything from chillis and broccoli to clothes and kitchenware and blankets here - all at reasonable prices (but nothing is marked: we will have to learn to ask for prices and be able to understand the responses!)

This lady on the right is making 'Korean Pancakes': A 'street-food' speciality: it is a ball of dough (similar to vetkoek) with sugar and peanuts in the middle. This is then placed on a hot oiled plate and squashed down to make a hot yummy pancake oozing fat and sugar!


And now: the spices: LOADS of garlic and chilli, so much! Apparently the chillis grown in our province, Gyeongsangbuk-do, are amongst the hottest in SK, aren't we lucky! We haven't found any of the food too spicy though, fortunately.



Sprouts!
They LOVE sprouts: with anything and everything!



Acorn Jelly! Hmmm, I'm not a big fan of this stuff, it doesn't taste like very much and has a horrible wobbly texture and horrid brown colour. They also love this and put it into lots of dishes!


Ginseng! This is the No.1 natural health product in Korea. SK is famous for its Ginseng. I haven't tried it but I'm sure one day I will. (Don't actually know in what form they consume it)

Mushrooms and more mushrooms! They have so many shapes and sizes of mushrooms: each for a specific dish or purpose.


Now for the LIVE FOOD! These are the eels. They are remarkable in that they are not only sold live at the market, but also eaten alive! You boil themn your table-top cooker and swllow them wriggling! Can you imagine that sensation down your gullet...gives me the shivers!

On the right are sea squirts. These are also live at the market and go down live!

Live Fish: Many tankfuls of these all over the place: at the market, in restaurats, outside restaurants and even in our local supermarket.

So there you have a brief introduction to shopping for food in South Korean markets. One can buy fruit and veg and some fish at the supermarket but it does seem that it is cheaper at the market. So I guess soon I will be grabbing a shopping bag (my Kanga bag - thanks K!) and heading on downtown to experience this!

Everyday is a winding road...along the river to school...

My school is about a 10min bicycle ride away from home. The ride starts when I unlock my bike chain (apparently bicycle theft is one of the few crime problems they do have in Sangju) which is stored in the foyer of our apartment building.
Then I put on my jacket (it is quite cold in the mornings so a breezy bike ride calls for a jacket and in some cases beanie and gloves), tuck my pants into my socks/boots so they don’t get caught in the chain, and hop on. Oh no, what’s that scratching sound?? I forgot to click up the bicycle stand! (I have done this so often in the last week…I really am sometimes a slow learner.)
I then proceed down a little alleyway which connects to the main road nearby. From here on I am on a proper ‘bicycle path’. It is marked by blue lines. I only have to cross a major road once, and the beauty of the bicycle path network in SK is that every time a path has to cross a major road there is a zebra crossing & robot. Thus I am ‘safe’ from traffic as long as I wait for the robot to turn green. This is great as I am still not 100% comfortable/confident on the bike in traffic etc and so I don’t have to worry about that! Once I have crossed this road I ride past a construction site for a bridge and then onto the river section of the bicycle path.

The path along the river is really great the path itself has a rubberized kind of surface so is really easy to ride on, and there are lovely trees along the path. There is a little strip of ‘park’ to the right of the path where there are lots of ‘exercise machines’ I call them e.g. health walkers, pull up bars, sit up seats etc. It kind of looks like an outdoor gym and it looks like it is used mostly by older people – it is freely open to anyone to use. There are signs which say “xxxxkcal”(the rest is in Korean of course) so I presume these tell you how many calories you’ll burn if you do x amount of exercise. Koreans are very serious about health and well-being. Lots of people also go walking-often with small dogs-along this bike path next to the river and at the weekend we saw a woman walking a dog which was dressed to the nines: it had orange ear-muffs on, a little smart ‘jacket’ and wait for it….shoes!!! HaHa! Can you believe it! It was hard not to laugh out loud as we rode past her!

So on the left of the path is the river. It is quite wide (maybe about 70m?) and has lots of concrete weirs and blocks of concrete which serve as kind of ‘stepping stones’ to cross the river.
There are little old ladies standing in the flowing water, bent over buckets collecting snails. And on the edge are (their) little old men fishing! We have been told that the river is quite polluted and one should not swim in it, but it can’t be too bad if thee little old people are spending time in and near the water and catching animals!
I then go under a large bridge and on the other side there is a small sandy road over the river which is still partly under construction (quite treacherous and slidy on a road bike with thin tyres!!!).

The large bridge was beautifully decorated with flowers for the festival (photo). Just after this bridge is my school: Sung-Shin Girls’ Middle School (The large building with the curved blue roof at the back, middle of the photo). I park my bike next to all the probably 300 or so bikes of the school girls along the river edge and then up a steep flight of stairs, cross the road and there’s school! The school garden is very nicely looked after with pots of chrysanthemums everywhere (which seem very popular in Korea, including as a tea!) It still seems to be late summer here rather than autumn, so the gardens are alive with butterflies, bees and dragonflies!

Photos of culinary delights: Part 1

So I have finally got some photos of some of the lovely dishes I have been describing in the blog.
To begin, the takeout lunch in Seoul: Enter at left the three boxes and two bowls...

My first Korean meal in a restaurant was kal gug su: a type of soupy noodle dish. The soup contained whole mussles/clams of sort which one fishes out with chopsticks and removes the contents - with chopsticks, difficult! This was accompanied by the usual side dishes: kimchi, cooked rgrass (I don't have a proper name for this yet!), fresh cabbage leaves, etc.

My ineptness with chopsticks seems to be quite a talking point when we're eating in a restaurant: great aught and offers of wooden chopsticks or a fork. Only little kids eat with forks, embarassing!! We now have wooden chopsticks at home to practice with. The metal chopsticks in the restaurants etc are really a nightmare to try and eat with, just so slippery!

This is the dreaded rice cake. This was a stall at the Sangju storytelling festival where they were making ricecake - very proudly so and offering tasters to all passers-by - could not refuse! I must admit that it is slightly better when fresh as it is a bit more tender-less rubbery!- and goes down easier! But as you can see, it needs to be beaten with huge mallets to make it at all edible, this stuff is crazy!
On Sunday (12 Oct) we went out for 'Korean Bacon'. This was really tasty. We had a little cooker/plate in the middle of our table (at which we are of course sitting on the floor!).
We fried the bacon and sliced mushrooms on the plate, then rolled it up in a piece of fresh lettuce with various combinations of soybean paste, garlic sauce, chilli, radish, kimchi (of course!!), marinated beef, quails eggs, 'cooked grass' dish etc. This was really tasty. Topped off with rice and tofu soup. A lovely meal indeed, very edible!
(P.S. The peace/V symbol is important when taking photos in Korea - you can see Jules is leraning quickly! And instead of saying 'cheese' in photos, the Koreans say...well, you guessed it...Kimchiiiiii!)

Home Images: our apartment and city in a few pictures

It's difficult to capture the atmosphere of the place one lives in photos. I think this first attempt may not be that succesful, but let's give it a go.

This is our apartment: It is small. probably about 8mx5m. It's a studio apartment so except for the bathrrom, it's all in one room - We sleep in our kitchen/cook in our bedroom depending on what mood we're in! (But whatever mood we're in, there's always a pink undertone lingering...with a faint but distinct sewerage smell creeping up through the plumbing!!)

Additions: some photos of our apartment block and city.

Our Apartment Block "Beautiful House" - Isn't it just! :) (My bicycle outside!). You can see our little window on the top/3rd floor on the left. Around the corner (out of the photo) is our larger window.

On the right: the view from across town towards Homever and our area.


The beautiful yellow rice fields on the way to Jules' school.

A festival, a visit to Seoul, a visit to the hospital...

On Wednesday afternoon Lucy took me to a story-telling festival in Sangu.

It seems festivals are very popular in SK. A festival is kind of what we know as a show (Royal Show, Bathurst Show, Rand Easter Show etc) on various scales. I would say the one we went to is somehwere in the region of the Bathurst show in size.

Lots of stalls: cultural, agricultural and commercial. Lots of food and drinks to try: Koreans are very proud of their culture and I couldn't turn down any of the offers of weird and wonderful food, drink etc.

I have decided that my least favourite 'Korean-favourite' is the rubbery rice-cake thing I wrote about the other day. It is so rubbery and tastes funny - they love it though and I think I will just have to get used to it. They often cover it in bean flour - which I got a chance to try and grind: photo right!

More pics will follow - our laptop is now up and running but alas still no internet at home until we are officially registered as 'aliens' hopefully next week!

Yesterday (Thursday) we went on a school outing to Seoul. We saw a musical show called 'Nanta' (English version apparently a broadway hit and is called 'Cookin'). It was very well done - minimal use of language so I could share many laughs with my teacher colleagues and the students. What a bunch of giggly girls. We too the Grade 2 (14yrs) class - they are so enthusiastic and I had so many of them approaching me to try their English and to ask me questions - very sweet. We then had picnic lunch in the park. We got take aways (errrr US=takeouts!) Another new experience for me. I will post a photo soon but let me describe this meal to you: 3 boxes and 2 plastic bowls with foil covers.:

Box 1: rice (K rice is sticky and like styve-pap almost - fortunately, as one is expected to eat it with chopsticks!)

Box 2: sheets of seaweed. (To wrap around rise: it is dry tastes like seaweed and adheres to the top of your palette -yum!:()

Box 3: An array of K culinary delights: Kimchi (2 types - one looks just like cooked grass with flecks of chili, the other red-pepper cabbage-NATIONAL FAVOURITE), pickled ginger (*nice!), marinated beef (vaguely familiar!), small whole dried fish with chilli, small sausages and processed meat patties in batter, whole chillies in batter (a trick! they're disguised but HOT!), gimbap (suchi-style rice in seaweed with fish - nice and plain but tasty - definitely my favourite so far), yellowy yoghurt: very sweet.

Bowl 1: water (yey!!!_)

Bowl 2: yellowy soup with leeks and spinach and traces of fish (not too bad actually!)

All in all the meal was fine. I tried everything and could avoid having too much of the less enjoyable and could focus on the rice, gimbap and soup. The ginger was also nice!

After lunch we went to the Kyobo Bookstore in Seoul: It is huge! Exclusive books, step aside! Also a large foreign books section (yey!) so I could get us some dictionaries and more phrasebooks: If we are to feel at home here we need to learn the script and the language as a No1 priority, there's no way around it. I went to buy tea the other day - decided to drink green tea s it tastes OK and is about 1/10th the price of normal tea. But alas I didnt; buy green tea I bought brown rice flavoured green tea - um, not very nice. and now the whole grocery cupboard smells like it. hmmm. might have to get used to it but please, not yet!

I did notice that signs etc in Seoul had more English translations (even saw some westerners on the street!!) etc but Sangju really is quite rural for Korean standards and hence pretty much NO English around.

So, we get to the hospital visit. To get the essential 'alien registration' we need a clean bill of health from the Korean authorities. So this morning, off we went to the hospital. It looks good: quite high tech, clean and well-run. Rural Sangju even has an MRI machine - weird?! So I get told to go into a little closet/room and take off my cloths and put on the gown. The gown is short!! Lukcily there were pants too (tight and short!!) so when I emerged into the reception area I was almost decent. Go to the chest x-ray machine. 'Please remove your brassiere'. back to closet, remove bra. back to chest x ray machine. X-ray. Done 'Please put on your brassiere'. back to closet put on bra. back to lady at x-ray machine. 'no put all on' back to closet, put on all clothes, leave tiny gown and pants behind. relief. less for the ppl in recepetion to stare at! Then blood pressrue, weight, height, blood sample, urinate in a little stick with colour indicators (just got enough out!)

They had told us not to eat and drink before the health check for 12 hours which we had done. The lady now gives me a cup and wants me to produce more urine! Is she nuts? Well I tried, to no avail. Get told to drink water. How fast does she think my kidneys work?? No results. walk around a bit. nothing. drink more. nothing. Julian and our tecaher waiting. After 20mins, GIve up. Take cup to school and try again later! Gosh, what a palaver, and all with hand signals and gesticulation and minmal vocab. This is a crazy experience!

Cheers for now, thanks for the emails, replies etc x

NOTE: a list

Have a look on the left hand side of this blog page (under the photos) for an interesting list of things/experiences!

(Well, interesting for us anyway!)

South Korean Adventure: Day 2

Ladies and Gentlemen...I present to you: Jessica's experiences and impressions in Sangju thus far:
I am probably repeating some of what was in my first email but let me just note down some of my ideas thus far.

My first impression of SK is that it is a well-run and organised country. The people here seem friendly, and generally happy and content. They are keen to get to know people from different cultures and countries. They appreciate every tiny bit of Korean one tries to speak! The sewers are smelly!! Maybe the population grew too fast and the sewerage system couldn't keep up?

I have felt very welcome in my new school, especially by my co-teacher (the local Korean English teacher) Lucy (or Mrs Song). My main school is Sung-Shin Girls Middle School. I will be teaching here 14 hours a week, and for 8 hours a week I will be teaching next door at the Commercial Girls High School. There my co-teacher is Mr Kang, also very helpful and approachable.

I start teaching next week, and my first lesson is an Introduction: introducing myself and getting to know the ss a little (ss=students - this is TEFL jargon!)
There are 6 classes in every level/grade. I am teaching level 1 and 2 (=Grade 7 and 8 in SA) in the middle school and level 1 (=Grade 10 in SA) in the High School. This means I prepare 3 lessons a week, each of which I re-teach 6 times: a little boring an repetitive probably, but at least I don't have to prepare too much.

I am expected to prepare lesson plans based on the prescribed textbook. The Tb is divided into a number of sections, but I ma only teaching sounds and talking - yey, so this probably means I don;t have t teach Grammar. What a relief. And even if I did - wel, the standard of English here is relatively low: even the local English teachers (KT=Korean Teacher, NT=Native speaking teacher) do not speak English all that well. The key is to speak slowly and simply. I am sure I will master this art quite soon.

As for life in our new home: We spent our first night on a quilt on the floor with a sheet, Samburu blanket and coats over use - feeling very much like poor students on an adventure! Yesterday we got a (brand new!) bed which our school bought, and a book shelf. Our home is now starting to look a bit more homely. Even if we were given bright pink floral quilts, not quite our taste but still, warm and useable. We are eagerly awaiting a fridge and table and chairs!
Our flat is in a block (which is about 5 stories in total) and we are No. 307 on the third floor. View? Well, the apartment block across the road! :) This is built-up Korea after all! Our flat is a 'studio- apartment' i.e. all in one room with separate bathroom. Quite small. Very small actually! It's a good thing we could only pack 30kg of luggage, any more and we'd be out of space to store it all!

We are located quite centrally: 4 min walk to the bus station and to "Homever": a large department store where we can buy groceries, home-ware, clothes (?size?) and much more. Even a pet Hedgehog if you like!:) My school is about a 20-25min walk and Jules probably a bit longer. We will try and invest in bicycles as soon as possible, until then walk or our co-teachers pick us up. Sangju is well-know for being a bicycle city: lots of people ride them here, especially as it is quite flat country. Look forward to some pleasant rides out of town at the weekends!
So we went on a big 'home-shop' yesterday to buy kitchen things (it's empty!) and some basic foods. Not that adventurous yet so bought pasta, tomatoes, spinach and mushrooms for supper. Yey, found salt and pepper but pepper is pricey and not in a grinder ;) Of course couldn't find all of that as easily as I though so was running around paging madly in my phrasebook for words!
One can also buy luxuries such as coffee, wine and chocolates but at quite a price. Our co-teacher took us to a coffee shop yesterday: coffee, iced tea and milkshake cost about R25-R30 each so that's a bit pricey but at least we can spoil ourselves like that once in a while!

So I am sitting at my computer at school at the moment. I have a nice desk and computer in the 'teacher's room/office'. There are about 30 of us in this room - everyone is quite chilled out, mostly working on lessons etc. Even if they are at times chatty this won't bother me much when I start working in earnest since I don't understand a word so it is truly just 'background' noise!

Tomorrow I am going on a school picnic with the Level/Grade 2 (SA Gr8) class to Seoul. Should be interesting - I am sure I will be exposed to many Korean culinary delights! This morning the Grade 2 teacher brought me some Korean rice cake - this is a light brown VERY rubbery 'thing' with dark brown beans sin it. It's quite sweet with a beany/ricey flavour and did I say how very rubbery it is? very! I wonder how my digestive system will deal with this delight?

Yesterday I joined Lucy and some of the other teachers for lunch at the school canteen. This was of course interesting: we each had a tray on which we could dish for ourselves the following: rice, pickled cabbage and spinach with onions, carrots and brown jelly-like blocks, boiled quail eggs with firmer and denser jelly-like blocks (what is this??), white-ish soup with onions, leaks and fish bits (??), crumbed squid rings (=calamari but tough!) and a red veggie sauce with chilli. Being keen to try it all I dished everything and most of it tasted pretty good. All this was finished off with a swig of barley water - ugh! After this, the soft brown jelly blocks were my least favourite-the colour and texture were just not so appetizing! So I have bought myself a 'booklet' of 10 meal tickets and this will expose me to all sorts of lovely local food I am sure. Should I maybe start a blog just with my food experiences?? :) (Will post it in a different colour for now!)

Ok, that's it for now will keep this updated as much as possible. We don't yet have a local plug/adaptor for our laptop, so cannot yet upload photos but will do so as soon as possible.
Keep in touch! x