American but so far away.

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This week's entry comes a little late. I was hoping some friends who had cameras with them would snap some pics and put them on Facebook but none have surfaced yet. Sorry guys for another text-rich, picture poor entry. I'll try to remember to snap some photos more often...I've never been much of a shutterbug though.

All week I revisited cooking with my 6pm adults class. It was something we covered way back in December but the students cycle through consistently enough that it was new for almost all of them and Kyong Yun forgot it so it was like the material was all fresh! We traded recipe advice and went over the steps of prep and cooking. We made a visit to a grocery store near the school to review ingredients and on Friday we actually cooked in class. Everyone pitched in ingredients but Su Yun took over coaching us while cooking the dish, ddok bokki, because she is an experienced adjumma (housewife). The dish was fairly simple, we just combined a few different red sauces like pepper paste and soybean paste in a big pot, added water and dumped all the other ingredients in slowly. The staple of the dish is ddok which is a common starch made from rice. Ddok is cylindrical in shape and about an inch long, it's quite chewy...like a hard, unsweetened marshmallow. We also included some cabbage, carrots, ramyen (ramen) and whole boiled eggs. It turned out pretty well, I had my camera but was so busy in the hubbub that I forgot to take it out.

After class I went out with some of Andrew's students and a few of mine. We ate some chicken and drank soju. The group was mainly men so we went to a pool hall next. The night ended at about 2:30. I was glad to get home because it was absolutely pouring all night and my feet as well as the cuffs of my jeans were soaked. This time of year in Korea is referred to as the rainy season. It's when a warm air mass from the Phillipines meets up with a cold one from the Bering Sea and they make little rain babies all over the country. It hasn't actually been raining that much...just cloudy a lot and humid most of the time. I've been told it's going to get ever hotter after this rainy season is over...ugh I miss temperate Minnesota summers!

Saturday I was a vegetable all day at home. I wanted to go out with Jason because it was his birthday this week so we met up at about 10. It was a small crowd of foreigners but we enjoyed hopping to a couple places. We went to a place that had big strainers full of pre-fried foods and you pick which ones you want refried for you. Everyone else was gasping at how amazing it tasted. I wasn't all that impressed to be honest...the whole experience left me feeling kind of dirty. When the group migrated to TLC (the western style bar with loud music and wayyyy overpriced cocktails) I dipped out. I decided to walk home to feel less guilt about the trans-fats fest from earlier.

Sunday many foreigners came together to celebrate the birth of our motherland. There were maybe 30 people at Jen's place where she and Amber were co-hosting a barbecue. I brought some pork and popsicles. Andrew whipped up some of his sinful garlic bread. There were a lot of amazing dishes at this patriotic potluck paradise including burgers, shrimp, pasta salad, cake and some bomb guacamole. It was of course an occasion for drinking. There were some Canadians there as well so we celebrated their July 1st independence as well. The crowd was a mix of guys from the base and teachers. We all had a merry old time and got out of there around 8 p.m. Andrew and I had purchased some roman candles at Lotte Mart earlier in the day so we went on the roof and had some fun with those. On Monday when I woke up I was still full...

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