Costco!

A couple of months ago when I heard that Costco would not only be coming to Busan, but that it would also be parking itself a mere 15-minute walk from my doorstep, I think I peed my pants a teeny bit in excitement. For those of you back home who have never lived in Korea (or in Asia, for that matter), you have no idea what this means. It means cereal. It means cheese. It means a whole lot of things you simply can't find anywhere else (without it costing an obscene amount of money). I've been counting down the days until Costco opened its glorious doors... and today was the day, people.

And Ken and I made the huge mistake of showing up on opening day.

Ken managed to snap this picture with his hand phone while we were battling our way through the crowd and, believe it or not, it doesn't nearly capture the chaos we experienced. Living in a densely populated country, you get used to shoulder-to-shoulder crowds in every shopping center. But today Costco was full of shoulder-to-shoulder, elbow-to-stomach, shopping cart-to-shin kinds of crowds.

After spending 30 minutes sitting in a traffic jam in the parking garage, and spending another 40 minutes pushing and shoving our way through the front door and down a few aisles, we finally found a few things we wanted to buy and then managed to head over to the checkout line which was, within and of itself, a monstrosity. Every line had about 30 to 40 carts crammed into it (and when I say crammed I mean crammed, as the concept of forming a line in this country has yet to be grasped). We decided that after all of the waiting and pushing we had to do to get the stuff we wanted, we might as well wait in line for a little while longer to ensure that our time and nerves were not wasted entirely. However, after waiting in line for a few minutes, we realized we forgot to pick up our membership cards at the front office; a bit of a necessity when it comes to shopping at Costco. So I held down the fort in line as Ken made a mad dash to the front of the store to claim our cards. To make a long story short, the line at the membership counter was just as chaotic as the checkout lines, and we were therefore unable to purchase anything. So after spending 15 minutes trying to ditch the items we could no longer buy and another 20 minutes trying to get back out of the parking garage (yet another traffic jam), we were finally free from the chaos and had successfully wasted an entire evening.

Costco, I'm glad you're here, but I don't think I'll be paying you another visit for a long, long time.

March-June-?

A gorgeous apartment, a title to a new/old car, a crappy diet, three and a half months since my previous post, and I've finally decided to blog again (for the last time this year, no doubt). A lot has happened since March; happenings that I had every intention of writing about, but I somehow managed to become increasingly lazier as spring moved into summer (I blame the humidity... but I suppose it wasn't really humid until last week).

First: The new apartment. Simply put, it's positively amazing. I'm pretty sure I will never live in such a nice place again, as I'll never be able to afford a place like this in any other part of the world. Only in Korea could I get away with such a deal. Just to give you an idea of my new abode, here's a little peek:

I also purchased a car a couple of months ago to make the long commute between the above palace in Busan to my bothersome place of employment in Ulsan. I don't have any pictures of it (it's too dirty at the moment to take pictures for public viewing), but it's a little '96 Hyundaii Avante and it was cheap, which is the important thing. It gets me from point A to point B every day without any problems (yet... knock on wood), so I'm happy with it.

I've been cooking up a storm over the past couple of months, which I suppose is another noteworthy tidbit of news. It's as though my domestic-side has lain dormant for the majority of my 28 years, and now I'm making up for lost time. It should be mentioned, however, that my recent cooking adventures (and they are indeed dangerous adventures) have been the result of a diet change that would have left me with very few food options if I hadn't made use of my oven and frying pan. As mentioned in previous posts, I had been suffering from sinus infections and tonsillitis galore for eight months straight with seemingly no hope for recovery. After talking about all of my symptoms with a nutritionist-friend of mine awhile back, she came to the conclusion that I could quite possibly have Candida. She put me on the Candida diet for a month to see what would happen. I'm happy to report that, even though this diet has been a big pain-in-the-butt, I haven't been sick in six weeks (a huge accomplishment!) and I'm feeling the best I've felt in months. But, as I said before, the diet is indeed a huge pain, and I've been forced to become more creative in the kitchen as of late. Much to my surprise, I'm not the terrible cook I always believed myself to be, although I would be lying if I said I haven't had any huge flops (like making an avocado soup using avocados that weren't ripe... but I choked it down anyway!). This website has definitely been a huge help in my recent ventures.

In other news, rainy season is upon us here in Korea. There has been a perpetual rain/mist cloud hanging low in the sky for the past month or so with only a few breaks here and there long enough for the sun to come out and steam things up a bit. I have a feeling it's going to be an exceptionally humid summer and my hair, for one, is not up for such a challenge. Lucky me.... I've been looking like a brunette version of Einstein over the past few muggy days (without the brains).

Well.... I've never known how to conclude a blog post gracefully, especially when it's all over the map as this one seems to be. I could promise to write here more often, as I tend to dishonestly do from time to time, but I'm not even going to bother this time. So without further ado, this is where it stops. Good night.

Procrastination, Part 237

I'm scheduled to move into my new apartment in Busan this coming Saturday. Of course, in Korea that could mean this Saturday, the following Saturday, or--heck--why not next month? Even though I won't believe my move-in date to be true until I'm actually in the building and holding the key to my new abode in my hands, I suppose I should start packing. I have posters to tear off the wall, clothes to stuff in my bag (note: "bag" is not plural because my wardrobe has been eaten by my washing machine and I have thus been left with little clothing to pack), books and lamps to load into boxes, and food... oh Lord, the food. How does a girl transport the contents of her entire refrigerator from one destination to another? Beyond packing, I have to figure out how to get my driver's license, buy a car, get insurance for said car (and probably tack on health insurance for good measure), and hire a moving truck to take the rest of my junk to the light at the end of my tunnel (Busan). And yes, I must have all of the above done by Saturday (presumably), so, naturally, I'm procrastinating and writing a blog post instead. 

One of the hobbies I've acquired during the past couple weeks of procrastinating (I've known about my pending move for far longer than I would care to admit) is cooking. As in, me cooking food. For those of you who know me well, you are probably shocked to read such a statement coming from my fingers. I have openly loathed even the mere thought of cooking for as long as I can remember.  When I moved to Nashville after college and could no longer depend on cafeteria food to sustain me, I resorted to buying Lean Cuisine meals. Even then, poking holes in the saran-wrap covered dinners and throwing them in the microwave for the necessary 5 minutes was almost too much "cooking" for me to handle. Anyway, I recently picked up a copy of a popular book (according to Oprah, anyway) called "French Women Don't Get Fat" (I thought it was a shallow, trashy novel I could soak my brain in after work, but was surprised to find it was a cooking/nutrition self-help book) and it inspired me to start cooking my own food. I've been raking through the internet over the past few weeks, trying to find healthy recipes that will actually work in Korea (ingredients that aren't native to Korea are hard to find) and I've found a few that have been working out quite nicely. My favorite recipe by far is a hummus recipe I found, and I was fortunate enough to find tahini when I was in Seoul a few weeks ago. It's so good, in fact, that I decided to post it here, just in case anyone else would care to try it. 

Hummus Recipe

Chickpeas: 1 & 3/4 cups, cooked

Sour cream or plain yogurt: 1/2 cup

Water: 1/4 cup

Garlic: 2 or 3 cloves, crushed with salt

Tahini: 1/4 cup

Lemon juice: 1/3 cup

Crushed red pepper: 1 teaspoon (optional) 

Directions: 

1. Puree ingredients in a blender or food processor

2. Add additional tahini and/or lemon juice if necessary until it suits your taste. The texture should be a little thinner than mashed potatoes. 

I also made some tasty chicken chili the other day, but I haven't worked out all the kinks yet, so I shan't be posting it here. Not to mention, I don't own any measuring equipment, so the "how much" in the recipe is a bit of a conundrum. 

By the by, if anyone happens to have any recipes that won't befuddle a new cook, feel free to pass them along. I'm feeling quite experimental these days (I have time to kill when I have something to procrastinate over). 

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I've procrastinated long enough. I'm going to bed. 

Quick, Long-Overdue Updates

It has been an eventful couple of months since I last left you. Somewhere between Christmas, New Year's, my birthday and now, I've managed to traipse around Indonesia for a couple of weeks, become a Mac person, sign a few more months of my life away to Korea, and get engaged (...to Ken, in case you were wondering).

Indonesia was as close to perfect as can be (it's definitely been added to my list of favorites). I can't believe it's been over a month since we made the dreaded trip back to Korea from Bali, 

as I still seem to be in vacation mode (read: lazy). The weather was great in Indonesia, in spite of the rainy season. We had a few days of thunder storms, but since it was warm, tropical rain and not freezing, acid-rain-like drizzle (the kind we're experiencing in the lovely city of Ulsan), it didn't really matter. Anyway, I'll let you read the Lonely Planet or something to give you the full scoop on Indonesia (it would surely be more informative) but, in a tiny nutshell, the country itself and the people residing there were absolutely beautiful. We flew into Bali from Seoul (talk about weather shock) and then immediately made our way to Lombok for the holidays. Since we were planning to stay there over Christmas, we each decided to splurge a bit in lieu of Christmas gifts and stayed in the most amazing resort I will probably ever stay in. It was such a great experience that I've decided that dabbling in luxury can be a very dangerous thing, as it tends to make everything else seem not as great. Whatever the case, it was there on Christmas day that (drumroll, please!) Ken proposed to me! Merry Christmas to me (and an apparently stressful one for him, as he was sent into a panic-induced fit of diarrhea for the rest of the day). 

From Lombok, we went to a tiny, very remote island called Gili Air. No cars, motorbikes, or fresh water; only pony carts for transportation and salty sea water for showering. I think I would have fallen in love with Gili Air a little more had it not been for the fact that during our stay there the angry, monsoon skies decided to let loose. It rained for three days straight, leaving us with nothing to do but swing in hammocks and take care of two little starving kittens we found on the island.

Our next destination was Ubud, Bali which turned out to be a gem of a place. Once again, Ubud--in a nutshell--was really beautiful. There were lots of coffee shops and art markets and rice fields and temples and monkeys. (Good grief, the monkeys... they were ill-tempered little critters and quite bold about digging through your stuff in hopes of finding anything remotely food-related.) Anyway, for further, less boring information regarding my trip to Indonesia, check out my pictures on Facebook, as a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. 

In other news, I became a Mac owner a couple of weeks ago! Since my previous laptop died nearly seven months ago, I had been agonizing over what kind of computer to purchase next.

It was the age-old debate: PC vs. Mac, and I'm happy to announce that after many sleepless, decision-making-nights, Mac won. Of course, I'm still learning how to use it, but while I've been working out all the kinks, I've been having some fun with a few of the applications (namely Photo Booth). 

One more update: I'm apparently staying in Korea six months longer than originally planned. Oh happy day.... In exchange for an apartment in Busan, I agreed to stay on at my current school until March, 2010. In retrospect, it may have been an impulsive decision, but I'll be moving back to Busan next month, so there's no backing out now! (I have a feeling I may be kicking myself for this come September, when I was originally intending to go back home.) 

And with that, I'm finished with Blogger for--oh--about three more months. 

Freezing

Well.... The temperature is dropping here in the smoggy city of Ulsan to well below the freezing point, I'd say (okay, maybe not well below). We are long past the days of only being able to see our breath in the air when we exhale through our noses; frost is actually forming on the ground in lieu of snow and our nose hairs are actually turning into miniature icicles. The temperature took its biggest nosedive today, much to my dismay, and has caused me to seriously consider moving to a warmer climate in which to spend... well, the rest of my life. Even though I love the presence of snow around Christmas time, I have no use for the cold--especially the kind that comes without snow (in the nearly three years that I've lived in Korea, I've only seen a few flakes of snow on only one occasion).

Although the frigid temperatures of the past few days have made me a bit disgruntled and--let's be honest here--moody, they have also made me thoughtful and appreciative of some of the things I currently possess; items I've added to my unofficial list of favorites. And here they are (you don't even have to ask!):

The ondul floor in my apartment. Most Korean apartments are heated by hot water pipes that run under the floor (the ondul floor), thus making the floor nice and toasty after only a few minutes of being activated by a seemingly normal thermostat. For those of us who suffer from the ice-cold-toe-disease, the ondul floor is a Godsend. (Note: I'm not sure how to spell "ondul" in English... or in Korean, for that matter.)

Royal Milk Tea. It's a Japanese beverage that Ken discovered at the market last year and it's become one of my favorite hot-drinks of all time (almost tied with coffee...and that's saying something.)

My Crocs. I bought them on sale at REI this past summer and I haven't taken them off since. I know they aren't much to look at, but they're so comfortable I almost feel like I'm not wearing shoes at all. And I hate wearing shoes in general, so they're a perfect fit. Now, it's getting to be a little too icy to wear them these days, but I've continued to wear them anyway by simply layering my socks. However, I think that my sock-layering days will soon be over, as I made this discovery online the other day. These undoubtedly amazing things have definitely made their way on to my Christmas list.

Bali, Indonesia. It's not a "thing", nor is it technically a favorite of mine yet, as I've never actually been there. But I will be there in two and a half weeks for my Christmas vacation. Not very Christmas-y, but I can deal with lying on a beach for two weeks in lieu of a traditional Christmas... but only this once.


Well, I've run out of words already. It doesn't help that I have the Discovery Channel blaring in the background... but it's Bear Grylls and I can't force myself to turn it off, as he's currently struggling through the Sahara. So, until next time, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! (...because we all know I probably won't manage to write an update between now and then.)

Semi-Annual Update

I've done a lovely job of neglecting this thing, haven't I? I was going to blame it on the fact that I now have a routine, causing one day to blur into the other and thus leaving me with nothing of interest to say here. But I just scrolled down my page and realized I failed to write much when I didn't have a routine, either.... Maybe I'm just a woman of few words. (Or maybe I just lack any form of discipline.)

The sinus infection has almost completely gone (knock on wood)! A couple of weeks or so ago, I went to the doctor to have him examine my useless sinuses (that I'm still a little angry with) and he surprised me with a shot in my cedar end (as my grandma likes to call it). Fortunately he didn't give it to me himself--he sent his nurse in to do his bidding. His nurse was a burly woman (if burly women do indeed exist in Asia) and she seemed to be a little insensitive and cold toward my nervous, "Will it hurt?" questions. She told me to bend over the table, then proceeded to jerk down my pants, slap my bum twice as hard as she could (at least that's how it felt), then she stuck the needle in. If distraction was what she was aiming for, then she did a great job. I was so stunned by the spanking that I didn't even realize I had gotten the shot, so I was a little surprised when I noticed she was standing there glaring at me, waiting for me to pull my pants back on and kindly leave the room. And now let's hope that I don't get sick again within the near future, because I would really rather not go through that whole episode again, thank you very much.

Other than that little tidbit of news, I really have nothing else to report. Jimmy has gotten a little better about controlling his bowel movements (he only had an accident in my class two times last week!), and the rest of my students seem to be getting along just fine. The novelty of having a new teacher has finally worn off, so my classes are now surprisingly calm. And I would even venture to say that my kids are developing a bit of an attitude; when I walk into their classrooms, they no longer run toward me screaming and smiling and saying "I love you, Miss McClintic!" (they seriously did that every day up until a couple of weeks ago). Nowadays they actually seem a little annoyed that they have to sit on the floor and interact with someone in a language they would really rather not speak. I can't say that I blame them, though (and it definitely helps that they're still cute).

OK, it was a poor attempt at a blog entry, but at least it was still an attempt, right? I'll try to update sooner next time, but I won't bother making a promise, as I seem to almost purposely break them.

Fall, Sicknesses, and Poopy Pants

Obscene amounts of overtime at work and lesson-plans fit for 40-year-olds instead of 4-year-olds--I believe that's where I last left you. Since then, the overtime has dwindled into non-existence and the lesson plans have become more manageable (i.e. I've quit following them verbatim). Life is finally starting to settle down a bit in the grimy city of Ulsan. Fall is trying to make it's way into October, but it's failing somewhat miserably. There were a few days of chilly breezes last week, but they have quickly been replaced by sticky humidity and mildly warm temperatures. Maybe most people would be okay with summer lingering a little longer, but I miss the cool autumns that force me to bust out my sweaters and hideously pink (but ridiculously comfortable) fuzzy slippers. But maybe by the time November rolls around, the weather around here will finally decide to act according to the season.

With the changing of the seasons--no matter how small the changes may be--inevitably comes various illnesses, most typically the flu and head colds. I have not at all been immune to any such illnesses. If anything, I seem to be the carrier and primary sufferer of them. I have yet another head cold at the moment and it is acting suspiciously like a sinus infection (green snot and the works!). This weekend was number four out of the five weekends we've been here that I've been too sick to go out and do anything. (Poor me, yadda yadda. Remedy advice is welcome.) To top off the boredom that has been spawned from my current situation, I'm feeling a teeny bit guilty for exposing my itty bitty students to the nasty germs that seem to be seeping from my pores. A number of my students were absent due to flu-like symptoms on Friday, and I can't help but feel somewhat responsible for infecting the little tykes. (Then again, since Koreans insist on working through sickness and health and expect their foreigner employees to do the same, can I really be blamed?)

Moving on to other student-related news: I have a little boy in one of my 4-year-old classes named Jimmy, who I think is at least borderline retarded. Aside from his odd behavior during class (he randomly screams in neither English nor Korean at times and then stares off into space with his mouth gaping open for sometimes up to 10 minutes), he seems to have a hitting problem (he doesn't discriminate between teachers and other students), and he is always running into things--namely the wall (he likes to hit students and then run away while looking over his shoulder and, consequently, usually ends up in a head-on collision with the nearest wall or door). There is clearly something askew with the poor little guy, but his mother seems to be in complete denial and insists on sending him to a regular kindergarten, in spite of his inability to interact normally with other students, let alone with the teachers. All of that aside, Jimmy has a pooping problem. As in, he does it frequently. And he usually does it in his pants. While teaching his math class on Tuesday, I suddenly got a whiff of something fowl that resembled a ripe, poopy diaper. The smell was so strong that it immediately hit my gag reflex and I let out a dry heave. The two students on either side of Jimmy crinkled their noses up a little bit, but simply scooched a few more inches away from him, without tearing their faithful little gazes away from the chalk board. This was my first sign that maybe this happens to Jimmy a lot. I signaled a nearby Korean teacher to haul Jimmy out of class, as the foreign teachers are not allowed to take a student into the bathroom (a rule that I'm even more thankful for nowadays). She returned with Jimmy, who was clad in a new pair of pants, about 15 minutes later, a disgusted look planted on her face and a relaxed and rejuvenated look on his. On Thursday, my hunch about Jimmy having a pooping problem turned out to be correct, as the same scenario repeated itself in my P.E. class. Lucky, lucky me. Here's hoping I can keep my gag reflex under control for the remainder of the year.

Well, the believed-to-be-cold-medicine (one can never be sure when they don't speak the language of the pharmacist!) I took earlier seems to be kicking in and I'm getting a little too drowsy to be writing my deep, insightful stories on life in Korea. But I promise, more stories will come....