It’s been COLD here! Like, really cold. Even our “warmest jackets we ever owned” weren’t cutting it. I’m pretty sure we almost died from hypothermia on our way home from Costco one night (that’s right, Korea has Costco). We had missed the train and had to wait for the next train out on the platform. It literally felt like we were freezing. We decided at that moment in time, it was time to invest in proper jackets for the Korean winter. Luckily for us, the new fashion trend in Korea this year is long, padded jackets. Whoever thought sliced bread was the best invention ever was sorely mistaken. This is the best invention ever! These jackets are like wearing a sleeping bag. They are long, insulated, shapeless jackets that actually keep you warm! Fortunately, our neighborhood is loaded with shops that sell these jackets. After visiting all the stores (and I mean ALL the stores), we concluded the best bang for our buck were the jackets being sold at the National Geographic store (National Geographic has a store here, who knew?). National Geographic was having a sale, and their jackets were goose down (duck down is what a lot of the other jackets were). So we both went with the National Geographic jackets. That’s right! We match! We have couple jackets! Casey ended up taking the fur off of his hood, but OMG this is like a cool thing here. In Korea, couple shirts, couple shoes, couple outfits, these are things! They actually exist! We are now part of the cool crowd. I thought this would never happen! Mentioning cold, we did our first super cold hike. We did a hike up Teojosan, which is a mountain in our city of Cheonan. We took a bus from the city center and made it to the trailhead of our hike in about 20 minutes. The hike was about 10 miles and really pretty. We saw some great views of our city and enjoyed a great day outside. During our next weekend, our school had our annual Parent Day for our kindergarten classes. On this day, the teachers teach a lesson and the parents get to attend class and watch their children interact with the teachers. Each kindergarten class is assigned a native (Korean) teacher and a foreign teacher and each teacher teaches a lesson. I had the privilege of teaching one of our pre-k classes and they did amazing! I decided to do a lesson on the mixing of primary colors. I have this pre-k class every morning during the regular week, so for about 2 weeks, we would periodically work on our primary colors and talk about what colors were made when we mixed our primary colors. During our final few days before the Parent Day, I brought in Playdough and we actually mixed the primary colors. This absolutely blew their minds! When it came time to do a 40 minute lesson in front of their parents, the kids did great and they were all very confident in knowing what to mix to get what color. It was really neat to see them so excited to share this information with their parents (and they explained it all in English! Way to go pre-k class!). On Sunday, we did a hike on the Seoul Trail. This is a really neat circuit. It is a 157 kilometer hike that goes around the entire city of Seoul. The circuit is broken out into 8 segments and each segment goes from one train stop to the other. We had already done one of the circuits during our vacation here. Our goal is to do all eight segments and we also want to do some segments twice during different seasons so we can compare and contrast. This specific segment was nice and not too rigorous. Afterward we checked out the French district of Seoul, which was actually quite tiny and also hung out at Myeongdong, which is like a night market in Seoul. Now let’s get onto the good stuff. Food! The food here is amazing. For the most part we have no idea what the names are of the restaurants we go to, but that’s ok, we just make up names for them. A restaurant we refer to as First Night is one of our favorites in our neighborhood. We call it First Night because it is the restaurant our school director took us to on our first night here. We have tried most of the things on their menu. There is a red broth soup that’s called spicy sullungtang. There is another version of this soup with white broth and its just called sullungtang (and its not spicy). It’s a soup made from ox bone. In the non-spicy sullungtang, you add salt and green onions. Otherwise, if you don’t it tastes bland. But once you add the salt and green onions, oh my goodness, you have yourself an amazing soup. Another meal we get there is the bulgogi. They bring out raw meat to your table and you cook it on a BBQ like thing. The bulgogi at First Night is marinated in a mix that tastes like sweet soy sauce. The first time we ate bulgogi there, we didn’t know you were suppose to turn the stove down when the meat was cooked, so about halfway through our meal our meat started smoking and one of the people that work at the restaurant came over to help us. OMG! So embarrassing! Anyway, they also have a great dumpling soup that works wonders on a cold Korean night. We have another restaurant nearby we frequent often we call Spicy Chicken. That is what they serve, spicy chicken. They have pictures on their menu so we can point and order without having to actually read the menu. It is a bummer not being able to read the menu though because one night we got adventurous and ordered another “picture” that we thought was chicken meat. Nope we got chicken feet and octopus instead. Whoops! Another place we go to often is called Tteokbokki and Pizza. (Tteokbokki is rice cake smothered in red chili paste, and it’s fantastic). We order the world's spiciest chicken from there and a stir-fry rice dish that you cook at your table. The world’s spiciest chicken is cooked on an iron plat and the iron plate is brought out to your table (kind of like fajitas). The stir-fry dish is fun. When you order it they bring something comparable to a small camping stove out to you table and you cook your meal right in front of you. This dish is mainly vegetables and rice cakes. When you are almost to the end you add rice to your stir-fry dish and re-cook the sauce that is left over and you get something like stir-fry rice. So so yummy! Another awesome invention we have come across in Korea is called Coal-pop. It is a cup that is about 3/4ths filled with soda, and then another small cup is placed within the large cup (taking up the ¼ space where there is not soda) and chicken is placed in this smaller cup. It is absolutely genius. One of Casey’s student’s brought this to him for a snack, and with the help of some of our other students (who drew us numerous maps and told us how to order it) we successfully can get Coal-pop as a snack between breaks at school. One of our favorite foods here is mandu. It is pretty much a steamed bun with the most amazing fillings ever. Our favorites so far have been kimchi mandu, golgoi (meat) mandu, and red bean mandu. These are the neatest things to see made. You walk up to a small stall or small restaurant and there is just steam billowing out of the large pots that are used to steam these delicious concoctions. The other thing about these little pieces of heaven is they are super super cheap! You get a set of ten of the little dumplings for about 3,000 – 3,500 won ($2.75 – $3.20). The large red bean or golgi mandus are about 1,000 won ($.90) for one large bun. We seriously could live off these things! We also buy chicken differently here. It is quite expensive to buy raw meat and a lot of the meat is sold from a butcher. Considering our Korean consists of “this please,” “thank you,” “where,” and “hurry” ordering from a butcher shop is a long way down the road. There is a man who sells rotisserie chickens out of the back of his truck. It is so AWESOME! We buy two of these chickens and then when we are done we make chicken broth and use the broth for our meals we cook at home. There is also a lady who comes through our neighborhood once a week and sells the best “chicken and sauce” meal known to mankind. They are little pieces of paradise smothered in a spicy yet sweet sauce. I can’t hold it together when I see her tent being set up when I head off to school in the morning. These are just some of our favorite foods. If you go to a street market there are so many delicious little snacks. There are pieces of bread with an egg cooked on top. There are more hot-dog treats combined with who knows what than you could want. There is chicken everywhere, dumplings galore, fresh squeezed juice, fried noodles, fish cakes, potatoes on sticks, red bean shaped fish, the possibilities are endless. Even the pickiest of eaters could easily find something in a Korean market that they could put down!
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