February Recap: Kindie Graduation and Tuna Feast

Happy Valentine's Day :)

Every month in Korea there is different day of celebration. For the month of February it was Valentine's day. In Korea, Valentine's day traditions are a little different than in the US. Girls are in charge of the gift giving over here and will usually buy their significant others chocolate. White day, which happens in March is the opposite, where the men buy their ladies presents and candies. Well, we celebrated a little differently than the locals so I ended up getting some pretty cute presents; my purple Metrocity (the Coach of Korea) purse and these red, Valentino inspired, studded heels. Thanks Alan!  

February was quite a hectic month! It was our Kindergarten graduation, aka super stressful month for EVERYONE. Kindie graduation consist of skits and performances of each class, in Korean and English. There are five classes totaling ten performances! Foreign teachers were in charge of the English skits which needed to include a dance and skit focusing on interactions between students and teacher. Alan decided to do a Super Mario Brothers skit where he was Bowser, who had kidnapped the princesses (girls in the class) and Mario/Luigi/Yoshi had to beat him up and save the princesses. I did a weather report on all things rain and rainbow related. With dress rehearsals, changing kids in and out of their costumes, and setting up microphones, everyone was exhausted by the end. Everything went by smoothly and its over! YAY!

To end the month we celebrated with a Tuna Feast. One of our friends whom we call Fisherman invited us to a Tuna Restaurant. Okay, when I thought tuna, I thought maybe some sashimi and some sushi. Oh boy was I wrong. We pretty much had the tuna in every which way possible, 8 courses to be exact. You can see the main highlights above, not pictured were the steamed tuna and tuna soup, and the multiple side dishes that accompany every Korean meal. I did not know there were so many different types of meat from the fish. Some were pure white aka full fat! The above picture with the blow torch is the tuna belly and belly button being torched. We ended dinner on a high note with some gold leaf soju, having already consumed multiple bottles during the meal of course! 

January Recap 2014

Happy Birthday!

 January has come and gone in a flash! My birthday week and Lunar New Year will be one to remember. Alan surprised me at work with beautiful flowers and delicious cake! We tried a new restaurant VIPS, which is a decent steakhouse/buffet. We welcomed a new foreign teacher to our school and had live octopus, raw beef and abalone!

Ready for live octopus and raw beef with great company!

It was actually very good! The octopus, beef and abalone were wrapped in seaweed with kimchi. Alan had it plain, since he hates seaweed and said it was good as well! It was seasoned with sesame oil, green onions and sesame seeds, which made the dish quite tasty. You can watch a video of the Octopus still squirming on Alan's Instagram.

Since we had a long weekend for Lunar New Year, we decided last minute to visit Seoul for some shopping! The city was quiet with no traffic which was great! Luck was not on our side though as the mall we decided to visit did not open until the last day we were there! We still managed to hit all the stores in the Galleria. For our combined birthdays and anniversary presents we splurged on matching wallets at Goyard (pics to come when they arrive!).

Happy New Year 2014!

Boseong Tea Fields

Happy New Year from South Korea!!!! We got two days off so we decided to go on a mini one day adventure. There was a festival at the Green Tea Fields in Boseong, a small town an hour and half away. So we hopped on an intercity bus, making several stops before we reached our destination. We arrived at the small bus station and asked the ticket counter how to get to the Tea fields. She said the bus leaves at 5:00pm, we had an hour to kill. So we decided to take the faster route and took a taxi instead.

The taxi took us to Daehan Dawon, one of the biggest plantations right on time before it closed. We had a problem though, this was not where the light festval was! We quickly took pictures and breathed in some fresh air before the fields closed. Walking around trying to find a taxi, we found a random English speaking man who told us that the festival was just up the street to the right. Awesome! So we started our trek and not before long saw a line of cars and a lot of people. We walked past cars all the way down to the street vendors and finally found the lights! We spent a good two hours just walking around and eating some street food.

Our adventure didn't stop there...now we had to find a way back to the bus station. With no taxis to be found, we asked a security person to call one for us. The verdict? One hour! No thanks! There had to be another way back to the bus station. We asked a police officer and he said that there was a bus and we just had to wait at the bus stop 200 meters up the hill. As we were walking up, the bus drove past us so we had to book it and got on the bus at the last minute. Luckily we made it on since the bus only comes every 40 minutes! Racing with time, we had 15 minutes to get to the bus terminal. The bus to Mokpo leaves at 7:45, or we would have to wait until 9:00pm. We arrived at 7:39, got on the bust at 7:40 and the bus left at 7:41, talk about cutting it close!

Tis the Season!

Merry Christmas everyone! We miss you all so much and are freezing our behinds off in Korea! Christmas in Korea is definitely an experience on itself. It is more of a couples holiday then a family holiday, but at our school of course it is celebrated for the little ones! Here are some pictures from of our kindies decorating the tree. On Christmas Eve we had a party at school, where the Kindie students received presents from Santa! Guess who that was...Santa Alan!! I made some focaccia for the teachers and staff, and we got some little gifts from our students.

                                                    
This Christmas we decided to give more than anything, after all it is the season of giving! We signed up for the annual ophanage Christmas party, where we got assigned a child to bring a present for, from Santa of course. Our girl's name is Oh Bom and she asked for leggings and stationary. We got her a few other things as well, which we were delighted to see that she liked! It was a great party with food, performances by the kids and or course a visit from Santa.

                               

On Christmas we ate Korean bbq for lunch, watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy and cooked some food. Chicken marsala and mini apple pies!

Wishing everyone a joyful holiday season!

A trip to Seoul!

Its December! Time is flying by here in Mokpo and it's definitely getting colder! We experienced the first drop of weather when we visited Seoul to pick up my parents. The temperature was a good ten degrees lower than in Mokpo and we were not ready for it at all. Coming off a slight cold, we both were feeling already under the weather, so the freeze attack did not help. But it was a good trip none the less. On our way by KTX (the Korean bullet train), we made it to Seoul in about three hours. Our first day in Seoul was a daze full of shopping and eating.

Our tour guide took us to Passion 5, which is a more upscale version of Paris Baguette (and owned by the same parent company), a famous bakery chain here in Korea. It was delicious! They had 5 different sections: gelato, pastries, cakes, chocolate, and coffee. Everything was so pretty and yummy, as you can see from our pictures we had a great time.

         

Alan went for the vanilla and strawberry gelato, I got the macaron ice cream sandwich! Yes, you read that right... it was awesome! We also tried a lot of different pastries including fruit tarts, sweet and savory breads, coffee and macarons.

 

 After our snack...lol we had a night of shopping. Our hotel was conveniently located near the shopping district of Myeongdong, so we spent the whole night shopping and eating from the various food vendors on the streets. 

On sunday we went to the Gyeongbokgung Palace. It was very cold and windy so it was a short trip. After the tour, we went to a famous ginseng chicken soup restaurant. Apparently, my parents have tried to visit this restaurant twice already with no success because of the long wait time. This was their third try and we got in! We tried one ginseng chicken soup, one black chicken soup, and the rotisserie chicken. They helped with the cold and was very soothing. There was no line when we got there, but when we left, the line was out the door! It was a short trip but very eventful and with great company!

Halloween and Alan's 26th :)

A little off schedule due to the Korean Crud... That is what they call the sickness every foreigner will suffer from during the first few months in Korea. Your body is not accustomed to the various strains of viruses and bacteria present in this foreign land so you will get sick... awesome right!? Especially if you come in the winter because of the dramatic change in weather from one day to another. Our school is very environmentally friendly to put in a nice way, as there is no AC during the Summer or heat during the Winter, just the opening and closing of windows and doors to keep the air in or out. When I say no Ac or heat... it means they exist, but to "save energy" (or to save money as I see it) they do not get turned on.

On to the actual post hahahah. Halloween and Alan's 26th birthday! Halloween is not celebrated here, except for places with foreigners ie. at school or at a foreign friendly club/bar. So as the week of Halloween came up, we were told that we were responsible for the decorations and activities at the school, but only for kindie classes. So we spent after hours decorating, cutting out witches and skeletons, and building spiders out of balloons. It was a success and the kids had a lot of fun and got a lot of candy!

On Saturday we went out to dinner to celebrate Alan's birthday. We wandered down Rose street and ended up at a small italian place called Gorilla Pasta. We ended up ordering two pizzas, the Margherita and the Bugolgi pizza. After we placed our order, we were first serve a mini appetizer and creamy cheddar soup. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the soup because we ate it all before I remembered lol. The appetizer consisted of a piece of honey smoked duck breast with some greens and a drizzle of honey mustard, quite good.

             

Our first pizza arrived, and it was super cheesy. The crust itself was a flaky puff pastry. It also came with a side of apricot jam that you can dip the crust in! GENIUS. After eating the first piece I was getting quite full. Thankfully, the kitchen forgot our second pizza so we didn't have to stuff ourselves. The server cleared our table and asked if we wanted dessert! Of course! A few minutes passed and we were presented with a trio of mini desserts: a chocolate lava, orange cream cake, and vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce. So if you are following our order, we get a full three course meal, but we only payed for the entree! Very good deal in my opinion :)