A glimpse into my Friday afternoon..

Since we have been here almost 9 months, so many things around now seem "normal" that seemed bizarre and confusing at first. However, every now and then, I have a "wow, I am really NOT in America, am I?" moment that brings me right back to my Korean reality. Yesterday afternoon was one of those times...

When I walked into my 4 o'clock class of (very advanced English speaking) 4th graders, I noticed that Tommy (one of the most serious, studious, fluent students) had a beautifully wrapped package next to his backpack.

Me: "Well, well, well, Tommy! What a beautiful gift! What do you have there?"

Tommy: "Whisky."

Me: (baffled) "Excuse me, one more time please. What is in that present?"

Tommy (impatient with me now): "Teacher...whisky! Teachers day..May 15th. adlakjfawe (the Korean equivalent to DUH)"

Me (now only more confused because May 15th is 2 weeks away): "Oh wow, what a nice present..."

The class now chimes in: "TeacherAmy!Teachers Day!Gifts!Whisky! Gifts!Tommysteachergone! Just!"

Me: "Of course. Why wouldn't I understand why a 10 year old has a handle of whisky at school for his teacher. Gotcha. Now, turn your books to page 25 and get out a red pen..."

and PS: I sure hope these kids count their English Academy teachers (ME) as 'teachers' on this allfabulous Teachers Day and I get lavish gifts, even if its in the form of whisky...

Happy Weekend Everybody!!!

Love yall!

Amy

La Comida

There is a long list of people and things that you just have to deal with missing when you decide to live in another country for a year.

At the tip-top of my list, just after a few people, is Tex-Mex food. I say 'Tex-Mex' because this includes everything from tortillas, jalapenos, salsa, and refried beans to real BBQ sauce, 16oz steaks, and St. Arnold's beer.

After a little research, I finally took the time to make my own tortillas! I have never done this, as it was never necessary. To my delightful surprise, it was extremely easy to do!

The tortillas were amazing. This simultaneously appeased my longing, and later reminded me how much I love and miss home.

Enough of the sentiment! Here's the recipe I used.

It instructs to use milk. I've now done it with milk and water...I'm not sure which is better.

Enjoy!

Texas Flour Tortillas (adapted from The Border Cookbook by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison)
Ingredients:
Two cups of all-purpose flour (can make them whole wheat by substituting one cup of whole-wheat flour for white flour)
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of vegetable oil
3/4 cups of warm milk

Method:
Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and oil.
Slowly add the warm milk.
Stir until a loose, sticky ball is formed.
Knead for two minutes on a floured surface. Dough should be firm and soft.
Place dough in a bowl and cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap for 20 minutes.
After the dough has rested, break off eight sections, roll them into balls in your hands, place on a plate (make sure they aren’t touching) and then cover balls with damp cloth or plastic wrap for 10 minutes. (It’s very important to let the dough rest, otherwise it will be like elastic and won’t roll out to a proper thickness and shape.)
After dough has rested, one at a time place a dough ball on a floured surface, pat it out into a four-inch circle, and then roll with a rolling pin from the center until it’s thin and about eight inches in diameter. (If you roll out pie crusts you’ll have no problem with this.) Don’t over work the dough, or it’ll be stiff. Keep rolled-out tortillas covered until ready to cook.
In a dry iron skillet or comal heated on high, cook the tortilla about thirty seconds on each side. It should start to puff a bit when it’s done.
Keep cooked tortillas covered wrapped in a napkin until ready to eat.
Can be reheated in a dry iron skillet, over your gas-burner flame or in the oven wrapped in foil.
While you probably won’t have any leftovers, you can store in the fridge tightly wrapped in foil or plastic for a day or so.
Makes eight tortillas.

Howdy Korea!

It has been nearly a decade since I've been to a rodeo back home. On Saturday, Amy and I explored the world of bull fighting in Korea. The rodeo was hosted in the town of Chung-do, about an hour train ride from Busan.

We raced through the low-lying rice farms west of Busan toward the event. Until then, I had never seen any of the boundless rice supply that feeds Korea. The train station was a ten minute taxi ride from the train station. I always find it surprising when very small towns have taxis. Could you imagine a taxi service in Junction?

We've read and heard about this bull fighting in everything from Frommer's to friends stories, and so it is a huge attraction for foreigners. I did not expect to see so many clumped together in the middle of nowhere-Korea.

The arena was surrounded with shops of local farmers, traditional Korean food and drinks, and games. We found tons of dried persimmon, which I wasn't a huge fan of. We also found some homemade Macali (rice wine). It was nice to get something hand made, but it was really gritty, with tons of rice pulp...not as fulfilling as orange pulp.

There was also a mechanical bull. However, the operator seemed to only want to spin people until they were too dizzy to see straight and then fell off. No go.

After lunch and site-seeing, we took our seats for the main event. I had no idea what to expect. So, bull fighting in Korea is bulls fighting each other. It's not people fighting and killing the bulls....I'm pointing at you Spain! The bulls are led with a rope through their nose by their trainers. As soon as they enter the ring, every bull knows what is about to happen. They dig in and kick up dirt over their backs. It was like watching a cartoon depiction. Then the owners pull the bulls together until they reach the event horizon. Once the bulls make eye contact, they stick to each other like magnets. Some of the challenges last a few seconds, and some last for nearly ten minutes. It all depends on the equality of the aggression. Eventually, one of the bulls realizes they won't win, and runs away. Essentially, these Koreans have found a way to get these bulls to fight the same way they would in the wild over a cow. No one gets really hurt, but it is still entertaining.

Apparently this festival used to only happen once a year, but after they built this huge stadium, they are supposed to have bull fights and other events year-round....just in case you were in the neighborhood.

Cherry Blossom Bliss

Over the past few weeks, Busan has exploded with STUNNING Cherry Blossom trees. This was such a nice symbolism of the beginning of the spring season, and they transformed the energy of the city. We were lucky enough to have our neighborhood streets lined with this beauty, and we also live close to the Oncheon River that had a fun Cherry Blossom festival last weekend. Here are some pictures from our neighborhood and the festival.

Pics from the hood:

Oncheon River Festival:

Happy Spring Yall!

Love,

Amy

Kite Festival in Dadaepo Beach

John, Maddie, and Steph with our kite!

The other weekend I went with some friends to a Kite Festival on Dadaepo beach. It was a very sunny and windy day- the perfect ingredients for kite flying. Many Koreans were flying traditional Korean kites (which we learned how to make a few weeks back). They also had "Kite Runner"style kite wars going on, where one kite tries to cut the string of the other kites mid-air.

Our kite (in the foreground of the pic) ended up having some serious issues staying up in the air....luckily an older Korean man came to our rescue! He helped for a bit, and then gave up on us. Oh well :)

The beach we were on was very beautiful, and there were a number of kite-surfers in the water which were super fun to watch.

In the end, our kite did make it up! Only to be quickly "slashed" by another kite's string...You win some, you lose some!

Being there made me think a lot about the Zilker Kite Festival from my home town. I grew up going to that one every year, and it was nice to be able to experience the same joys from that festival across the world on a small South Korean beach. I imagine that in the years to come when I am back at the Zilker festival, I will look back on the fond memories on Dadaepo Beach in South Korea :)

Love yall!

Amy

Lotte Gi-ee--ant--uhs!!!!

After a horribly cold hiatus, the Lotta Giants baseball season is officially under way!

Our friend and Lotte Giants Starting Pitcher, Ryan Sadowski, was able to get us some tickets to the season opener last Saturday.

Amy and I sat with some mutual friends, John, Soo, and Jee-un. Ryan managed to get us tickets directly behind the Lotte Cheerleaders stage. The cheerleaders are definitely something to gawlk at. The combination of beautiful women, with 3kg of makeup, and 120 decibels of baseball chanting in your face for three hours is pretty intense....not to mention the fact that their is a baseball game going on.

Jon and Soo....with some pigs feet. The feet were a little chewy, but not bad at all considering.

The Giants played the Han-hwa Eagles. Each Korean baseball team is allowed to sign two international players. Ryan fills one of those spots. The other player is pitcher Bryan Corey...that's right, same name....Ryan, Bryan, and Bryan.....it honestly feels weird to type my name but mean someone else.

Anyway, Corey started for the opener against Han-hwa. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but the dude pitched really well. He dished out either 7 or 8 shut-out innings, to hand off the mound to the relievers with a score of 6-0...nice way to introduce yourself.

It was a great start to a hopefully fruitful season.

After the game, the five of us met up with Ryan and his charming wife Lindsey for some Shabu-Shabu. Luckily for both of them, Lindsey is able to come live here in Busan for a good part of the season this year.

We're planning on going with a much bigger group of Wehguks (foreigners) to the next Saturday home game versus SK on April 23rd!

Nakdong Estuary Multicultural Center

A few weekends ago, I went to an area on the Western side of Busan that I had never been to before. My friend Maddie lives over there, so she was able to show us around to a few really neat places. The first place she took us was a park on the Nakdong river*. Apparently this is the spot where birds that are migrating land, but I think we were there during their 'off season'. Regardless of the birds, it was a beautiful spring day! So many children were out with there bikes and little cars..it was adorable.

*Interesting fact: this river marks the line during the Korean War of the spot where North Korea reached before being stopped by America. So, Busan was really one of the only cities untouched by the North during that time.

The area also had a sculpture garden with some very beautiful art. I find myself feeling...a lack of art here in Korea, so this was a nice thing to stumble upon.

Have a wonderful day!

Love,

Amy

Name That Korean!

At Reading Town, all of our students have, or are given, English names when they join our school. At first I thought this was weird, and felt like we should call them by their actual Korean names, but, once I realized that I could not pronounce half of their names...English names were fine by me! Also, growing up, I always had 'Spanish', 'Italian', and 'Hebrew' names in my various language classes, and it does put you more in the mind set of learning and speaking that language.

We have new students join our school all the time, and a lot of times we get to 'name them'! I LOVE THIS. We usually write about 20 names on the board, and the student gets to pick. So, naturally, I only write names of friends and family members because I get a kick out of teaching kids with the same names as people back home!

Below are some pics of students that we have 'named' since we have been here. Ps- if your name hasn't been 'chosen' by a Korean yet, it probably will be soon! haha! We seriously put all of yalls names up there!

SHANNON

CINDY

HARRY

STEVE

CLINT

RYAN

NATHAN

TIM

ADAM

And last but not least, this is JENNY!! Most of you know that basically all of my friends are named "Jennifer" (Jenny Gilbert, Jennifer Nash, Jen Landers, Jennifer Vogel, Jennifer Savory, Jennifer Roe...should I go on? :) )...so this one's for yall!

Happy April everybody!

Love you and miss you,

Amy