a thanksgiving gift from jim's mom

we got a package from jim's mom a while ago, and in it were these two little thanksgiving figures. they have amused us to no end. fabulously weird! they're sort of like nutcrackers, but definitely not strong enough to do the job. do check out the fashion on the native guy. wonderful.

tales of turkeys and underbaked pies

when you last heard from me, i was getting ready for a bake-off extravaganza with our borrowed convection oven. (the irony of this wasn't fully appreciated until rob said in an email yesterday, "How can the Koreans live without ovens??? That's insane. Even funnier that you 'borrowed an oven' to bake. Who borrows an oven? The very concept is so out there. " indeed. so very out there.)

well, we managed to get a good night of baking in. made some banana muffins, two batches of brownies and two or three pans of lemon squares. overall, a very successful evening. and tons of fun with priya, joy and jim. we even had a moment of telling each other what we are thankful for. how very...thanksgiving.

i got home Friday night, ready to bake it up again. Made some awesome pie crusts and got ready to preheat our little white stallion for an apple pie and persimmon tart. and, ah, korea, you never disappoint. the oven would not turn on. it was broken. fully broken. we plugged it in a bunch of times, and finally realized that it was, in fact, broken. i had a bit of a breakdown about it. that feeling of, oh my, i think i broke the oven. obviously i didn't break it, but i was the last one to touch it, and then i thought, oh my, i don't have $300 to replace the oven. and we've got to bake a turkey, and on and on. a little spun out, yes. working on it.

so, we called the owner of the oven, and plans were made to deal with it tomorrow. saturday comes. and we get the word that the place where he bought the oven will a) not refund the money; b) not give him a replacement; and c) not give him store credit until a repairman comes out to the house to check it out and confirms that it must be replaced. and we can't bring it to the store. the guy has to come out and look at it. and he'll come at 3:00.

right, so in the meantime, i decide that i'm going to buy an oven. i'll split it a few ways with some people, but we've got a 13 lb turkey in the fridge and we've got to do something with it. so, priya and i go out shopping for ovens. but alas, we are thwarted at every turn. you see, in korea, appliances are ridiculously expensive. the oven our friend bought was about $250, but everything else we saw ran anywhere from $400-$900. silly. and SMALL. super small. and the fridges are the same way. you really can't find anything that's less that $500. and everything is super fancy. it seems to me that most of the korean experience is about show and presentation. so everything is always really fancy. there doesn't seem to be a basic model of really anything. so, alas, the trip to find an oven was a bust.

the repair guy showed up early and determined after much confusion that the LCD screen on the face of the oven was broken and could be fixed on Tuesday. After a few back and forth phone conversations with the store representative, we figured out that our other option was to buy a different oven for about $90 more. So, we went for it. And Jim disappeared for about 2 hours trying to get the new oven. They tried to take off the face of other models to try to replace the part on ours. And finally, after all was said and done, we got the new oven. Slightly smaller and black. I named it Black Sabbath, seeing at we were cooking on Saturday, and all.

oven. Jim rocked it. He was a star with the basting and the checking and the cooking and the constant vigilance. He really made it happen. Even spilled a considerable amount of turkey grease all over himself while carving it up. We got the turkey in the oven with a little creative maneuvering. The top of the turkey just about hit the top of the oven. We ended up burning the hell out of the top side of the turkey, but after changing some settings, we worked it out. Cooking a 13 lb turkey in a 35 gallon convectionWe tried to bake a pie and an apple crisp, but the oven was a little wonky again, so i burned the hell out of the top of the persimmon pie and never actually cooked the crust -- a sad realization when we tried to cut into it at the party later. very sad.

while we were cooking the turkey, a friend from the states called us to say that she had just arrived in Gwangju. She had moved to Korea five days earlier to a town called Cheonju to the north of us. She made it down to our place for our Thanksgiving feast, and it was awesome. Bad Kitty (Lisa) is her name. She moved from Oakland. She's fabulous. It was so refreshing to have a new face around, and it was a great boost to my emotional experience. I had been having a really hard day, missing home, feeling frustrated with Korea, and chatting with her was really wonderful. She's definitely a kindred spirit in her love for all the same kinds of things that I dig --women's health, sex education, etc. etc. etc. I'm glad we got the chance to meet her (thanks Curtis, Christine, Steve and Juicy!).

The dinner went off quite well. tons of food. good company. funny you tube videos of japanese practical joke shows. excellent thanksgiving all around. definitely a 100% Korean Thanksgiving, folks.

convection oven bake off!

so, one of my coworkers decided to buy a small convection oven, just in time for turkey day in the other part of the world. since jim and i are the only ones who appear to know anything about turkey cookin', he dropped it at our house (it's a very portable oven, as you can see). now, i have this oven for about four days. and i think i'm about to go bakin' crazy! you must understand, such things are unheard of in this country. no one, and i mean no one, has an oven. a list of delectable treats that i will be making this evening and beyond:

• cornbread
• persimmon tart
• apple pie
• sweet potato casserole (sans marshmallows)
• brownies
• herb and apple stuffing
• and two lovely turkeys!

wish me luck. i've got a serious head cold, and i can't breath well enough to taste anything. so, we'll see how this goes. i'll give the full report with photos later!

catie

winter is here!

we spent the weekend in Seoul, visiting some friends, eating yummy food and walking around in extremely cold and windy weather (the news said it was -3 degrees Celsius yesterday which is 26.6 degrees Fahrenheit. woohoo!). the pictures and a fuller description to come, but here are some highlights:

• jim bought a fancy butterfly knife on the street in Itaewon which was available for purchase among a fine assortment of hand-held weapons, most of which definitely gave me the heebie jeebies--catering to the military crowd, i guess?
  
  
• we had actual real grilled hamburgers and bacon and onion rings and french fries at a tiny little place called Smokeys Saloon in Itaewon.
• ate delectable chicken tikka masala and a lamb curry at an indian place in Hyehwa with some really great friends of ours
• spent a long evening at a great hookah bar in hongdae, chillin on sofas and relaxing on pillows. they made a korean style mojito that sort of approximated a real one in the states. there were actual mint leaves in it this time, but still, the use of peppermint schnapps eludes me.
• ate some great feta and gyro sandwiches for lunch and headed home.
  

Seoul is fun. Seoul is crazy. It was definitely overwhelming to be there. The subways are really much more insanely packed than i first thought during our other trips there. Saturday night is a mob scene. And there is a TON of stuff to do and see at every minute. It's a great trip, but at this point, kind of like vegas for me. I can only be there about 48 hours, and then i need to come home. living in Gwangju is really chill and easy. We don't see a lot of foreigners, and we're still the anomaly. In Seoul, there were Westerners everywhere. A Korean woman we hung out with on Saturday night said that just in the past three years, the foreigner population has exploded. We have apparently been flooding the city in droves at a very rapid pace. And until the recent sexual abuse scandal wit the teacher from Canada, there hasn't really been a thought towards a screening process for all these teachers. There are no background checks or any other sort of filter to determine your eligibility as a teacher. But in December, the government will make it much more difficult for Westerners to enter as English teachers.

so, once again, back and ready to head to work for another week of madness. feeling pretty sick again. but this will be a good week:) much love from across the world.

catie

a trip down the river

one sunday afternoon in october, jim and I took our new-ish bikes out for a spin down the path along the river in gwangju. we had a lovely day, meeting funny teenage girls who i tried out my newly acquired korean vocabulary on. found a group of old guys drumming under one bridge, and a slew of forty or so playing kododi (korean card game) under another, fully set up with little mats to sit on and mats for their card game. the flowers were in full bloom all along the river. it was a great day. here are some pics.

a random store

just a random funny store in gwangju. the toilet, of course.

my new coat

i had to post this. i found this coat while walking around downtown a couple of weeks ago. i love it. it's very 1940's meets korea.

the monster mash

And so, after the week was over and we had some time to rest, it was out to the party downtown for all us adults. We headed to a foreigner bar that we don’t frequent too much, and I was definitely reminded Saturday night just why we don’t. I pulled together a slightly more adult version of my skeleton/dead lady costume sans the white makeup. The party was fabulous – it was awesome to see lots of good friends we’ve made since we arrived here and to find other people wearing crazy costumes aside from me. There was a Scotsman dressed as Braveheart. An Aussie who made a fabulous devil. An American who made an Optimus Prime costume entirely out of cardboard boxes and poster paint. And a Korean girl who pulled off an impressive Borat-in-his-one-sie.

Altogether we had a great time. I met some great new friends, but I definitely was put off, once again, by the multitude of yahoos that I meet here, particularly the boys. They seem to be the type who have very little ability to function normally in a social environment but are quite skilled at acting as creepy and sleazy as possible whenever a woman is around. This particular bar is really awesome for its unisex bathroom. There’s a stall for the women with a fully closed door, which is nice. But the men have this urinal that’s just open to the tiny room you have to stand in to wait for the stall. And the sink is right on the wall behind the urinal. So no matter what you do, you can’t really avoid it. So on the night of this crazy party, it was especially an awesome experience since the guys were extra creepy in their bizarre costumes and were pretty much extra drunk. During my first trip, I was forced to stand there in my hot pink wig and slightly revealing top while not one or two but three of the sleaziest dudes in the place piled in to the bathroom. They asked me such awesome questions as “Hey, who would you rather do? Me or him?” Right. You’re kidding, right? How old are you? Wow. Made it in and out of that place in a flash and left laughing at these very silly, stupid boys.

It was a much needed very late night that ended with the only kind of junk food we can get in Korea – McDonald’s – and resulted in a little bit of a downturn in my already sick state. I’m nursing a cold with some meds from the doctor this week. Getting lots of rest, and definitely feeling good that Halloween is finally over.

la guapa does dia de los muertos in korea

Korean kids get scary on Halloween

And so do their teachers. yes, it’s true. Korean kids do celebrate Halloween. But only if they go to a private English academy, like the one we teach in. And let me tell you, these places go all out for this totally American holiday experience. For Halloween with our kids, we did the following over a period of 10 days:

1) Three elaborate Halloween art projects, all made out of various black and orange paper, definitely including a mask of a bunny (for girls) and a dog (for boys) and a stupid witch hat that involved using far too much hot glue and sustaining a variety of second-degree burns.

2) One science project that turned out to actually be an art project because it involved making a glow-in-the-dark clock for which we had to mix together some unknown yellowish powder with glue to make a kind of paint/paste. This was, of course, very toxic – as is nearly every material in our science projects – and caused my eyes and hands to itch and turn red. Woohoo! (The full explanation of such projects requires a much longer explanation than I can really get into here. Perhaps later).

3) One pumpkin carving session that involved the kids standing around one table while I scooped out the pumpkin guts and they got to mush their hands around in it as I carved up the pumpkin’s little face. This blew their minds.

4) One GIANT package from my mom, Adrienne Magee, the World’s Most Prepared Kindergarten Teacher, that contained lots of little presents for my kids but which I ended up accidentally using to scare the kids just a bit. You see, we had been talking about Halloween and Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead, for all you non-Mexican holiday literate folks) for a week or so when the package arrived. They wanted me to open it right away as they were dying to know what was inside. As a joke, I told them that there might be some ghosts inside. I wasn’t really sure. But it was Halloween that week, so it was possible, I guessed. At that point, almost all of my kids shrieked in horror and jumped back to the wall, tripling the size of our circle. But one kid, Sean, who has an older brother and sister and comes to school singing Avril Lavigne every day, he scooted right up next to me, put his hands on his hips, looked me dead center and said “Open it, Teacher. Open it.” I loved it. It was awesome. I kept peeking in the box and looking up with great surprise as I quickly closed it again. I assured them, though, that if there were ghosts in the box, they would be nice ghosts. It was a package from my mom, after all. My mom wouldn’t send us mean ghosts, I said. Finally, I opened the box, and found all kinds of amazing goodies inside – spider rings, glow-in-the-dark rings, moulds to make Mexican sugar skulls and a beautiful book telling the story about the Day of the Dead.

5) Halloween Day – kids and teachers all came to school dressed in their Halloween finest. And they all call it Halloween Day. I don’t know why. I won the award for “Person Who Scared the Most Children and Adults” in my Dia de los Muertos skeleton costume (thank you, emalie, for the inspiration!). The kids came as various Snow Whites, Harry Potters, strange robots and Spidermans. There were some costumes at the local Target-esque stores, but some parents bought their kids stuff from the interweb. We had to go through a very elaborate trick-or-treating process where all the classes from the 5th floor came down to the 4th and then vice versa. I made a lovely little mix of Halloween creepy songs – “Thriller,” “Ghostbusters,” “Purple People Eater,” and “The Monster Mash” of course. It was pretty hilarious. Especially since I kept scaring the pants off these kids. The best part of my costume was the f*ed up make-up I had found to create the super scary skeleton look. When I started putting it on in the morning, I noticed that it felt kind of weird on my skin, almost like plastic. It started to dry, and it felt like a facial mask does – tightening on my skin and drying up so I could hardly move my face. By the time I had finished, I couldn’t smile and definitely couldn’t laugh. I tried to eat a piece of toast and my face cracked. At school, it got so bad that I just had to start peeling off my face. This scared the children even more, as you can imagine. I was half flesh, half white skeleton. It was bizarre. I also made this bouquet of fake roses with marigolds that I put a white candle in the middle of. I carried it around with me, lit, as we walked to each classroom. The kids loved it and wanted to take a picture with it.

The final touch was a special Dia de los Muertos party for my kids. (For those of you who don’t know, the holiday is celebrated on Nov 1st and 2nd every year. It involves remembering your ancestors who have died by visiting their graves and having a giant party in the cemetery with music, food and dancing. People create amazing altars in their homes, and in many places, there are big parades where people dress up and carry candles and marigolds – the scent of which the dead are believed to follow to the celebrations each year. I’m not Mexican, but it’s been a big holiday for me living in Tucson, AZ, and in San Francisco. I wanted to share it with my kids, too). I had been talking to them about it for weeks, and since they do very similar things in Korea when one of their relatives dies, they really got the idea pretty clearly, I think. One of my kids had been to visit his grandfather’s grave recently, so he explained to the kids what he did when they went – lots of bowing, eating, etc.

To prep for the day, I pulled together a bunch of things to set up an altar in my room. I hung up the great calaveras (or skeleton) banners in my room. And I took on the crazy task of making sugar skulls in my kitchen with all of the stuff that my mom sent me. This was, of course, far more work that I imagined, and I was definitely channeling Adrienne the Star Kindergarten Teacher the whole time. The skulls were a little ghetto as I definitely do not have the fancy pastry tools that one would want to have when making such intricate, delicate things, but they turned out pretty nicely. And I had the inspiration to wrap some cardboard in tin foil and glue the skulls to it so they wouldn’t fall apart. Mexican cowboys for the boys and Santa Caterina for the girls. I was pretty proud of myself.

I made up some yummy hot chocolate, bought some oranges and baked treats to share with the kids, and set up the altar in the morning before they came to the classroom. The altar was quite lovely. I had placed a picture of my grandmother on it along with some sugar skulls and a bunch of little marigolds I picked from outside the school. But this was the best part – when the kids came in, two of my boys went over to the altar, immediately knew what it was for, and started bowing. On their knees, hands on the ground in prostration to this little altar. And then five or six kids did it, and then everybody wanted to do it. “Catie Teacher’s grandmother?” they asked. Yes, I said. She died when I was just about as old as you. And I watched them bow, and I laughed, and I had to try hard to hold back some tears, too. It was truly a beautiful moment.

Later, one of the younger classes came down to my room, and we all read the storybook my mom had sent and then drank the hot chocolate. Of course, it was immediately all over the floor and all over three kids shoes. Sticky chocolate everywhere. But what a wonderful day. It was a ton of work that I definitely did not have to do, but since when have I stopped at just doing what I’m supposed to do?

Here's a close up of the altar. A little memoriam to Alice Catherine, my nana.