Helens Birthday

Helen's Birthday Pictures
1. Our cuisine for the night, boiled pork with oysters, cabbage, pancake, kimchi, and assorted other goodies
2. Pre dinner drinks at Helen's house
3. Hels and her new friend
4. The birthday girl gets her cake on!
5. The gangs all here

Last week the whole gang got together to celebrate Helen's birthday in true expat fashion, that is with drinks, karaoke, and lots of food.
We all headed over to the lucky birthday girls house on a warm Saturday evening about five thirty to enjoy some beer and vodka watermelon libations that I had whipped up with my new, at least new to me, blender.
After a few hours of drinks, snacks and stories while watching a gorgeous red sunset, we headed off for the birthday dinner of bossum, boiled pork, at our favorite place just down the road, Arirang Bossum.
It was a great crowd that we had that night. There were people from A.P. and Helen's school, Dari, along with friends from around Sokcho, both old and new as we ate drank, and had a good time.
After dinner we headed out to the Western to continue the party. I left early, as I usually do, to get in some time writing and hanging out at my place, but I here that the rest of the crowd hung out at the Western and then the Karaoke bar till about five that morning and a good time was had by all.

Goodbye to two good friends

Yesterday was finally the end of the Korean ride for Helen and Kirsty as they finished their contracts and headed out to North Korea, China, Kyrgestan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Turkey.
Guys, I dont know if you will ever read this but I just wantd to say that you have been great friends and I am sad to see you go. I wish you all the luck in the world and I hope that your trip is as great as you hope, I will miss you.
Thanks for the memories!
Ara
Pictures
1. Kirsty giving a present to our bosses, Won-gi and Yeon-soo
2. Kirsty in fine form cracking open her last bottle of two dollar champion for some pre trip drinks
3. The girls, packs and gear ready to go

The Unknown Festival

Walking into Yang Yang on our little stroll we were pleasantly surprised to find some sort of cultural festival going on with a big market around the festival grounds selling lots of junk. It was really cool to see the normally reserved Korean masses out enjoying themselves in the sun light. We even saw, gasp, kids without computers playing games, something that you don't see much of here int he land of the morning calm.
After grabbing some much needed street food, we were kind of famished after our little trek, we headed down to the festival proper and checked out the archery and tug of war competitions. Not the best festival that I have ever been to but it was a nice way to spend the day.
Pictures
1. For lunch we had these really nice corn pancakes stuffed with onions.
2. At most shooting galleries at fairs and such one wins games and toys for the little kiddies, not true however here in Korea. If you are a real dead eye Dan one can win bottles of whisky! You have to love living here sometimes.
3. For seven hundred plus years this bow was the mainstay of Korean defence, now it is regulated to archery clubs but it is still fun to see in action. This little bow fires arrows a long, and I mean a long , way.
4. The tug of war action really starts to heat up.
5. You have to love a country like Korea that takes drinking to places the rest of the world only dreams about. In Korea you can get the potent national liquor, soju, at any store, day or night, for the low price of ninety cents or so. It comes in little plastic flasks, big two liter bottles, little glass bottles, and for the kiddies, a juice box version, perfect for the lunch box. Here we see the good marketing tactics of the Jinro company at work trying to lure some young customers by dressing up as your friendly soju bottle

Today was a gorgeous day to walk along the back roads to Yang Yang, a small market town south of Sokcho. Paul and I set off around 11:30 and walked about three hours through woods, fields, and small farming towns.
I really love to get out into rural Korea where the people are always nice and eager to talk, even with a couple of waygooks like us.
The whole trip was fairly short as far as hikes go, we were at our destination about three hours after setting out but it was worth it to get out and enjoy some nature before the monsoon rains come and then the horrible humidity.
Along the way we were both impressed with how green the country looked. Everywhere you turn in Korea right now the hills and fields are alive with the green colour that we were hardly able to see through the long brown winter. Now the fields are filled with new rice plants busily growing in a thin film of water and flowers are busily blooming in every nook and cranny, there are so many flowers that every time you take a breath the air reeks of honeysuckle and myriad other flowers that I cannot name.
Pictures
1. A nice country road, who knows what is around the bend?
2. An old tower of some sort, here for a very long time. It could be an old watch tower, maybe a beacon tower for signalling, but its use was probably much more mundane. It was probably some sort of grain storage.
3. An old abandoned house that we found in, literally, the middle of nowhere. We walked up and looked inside but it had been totally cleaned out.
4. And now for something truly differ ant, a herd of goats that appeared out of nowhere.

A New Place

A New Place

Finally, after ten months I am out of Dongjin Officetel, thank god!

Yeonso, my boss, told me early last week, to be at work a half hour early. I thought that it was time for a little chat, maybe I had done something wrong, but she surprised me quite a bit when she told me a little later that we were going to see my new house.

I had known that I would be moving but thought it would be a lot closer to the end of my current contract.

When I got to work the next day I was pretty surprised to find out that I would be living right next door to the school, on the fifth floor of the local orthopedic hospital.

It turns out that I shouldn’t have worried about anything, the apartment that I am now in is really nice, one big L-shaped room with a separate bedroom that is fairly good size. It is by far the largest place that I have lived in so far in Korea and I really like it.

The best part about the place though, by far, is the view. My front wall is all tinted glass, pretty smart actually because it faces east, and overlooks the huge lighted bridge and the sea. If I look to the north I can see the whole skyline of Sokcho, which isn’t much but is pretty, and if I go on the roof, the huge spacious, perfect for Bbqing, great firework watching roof, I can look to the west and see huge mountains, to the east the sea, to the north the skyline of Sokcho, and to the south, the main coast road.

Pictures
1. Kitchen and entryway
2. Living Room
3. The view out the back door, Buyoung apartments and mountains
4. View from the roof to the sea. I have almost this same view from my front window

An Ode to Tofu

So I have always been a meat eater, I love steak, lamb, pork, roasts, any kind of dead animal, other than fish is great to me, and I have always been suspicious of this pressed soybean curd called tofu, but today, I am a convert.

Tofu has been used in Asian cuisine for centuries, probably a millennium or two, and the stuff you get out here is so different from the pressed, processed junk you can purchase at any store in the west.

The tofu here, the big block in the picture, costs about a dollar. It is pressed locally, probably by a farmer deep in the countryside, you can see his brand on it, and sold in the market from a big red tub in which rests kilos of the soft white curd

The flavour of tofu that I have had before coming here is what had always turned me off from it, tasteless and bland. Here, when you cut it, you can smell the beans that the stuff is made from, and when you cut it it forms nice soft chunks that hold their shape through almost any cooking process.

Tofu curry, my current favorite meal.

Ingredients

A couple of tomatoes, cut into chunks

Small onion

A big chunk of cubed tofu

Three cloves of garlic

Turmeric

Salt

Soy Sauce

Curry Powder

Olive oil

Ginger

Eggplant

Cut the onions into chunks, through in some crushed garlic and some crushed ginger into a pan that has a good dollop of oil in it and fry lightly till the onion is translucent, don’t burn it!

Add the tomato, tofu, and eggplant, a dollop of soy sauce, a little salt, some turmeric and curry powder and stir if around on medium high heat for about five-ten minutes, serve over rice.

Serves 2-3