The Flag Cake and the Fourth

I MADE AN AMERICAN FLAG CAKE HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY

I baked a chocolate cake last night and woke up a bit earlier than usual this morning to decorate it with vanilla frosting, strawberry jam, frozen blueberries, and white chocolate chips. The result was the delicious Pan of Patriotism pictured above. Well, I don't actually know if it was delicious or not, since I didn't taste any of it. 왜?!

왜냐면, This American flag cake was for the teachers at my school, in celebration of American Independence Day. They all told me the cake and the chocolate chip cookies I made were 진짜 맛있어요, so that's good enough for me! I also brought two huge watermelons in a suitcase, because they are in season right now, and because, as I tried to explain in Korean, "In America, on Independence Day, people get together with friends and family and barbecue outside and eat watermelon... and there are fireworks..." It's quite different from the somewhat solemn Korean Independence Day (August 15th), and actually in comparison it seems rather frivolous.

But the point is that my job is to share American culture in a positive way, and in Korea, food is one's best bet for building relationships. All of my school's faculty are amazed that I made the cake and cookies from scratch. Literally, they have a hard time believing that a cake can come from anywhere other than the corner bakery (ovens are rare in Korean households). But tasting is believing in this case. I'm happy to have helped everyone start their day right: with sugar and a healthy dose of red, white, and blue.

A great morning continued with a great day. I was productive during my desk-warming hours, preparing for some workshops I'll run at the 2014 Fulbright Orientation (which begins, incidentally, tomorrow!) later this month and taking care of some errands. My "Before I Leave" to-do list seems to get longer every day, and I'm a bit worried. But I'll take things one step at a time.

My students finished their final exams today, so everyone I met in the hallways and at lunch was quite happy. Also, more alumni came back to visit! Well, they didn't come to visit me this time, as this particular group of boys was... well, they were my sleepers, so I didn't have the opportunity to get very close to them. Still nice to see them, though.

And in the evening, all the faculty celebrated the end of finals and the approaching end of the semester with dinner at a wonderful barbecue restaurant by the Junam Reservoir called 호수에 그림 하난 ("One Picture at the Lake"?). We ate outdoors and watched the sun set over the mountains and the lake. Everything was lit golden, and large cranes flew by on occasion. It really was lovely. Even though I didn't get my fireworks or pool party, I am still grateful that I got to spend this Fourth of July in good company and in a beautiful place.

Junam Reservoir at sunset. The water is covered with hundreds of thousands of lotus plants.

Even indoor soccer at taekgyeon tonight couldn't ruin my good mood. Actually, soccer was saved by the middle school taekgyeon students, who stuck around to join us for our game. These kids are so full of energy, it's hard not to enjoy anything when they bring their game on at full volume. The best part was that the kids on the sidelines would yell out a constant live commentary, a skill they'd picked up from World Cup announcers. They also referred to me as 박지성 since I was scoring the most goals (not terribly difficult to do when you're a head taller than all your opponents). The only time I'll ever be compared to a professional athlete is when I'm playing indoor soccer with the taekgyeon kids...

Well, a very happy Fourth of July to all of you Americans! Celebrate your good luck and your liberty, crack some jokes, and then remember to support ongoing efforts to secure freedom around the world.

A Day Off with Friends

초코칩쿠키즈!

I love to bake, and when friends come to visit Changwon, I all but drag them to my apartment so we can make cookies or pies or something delicious and cavity-inducing. Today's all about the chocolate chip cookies, but I'm also waiting for a chocolate cake to cool as I type. Tomorrow morning, it will become an American flag cake to celebrate the Fourth of July! :)

Hana and Yoobin visited me today! There's a convoluted story behind our relationship, which I am going to describe whether you're interested or not, so listen up: Hana and Yoobin met in the States while Yoobin was studying abroad in Pennsylvania, where Hana is from. Hana and I then kind-of met in college because we went to the same church. I knew her as one of the women on the worship team, though I didn't really consider us friends... But then, during our Senior spring, I heard that she was going to go to Korea on a Fulbright, and realized that we were going to be in the same program! Unfortunately, we were separated by our placements, because Hana was sent to Naju, and I went to Changwon. But, surprise surprise, it turns out Yoobin is from Changwon! So Hana got us connected, and Yoobin and I hung out for all of one day, before he left for China to study abroad for a year. Then Hana finished her grant year and returned to the US, and I was all alone...

... But Hana came back to Korea last April, and then Yoobin returned from China, which he claimed was too smelly for his liking, and today, the three of us finally had a reunion! It mostly consisted of eating patbingsu, eating yukgaejang, and (baking and) eating cookies. Oh, and we also taught Yoobin how to play Bananagrams.

Bananagrams at Sulbing! Two of my favorite things. And two of my favorite people! ;) Also, I am going to not-so-subtly point out that I had the letters to play "polyandry" in this round.

Baking for 드림s

Did I mention that I love to bake? I never did much of it before I began living on my own in Korea, but now, I only need the smallest of excuses to make good use of the big oven in my small apartment. Last weekend at the Fulbright Spring Conference, some ETAs held a bake sale to raise money for a special school in Cheonan called the Drim School (드림, pronounced "dream"). This school was established for North Korean defector students to help them obtain the education they need to compete with their South Korean peers. Often, young defectors who begin attending school in South Korea are at a disadvantage due to poor education in North Korea or no education at all during the years of their escape and refugeeism.

I was happy to be able to contribute a little bit to the bake sale. As I mentioned before, I pulled an all-nighter (from 2am until well after sunrise) baking a ton of cookies, cupcakes, and cakes. Here are some photos:

Soft chocolate chip button cookies! Also, pre-frosted strawberry cupcakes in the back.

Double chocolate chip cookies -- these were a hit. Tracey said they tasted like chocolate snickerdoodles!

Walnut maple syrup bread with cinnamon sugar. This is super easy to make; I might just do it again for breakfast.

And lastly, the seasonal specialty: strawberry cupcakes with strawberry frosting! Real strawberries used all the way.

Although I didn't keep close track of my sales during the fundraiser, almost everything I made sold out, which puts my contribution at over seventy dollars. Success! My next step will be to bake cupcakes for the Drim School students themselves. :)

Blossoms & Stress Baking

Wen Ni and me at Yeojwacheon in Jinhae last week, just before the cherry blossom festival began.

The same stream about one week later, with the trees in full bloom.

The city I currently call home is gorgeous in the spring, as streets and hills turn pink with cherry blossoms (벚꽃) blooming all over. I'm very happy in Changwon now, and I'll be honest: I couldn't bear leaving my city and my school. But graduate school beckons... I have a tough choice to make by mid-April. Naturally, I'm worried out about it: add Decide Future Plans to my huge to-do list, right after Stress Bake All Night, which is what I'm doing now. It's 5:46am and my apartment smells like chocolate chip cookies, maple-walnut bread, and strawberry cupcakes. I'm headed to the Fulbright Spring Conference on Jeju Island in a few hours, and the treats I've made are for a bake sale there. Hopefully I can find some time this weekend to take a deep breath, relax, and ponder the future.

WWOOF CSA and Potato-Crust Mini Quiches!

I've been trying new things lately. One of them is buying local and organic groceries, which I know intellectually is a healthier and more sustainable way to be a consumer but am too lazy usually to do. The second is baking savory goods rather than the usual butter and sugar bonanzas that erupt from my kitchen.

Enter WWOOF Korea! WWOOF stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. I was first introduced to it through friends who spent vacations on farms in Belgium, France, Thailand, and Australia. They picked grapes, weeded gardens, babysat, built sheds, and otherwise worked with their hands while helping a planet-friendly, local business do its thing. It didn't surprise me to hear that there are WWOOF farms in South Korea.

What did surprise me, however, was that WWOOF CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) exists: it is a program that seeks to connect the farmers with the consumers buy delivering a seasonal box of produce from the farms in Korea directly to members of the community each week. There are so many cool things about this:

1. WWOOF Korea is catering to English-speaking foreigners in Korea with this initiative, as you can tell by the website, Facebook page, and newsletter.
2. The produce that you receive each week is kind of a surprise, but you know it's always what is in season, and there are highlighted specialties from different regions in Korea.
3. Your groceries are delivered to you! Now, E-Mart and other Korean conglomerate-owned big box stores do this, too, because this is Korea and delivery is just the modus operandi, but still.
4. Fresh, local, and organic! At a not-exorbitant price!

Obviously, I was quickly convinced to sign up. However, I only signed up for a one-week trial ("taster basket"), since winter break is over and I will cook much less often now. The longer the period you sign up for (one month, six months, etc.), the better your price. I signed up on February 24th, but unfortunately the boxes are mailed out each Monday, which meant that I had to wait over a week to get mine! But I received it on March 4th and was eager to see what was inside.

Eggs, strawberries, potato walnut bread, citron cakes, apple jam, garlic, potatoes, onions, a carrot, bay salt (a specialty from Jeollanam-do), bok choy, spinach!!!, and winter cabbage.

As soon as I opened up my box, I smiled really wide. Smart packaging placed a carton of bright red strawberries, a loaf of bread, and golden cake-like things at the very top. Beneath, I discovered vegetables and a mysterious, pretty package that turned out to be salt. There was also some information about WWOOF CSA and their March newsletter, which I read and really enjoyed. It may sound odd, but it makes me so happy to see how this model of a local, community-based food system is actually working and thriving in Korea.

So, it didn't take me long to finish the strawberries and the cakes, which I think might have been vegan. But what was I going to do with all of those vegetables? I looked at the spinach, and then I looked at the eggs, and then I looked at the muffin tin drying in my kitchen sink, and I thought, "Quiches."

With some help from my friend Sara, I found a tips online for how to make quiches in cupcake tins and also how to use potatoes for the crust (since good dough is a pain to make without a food processor -- also a plus because it's flourless and gluten-free).

I didn't follow any recipe exactly, so I'll just describe roughly what I did and leave you with photos!

Mini-quiches just before being popped into the oven.

WWOOF CSA organic ingredients: potatoes, spinach, eggs, garlic, and salt. Other ingredients: milk, pepper, dried basil, and just a bit of flour. And imaginary cheese. I didn't have cheese, so I just pretended my quiches had some melted Gruyère on top...

For the crust, I peeled the potatoes into thin strips, added pepper, and arranged them on the bottom and sides of the cupcake tins like little crusts. I forgot to grease the tin, so later the quiches had a bit of difficulty coming out, but otherwise the potato crusts held together just fine. (According to the recipe I found, you should bake the crusts alone for a bit first before adding the quiche filling. I totally didn't read that part. It didn't really matter though!)

I then added finely chopped spinach and diced garlic to the potato bowls. The last step was the egg filling; for 3 servings (6 mini quiches): 2 eggs, 1 cup of milk, salt & pepper, and 1 tablespoon of flour to thicken it -- and for me because I'm weird, dried basil -- whisked into frothy goodness and poured over into the crusts, filling them to the top. Baked at 180°C/350°F for 25 minutes in a convection oven, and they came out like this:

Voila. Des quiches petites. Fait avec amour, de Corée!

Beautiful! And they were delicious (although my standards are low). The only problem I had was getting them out of the muffin tins, since I'd neglected to grease them. But this just meant that I got to spoon out the extra eggy filling stuck to the tins and eat it directly. No great loss there.

So, that was my first experience baking a savory treat! It was fun, and I learned some things that I'll keep in mind for next time. Thanks, WWOOF, for giving me great, fresh ingredients to work with, and I hope to find an excuse to get another box from you in the near future!

Noms. I need to make about a dozen more of these.

Oh, one more story: organic stuff is never treated with pesticides. This is good for humans. It's also good for pests! It means that they can survive in the natural environment in which the produce is grown. But if you don't like finding pests in your food... Ha. Keep your mind open to that possibility.

So, I was about halfway through the aforementioned carton of delicious strawberries when I saw a brownish blob stuck to the side of the carton. I took a closer look and realized that it was a slug! A tiny, cute little slug in my strawberries. Ick? Well, it wasn't exactly a welcome sight, but I also saw that the slug was still alive. So, some definitive proof that my fruit was free of fatal chemicals. Deciding that I wasn't actually grossed out by my discovery, I dropped the little guy off outside and rewashed the strawberries, quickly polishing them off.

Sorry, buddy, they're mine.

개학 - School's beginning!

Winter break is finally over. It's been a long two months, and I'm restless to get back to teaching! I wouldn't say I'm ready for 개학 (gaehak, the start of classes), though, since I've left a lot of my curriculum planning undone. Yeah, I really tried to make the most of my vacation this year, and that meant that I traveled and hung out with friends a ton but left all my work for the last minute. But as a last hurrah before I buckle down and hit the road running tomorrow morning, let us recap!

December 2013: I stayed at school during the week of Christmas, even though I'm contractually allowed to take off earlier, because I wanted to watch my students perform at their school festival. I baked a ton and then went to Seoul to visit friends, which always means eating a ton of food. Year-end festivities were put on hold so that I could finish my grad school apps.

January 2014: I reconnected with my homestay family, began a linguistics research project that took me to Jeju Island, then passed through Busan on my way to Japan for a five-day trip around Kyushu with my friend Erik! I took the hydrofoil ferry from Busan to Fukuoka, visited the Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki, saw a volcano, dipped in a natural hot spring, and ate a lot of amazing food. After ten days at home, I was off again to backpack through Thailand and Laos for two weeks.

February 2014: After visiting the protest sites in Bangkok and riding elephants in Chiang Mai, I crossed the northern border of Thailand into Laos and cruised down the Mekong while enjoying the amazing views of a virtually untouched landscape. I spent one night in a rural Lao village, then traipsed around Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng, exploring waterfalls and caves. In two weeks, I made a dozen new friends and decided that backpacking is the best way to travel when you're young. Lastly, I came back full circle to Bangkok via Vientiane and flew back to Korea, just in time for my school's second graduation ceremony. One week of writing for Changwonderful, biking with Changwon Bike Party, and blogging as much as I could passed by too quickly, and then I found myself on a plane bound for Pyongyang. North Korea was weird and unforgettable, and you'll hear all about it soon.

I've been back in South Korea for a little over a week. I got a new haircut, went to a pizza party with friends in Seoul, baked banana bread and Nutella muffins, tried out a ton of cafes and restaurants in Changwon, visited Tongyeong on a whim, volunteered with North Korean defectors, and went to my first ever K-pop concert: K.Will in Busan!

Okay, it's too late. I can't write anymore. Here are photos of my winter break!

Graduation day; new haircut; Tongyeong mural village; Cafe Olympic in Nagasaki; brunch in Changwon; hanging out in Seoul; hanging out in Bangkok; Changwon Bike Party; hanging out in Pyongyang; elephant ride in Chiang Mai; canoe ride in Laos; K.Will concert; chilling in Vang Vieng; chilling in Luang Prabang; and 친구들~

Some of the things I've made and/or eaten: Nutella banana walnut muffins, honey toast at Ogada, Japanese hambagu steak in Changwon, homemade pancakes, citron tea at Cafe Hau, orange French toast at Flying Pan Blue, Sulbing, more Sulbing, raw horsemeat (basashi) in Nagasaki, and peanut butter jalapeno burger at Sharky's in Busan!

Happy March! I saw cherry blossoms in bloom today in Tongyeong. Spring is coming! And goodnight.

Volunteering with North Korean Defector Children

This photo is courtesy of the Facebook page of the Korean Red Cross Gyeongnam (대한적십자사 경남지사). It was uploaded today with a caption I've roughly translated as, "Today was the Mentor-Mentee Matching and Opening Ceremony for the KRC Gyeongnam's mentoring program with college students and defector children. After the matching, everyone went to the first floor baking kitchen to make muffins and have some great bonding time. We have a ton of enjoyable and edifying activities planned for the future. We are all rooting for you!"

As some of my readers may be aware, I recently traveled to North Korea (DPRK) on a tour with the Pyongyang Project. I have a lot to say about that trip, but because I'm still processing some thoughts (and because I haven't finished recapping Southeast Asia), I'll hold off on blogging about it for now.

However, I am remaining connected in a small sense to my experiences there by beginning a new volunteer activity this semester. Fulbright Korea sponsors many educational and cultural initiatives far beyond mere teaching, and one of its most successful programs has been the English tutoring program for North Korean defectors.

North Korean defectors are DPRK citizens who illegally leave the country to attempt to live and acquire citizenship somewhere else. If defectors successfully make it to South Korea (ROK) -- which is difficult and dangerous -- they can acquire South Korean citizenship and adjust to life here. But things don't get easier for North Koreans in the south. In addition to culture shock and the stress of daily life here, many find themselves at an economic disadvantage fueled in part by linguistic disparity.

North Koreans can face prejudice because they speak Korean a bit differently, but even worse, many defectors have had little to no English education, which bars them from applying to better-paying jobs and stymies economic mobility. As for children, many who have spent more of their lives living in China than in either of the Koreas, they must hit the ground running with their education and play catch-up for years before they can match their peers in linguistic ability.

One of the children I met today is a typical case: MS is fifteen years old but looks much younger than his age. He wasn't exactly shy, but he wasn't speaking much, either; the reason, I soon realized, was that he is more comfortable speaking Mandarin than Korean. He told me that he arrived in South Korea one year ago; prior to that, he spent eight years in China. As we chatted in Mandarin, South Korean volunteers looked on in interest, unable to understand. MS used Korean with his official mentors and the other children but Chinese with his younger sister and me. I taught him a handful of English words, but when I'd try to switch from speaking in Mandarin to English, he'd stop and say, "영어 어려워요." English is hard.

When MS enters high school in a year or two, he will be required to take intensive English grammar courses. Right now, he cannot even introduce himself. It is for people like MS that Fulbright organized its English teachers all across South Korea and began the English tutoring program. At the Hana Centers (where defectors go for resettlement and living assistance) in cities including Seoul, Daegu, Gwangju, Jeonju, Jeju, Busan, and Daejeon, Fulbright teachers conduct classes and/or one-on-one tutoring for defectors who want to improve their English. Changwon's Hana Center, which is operated by the Korean Red Cross, made plans to begin its English tutoring program this semester -- via me.

So that's how I found myself at the Gyeongnam Red Cross building, making chocolates and baking muffins with twenty adorable and high-energy kids and twice as many local college students, who were the defector childrens' official mentors for the year. The classes will begin in a week or two, but for today, I was just there to meet my future students and have some fun. And I did just that! I've never made chocolates before, and to do so with a bunch of kids with wild imaginations and a rather typical lack of self-control was the best way to learn how, I reckon.

Handcrafted chocolates courtesy the kids of the Gyeongnam Hana Center!

Some of the children were very reticent, but others opened up very easily. One bold girl who told me her name was Sandy and tried out her entire English vocabulary on my throughout the day was utterly incredulous when I told her that I was American. (Even some of the college students mistook me for another mentor who happened not to have a mentee.) But Sandy insisted that I was Korean and was just pretending not to speak Korean well because I was the English teacher. I don't know if I managed to convince her in the end, but the playful misunderstanding didn't keep us from having a great time when we played tag outside or packaged the colorful chocolates and freshly-baked muffins into bags to take home.

I had such a wonderful day today, and I can't wait to see Sandy, MS, and some of the other kids soon in my classroom. I'm nervous about teaching low-level students for the first time, but I'm committed to this and I know it'll all work out.

Back in the Family

규, their cat! Bigger and cuter than ever.

Tonight, I had a very pleasant evening with my homestay family from last year. I was beginning to worry that they had either forgotten about me or didn't care to keep in touch, since I hadn't seen them since Chuseok, around September. After Christmas and the New Year passed without comment, I decided to simply invite myself over to their house, a sort of last-ditch effort before I gave up altogether.

As it turns out, they assumed that I had gone home for Christmas, and then they went on their own family vacation in the first few days of January. So it wasn't until this morning that host mom responded to my text and called me from the airport in Seoul, announcing that they had just returned from Cambodia and asking if I'd to join them for dinner tonight.

So, this evening, I baked cranberry-pecan scones and whipped up some cinnamon cream to go with it, then jogged over to their apartment. Not much had changed! The dogs still peed on the floor, their cat had punctured holes in everything during the family's four-day absence, and host bro was still taking care of his menagerie of a hedgehog, several spiders, and a bucket of mealworms. He had also acquired a giant centipede, although his scorpion had gone missing. "Where did it go?" I asked. "I don't know," he said, quite unconcerned. Host bro himself has gotten noticeably taller, but his personality is the same as ever.

As usual, host dad was craving 회, or Korean sushi. We had Korean sushi almost once a week last year. He really loves it; I really do not. But I was happy just to be spending time with them. They regaled me with stories, photos, and videos from their tour of Cambodia: Angkor Wat, floating villages, and eating snakes and tarantulas.

Apparently, K-pop and K-dramas have been a hit in the country, so children selling trinkets on the street had picked up enough Korean -- more than just "Gangnam style!", surprisingly -- to bargain with my family in a language they knew. "One, one dollar!" was the universal way to begin a bargain war for bracelets or toy flutes. But the next kid would offer three for one dollar. My host mother bought three bracelets for one dollar, only to learn that her daughter had bought five for one dollar from another kid. "필요없어요!" ("I don't need it!") she said to the next tiny salesman offering eight for one dollar. To her surprise, he responded, "필요있어요!" ("You do need it!") Taken aback, she just repeated, "필요없어요!" And the mischievous kid cried, "거짓말!" ("Lies!")

Host sister had similar drama (pun intended) with a tiny flute saleswoman who tried to charm her with, "언니 예뻐!" ("Sister, you're so pretty!") We all had a really good laugh at these stories. I was surprised when host mom first insisted that Cambodians were really good at speaking Korean, but I suppose it makes sense!

I thoroughly enjoyed the time we had to catch up. They invited me over for tea after dinner, and we munched on the scones I had brought. (It was my first time making scones, and as far as I'm concerned, they were a success!) We continued chatting as the cat crawled over the kitchen table and tried to get at the cinnamon cream. I found out that host dad has picked up the saxophone, host bro is ranked ninth in his middle school, and that host sister is going to Ewha Womans University! (Her parents aren't happy about the sticker price, but it's an elite school.) I left with more gifts than I had brought, as well as an offer from host dad to drop by whenever I wanted. I'm really glad we got to reconnect, and I hope that they'll remain my family, in a sense, as long as I'm in Korea.

Cranberry-pecan scones -- my first batch ever! I loosely followed this recipe, substituting cinnamon for nutmeg and heavy whipping cream for the buttermilk. They were fluffy and delicious.

Merry Christmas from Korea!

And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."
- Luke 2:10-11

A jar of homemade cranberry honey butter I made!

Merry Christmas! (메리 크리스마스!) This is the first Christmas I have ever spent away from home. 그래서 조금 고향과 가족이 그리워요... But I've had a great day and a very cheerful holiday season overall, so no complaints. To get my dose of holiday spirit, there was the Santa Bike Ride and a holiday White Elephant party at a church friend's home. At school, I wiled away free hours by cutting paper snowflakes and trees and showed Elf and Christmas YouTube videos to my students. To top it off, of course, baking Christmas cookies, listening to my Christmas playlist all day, and Skyping with my family, are really what make me feel "at home".

Today, I went to a service at my church, followed by bacon and pancakes at a friend's house, and then ice skating in the afternoon! The day ended with dinner and hanging out with a bunch of 솔크* friends. I'm heading to bed early because tomorrow morning I'll get up early to bake (more!) and go to school to attend my school's festival (it's like an end-of-the-year talent show). After that, it's winter break! 드디어!

Holiday party at a church friend's house last Saturday.

* In Korea, Christmas is all about couples and being romantic. It follows that being single on Christmas Day is considered to be one of the saddest things that can happen to you all year. The Konglish for this is "솔로 크리스마스" (Solo Christmas), which teens have shortened to 솔크. I like this because it sounds like the word "sulk". Got no one to hold hands and watch the pretty snow fall with? No one to buy you chocolate and a new scarf? No one to *gasp* match your red reindeer sweater with a green snowflake one? Too bad! Go sulk about it and better luck next year. Ha.

Pentatonix's "Little Drummer Boy" 
The Piano Guys' "Angels We Have Heard on High"

WestJet Christmas Miracle. Good advertising that brought me to tears.

Thanksgiving Weekend

Busan Fireworks Festival. Note the smartphone screens...

Highlights (and a lowlight) from an all-around great weekend:

• Thanksgiving Dinner with Fulbright and the US Embassy was quite nice. I ate lots of turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes with marshmallow, and pumpkin pie, and I caught up with friends and colleagues. I also performed a short demonstration of taekgyeon (right in front of the American ambassador!) and only endangered the life of an audience member one time. I'll post a video of my performance soon.
• Celebrated a friend's birthday with cake and beer while a legit thunderstorm raged outside.
• Caught up with a Swattie friend and talked extensively about books for our students. I love books, and last Friday I submitted an order for a few dozen more for my school's English library. Also, I baked snickerdoodles and the aforementioned friend got to try one for the very first time.
• Walking around Seoul with my 장봉 felt only slightly incongruous. A lady mistook my stick for a handgrip and used it to steady herself as she took a seat on the subway.
• Transportation fail: having left my wallet in a hostel, I had to borrow cash from a friend to take a taxi across the city, and I accidentally took a yellow cab, whose rates are twice as expensive as the normal taxis. I gave the driver all the money I had, apologizing profusely. Miraculously, I was only one dollar short of the fare.
• Transportation win: I never book bus tickets in advance (I don't even know if it's possible), so sometimes earlier buses sell out. I arrived at the terminal at 5:30 and the next available ticket was for 8:15. I bought it but then went straight to the gate to see if I could snag an empty seat on an earlier bus. Just before the 6:00 bus left, I asked if there were any seats still available, and voila, I got right on.
• I obtained the position of photography editor for Fulbright's literary magazine, Infusion! Our staff had its first meeting today at a cozy cafe in Hongdae. I'm very excited to work on the magazine this year.

Picture is unrelated: I took that at the Busan Fireworks Festival, which was a few weekends ago. I absolutely loved it. Despite the frighteningly large crowds, the beautiful, mesmerizing show really made my whole weekend.

베이킹을 사랑해! I Love Baking!

Fulbright Fall Conference was last weekend, and one of the events was a bake sale as part of a fundraising effort for various Fulbrighter-led initiatives. My contribution was a batch of persimmon cupcakes (with persimmon frosting!) and Oreo brownies! My friend Katelyn, who baked peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies, and I together raised about $70 for the North Korea Defector tutoring program in Daegu.

I documented my uber-baking process, which began at 6am the morning before I was to leave for Gyeongju. I got up before sunrise, baked for three hours straight, cleaned for one hour, packed, and was out the door by 10:30am.

The set-up: some new baking pans, a new muffin tin! And all the ingredients up top: peanut butter, persimmons, Oreos, chocolate... Dang, seeing this makes me excited to bake again.

Oreo brownies: one layer of cookie dough, one layer of Oreos, and one layer of brownies. Recipe from here.

The finished product! It was very sweet, but not as melty or moist as I'd have liked. Still, not bad for the first try.

Persimmon cupcakes, just out of the oven! I mostly followed this recipe from the Cupcake Project, but used cinnamon instead of pumpkin pie spice and also added crushed walnuts per a recipe I got from my aunt. (The idea was inspired by her own persimmon cake, so thanks, A-koh!)

Here's the first batch! Persimmon cupcakes, with persimmon. :) Cute, but a bit flat. Perhaps more baking powder next time to help them rise. Also, more flour to counteract too much juice from the fruit.

I also made persimmon frosting! Without powdered sugar (confectioner's sugar), I had to go with a recipe that used granulated sugar, but it turned out better than I could have imagined, anyway. Butter, sugar, milk, flour (?!), and one persimmon, whipped together like mad and refrigerated for a few hours. I frosted them just before the bake sale, so that it wouldn't melt. They were a hit. I even sold cups of extra frosting for a buck each; I'm not kidding.

Oh and here's another thing I did a few weeks ago: cinnamon sugar sweet potato fries. Yum!

I love baking and I will try to get better at it throughout the year. Fall is definitely here. How do I know? The weather is chillier and I've caught a cold. Time to try recipes with pumpkins (Korean pumpkins, 호박, are quite different from American ones) and Korean pears!

휴일

휴일 (hyu-il) means holiday or vacation day. Today is Korea's Foundation Day, when the ancient Gojoseon kingdom was supposedly established by a god who descended upon Baekdu Mountain from heaven. It's a typical origin myth, and while I find the story interesting (there's a part about a bear that ate garlic for a hundred days and turned into a human), I'm only really invested in the day because, as a national public holiday, I got the day off of school. My students didn't; they're stuck on campus for a day of self-studying.

I don't have any plans for the day... aside from the usual sleep in, cook some whatever, upload photos to Facebook, and work on graduate school applications. Here's what I've been up to lately, though:

Fulbright friends!

Wine, cheese, and cookies! And tons more food.

Last weekend, I traveled to Pohang (about two and a half hours away by bus) to visit a fellow Fulbright teacher, who teaches at the Gyeongbuk Science High School. We had organized an informal "wine and cheese social", where we dressed up, discussed art, and networked. Nah, I'm just kidding. We drank crappy wine and ate cookies and pizza, watched Lady Gaga's music videos and talked about our schools and travel plans, and really, it was just an excuse to hang out with friends and pretend to be classy (세련되다) and I have no regrets.

And then this happened.

Katelyn and an apple pie a la mode!

This past Sunday and Monday, my friend Katelyn came to visit. Her school has midterms this week, so she was free to travel, and, aren't I lucky, she decided to travel to Changwon! My first visitor this year. To celebrate, we had a jam session, baked an apple pie (pâte brisée is impossible to make...), watched Glee, and had a fantastic time.

Also, Katelyn visited my school on Monday and left a couple of my classes in awe. We threw together a lesson that consisted mostly of my students asking her questions about her life, and the response was quite positive. Some of my students were more engaged on Monday than they have been all year!

In other news, I've officially begun applying to graduate programs in Linguistics, most of them in California. Writing a personal statement is proving to be difficult, since I don't know for sure what the programs are looking for in an applicant, or how well I stack up. However, I hope to have them all done by the end of November, and then I'll leave it up to God until I hear back in February or March next year.

I also bought a guitar, and I started listening to more K-pop (current favorites: Ailee, Primary, Roy Kim, Akdong Musician, and Miss A). Uh-oh... I wonder how much of a distraction both of these are going to turn out to be!

Baking Party

Some friends came over tonight because I enticed them with cookies! It was supposed to be a 집들이 (housewarming party), but in reality I just wanted to test-drive my new convection oven. The instruction manual was in Korean, so I needed some help... My friend 은진 graciously took me shopping for baking supplies this afternoon, and then we set to work making banana bread! Preparing the batter was easy and quite fun -- 은진, like most Koreans, doesn't bake often at all, so it was a novel experience. When it came to using the oven... well, we ended up just pressing a lot of buttons. (I learned that convection ovens don't need to preheat. At least, mine doesn't. Is this normal?)

바나나 브레드, which is not technically bread but who cares?

We then ate our delicious banana bread and watched a movie, and when Aaron came over, we started on chocolate chip and M&M cookies. These were less successful. I think we were all comparing them subconsciously to the warm, gooey cookies that Maggie Gyllenhaal's character makes in Stranger Than Fiction (the movie we watched). Ours were warm and a bit crispy. Too little flour? Too much butter? I'll figure this out. I have a whole year to get good at this.

엠엔엠 쿠키, which was a wonderful culinary invention!

Also, like Maggie Gyllenhaal's character in Stranger Than Fiction, I'm going to have to give away a lot of what I make, because I'm trying to eat healthfully this year, and cookies don't factor into that anywhere. You know what that means, readers who live in Korea: come visit me, and I will feed you delicious baked goods! In the meantime, I think I'll give the rest of the banana bread to my old homestay family. I bet they've never even heard of banana bread...

July Fourth

Cookies and sparklers!

July 4th didn't happen last year, at least for the eighty of us Fulbrighters. Our plane left Los Angeles on the evening of the third and arrived in Seoul on the fifth. Crossing the International Date Line going west caused us to lose a day, and that day happened to be Independence Day.

My family's usual July 4th tradition is a backyard barbecue at my cousin's place, the one with the swimming pool. Even though I call it a tradition, I realized today from looking back through my Facebook timeline that I haven't celebrated the holiday with my family in many years. In fact, I have not even been in the United States for Independence Day since 2009. That was four years ago. I feel mighty unpatriotic. Ha!

Hanna and Traylor roll out dough with... jars of Skippy. Ha!

This year, I decided to use the holiday as an excuse to give back to my school community. Although I'm not very close with all the teachers, I wanted to show my appreciation for their having taken care of me, given me rides to school, and shown willingness to converse in English, even though it's difficult for most of them. So, yesterday evening, I invited myself over to my friends' place and we had a cookie-baking party! (My homestay does not have an oven.)

Three and a half hours of mixing, cookie-cutting, decorating, and sneaking dough (and spoonfuls of peanut butter and Nutella) later, we had over a hundred cookies. We then ate them. We also lit sparklers! Indoors. Smart, right? One wayward spark burned the new linoleum floor, but it wasn't such a disaster. The cookies were really delicious, and I had a great time with Hannah, Traylor, Tiana, Amy, and Saerom.

Choco-chip, choco-dipped, sprinkles, and 똥 cookies (the Hershey Kiss ones)!

Then, I went to school this morning armed with two giant tupperware containers of cookies and left them in the main 교무실 (teachers' office/lounge) along with a note: 맛있게 드세요! (Eat a lot!) Happy American Independence Day! I also personally left some cookies for the vice principal and two teachers who have been exceptionally kind to me.

I don't mean to brag, but they were a hit. The teachers who were in the office when I left the cookies came over and wondered where they had come from. When I told them that I'd made them myself, they looked shocked. And they all ate quite a few each. When my co-teacher sent out a message to the staff inviting them to the office for cookies, she had to mention "양이 많지는 않으니 선착순..." which means, "There aren't a whole lot, so first come, first served."

Actually, here is the rest of her message; I'm reproducing it because it amuses me: 앤드류샘이 맛있는 쿠키를 구워 오셨습니다. 오늘이 바로 그 유명한 July, the fourth!라고 미국독립기념일이라. 인디언들에게는 슬펐을지 모르나 암튼 좋은 날입니다.^^ 직접 만들었다는데 맛이 좋습니다. 허나...

Translation: "Teacher Andrew brought some tasty cookies he baked, as today is the famous "July, the fourth!", or American Independence Day. Perhaps the Indians were sad, but anyway, it's a great day. [happy emoticon] He made them himself, so they're delicious. (But... first come, first served)"

I got several messages from teachers later, kindly thanking me for the cookies. Later, I intimated to my co-teacher that if there's enough money in the budget next semester, I'd like a convection oven for my apartment so that I can bake tons more cookies for everyone. If I could, I would totally be that guy.

Happy Fourth of July! 미국 독립 기념일 축하합니다! (Mi-guk Tongnip Kinyeom-il chukha-hamnida)

On that note, it has now been one year since I left the States to begin my Fulbright adventure in South Korea. Look, two blog posts from one year ago: July 4th and July 5th, 2012. My, how time flows like running water. (시간이 유수와 같이 빠르다!)