Day Trip: Daebudo

The church I've been going to here in Korea is really great. The service is in English, but the congregants call over 20 different countries home.

In addition to normal Bible studies, they also have activity based small groups. Like right now, I'm in a taekwondo group, and if all goes according to plan, I'll be a yellow belt come December. So, that's pretty fun. I'm also part of a day trips group, which has been a nice way to see the country and meet new people.

A couple weeks ago we took a trip to Daebudo, a little island a few hours from Seoul.

When we got to the island, we visited a new, manmade park situated on strip of land reclaimed from the sea. We took a guided tour of the area and learned about the irrigation and gardening difficulties there, with the land being so sandy and all.

it was a very Monet kind of day.

Though, with cosmos blooming in every direction, you'd never know the soil wasn't fertile.

After the park, we walked along the beach for a bit and watched some local fishermen haul in their catch.

Then, we headed to a seafood restaurant to taste some of the cuisine the island was famous for, namely, shrimp, haemul pajeon (seafood pancake), and a noodle that I think was called kalguksu.

For the shrimp, our waitress brought over a bucket of live creatures, dumped them into a boiling pot in the middle of our table, and closed the lid. Horrified, we all listened for a solid minute as the shrimp fought for their lives. Then it was silent. One of the Korean ladies at our table opened the pot, dished the shrimp, and instructed us to pull the heads and legs off and eat...

it would have been worse not to eat the shrimp after all they'd been through...

It was a nice trip. I wouldn't want to do the shrimp part again, but the ocean was pleasant. Sometimes it's nice to be reminded of how small we are.

Bootcamp NYC (Korean public transportation and other things)

At the conclusion of my freshman year of college, I watched the class of 2010's commencement ceremony from my 15th floor dorm room. When the ceremony was over, Sinatra's sweet voice played through the campus while elated graduates sang and formed celebratory kick-lines. "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere..." Looking down at the seniors, I couldn't wait for that to be me, and soon enough it was.

I'm convinced that I would not have transitioned smoothly into South Korea if I had not first spent four years in New York City, mainly for three reasons: public transportation, stressful situations, and being alone.

1. Visitors to New York are always impressed by people who can navigate the city with ease; however, they shouldn't be. New York -- Manhattan at least-- is a giant grid. Getting from point A to point B is basically as simple as plotting coordinates in a game of Battleship. The subway can be a bit tricky when it comes to transferring lines, and the buses may be reserved for more seasoned New Yorkers, but after some exposure, traveling in the city isn't too difficult. And if you do get lost, you can always catch a cab -- or call Uber.

With that said, if you've ever taken the subway from the Upper West Side to JFK with a 50 pound suitcase at Christmas time, you can navigate the Korean subway system no problem. The subways in Korea are much gentler than those of New York. None of that abrupt stop, trying to get you to fall on your face business. On the train, stops are announced in both Korean and English, which is crazy to me. I mean, despite the number of Spanish-speakers in NYC, you're never going to hear anyone speaking Spanish over the intercom... If you're in Seoul, I recommend the snazzy Jihachul subway app.

subway station out in the boondocks.

You can use your phone and get WiFi underground. That’s good in the sense that it's amazingly convenient, but you miss out on the beautiful sight of rows of people reading books to pass their commute time. Instead, you get rows of people on giant Samsung smartphones. 

touch screen station maps to help you get around.

The bus is a little more tricky. I'd say tag along with someone who knows where they're going until you learn your own way; that's been my strategy at least. There are a couple cool things about Korean buses. The inter-city buses tell you how many seats are available and also have WiFi and phone chargers onboard. There're also airport shuttles that take you directly to Incheon, so that's convenient.

bus with TV and internet.

You pay for the subway with a T-money card, but unlike MetroCards, with T-Money, you pay for distance travelled, not per swipe, so you save quite a bit. You can buy and refill cards at convenience stores or in subway stations.

NYC could learn a thing or two about bike lanes from Korea...

2. In the words of Forrest Gump, "S*** happens." You get set on fire at restaurants; you’re approached by emo guys who look like they’re going to kill you; you shamelessly cry in public parks; you get cursed out by strangers a couple times a year. (There are actually decent stories there... Ask me sometime.) But yeah, learning from past experiences, I feel New York prepared me to be pretty lax about situations out of my control. That's probably why I haven't quit my job... In the end, life is life. Conflict makes for better stories -- at least in the movies.

3. Lastly, likely one of the most important things New York taught me was how to spend most of my time alone without being lonely, which is not to say I'm never lonely. A city of over eight million people, it's astounding how isolated you can feel there. The numbers provide anonymity, and with everyone taking up an independent, "you do you boo" attitude, it's easy to get lost. NYC taught me to find peace in solitude. At the same time, New York -- specifically, the church in New York -- taught me to be intentional with relationships, to make time for friends, to stick to appointments, and to be sacrificial with my time because people need people. "It was not good for man to be alone." So, in Korea, I’m trying to do those things as I start to make friends here.

I haven't been here that long though, so these observations could be prematurely thought out... 

But anyway, I love New York. When I think about that city, I hear this song in my head and at the same time, remember all the brokenness that resides there. Regardless, I can't wait to go back someday. Until then...

Teaching in Korea: What I'm Doing Here

After a quick glance at a calendar, I realized I've been in Korea for over a month. Time flies, retrospectively at least. I also realized that most people don't know what I'm doing here, so hopefully this post will clear that up.

Until September 2014, I'm contracted to work as an English (ESL) teacher in South Korea. I work at a hagwon, which is what Koreans call private academies that are supplementary to students' regular school day. There are hagwon's for languages, math, science, music, and the list goes on. Most kids attend multiple hagwons per week, if not each day.

In the morning, from about 9:00 am to 2:30 pm, my hagwon is a kindergarten, so I teach a phonics and reading to a bunch of kids ranging in age from, I'd guess, three to seven. Once or twice a month, we get to take the "kindy kids" on a field trip, so that's nice.

last week, we took the kids to a traditional folk village.
it was like the Plymoth Plantation of Korea.

however, we spent most of the day in the amusement park area, which is fine
by me. the kids were really happy to be able to play.

In the afternoons from 3:00 pm to around 6:30 pm, the school becomes a hagwon for older kids, so I teach comprehension, reading, writing, and vocabulary to 2nd - 5th grade students. The school provides the textbooks, but we teachers have to write and submit all our own lesson plans, grade assignments, and send monthly progress reports to parents. There's always something due.

some of my boys on the field trip. the kid in the Dodgers hat never. stops. talking, but it's
impossible to get mad at him because he's so full of joy. i smile every time i see him.

Unlike public schools, hagwons are for-profit entities, and like most things, where money is involved, the stress level is inflated. The school I work at has an almost comical teacher turnover rate. The guy who I replaced lasted a week and then did a midnight run without telling anyone -- and he wasn't the first to do so...

the school does pay for our flights to and from Korea,
and occasionally they feed us when we have to work overtime or weird hours.

My first week of work, I was afraid of what I'd committed to because the place seemed so incredibly disorganized, but as the weeks have progressed, I’ve gotten use to the routine -- or lack thereof  -- and have become more open minded towards the constant flux of the school. I think they're trying to make things better though...

i don't mind the kids screaming on rides. just in the classroom.

In just a month, my patience has increased exponentially. Though, I regularly have to remind myself that kids are kids, that I was a kid once. They just want to have fun.

Still, the days can feel mad long, but like I said in the spider rant, I haven't been stressed at all -- terribly annoyed, but not stressed. The job does however take a toll on my body in that quite often I lose my voice before the elementary school students arrive, but I look at this as an area where I can practice the breathing techniques I've learned from my voice lessons, should I ever make it back to a stage...

sometimes, halfway through the day, i feel like this guy
and just want to hide somewhere quiet.

This weekend, I happened to meet one of the ex-teachers from the school I'm currently working at. She told me how much happier she's been since leaving and how being at the school taught her that she wasn't meant to be a teacher. I now wonder the same thing, which is interesting because before I started working here, I was planning on getting my masters in education once I returned to the US. Maybe I'm just teaching the wrong age group? Maybe it’s just the type of school I’m working at? I don't know. From this past month, I don't feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. I don't want to sound too millennial, though; someone might tell me that I'm just lazy and have set the expectations for my life too high...

As one of my friends in Teach for America pointed out, "Teaching is hard." Yes. Yes, it is. I knew I was blessed with amazing teachers throughout my life, but since starting a full-time classroom position, my respect and admiration for my past educators has risen quite a bit. I want to send them all on a "thank you" vacation, but I can't because I have a teacher's salary.

At the church I've been going to here in Korea, we've been talking a lot about the weight of our words. "Death and life are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21a)." I know first hand -- as most do -- how one careless word can plant seeds that produce mental weeds well into adulthood.  Yet, at the same time, "Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. (Proverbs 16:24)." I know that to be true as well. As a teacher, I feel like there are so many opportunities to speak life -- and death -- into students' lives. I just hope that even through the craziness of the job, I can be sure to speak life. 

Anyway, I’m planning on staying for the full length of my contract. I mean, I signed my name to it and I was raised never to quit; plus, I like Korea and want time to see more of the country. So, we’ll see how it goes.

Behind the Scenes: Braised Tofu and Eggplant

You guys, this wan't cool.

While making dinner, a little spider, about the size of a quarter crawled in my apartment. I squashed it and kept cooking.

Four years in New York and having grown up in the South, spiders, insects, and pests are no strangers to me. I've handled roaches, silverfish, mice -- MICE as in plural, and spiders... within reasonable size.

I mean, at the moment, there's a spider that's setup shop outside the front door of my apartment, and you know, I just let it do its thing. Really, it's doing me a favor keeping flies out. After a couple days here, I realized there was another little one that lived under the step into my bathroom. It mainly would stay in the shadows but occasionally would pop out. Once I tried to step on it, but it jumped back into its hiding place, so after that, I was like, That's cool. You stay in your lane; I'll stay in mine.

Back to dinner, after I squashed that first spider, I put it in the garbage, then opened my front door to take the trash out, and a grasshopper jumped in. Nooooo! I thought, I don't feel like chasing you around. So I stood and stared at it for a bit. I turned around to pick up one of my muddy tennis shoes, which I've lazily left at the front door since getting back from WWOOFing, and chucked it at the grasshopper, who just hopped around more.

I don't know if it was in my shoe or if it came in while the front door was open, but a freaking GIANT SPIDER crawled in and over to the kitchen cupboards.

It was too big to squash, to big to allow to take residence in a corner of my home, and also too big to try and catch because it looked like Death. Like it might as well have been a copperhead as far as I was concerned. Like this wasn't even an "I wish I had a boyfriend" moment because I don't even think a guy wanting to display his manliness would have wanted anything to do with this thing.

I had a mini rush of anxiety and had no idea what to do, so I embarrassingly called my co-worker who lives in my building, but I think she was at a bar because her phone was answered but all I could hear was ambient bar sounds.

So I just stood petrified for a few minutes until the National Geographic specimen decided to crawl back out the door.

Not cool. Not cool at all. Guys, really so not cool.

Now that it's all over, the crazy thing is, I realized that this is the first time I've come close to experiencing anxiety in Korea, which is saying a lot considering how often I felt it in the States. I guess that's a blessing? I don't know, at the moment, my heart's still pounding. Ugh.

Braised Tofu and Eggplant

As I've shared before, my kitchen in Korea is limited. While thinking of what to make for dinner the other night, I was reminded of a time a couple years ago when I helped one of my Hawaiian friends with a film shoot. To thank me and the rest of her cast, she had us over for dinner. That night, I was introduced to sesame seed oil and how wonderful it was on eggplant and rice.

So, I decided to try and find a recipe for the eggplant dish she made. I found this one, "Sunday Supper: Braised Tofu with Eggplant and Shitakes." 

The first time I ever tried tofu, I was in Kindergarten, living in California. At a cookout at my vegetarian, model best-friend's house, I was prompted to try some sort of tofu faux-meat that didn't sit well with my stomach. I never really tried tofu again until college, where I learned that it wasn't an invented meat replacement for people who wanted to stay in shape, but rather had been a staple in Asian diets for centuries.

Anyway, this recipe was really easy to make and legitimately tasty -- as in I'd make it even at home where I have more than two-burners to cook with, so I wanted to share it:



Braised Eggplant with Tofu:

You'll need:
- 4 teaspoons oil (I used soybean.)
- 1 cup sliced shiitake mushrooms (I used the button kind.)
- 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
- 3 long, purple eggplants
- 1 tablespoon chili paste
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce (The recipe's gluten-free if you use gluten-free soy sauce.)
- 1/2 pound tofu, blotted dry
- 1 tablespoon dark sesame seed oil for garnish


* If you want to serve this on rice, go ahead and get that cooking so it'll be done by the time you're finished with the eggplant.

1. Cook mushrooms 5-10 minutes in 1 teaspoon of oil. Once browned, set aside.

2. Cook garlic in 1 teaspoon of oil until golden.

fun fact: garlic is so popular here, you can buy it in convenience stores near the fruit

3. Dice the eggplant. Cook in 2 teaspoons of oil for 5-10 minutes.

all this was only like $0.40!

4. Add chili paste and water to pan. Stir and cook 10-15 minutes until eggplant is tender.

5. Add soy sauce, diced tofu, sesame seed oil, and mushrooms. Stir and  enjoy!

Some of you may be thinking, "It looks like dog food,"
even though I tried to compose the shot in the most flattering light.
But believe me, it tastes like fluffy clouds of wonder.

Recipe from: http://markbittman.com/sunday-supper-braised-tofu-with-eggplant-and/

WWOOF Korea

I wanted to spend last summer working on a ranch and this past summer farming in northern France. Obviously, neither of those things happened, but I have since remained interested in the idea of working someplace where I could look up and see the sky.

WWOOF connects organic famers around the world with volunteers interested in sustainable agriculture. The volunteers work the lands and learn farming techniques for a designated amount of time in exchange for meals and housing from the farmers. It's a pretty cool program and a great way to travel if you don't mind a little dirt and sweat. I'd been wanting to get involved with the organization for a while now, so this weekend, I did.

Yesterday, with a not-particularly-granola-looking group of fellow organic farming enthusiasts, I attended  WWOOF Korea's "Get Your Hands Dirty" day trip to Ungilsan.

At the meeting point, our WWOOFing guide told us about our task for the day and handed our volunteer t-shirts and pamphlets about AsioGusto. (Free swag!). We then hopped into the back of a pick-up truck and drove to the farm. I found riding in the truck bed to be quite exciting, since I'd only done it once before.

Once at the farm, one of the farmers gave us a brief lesson in strawberry planting -- our task for the day, and then, we were off to work!

We started planting the strawberries in our first greenhouse around 9:45am. None of us were really accustom to the labor of farming, being hunched over working in the mud. We often had to stand straight to stretch our backs and would laugh when we caught our fellow teammates taking breaks to do so.

strawberry plant.

long way to go.

almost done. 

After we finished our first greenhouse, we took a break for steamed red bean buns. I'd never had them before, but will be looking out for them in the future. Yum.

ho bbang.

Rejuvenated by the snack, we moved onto greenhouse #2. With a lot of people needing to use the bathroom and others being hungry for lunch, we were motivated to finish this one more quickly. We got into a rhythm and knocked it out in what felt like no time at all.

We jumped back into the pick-up truck and drove to the main farmhouse for lunch, a home-cooked Korean meal made from organic ingredients fresh from the farm. It was great to sit back and enjoy the company of the team as we laughed and ate together; though, the makgeolli that was flowing may have made some people extra happy.

rice, eggplant, kimchi, eggs, pickled Korean pumpkin, beef, potatoes, and soup.

sooo good.

While we were eating, a ladybug landed on our table. The farmer told us that ladybugs were a sign of organic farming, since the bugs do not populate fields that have been sprayed with chemicals. Cool little fact.

our team.

After lunch, we went back to finish up our third and final greenhouse. We sang a traditional Korean farming song and listened to the rain tap on the roof as we planted. It was perfect. I honestly kept thinking, PTL. Nature does that to you.

all done.

Around 6:30 p.m., we were done. We ended the day's events by celebrating back at the main farmhouse with, of course, more food. This time we had pajun (pajeon), one of my favorites.

lots of chickens at the main farmhouse.
when the farm started, the farmer only had two.

the head farmer, Beyoungsu Kim, made us dinner himself

We chilled until dark, talking and eating. When things started to quiet down, the head farmer, Beyoungsu Kim, told us his story, how he was in mechanical engineering but then came to learn the importance of sustainable agriculture for the environment. He thought the best way to advocate organic farming practices was to become a farmer himself, so that's what he did. About thirty years later, his farm had grown into the beautiful place we were privileged to work at that day.

Beyoungsu also talked to us about three practices he'd incorporated into his life since becoming a farmer: 1) giving up the quest for material wealth, 2) trading in speed and instant gratification for intentionality, and 3) being content even in life's discomforts. Words of wisdom indeed. 

It's an attractive lifestyle, farming. Literally reaping the fruits of your labor and not being polluted with all the opinions and advertisements of society, but rather having fresh air fill your lungs daily. 

a small, small portion of the farm. très belle, non?

Now, my shoes are covered in dirt. My camera's covered in dirt. My jacket has dirt on it. My water bottle has dirt in it. And that's cool. I'd gladly do it again. I'm definitely looking forward to more WWOOFing experiences in the future. Maybe I'll even become a farmer... (Ok, that's highly unlikely, but a garden would be cool.)