dunkin donut darling

The sweet lady that cleans my apartment every Tuesday comes at 9:00 a.m. I used to play mahjong on that morning but we changed it to Wednesday afternoon to get a better response. I had someone clean my house when I worked in Texas. But since I am just a homebody, I feel sort of guilty that I have someone to clean. However, the apartment comes with weekly cleaning and Ken especially appreciates it when I am not here. The big thing is that she irons our sheets!! Have I mentioned that before? It is my favorite thing she does.

Anyway, I always feel funny when I am just hanging around the apartment when she is cleaning. Sometimes I work on the computer, but I still feel like I am in the way. This morning, I headed out to town to stroll the streets and maybe stop for coffee. Most of the businesses do not open until 10:00 or so, but the hair salons already had their towels out to dry.
Getting ready for the day. I guess pink is the towel of choice.


I also took some pictures of something that disturbs me here in Korea. I have mentioned in the past about the meticulous garbage collection they have here. But Ken and I have noticed that whenever we are in a public place - like a park or on the street - there are never any public trash cans.
I would really love to know the reason for this. Is there not an agency that can be in charge of this? Thus you see piles of trash heaped in areas of town. And it is nothing to see someone just throw a piece of paper on the ground very nonchalantly. You can walk around Okpo and see nicely kept areas with even flowers
and then in your next few steps you see this....
I think it is such a shame because Korea is such a beautiful country. On the other hand, the shipyard where Ken works is spotless. I haven't been in alot of large industrial areas, but I would think that this takes the cake for cleanliness. Even around our apartment (which is run by the shipyard), there are people sweeping the sidewalks and gutters all the time. Well, I guess I will get off of my soapbox.

I headed to Dunkin Donuts.
I don't know if I have mentioned that we have one. It is similar to the U.S. but they do have some donuts that are green (as in green tea). They also do not make them there - I have seen a van deliver the donuts on occasion. The Korean people seem to have taken to donuts. In some Korean cities, they have Krispy Kreme donuts. You wouldn't believe the lines and the boxes of donuts they are taking home! Anyway, I rounded the corner and there were 2 friends of mine, Brenda and Wendy. So I was able to have some conversation with my coffee. While we were there, the cutest little girl came in for a donut.
Isn't she adorable? Her mother let me take her picture. However, I think she was more interested in the donut than the camera.

tasty tesco tweekim

The grocery store I go to in Goyheon is called Tesco Home Plus. Everyone seems to call it either Tesco or Home Plus. If you remember, this is where they do the exercises to the Hokey Pokey or If You're Happy and You Know it Clap Your Hands. I have read that you shouldn't shop for groceries when you are hungry because supposedly you will buy too many groceries, especially items you hadn't planned on. Well, Tesco apparently hasn't heard of this ploy of American grocery stores. Because if you get hungry while in the store, you can just sit down on a stool and eat some noodles or numerous objects on skewers. I didn't have my camera but maybe I will get a picture of this area of the store in the future. (By the way, I have resized my photos. So just click on a picture to get a better view, then you press the back arrow and it will take you back to the blog.)

Anyway, you can also purchase some of these items and take them home. They package them up for you with a package of soy sauce and slap the price on it. I had tried a couple of the items, but I decided to go for the tempura today. These items came to $5.00.

My favorite of the whole bunch were the green peppers. They serve these peppers raw with meals - they can be quite spicy - but Ken eats them. The peppers at Tesco are stuffed with some sort of cellophane noodles, veggies and possibly a little pork. Then they are battered and fried. Anyway, I love these with a bit of soy sauce. I have scooped some of the filling out so you can see it. Also, everything is pictured on a salad plate (so you can get an idea of the size).


This next item was what I thought it would be - calamari (squid).
It was chewy but still tasty. I definitely would eat it again. This picture is with part of the batter taken off.

The Koreans eat quite a bit of sweet potatoes. They put it in many recipes and even use it to make a type of soju (their traditional Korean liquor).
I really don't like sweet potatoes. I think it is mainly the consistency of them. Anyway, this had sweet potatoes in the middle. This is a photo of the inside with the batter scraped off.
Not my favorite.


The next item was a little turnover filled with much the same items as the pepper but with something else I couldn't quite identify.
It had a different flavor and it wasn't bad. It also had more of the pork or whatever in it.

I had no idea what the next piece of tempura was. It was chewy and had a slightly sweet taste and really wasn't bad at all - I would eat it again. I was guessing it was some sort of dried fish though.... and it was.
Ken wasn't thrilled, but I had him take some to the office and ask the secretary to verify that it was dried fish. She replied with the following email:
The inside food is a “Dried Filefish”.
That is a Dried filefish fried food.
Korea people call “ZIPO(Dried Filefish)TWEEKIM(FRIED FOOD)”
“ZIPO TWEEKIM”
Enjoy with a meal^^*

I have saved the best for last - and not necessarily the best tasting. I had purchased this previously, so I knew what I was in for. By the tail, you can see that it is shrimp.
What you don't realize is that it is the WHOLE shrimp from head to tail! Nothing like crunching down on the head, antennae and legs of a shrimp when you aren't expecting it. It is obvious that they didn't devein the shrimp, but at least they could de-eyeball it!

searching for sea glass

Yesterday afternoon (Sunday), Ken and I felt the need to get out of the house for a bit. It wasn't an absolutely beautiful day, but at least it wasn't raining.
We drove about 20 minutes to Wahyeon Beach. I don't know why we haven't been there sooner. There is a large expanse of sand and it was very clean, as beaches go. There was also the luxury of bathrooms along the seawall. Ken and I sat for awhile watching the waves.

Then we decided to trek along the beach. I am always looking down while walking on the beach - looking for shells and such. I spotted a couple of pieces of sea glass. I explained to Ken that this is glass that is tumbled and smoothed out by the waves and the sand.

Whenever I think of sea glass, I am reminded of the movie "Spanglish". My daughter and I love this movie - perhaps because it involves mother/daughter relationships. In a nutshell, a Hispanic woman that speaks very limited English goes to work for a couple that has a son and a daughter. They rent a beach house for the summer and have the Hispanic woman come with them. However, she has a daughter that they invite to come also. Anyway, one day the husband tells his two children and the other daughter to look for sea glass on the beach for him. He owns a restaurant where he is the chef and he said that he would use the glass to make a platter for fish at his restaurant. He said he would pay a certain amount (I don't remember how much) for each piece of sea glass. His two children soon tire of this project, but the other little girl comes to him one day with a bucket of sea glass. According to his price for each piece of sea glass, it comes to $650! In case you might want to see the movie after this little blurb, I won't reveal what happens.

Back to our sea glass quest. I got Ken pretty involved in the search and we came away with a respectable amount. I have a feeling we will both be on the lookout whenever we go to the beach. I was looking up to see if sea glass was one or two words and read some interesting facts. Green, clear, brown and amber are the most common colors found. However, light blue, yellow and pink can be found also. Grey, purple, black, red and orange are the rarest.

I saw a friend of mine from painting and mahjong spending the afternoon with her two children.

Ken also found a friend.

Or three.

On the way home, I snapped a picture of this sweet lady digging in the sand during low tide for ????? I see this all the time but I don't know exactly what type of sea life they are harvesting. I'll try to find out and let you know.

so sorry

I am sorry for my lack of writing in the past month, but I have been in Texas visiting. While I was home, my mother had a publication from Somerset Studio called Artful Blogging.
I brought it back on the airplane and read it. I thought it would have alot of technical information in it, but it mainly had excerpts of different blogs. However, it did have a few tidbits about blogging etiquette. One of them was to make sure you let your readers know if you're to be away from your blog for a while and tell them when you'll be back. I originally started this blog for myself and family to read, but as per some of my comments I see that it is read by other people. My family knows when I am away, but I guess others do not. For that, I am sorry - I won't let it happen again.