kim in korea

i can see clearly now

2009-04-21T14:41:00.010+09:00

I can't remember if I have commented in the past on the yellow sand during springtime in Korea. Just for your review - it originates in Inner Mongolia and the Gobi Desert and is carried through dust storms to Korea, Japan and China. It is heaviest during the spring months. From what I have read, alot of it is due to the fact that they are clearing too much land and from overgrazing of livestock. Combined with a dry winter, there is an abundance of dust and sand that is carried through the air to other areas. Supposedly Japan, Korea and China have joined forces to replant trees and/or grasslands in the trouble spots.

Not only is it a health and environmental problem, but there is a constant haze to the sky during a beautiful time of the year. This is what stays on our car.

Some days it is really bad. I caught these photos (around mid morning) a couple of weeks ago from our balcony. We had a heavy rain yesterday that cleared things up some. So today I tried to capture the same photos. Note the difference.

All of the hazy days make me really appreciate what I can see on the clear days.

ladies of the street

2009-04-20T07:46:00.038+09:00

Okpo is definitely a small town that has a "seedy" side to it. I guess it is to be expected when there is a large population of single (and not so single) men that are away from home. No offense to the male population out there - just stating it as I see it. Even alot of the Korean men that work at the shipyard only live here during their workweek and then return home (to somewhere else in Korea) for the weekend. There are bars and "foreigner's clubs" to be found on every street, with colorful names like
the Singing Chicken,

Elephant House,

and Gangster.

The harbor area is heavily lined with bars and restaurants.....if you eat in that area, you will return to find numerous "business cards" from young ladies in the windshield of your car.

But I am not talking about those ladies.

I am talking about the mostly older Korean ladies that line the shopping street (or tree street or umbrella street - it is called by all of the these names by all the expats - I have no idea what the street name really is) every day to sell their goods. Their goods range from fruits to vegetables to grains to roots and barks. We do have an official market area that is covered and lined with shops and stalls. However, these women line the sidewalk outside the market. They set up shop with their bowls and tubs of goods,

all the while sitting on a stool, squatting or even sitting on the ground. They are there in the cold, in the heat and usually in the rain. I think they even have their "own spot" because I have seen people inquiring about an absent peddler. I love that when I smile at one of them, the smile is usually returned. I have often wondered about them. Is this from one of the many vegetable plots you see wherever there is a spot of dirt or flat land? Or did they work in the larger fields at one time?

Most of their faces are brown and lined,

very unlike most of the Korean women that are constantly covering their faces with masks, large visors and/or sun umbrellas to keep their skin from the sun.

You see them chatting among each other, but their hands are constantly busy. They can be separating garlic cloves.

And even peeling them.

Or peeling radishes
so they are ready to chop up for kimchi,

or maybe it is already grated.

Whatever their styles
or their stories,

these hard working ladies are part of a way of life in Korea.

cherry blossoms and children

2009-04-07T15:08:00.062+09:00

I returned to Jinhae for the third time for the Cherry Blossom Festival on March 29th . Ken had never been and was free to go. However, I think that he was only going because there was a McDonald's in Jinhae.......
if he had known that they deliver, he might have opted out! Just kidding.

The cherry blossoms in Okpo were not at their peak, so I was thinking we were a little early. I was right. They really were not at their prime. It was the first weekend of the festival, so the crowds were not so bad though. I felt like I could see a few things easier without the hordes of people. And we had time to explore some areas of the town that I hadn't been to before. There is an area called Romance Road that is essentially a canal that is lined with cherry blossoms on both sides with numerous bridges crossing over.
Even though the blossoms were not at their best - the area really was beautiful.

Ken and I were able to sit down for a few minutes to watch some children

demonstrate their martial arts expertise.

There also was an area where children,
could do some crafty projects
- like make a key chain with a cherry blossom in it.

Children everywhere are beautiful, but I was really struck that day by the sweet innocence I could see in the Korean children.

The festival market area disappointed me somewhat. A few booths that had been there previously where not there that day..........I missed the singing dolls. However, Ken enjoyed it - he even searched high and low for a perfect hat
and matching mask for me.

I didn't get one (thank goodness - don't tell Ken) but he was pulled in by the man demonstrating a vegetable chopper.

These mannequins spooked me a little bit.

I also didn't get any socks.

And Ken didn't get a new tie.

Thank goodness I didn't need a book to translate Korean into English (look carefully).

The tea looked tempting.......if not to drink, but to look at.

I was really tempted by the George W. Bush matryoshka (Russian stacking) doll......

and the sailors.............

and the cowboys.

But in the end, I caught the ferry home with Ken.

I think I made the right choice.

I don't know how to say "excuse me" in korean

2009-03-27T10:28:00.011+09:00

Before I came to South Korea, I had high hopes of learning some of the language. Previously, we had lived in France and I regretted that I hadn't learned French any better than I did. I could get by. And I could read and comprehend it far better than I could speak. However, ten years have gone by and I am sure that even alot of my reading abilities have diminished. (I do try to retain some of my French speaking abilities though. We bought our dog in France and I think he is used to me telling him that he is my "beau garcon" and that I love him "beaucoup".) There has been an influx of the French to Okpo in the past year and I have enjoyed getting to know some of the women. Three of them are in my Friday morning art class and I try to pick out what they are saying whenever they converse among themselves. Unfortunately, I seem to only understand a few words here and there and also whenever a number is in the conversation, like cinq heures(5:00).

I bring this up because it was the learning of Korean numbers that ultimately had me give up learning some Korean. Koreans use 2 different sets of numbers - native Korean for counting and stating a number of items (like five boys or three trees) and Sino Korean numbers (which are taken from the Chinese) for anything involving money, phone numbers, dates and time. And if that isn't confusing, only minutes and seconds are in the Sino Korean numbers - hours are in the native Korean! Two sets of numbers to learn..........and I think that the fact that there are two steps (translating the characters into our alphabet and then translating what the characters mean) instead of just translating what the word means also played into it. At least the French language has characters like a, e, i, o and u instead of vowels that look like ladders with and without some of the rungs. French words may have extra accents over some of the characters, but at least the letters are recognizable to me. And let's face it, I might use French (maybe at a restaurant?), but I don't think that Korean will play into my everyday life.

I am sure that by now, you can see into my thinly veiled excuses for not taking the time to learn Korean.

I have learned a pitiful few words in Korean - hello, goodbye, how much, yes, no, thank you - all come to mind. However, I haven't learned the Korean words for "excuse me" or "sorry" as of yet. Maybe this is why? When I first arrived, I would spend afternoons walking the streets of Okpo and wandering into the shops and marketplace. People would bump into me. They would not only bump into me, but they would push me. They would get in front of me in while I was waiting in a line. At that time, I made a mental note to learn "excuse me" and/or "sorry" for these incidents. However, I usually forgot this thought by the time I got home. But you know what? In time, I learned that it didn't really matter if I said "excuse me" while navigating around someone standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Or if I said "sorry" when I was "accidentally" bumped into by someone in the shop aisle. Because when it comes to matters of courtesy regarding personal space in Korea, in my opinion - there doesn't seem to be any.

I wonder if this comes from living in a small, mountainous country, where one's own space is limited? I have told Ken that I think if you told the average Korean that you thought they were being rude when they pushed by you, they would be shocked and apologetic. I don't think that it is intentional or deliberate, I just think it is their way. Some days, it doesn't bother me at all. But some days, it just hits me wrong.

For example, Ken and I went to see a movie last weekend. Afterwards, I went into the ladies restroom, where there was one lady waiting in front of me. There were only 4 stalls, and after she went into an empty stall, I waited for the next available one. Before someone could exit, two young girls came in, went right past me and each planted themselves in front of a stall. Then, another lady came in, walked past me and posted her claim on a third stall. By now, since I was by the first stall, I decided that no one was going to get that one for sure. That one was mine. But I guess it really comes down to the luck of the stall. I lost big time - all three women (that entered the restroom after me) went into their respective stalls before mine emptied!

P.S. I want to reiterate what I have always tried to maintain in this blog - that these are my opinions formed from my experiences living in South Korea. They are no means a reflection of the people or country as a whole. Hopefully, I always try to look at the other side of the coin. Which makes me wonder...............what would a non-English speaking South Korean think about the people they encountered in the aisles of the American grocery store, the mall or the fast food restaurants? Now that's a thought.

one more (and probably my last) spring in korea

2009-03-20T15:08:00.020+09:00

Yes,this is my third springtime in South Korea. (I had some difficulty in coming up with a title for this post because of that. After "spring has sprung" and "spring again", what do you say?) I love spring. It is funny, but the weather in Okpo is very similar to the weather in the northern part of Texas. Spring usually arrives in March and April after a short winter. That being said - we still can have cold weather during that time! (Why is the weather always cold, windy and/or rainy on Easter Sunday?) Anyway, I like to see the transitions of all the flowers and trees during the springtime. One day you will see a few buds
- in the next few days, it will be in full bloom.

I know I have had previous pictures of the Japanese magnolia trees here and here, but I couldn't resist a few more this year.

Some of the cherry blossom trees have also started blooming. I may be wrong, but I will bet that they all will be in full bloom in a week or so.

This tree is at the entrance to the trail up the mountain. Notice that even all the trees on the mountain still are not green. The light yellow-green leaves in the foreground are willow trees.

I also caught some photos of wildflowers blooming on the hillside. On Monday, I went on a drive to some sites close to here with a fellow blogger. She is an American living in Singapore with her husband and he was coming here for work related reasons. She was doing some research on Busan and came upon my blog. It was a post where I had a photo of my husband - she showed it to her husband and he realized he knew my husband. Small world of ours, isn't it? Anyway, I enjoyed meeting her and spending some time with her. The bad part of it is that she is a "real" photographer with a "real" camera - since I have looked through her viewfinder, I realized that I might want to upgrade.
We will see.

down the ferret hole

2009-03-17T15:26:00.012+09:00

We had a new experience last weekend - a midnight visit from a ferret. Well, we never actually saw the ferret, but we think it was a ferret. I was watching TV in the bedroom and Ken was already asleep. I had the TV volume down low because I was watching Saw 2, 3 or 54 and there was alot of screaming (I actually saw Saw 1, but apparently more were to follow). I really wasn't watching it intently - I was just trying to fall asleep. We only have a movie channel and CNN in English on the bedroom TV, so I was limited in my selection (trying to explain my movie choice!).

Back to the ferret. I heard a noise downstairs, so I turned the volume off completely. Listening for awhile longer, I heard it again. It sounded like a plastic trash bag rustling along with a little bit of banging. I woke Ken up and we listened some more. We finally got up and ventured downstairs. The storage room is at the bottom of the stairs, so we armed ourselves with a broom and a 3-iron (a golf club - Ken's weapon of choice). After turning on all the lights, opening every cabinet in the kitchen, and yelling "off with her head" (not really, but it kind of went with the title of the post!), we relaxed somewhat. Ken started taking the golf club and sweeping it under the two sofas we have. Underneath one of them came a plastic bag with a hard piece of bread in it. What I find humorous at this time is the fact that we really didn't think too much of this. I kept asking how in the world the bread got there. Either Ken was too tired (he had been up since 5 a.m. and had also played golf that day) or he didn't want to panic me, so he just kept saying "I don't know". For some dumb reason, I thought that maybe one of us had left the bread on the couch. I guess I was tired too....!

We headed back up to bed. Ken instantly fell back asleep and I was just dozing off when I heard the noises again. I woke him up again. We both listened for awhile. Ken said, "Do you think we should go down?" I said, "Let's just listen for a moment longer." I was actually hoping that I would stay in bed and he would go down. No such luck - I could tell by his breathing that he was back asleep in seconds.
I guess I dozed off shortly too - because I woke up to the noise again. ONCE AGAIN, I woke Ken up and we went downstairs and repeated the previous downstairs scenario. Except this time, we opened the cabinet above the stove that houses the equipment for the exhaust fan. The foil tube that was supposed to be attached to the wall was not attached to the wall.

There was a hole in the wall. Ken took a towel and stuffed it into the hole. Thinking all was well, we closed the kitchen door and then closed the bedroom door for good measure.

The next thing I know, it is 6 in the morning and Ken wakes me up to tell me that something had urinated and pooped in our kitchen. I won't go into detail, but it was obvious it wasn't a mouse or rat by the droppings. Maybe the size of a small cat or dog. He also added that whenever I decided to get up, WE would go into the kitchen and trap the animal. I promptly told him I wasn't getting up right now (thinking he would take care of it by the time I got up?). He said he needed some coffee and was going to the office to get some (remember, we live in small town Korea, no Starbucks or convenience stores with carafes of coffee).

When he returned, he said that we needed to go into the kitchen and close the door after us to trap it. And I said no. Long story short (sorry - it already is a long story), a neighbor came over to help Ken. After much searching (more bread wrappers under the other couch), they came to the conclusion that the animal had gone back through the hole (the towel was shredded). Ken then affixed a plastic plate over the hole.
We decided just to not use the exhaust fan and have the management fix it because we felt that this critter would just get in again. Why do we think it was a ferret? Two other residents of the rowhouses have had incidents with them in their houses, so we thought it was probably the same. Ken was disappointed he wasn't able to trap it. He said they are pretty animals. After looking them up, I decided that they looked too much like the rat and possum persuasion for me. I couldn't believe all the websites that sold ferret toys and clothes. Even youtube videos. Check this one out - if he could do this, one could easily drag bread wrappers under the sofa.

We really haven't seen too much wildlife (or animals of any kind) on the island. We have seen a couple of pheasants around our place and an occasional squirrel in the hillside. You might see a cow in a field rarely, but see black goats in fields often.

Yesterday, I came across a group of escapees on the road.

Hopefully, they got back home in one piece.

where have all the business cards gone?

2009-03-09T13:47:00.006+09:00

With the influx of new arrivals in the past 6 months or so, the Women's Coffee Group has staged a renewal of sorts. Since I arrived two years ago, the Wednesday morning get together consisted of a group of women - fluctuating in numbers and diversity - who sat around tables in the Foreigner's Club and drank coffee and tea while chatting. It is a nice starting point when you get here because not only do you meet some other women, but you can get information on activities and travel. I have tended to frequent the coffee group sporadically - I usually attend when I return from the U.S. for some reason.

However, a few women (who I am not surprised, are American) have arrived and have set their sights on getting the group organized and informed. Years ago, in Paris, I was instrumental in the organization and the writing of a newsletter for the women's group of my husband's company. It really took alot of time and effort but I felt like I was doing a worthwhile project. When I arrived here, I did comment that there could be some organization to this group in order to instill some continuity to the activities and such. But I really didn't have the "want to" to devote the time and energy it deserved. So I am thankful for the newbies that have come along and gotten together a directory, have organized events and kept those of us that wanted to be informed - informed.

Although it is not on the scale of Paris or even Aberdeen, it is definitely a good fit for Okpo, South Korea. There were wine tastings, origami lessons and Christmas parties for the orphanage while I was gone. And last Wednesday, one of the groups that sponsors the Cherry Blossom tour that I have been on for the last 2 years, came to the coffee and discussed Korean table manners. I did know some of the information, but I did come out with a few more tidbits.

You really only need to know a few basics. Everyone will usually have their own rice and/or soup bowl, but there will multiple small bowls with side dishes that everyone shares. You will be given chopsticks and a spoon (it is soup spoon size, but with a longer handle) and you can use the spoon for soup and rice but chopsticks for everything else. We have gotten fairly adept with the chopsticks. However, they use stainless steel chopsticks alot and they are more difficult to use - we usually ask for wooden ones when this happens. Protocol states that the eldest is the first to be served and the first to eat. If you are at a meal where everyone is around the same age, the most honored (or the highest on the pay scale!) goes first. I haven't really observed this yet.

The chopsticks and spoon are to be left on the table when you are finished. While eating, you can rest them on the bowl. However, never just stick the chopsticks upright in the rice bowl - she said this meant "death". I wonder whose death? You are also not supposed to pick up a rice or a soup bowl in Korea while eating........but I have witnessed Koreans doing this multiple times!!!?

Blowing your nose at the table is a no, but burping and slurping is a go.

It all was interesting - I was surprised to find out that alot of the younger generations (including our speaker) do not care for kimchi!

On the topic of Korean customs - Ken and I attended a dinner a couple of weeks ago celebrating the naming of one of his company's ships. At a table for ten, I was seated next to a young Korean woman who worked in marketing from Seoul. After I sat down and said hello, she presented her business card to me. I explained that I was not in the business and deferred the card to Ken. After this occurred, everyone stood up and exchanged business cards. When he first arrived, Ken had been instructed on proper business card etiquette, which he shared with me. The exchange of business cards is taken seriously. It is considered impolite to take a card, not look at it and stuff it in your pocket. The ritual is to receive the card with both hands and study the person's name for a moment. I can't even imagine the amount of business cards Ken has presented and received while working here. I wonder where they are?

Since living here, I have tended to pick up cards at restaurants and businesses when leaving the establishment. I think that multiples of things - matchbooks, beads, pine cones, marbles, whatever - are intriguing when placed as a decorative accent in a bowl, basket, plate or whatever. I thought that I would place them in a bowl when I returned to the U.S. as a kind of interesting conversation piece and memento of the places I have been while in Asia. I know that most of them are entirely in Korean or Chinese or Japanese and I can't read them, but I know that looking at them will impart a feeling, a memory and a small token of our time here.

another apology

2009-02-27T15:41:00.007+09:00

Okay. I know that I was a bad blogger again.

I went off and left for a couple of months without saying anything.

I don't know what came over me. Maybe it was because it was around the holidays and I got so busy planning Christmas in Texas (I left on December 20th), or maybe it was because I was so upset at leaving my husband here alone during the holidays (he ended up not being able to go due to work), or maybe it was because I thought that most of the people that read my blog already knew I was leaving (and I didn't think about the other 1 or 2 people that might happen upon my ramblings), or maybe it was because I was so organized that I had already packed my computer in my suitcase, or maybe it was because it was so cold in December that my fingers were frozen and I was unable to type, or maybe you are now realizing that my last two or maybes are not accurate.

Anyway, I am back. Since I am being totally truthful today - I have been back for a little over a week. However, jet lag hasn't kept me from getting back into the groove of writing. Allergies, a nasty cold or whatever it is has made me miserable this past week. I think I am on the tail end of it, but I am still working on a plugged up left ear and a junky sounding cough. So expect to hear from me more than you have in the past 2 months. I will actually try to make up for lost time, since I have alot to say.

Ken mentioned to T.Y. (the agent for the project) that I was under the weather one day this week. Late that afternoon, a large decorated fruit basket with oranges, apples, grapes, kiwis and a pineapple arrived at our apartment. Unbelievable how thoughtful and sweet he is.

감사합니다 - Kamsamnida - Thank You

simply shopping

2008-12-18T07:51:00.017+09:00

The weather on my trip had been wonderful. However, I woke up to some fog and light drizzle on my last day in Japan. That definitely didn't deter me from getting to Toji Temple for the monthly flea market. This is held on the 21st of each month and I happened to be there on that day!
It was easy to find - you just followed all the people walking in one direction. One there, you entered the grounds to find booth after booth. I am sorry that my photos aren't that great, but the off and on rain caused me a little difficulty with an umbrella, a camera and a purse. There was a multitude of food
if you were hungry. We have these in Korea - they are filled with bean paste. I didn't get any photos, but there were alot of booths that sold kimonos and fabric. I don't know if they were used kimonos or just inexpensive ones, but they were mobbed with ladies going through the piles. There was the usual "junk"
and antiques to go through. I saw some interesting things, but decided to forgo. Some booths were very colorful
with their crafts using kimono fabric.
And I wish I knew the reason behind selling pine branches.
This booth was selling Japanese crackers of some sort - I guess they are pretty popular.
There were some shrines
and temples on the grounds, if you could find them in the masses.
By the time I left, it was around 2:00 and of course, the sun came out for awhile. I spent the afternoon shopping and waiting for early evening. I wanted to head to the Gion area of town in hopes to see a geisha walking the street. One of the ladies on my tour had seen one there the night before. But due to the rain starting up again and I was cold, tired and hungry, I said goodbye to Kyoto for now and went back to my hotel.
This was such a wonderful experience for me. Hopefully I will get (or make) another opportunity to see more of Japan.

my favorite day of the trip

2008-12-15T15:38:00.066+09:00

Kyoto was definitely one of the places I wanted to visit while in Japan. And hopefully I can take another trip there, as I didn't get to see a fraction of what there is to see. The tour guide said that there are 1600 temples and shrines in the area! My first day there was a full tour day. We started out by going to the Nijo Castle. By the way, I am going to take it easy on the history and mainly tell my day with pictures - if that is okay with you. The castle is surrounded by a moat and several structures.

We toured the Ninomaru Palace with its nightingale floors - built that way to warn the shogun that lived there of intruders.
We were not allowed to take pictures inside, but there was beautiful gold leaf and paintings.

Next stop was the Kinkakuji Temple , or the Golden Pavilion Temple. Not only is the temple something to see (you can't go in), but the grounds were very picturesque as well due to the fall leaves.

There was a small rock garden (unfortunately the only one I was to see) that was being tended to while we were there.
Next on the morning agenda was the Kyoto Imperial Palace. Kyoto was the capital of Japan until 1869, when it was relocated to Tokyo. I was surprised by the bright orange color
of some of the trim on the buildings. But what really struck me were the roofs made of layers of cypress bark.
Once again, you do not tour the inside of any of the buildings but you could look into some of them.
I wonder if they would like another tiger painting......I happen to have one.

After a quick lunch, we boarded the bus for Nara, which is less than an hour away. The first stop was the Todaiji Temple. This is the largest wooden structure in the world and houses the Great Buddha of Nara, which is 49 feet tall.It really was a sight to see.Note the person in the lower left hand corner of the photo to get an idea about how large the doors are!
We then headed to the Nara Deer Park. Supposedly there are over 1000 deer roaming the park freely. It was fun to see. You could buy crackers that the deer eat to feed them. However, I saw that once you fed them, they wouldn't leave you alone for awhile. So I elected to just watch. This was a school picture that they were taking - I guess they gave up and just included the deer.

The last and (my favorite) spot of the day was the Kagusa Taisha Shrine, the largest Shinto shrine in the area. It is also home to 3000 lanterns made of stone, wood or bronze. In older days, all of the lanterns were lit daily. But that is now only done twice a year, on certain festival days. I would love to see that! I could have stayed there longer, taking photos. But I did take a fair amount - I will share some with you.

They are also known for wisteria. Since we were there during fall, we didn't see any blooming - but the young girls selling religious items had cute little wisteria hairpieces.

The area was thickly canopied with trees, which made for an air of reverence. But the cold air of late afternoon fall had us boarding the bus soon for our return to Kyoto.

people you meet on a tour (or part three of the Japan trip saga)

2008-12-14T15:33:00.003+09:00

My last day in Tokyo was spent hurrying around a few local landmarks.
Looking out onto the city from Tokyo Tower

and also looking down at my feet (the yellow rectangles are the tour buses).

Getting off the bus to quickly walk around the moat surrounding the Imperial Palace - the palace itself is only open to the public 2 days a year (we didn't hit one of those days).

We saw most everything else from the bus - like I said, it was a rush. The next morning, I said goodbye to Tokyo and boarded a bus headed for Mt. Fuji. I will have to say that this part of the tour didn't interest me too much when I booked it. However, I couldn't find the type of tour I wanted without including the Mt. Fuji part. It ended up to be a great day though. The tour quide was really quite good (he kept us entertained with little tidbits of trivia concerning Japan) and I met a variety of interesting people. I even saw an exit on the freeway for Sagamihara (where I had lived when I was younger).

How far you were able to travel up Mt. Fuji is dependent on the weather - mainly snow. We were fortunate to go to the the 5th station, which is more than halfway up the mountain. By the way, Mt. Fuji is 12,385 feet. The weather in Tokyo had been pretty moderate, but it was cooooold on that mountain. Part of the reason was the wind - it was very windy.
However, because of the wind, we were able to get some clear pictures of Mt. Fuji.

After lunch, we were supposed to take an aerial cablecar with great views of Hakone National Park. But the high winds had closed it down. We instead took another tram that was enough for me. Mt. Fuji is a volcano, so I guess the area is a hot spot of sorts and you could see steam? or gases? rising in some spots - sorry,I am not a geologist! If I remember correctly, the tour guide said it last erupted in the early 1700's.

The end of the day was a cruise on Lake Ashi, one of the five lakes surrounding Mt. Fuji. I am sure that the area is a hot spot in the summer, but for now, all the duck paddle boats were in rows waiting for the warm weather.

Alot of the people were taking a train back to Tokyo. But there were a few of us that got on the train for Kyoto, my next leg of the trip. While we were waiting for the train, a few of us started talking about where we were from. What are the chances that a young couple from Houston was there! She actually was coming for the wedding of a Japanese friend from college years earlier. Over the span of the whole week, I met quite a few interesting people......
a mother/daughter team from Barcelona
a couple from Pennsylvania with 2 small children on their way to China
for their adoption of a second little Chinese girl
a French couple that made me remember how I felt about some of the French when
I lived there (take that how you may!)
a friendly young couple from Australia
a Japanese man that worked for Proctor & Gamble in the U.S. that was in Japan
for meeting to try to market Head & Shoulders to the Asian market - I told
him I equate the shampoo to dandruff control but I had noticed a commercial
in Korea for the product that seemed to suggest it was good for your hair
(no dandruff in sight)
another young Australian couple on their honeymoon
a very pretty young woman that had come to Tokyo for some classes on holistic
healing
a Japanese/American man that had left Japan at age 5 and was here for his first
visit since leaving
I won't bore you anymore with the details. But since I was on this trip by myself, I really enjoyed the times I did have to converse with other westerners and hear their stories.

the rest of the day

2008-12-08T19:54:00.000+09:00

To recap my last post, I had gone to the Asakusa area of Tokyo, where I visited the Sensoji Temple. But that wasn't everything I experienced that day.
The Kaminarimon Gate is the entryway for the pedestrian street leading up to Sensoji Temple. There is a huge lantern hanging from the gate that is not only huge, but weighs almost 1500 lbs.
Once you cross underneath that, you are on Nakamise Street. This is open only to pedestrians and is lined with small shops selling anything from souvenirs, to food, to traditional Japanese handicrafts.
I spent much time looking around this area. Some of the booths even had people working in them to demonstrate their craft. There were several painters and men that did wood block prints. But the one thing that really caught my eye was a dollmaker. I remember the Japanese dolls that had porcelain faces and traditional dress.

My mother has several signed woodblock prints from Japan. They are quite intriquing. One of them is called (correct me if I am wrong Mama)" The DollMaker". Probably only my parents and my sister will appreciate this photo I took, but it reminds me of the print.
The dolls actually started out with wooden templates
then the ceramic and the final product.

It was great fun to see some people walking around in traditional dress.

And I enjoyed some noodles for lunch at a little outside booth.

Besides the temple that I had talked about earlier, there are various other structures on the ground.
At the end of Nakamise Street, there is another gate called Hozomon Gate.

The tour guide the next day told me that this is a giant replica of shoes that monks wear in Japan.

There is also a 5 storied pagoda. There was some sort of fall chrysanthemum exhibition going on with some unbelievably large
and different blooms.

There were many statues to be seen
- mainly with some sort of attire?

And various shrines.
So you can see that I spent alot of time here. The next day, I was here briefly with an organized tour - I was so glad that I was able to spend more time that first day at my leisure.

The area around the temple also houses many shops and restaurants.
Walking around the streets was totally different than all the neon and signage you normally see. One street I did make an effort to find was Kappabashi Street. On this street is a one kilometer stretch that sells restaurant supplies. I am not in the market to open a sushi bar or anything, but this was really fun for me. Some stores sell only pans, some sell the fake food that they use to advertise the menu, and this one sold teapots, tea cups, rice bowls and anything ceramic. This photo doesn't do it justice - this is only one aisle of the endless cavern of pottery.

I would have liked to tell you that I met Bill Murray for a drink at the Park Hyatt Tokyo, like in the movie, Lost in Translation. But after my long and full day, I stopped at a grocery store in the subway by my hotel - picked up an apple, cheese and crackers for dinner in my room - and crashed.

prayers and fortunes in japan

2008-11-30T16:06:00.037+09:00

I have to admit that I have been a little overwhelmed thinking about describing my trip to Japan. So I have decided to chop it into several little posts - so you won't get bored reading a long narrative and I won't procrastinate and not write anything at all! Even though I used a tour company when I went to Japan, it wasn't the sort of tour where you are with a group of people all the time. This tour company has a variety of tours - whether they are one morning or two weeks - and you can just design what you want to do. The tour I signed up for included a day in Tokyo, not including the day you arrive. The day in Tokyo had a quick morning tour of a few sights of Tokyo. I really wanted a little more time in Tokyo, so I arrived a day earlier to have a complete day of wandering. I headed out on the subway for the Asakusa area of the city. I had read that this area still had a sense of "old Tokyo". And it is also home to the Sensoji Temple. This temple houses a golden image of Kannon (the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy) - which is not on display to the public. For some unbelievable reason, I didn't take a picture of the temple in its entirety - just bits and pieces. This is part of the beautifully painted ceiling in the temple. Around, and in, the temple there are shops that sell items relating to Buddhism. I was also intrigued with an area that had numerous small drawers with Japanese characters on it. I just had to open one of the drawers and see what was in it. I found a stack of papers with alot of Japanese written on it, but if you turned it over there was a small portion in English. A couple walked up to the drawers and I finally got to see what the significance was. There was a metal container that had a small opening in the top. You donated 100 yen and shook the container to dispense a stick that corresponded with a Japanese character on one of the drawers. You then opened the drawer and took one of the pieces of paper. I decided to follow suit and luckily received good fortune. I saved my paper, but I noticed that some of them were knotted on pieces of wire close by. It wasn't until I got home and got to do some looking on the internet, that I found out that they are called omikuji, or written fortunes. There are 12 levels of the fortunes, ranging from Great Blessing to Great Curse. Wow, if I had known that I had the possibility of getting the Great Curse, I never would have done it! I also read that whenever the fortune is bad, it is believed that if you leave it on a pine tree (or a specially prepared place), the bad luck will stay there rather than attach itself to the bearer. If you are interested in a little bit more, click on here to get more info. There are also small wooden plaques that you purchase and write prayers and wishes on.

Another interesting scene is this pot of incense burning. People will come up and wave the smoke towards themselves and also rub it on their clothes. This is for good health.

You can watch a video I took of the process.
There was also an area with water and cups that you drank from? I am sorry, but I don't know too much about that. I hope it isn't for good health - I can't see that using communal cups is good for any one's health. A few days later, one of my tour guides gave an interesting insight into religion in Japan. (Don't quote me on any of my facts about all of this. I didn't research it like I did with SPAM. Most of this is from the mouth of a tour guide or a travel book.) He said that Shinto is a religion that is native to Japan and once was the official religion. Most Japanese practice Buddhism today. However, they supposedly interlace it with some Shintoist beliefs and practices. As my tour guide said - birth is celebrated in the Shinto religion, death is commemorated at a Buddhist temple - and nowadays the trend is to have a wedding in a Christian church!

time to go.......to Japan

2008-11-26T15:50:00.021+09:00

I thought it was about time for a trip of some sort. Ken is extremely busy with trying to get the first drillship finished, so I knew that he wouldn't be involved in this trip. So I decided to head to the closest place I wanted to go - Japan!

I am usually the sort that can navigate all the ins and outs of going to a new destination - you know, alot of reading up, comparing things and making an informed decision of some sort. However, I did this sort of on the spur of the moment, so I elected to go with a tour company. I also thought that this would be best since I was alone - but I did want some alone time to do some exploring. I elected for a package that had a morning tour in Tokyo, a day at Mt. Fuji and Lake Hakone and a day in Kyoto and Nara. It included a free day in Kyoto and I arranged for an extra free day in Tokyo. I would have liked to taken some time to go to Sagamihara (a suburb of Tokyo where I lived for 3 years when I was in grade school). We lived on an army base and so I knew that I probably would need some sort of authorization to get on base and I really didn't have the time to figure all of that out at this time. Maybe I will take a day of layover in Tokyo and do that on one of my jaunts back to the U.S. sometime.

I will go into more depth later, with pictures and such, about my trip. But I want to say that I had a wonderful time and I was so glad that I took the leap to go on my own. I have such wonderful memories of my previous time in Japan. We moved there the last part of second grade for me and left around the first week of fifth grade, so I was old enough to remember alot. (But if you really want someone with a memory, you need to ask my sister. She remembers everything.)

I remember......

ice skating outside with my girl scout troop with a view of Mt. Fuji

my wonderful bicycle I had there (I thought it was so neat because it had hand brakes)

chocolate umbrella candy and Botan candy - you could eat the rice paper wrapper

staying at a traditional Japanese hotel and sleeping on the floor

watching sumo wrestling on TV with my father

being in a Japanese play at my school in which I wore a kimono

seeing Japanese school children in their uniforms

restaurants with plastic food on plates outside to advertise what they served

I could go on and on (and I am sure my sister can fill in any gaps I may have). Surely, most of this means nothing to some people, but to me, these memories are a part of my attraction to Japan. Being that I lived there a while ago (we won't say how long ago - but another memory of mine was waking up one morning and hearing that JFK had been assassinated), I knew that things had probably changed alot. And you know how different everything looks to a child.

I was pleasantly surprised - many things hadn't changed after all.

Food was still advertised in the windows outside.

Little girls still wore kimonos.

School children still wore delightful uniforms.

And Mt. Fuji was still standing there in all it's splendor.

going up guksabong

2008-11-14T14:50:00.032+09:00

A couple of Fridays ago, seduced by the fall coolness and color, I decided to go up Guksabong. This is one of the mountains that is behind our apartment. I have only completely gone up this once since we have been here. I know some people that do it several times a week and I am sure that many of the Korean people from Okpo hike it daily. The Koreans are big into trekking up mountains.....and goodness knows, there are alot of them here. At 464 meters, I don't know if Guksabong is considered a mountain or a hill, but it looks high enough to me. Most of the trails in Korea are clearly identified with a sign that has these little bean people on it.

I only have a short walk to the entrance of the trail.
The first part is a killer because it is so steep, but at least it is paved. You cross this little makeshift bridge

and then you are into the wild. Not really.....the most wildlife I saw were a few birds and this.....

But the path is now mostly dirt

and rocks.

Sometimes the path has some steps made of stone that someone kindly made.

I was thankful that I hardly saw anyone on my way up because I am sure that my face was red as a beet. Whenever I did see someone, I usually ended up taking a photo of something so that they couldn't see my redness. By the way, I had never seen hydrangeas in the woods.

Being by myself, I made sure I had my cell phone with me in case I needed to call Ken or someone else.....

You come to an area where you think you have reached the top. You are then greeted with this sign.

When you reach the top (actually I didn't go to the very top today, it is another .4km) there is a clearing that has a gazebo that looks out over the town and the water. This is the view of Okpo from the top.

If you look to the right, you can glimpse a view of the shipyard. If you look closely, you can see the two derricks that are on two of the drillships Ken is working on.

After sitting awhile and enjoying the view, I decided I was getting a little chilly due to the fact that the sweat I had produced was now making me cold. I elected not to warm up on any of the exercise equipment kindly supplied there.
So I headed down.
One of the main reasons I don't like to do these climbs is because after you climb to the top, you have to go down! The steep inclines tend to scare me a bit. So I elected to go the long way down. It definitely has some steeps walks down, but nothing like the path I took up. Since my eyes were mainly on the trail as I managed my way down, you are spared any more of my scenery pictures.

I did have to smile when I saw this along the path at the bottom of the mountain.

laundry day

2008-11-07T13:36:00.019+09:00

I thought today I would comment on a mundane part of life - doing laundry. I was inspired by the beautiful day we are having today. Not a great day to be inside doing laundry, but rather a fantastic day for putting your laundry out to dry. Whenever there is a nice sunny day, you will see laundry hanging out of the apartment windows around here. I think that sometimes they are just airing out comforters, but they also have laundry.

Most of the apartments here (and I would guess in most of Korea) have a small room (about the size of a walk in closet) that is usually outside their kitchen.

Some are finished nicely and will have counter space, maybe a kimchi refrigerator and usually a washer/dryer combo. We live in a place that is circa 1980 and it only has a dryer in it (and sometimes a stray centipede). However, I am lucky to have the dryer. It is old, the wiring looks like an accident waiting to happen and the room gets all drippy from the steam if you don't open a window when you are using the dryer. But it does the job.

I also have one of the "handy" washer/dryers in my kitchen. It is a Tromm, which I think is a good brand. Everything is in Korean. The apartment manager had some instructions in English, so you could at least get the gist of it.

I have never used the dryer portion of it since I have been here though. We had one of these when we lived in Scotland in the early 1990's. It was a disaster. Imagine doing 2 loads of laundry - instead of doing one load in the washer, putting it in the dryer and then starting the next load in the washer, you can't start the second load until the first one is completely done. And it just seemed to dry unevenly and made everything very wrinkly....if it was dry at all. Luckily, we lived in a house with a backyard, so we had a clothesline in the backyard and I was able to hang (at least the jeans) out to finish drying. Unfortunately though, we did have alot of foggy and wet days. So sometimes the inside of our house looked like a dry cleaners. I don't know if the machines have advanced much since the 1990's - most of my friends that have one (with no extra dryer) say that they still don't dry well.

Since we live in a duplex, we do have a small garden and a clothesline contraption of sorts. It hangs down right in front of the window of our living area which is quite lovely (not!).
I don't use it on a regular basis. When we first moved here, I thought it would be nice to hang the towels out to dry. But even with using fabric softener in the wash, they came out all stiff and crinkly. Maybe it is the water here? However, the cleaning lady hangs my spare set of sheets out every week to dry and they don't do that.

Look around, and you will find clotheslines everywhere.

In the harbor area.

Outside restaurants.

I have actually seen fish drying on clotheslines along side the clothes. Couldn't find a picture of that, but this is some sort of marine life drying in the sun.

The gas station. Nothing like the scent of gas fumes to make your laundry smell nice and fresh!

in the mood

2008-11-05T17:05:00.015+09:00

I know that I have been remiss with my blog lately. To tell you the truth, I just haven't been in the mood.

Because the weather has just been gorgeous and it was so much easier to get outside and marvel over the fall colors. Like the pyracantha berries.

And the chrysanthemums being planted in the pots along the street.

And the bright red peppers drying the sun.

And don't forget all the time I spent outside harvesting persimmons from my very own persimmon tree. Ha! Ha! Yes, I discovered that we have a persimmon tree in our minuscule backyard. I couldn't believe all the persimmons that came from this little tree. I don't particularly like persimmons, but I was excited to have the tree because persimmons (to me) are a very oriental type fruit. It just seemed fitting that I have a persimmon tree. I gave alot of them to my painting teacher.

Speaking of painting.... when I have been indoors, I seem to spend my spare time painting. I wasn't really thrilled to be painting ducks......
or tigers.

But my teacher insisted I try both of them. I actually ended up liking the ducks. But I think I am more a flower and scenery type of painter.

Anyway, we are off to Seoul for the weekend on Friday. When we get back, I think I will be back in the mood to write again.

a rhetorical rice question

2008-10-21T14:37:00.032+09:00

Rice. I personally like rice - whether it is steamed, fried, white, boiled, sticky, brown, pilaf......And I have commented on occasions in the past that I could eat rice every day.

So why don't I eat rice every day in Korea?

Maybe it is because I don't know how to properly cook the Korean rice. (Not that I was an expert in cooking rice in the U.S. I am afraid I often resorted to the boiling bags!) It looks different from the rice I used to buy in the U.S. - the grains are smaller. I once came across a blog that had a 3 part video on how to cook Korean rice, but it seemed like alot of trouble. Especially when it talked about soaking the rice - 30 minutes in the summer and 1 to 2 hours in the winter! So I just buy these individual containers of cooked rice.

I really don't know if I am microwaving it correctly, but I just peel up one corner of the container and microwave it until it is hot. I am sure that most Korean homes have a rice cooker. They are plentiful in the shops here.

Maybe it is because I don't have a rice cooker.

One thing I know for sure is that the Koreans eat alot of rice. When we lived in France, the yogurt, cheese and wine aisles of the grocery store were the largest. Thinking about that, what aisle in an American grocery store has a large amount of one thing? Cereal? Cookies? Funny how the grocery store aisles can show alot about a country. I would say rice, noodles and red chili paste would be indicative of the Korean grocery stores. When you go to the grocery store, the rice is sold in large increments....I mean large, up to 20 and 40 kg. (44 and 88 lbs.)bags.

Maybe it is because I can't lift an 88 lb. bag of rice into my grocery cart.

Maybe it is because I don't have that much room in my pantry.

This past spring, it was interesting to see the progression of the rice fields in Korea.

First they hand plant the seedlings into the fields.

As I understand, the fields are flooded with water to keep weeds and pests under control at that time.

By the time I left in July, the plantings were filling out nicely and were a lush green.

When I returned in September, the rice fields were a golden color

and resembled stalks of wheat.

Then the harvesting begins.

The rice is left to dry in the sun in the fields,

and along the roadside.

I don't think I will lose any sleep over this question, after all it is only a rhetorical question about rice. My thoughts right now are more concentrated on
"What should I make for supper tonight?"

Now that is the never ending question!

lighting of the lanterns

2008-10-13T15:13:00.033+09:00

Late Friday afternoon, Ken, Brenda, Norman and I headed to Jinju. Ken and I have been to Jinju several times before, whether it was to tour the castle Chokseongnu, or just to go to McDonald's and then look through the antique shops. This time, we were there for the Jinju Namgang Yudeung Festival. The Namgang River runs through the city of Jinju, which is a little over an hour away from us. The festival got its origin from a Japanese invasion in 1592 - 1593. The Koreans, with only 3800 troops, were able to kill 20,000 Japanese during this invasion. The Korean general floated lanterns and torches on the river to send military signals to troops and support systems outside of the castle. It was also used as a means for soldiers in the castle to let their families know they were safe.

We got there around 5:30 and headed to McDonald's for a quick hamburger before walking to the castle side of the river. The image of the lanterns floating on the river was magnificent. There lanterns of all sorts and sizes floating down the river. We walked across the river on a floating makeshift bridge. It was a bit wobbly at times, but you were still able to see and take pictures
of some of the lanterns more closely.

The lanterns depicted a wide variety of objects, shapes and colors.

This apparently was of a rooster, for the year of the rooster.

More traditional Korean figures...

Some were geared for the younger set - not all of the lanterns were floating, some were on the grounds around the river. This lantern periodically shot fire out of his gun.

This dragon was huge and also had some smoke and fire effects.

You know, I just can't decide which pictures to add.....so I think I will just give you a little peek of some of my favorites.

The bridge ended on the opposite side with a building sized replica of a temple.
There were booths lining the river with food, souvenirs and lantern making activities. Although I would have loved to make a lantern, I knew that it would take away from my time to see everything. So we all elected to purchase a floating wish lantern. For 3,000 won, you wrote down a wish that was then attached to a ready made lantern. You took it to a certain area, where the candle inside it was lit and lowered into the river.

There also were scores of lanterns lined up along the waterway. These were hanging wish lanterns - people had their wish and name written on these lanterns. These were used to hope for happiness in the home, longevity for parents, students' success in schooling, etc. I have no clue how many there were, but it was definitely alot!

Other lanterns that were made at the festival by individuals were hung overhead in several areas.
It was obvious that some were made by children, while others showed a bit more skill.
They were all beautiful though.

Although we didn't see any of the extra events that night, there were dance, plays and other cultural performances during the festival - which was October 1st through 12th. We did get to see a fireworks display
at the end of our evening before heading back to the island. This was a "waterfall" of fireworks coming off one the bridges that crosses the river.

just the little things

2008-09-30T17:00:00.006+09:00

I drove to Tesco Home Plus (the grocery store in Goyheon) this morning. The key to going there is to get there when the doors first open - at 10 a.m. It also helps to NOT go on the weekend - if you have to go on the weekend though, be there early. Anyway, I was one of the first ones in and I was able to scrutinize everything a little bit more than usual. And it paid off big time. Look what I found!
I had bought the canned green beans and mixed vegetable before, but never the beans and "Rotel" tomatoes. Chili is a staple in Ken's diet, so this was quite the find. Sure, I probably paid twice the amount than I would have in the U.S., but to quote Ken's two favorite lines -
"We have to eat."
and
"What else are you going to spend your money on here?"

(I don't think the last quote is one that I live by though - I can always find something to spend my money on here!)

Like a magazine. Remember Marie Claire Maison that I mentioned in another post? Well, the cover of this one looked interesting - mainly because it mentioned Texas!

The article on Texas didn't prove to be my highlight of the magazine though. It appartently had to do with the arts in San Antonio and Marfa.
I haven't made it to Marfa yet but I would like to.....

I got tickled thinking about some Korean visitors arriving in Marfa (population 1,887 in 2007 according to this source ). Wonder what they would think of the Marfa lights?

However, it did have an article on Tokyo that I found very intriguing. By the way, when I mention article, I don't mean that I can read the article. Everything is pretty much in Korean except for some headlines and addresses and such.

Anyway, this article on Tokyo highlighted some shops and places to visit in Tokyo.

There were several shops that looked like fun

but my favorite was this one - a Tokyo flea market maybe? I am putting this on my list of things to do in Japan. Speaking of which, I can't believe I haven't been yet. Maybe November.

Anyway, isn't it funny how just a can of pinto beans and a magazine can make your day?

pungs, chows and kongs

2008-09-25T17:05:00.018+09:00

I was excited to get back to some of my usual activities around Okpo. Ken had really been the only person I had conversed with in days, so I was looking forward to having a little female chit chat again.

For me, that meant Wednesday afternoon mahjong...!

Prior to moving to Geoje Island, I had heard of mahjong. I actually think that when we lived in Aberdeen, Scotland, there was a group of women that got together on a regular basis to play. But I didn't really know what the game was about or how it was played.

I really like to play games. My husband, daughter and I used to play Yahtzee on a regular basis when she was growing up. My daughter and I like playing Boggle now that she is older. I like to play Scrabble and UpWords with my mother and sister. When I was a freshman in college, I played alot of Spades with my suite mates. Pictionary, Monopoly, Risk, and Trivial Pursuit are just some of games played in my past. I also like a few games on the computer - TextTwist, Scrabble Blast, and Zuma . Speaking of Zuma, I caught a photo of a Korean monk playing Zuma on a laptop while waiting for our delayed flight to Busan. He was getting very excited about his game and I think everyone sitting around him got quite a kick out of that.

Back to mahjong. Apparently there are various versions of the game - Chinese, Singapore, American and Hong Kong, to name a few. The woman that started our group learned how to play while living in Ulsan, South Korea. So I guess we play by Ulsan rules, whatever that may mean - she doesn't know what rules they played by. The game is played with tiles that are made out of bamboo, wood, ivory, resin, or plastic . It is like a deck of cards, because there are suits of sorts, except only 3 - bamboo, circles and Chinese characters. Instead of royal cards like Kings and Queens, there are royal honor tiles - winds and dragons - and honor tiles - ones and nines. There are also flower and season tiles.

I won't bore you with all the particulars of the game, but I will say that it has never bored me. The goal is end up with 14 tiles that comprise a certain hand (and there are numerous ones with names like Buried Treasure, Knitted Pairs, Windy Pungs and Three Philosophers).

With new players coming and going, it can sometimes be difficult to remember all the hands. We all carry cheat sheets in our laps while we play. Sometimes there is much chattering going on while we play. By the way, mahjong is loosely translated "chattering sparrow" - how appropriate! But other times, we are quiet and highly concentrating on our hands.

This was one of my hands I was working toward called Little Robert. I didn't win that one, but there is always the next game!

We played 4 hours on Wednesday - wow! times flies when you are playing mahjong.

everything you never wanted to know about spam

2008-09-21T09:50:00.024+09:00

When I arrived home, we had various gifts given to us for celebration of the Chuseok holiday. We had gifts of ginseng, fruit, and ....... I can't believe it ........our first SPAM gift box.

I don't know if you remember my prior post mentioning SPAM gift boxes. I felt at that time that a SPAM gift box was on the "lower end of the hierarchy of gifts". Well, I think that I have changed my mind. I did some research on SPAM and came up with some interesting facts. (I can't believe I am talking about doing research on SPAM . I have learned alot of the history, customs and culture of the Korean people while writing this blog though, so I guess SPAM just goes with the territory!) I have the usual biases against SPAM - you know, Something Posing As Meat and urban legends like that. Anyway, for those with inquiring minds, SPAM was originally made in the U.S. by the Hormel company. They had just introduced a canned ham product and were trying to figure out what to do with all the leftover pork shoulder they had. They came out with another canned product which was originally called Hormel Spiced Ham, but was renamed SPAM after a naming contest - get it - SPiced hAM?

What does this have to do with Korea, you say? SPAM was perfect for military use, due to the fact that it doesn't require refrigeration. Sales of SPAM rocketed during World War II. It is interesting to note that places with history of U.S. military presence have the largest amount of SPAM sold today - Hawaii, the Phillipines, Okinawa, Guam and Saipan. And don't forget South Korea, with the most SPAM sold each year, after the U.S.

I also found a website that stated that SPAM in Korea bought the rights to start making it's own version. It supposedly has less salt to cater more to Korean tastes. At the little grocery store down the street, I found 3 different types of SPAM.
There are also "generic" cans of the same product that aren't as costly. SPAM costs 4200Won at the store in our town (approximately $4.00).

It is surprising that the Korean people have taken to SPAM - they are usually very health conscious.

Wikipedia states that:

A 56 gram (approximately 2 ounce) serving of original Spam provides 7 grams of protein, 2 grams of carbohydrates, 15 grams of fat (23% US Daily Value) including 6 grams of saturated fat (28% US Daily Value), and over 170 calories. A serving also contains nearly a third of the recommended daily intake of sodium (salt). Spam provides very little in terms of vitamins and minerals (0% vitamin A, 1% vitamin C, 1% calcium, 3% iron). It has been listed as a food that is a poor choice for weight loss and optimum health and as a food that "is high in saturated fat and sodium".

I guess they figure that a can of SPAM followed by a box of Krispy Kreme donuts (another favorite) won't hurt you too bad. Seriously, apparently during the Korean War, SPAM was an item smuggled by Korean women from the GI's on military bases. To the very hungry Korean people, this was quite a treat and continued to be so even after the war ended. According to another website, the trade treaties at that time prohibited alot of foreign food to be imported to South Korea. SPAM was hard to find, and thus, very desirable. By the way, I am trying to be correct in showing my sources for this "research paper". After all, we didn't have computers when I was in school - so I am sure it isn't quite right. (I just wanted to get that across in case I am cited for plagiarism!)

My father was in the Army and I remember eating SPAM growing up. However, I don't think it was an Army ration - I am sure it was purchased at the commissary. Ken has told me stories about his sister and her husband living on SPAM as poor college students. I wonder if they eat it now - I'll have to find out. I can't remember the last time I had SPAM (I think my mother would fry it) but I am sure I would probably like it okay. I don't think Ken would go for it though. He is so anti things like hot dogs and bologna. He once took a tour of a plant that made hot dogs and will now only eat hot dogs that look like sausage. I really don't see the difference since I have heard horror stories about what goes in sausage, but I guess it made quite an impact on him.

As you can see, the box also contained cans of tuna and bottles of sesame and corn oil. I wonder what the significance of that is. Maybe my next research will be looking for a recipe using those ingredients? I'll take suggestions.

twenty four hours

2008-09-19T07:48:00.006+09:00

After
a one and one half hour drive to the airport
and
a one and one half hour wait at the airport
and
a 13 hour airplane ride
and
a four hour layover in Tokyo (was only supposed to be two)
and
a two hour flight to Busan, South Korea
and
a two hour drive to Okpo, South Korea,

I am safely back to my life in Korea. Sorry for the 2 month hiatus, but I had a wonderful time back in Texas. It has been a month since he left Texas, so it is wonderful to see Ken again.

haircuts

2008-07-13T13:23:00.000+09:00

I couldn't resist one more comment about the humidity. I have touched on this subject various times but it just seems to be getting worse. I am talking about my hair. I wash and dry it and it looks okay. I am not one inch out the door and I look like a Brillo pad. In my opinion (and probably most hairdressers), I do not have great hair. It has a fine texture and really doesn't grow very fast. It has alot of wave and/or curl - that can be good at times, but not when humidity is added to the equation. I am picky about getting my hair cut, but recently I decided that I couldn't wait to return to Texas for a haircut. Coupled with the humidity, the uneven ends were just having a field day on my head. I returned to a salon here that I have been to twice since I have lived here. I couldn't believe it - she remembered my name! She actually did a good job of cutting my hair. I had learned from my two previous visits to stop her when she started to tease my hair in the back. I had looked like Jackie Kennedy and her mid 1960's hairdo when I left.

This reminds me of the dry cleaners here. I took some clothes in (and even had a little hemming job) for them to do. The man looked at the calendar and told me Friday, which was 2 days away. I stood there a minute waiting for a receipt or something. I finally asked if he needed my name or phone number and he nodded no. On Friday, I walked in, he got the correct clothing out and it was only $13.00. Kind of makes you feel special (or maybe unusual?). I guess you need to remember what you take there, in case there is a mistake.

I am leaving today for Texas for the rest of the summer. Ken will be joining me for a couple of weeks. I am so excited to see everyone and to have a bit more to do. Alot of people head out for the summer and activities slow down a bit. I have intentions of doing some posts while I am there but I guess we will see. I am going to close with a picture of the pompom trees (as I call them) getting their haircuts the other day around our apartment.

hiding from the heat and the humidity

2008-07-12T14:37:00.012+09:00

I can't believe I am saying this - but I wish it would rain. For a couple of weeks, it seemed like it would never stop raining. Now it is just hot and muggy. I know that I am from Texas and I am supposed to be "used to" the heat and humidity. But in Texas, I don't walk everywhere to do my errands. And when I go into a store, it is like walking into hot closet. I don't know if the Koreans do not have any sweat glands, but they seem to like it warmer. To prove my point, here is a picture I took just the other day (in July) of one of the women hikers.
(However, the lady sitting down with the towel on her head seems a bit warm!)
They are always dressed to the nines in proper walking attire. And don't forget the gloves and the face mask! I have mixed feeling about the face coverings here. On one hand, I am sure that I would have a rash or an acne breakout after wearing one of those while walking in this heat. (I always hated wearing surgical masks whenever I had to while working in the hospital.) However, the plus side of wearing one of them would be that no one would see my sweaty beet red face.

On a more serious note, there is alot of evidence to support wearing the masks here, especially while exercising. During the springtime, we get the yellow sand from the Golbi Desert blown in. Apparently, last year was really bad. And pollution from China can also be a problem. I have read a couple of articles about the Olympic athletes training in China and the difficulties they have encountered. When we first moved here, I used to comment on all the "hazy" days we seem to have - not knowing the cause of it.

Another lovely side of summer here is the influx of mosquitoes. Here is a notice we received from the apartment service company last month.

SUBJECT: Spraying of insecticide

It's getting warmer these days.
In line with this, vermin is appearing.
We can say they are not harmful to body.
If you are worried after bitten by insect, you apply ointment to a wound and
see a doctor.
We are doing regular spraying of insecticide the last date of every month.
If you are interested in this, please call.

I want to interject a comment before I continue on the mosquitoes. I sometimes get tickled at the wording of emails and notices. I am in no way making fun of them - I can't even imagine how I would mangle the Korean language. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a sweet Korean girl in the management office wrote this. I have been so thankful for her because she speaks English so well.

Back to the vermin. The mosquitoes are different looking than the ones I am used to. They look more like gnats. And the bites you get look more like pimples and don't itch as much. Of course, these are observations from my own personal experience. I wake up with a new one on a daily basis - unfortunately, they are usually on my face, neck and arms. I guess this is due to the fact that these appendages are usually on the outside of the covers. They do sell mosquito nets that go over the beds but we haven't tried that yet. I did buy one of these mosquito zappers.
You put in a couple of double A batteries and you are ready to electrocute those pesky things. Unfortunately, I don't usually have this close at hand when I see a mosquito. Ken has killed a couple with it. It makes a pop noise and the mosquito is dead on the floor. I got a kick out of the packaging. Click on the photo to read what it says.

While I am on the subject of the summer humidity, I want to show you another nifty item.
Someone turned me on to these when I first got here and I use them faithfully in our closets and storeroom. There are alot of brands, here is one I got at HomePlus. They have either charcoal or some white substance in them that absorbs the water in the air. When the container has water in the bottom of it, you ditch it and put in a new one. I have heard that some people have had mold problems, but I haven't due to these handy things. You know, we might have something like this in the United States but I have never had the need for one.

quick trip, quick post

2008-07-05T16:14:00.016+09:00

We took the 5:30 p.m. ferry to Busan last night. Martin (Ken's friend, golfing nemesis, and coworker) also came along. T.Y. (Ken's friend, golfing partner and business associate) picked us up at the ferry terminal in Busan. He took us to the Commodore Hotel, where we checked in. This hotel is patterned after the Buddhist temples you see here and was quite lovely.
It is probably an older hotel, but I would definitely stay there again. We had a corner room with a little balcony and a great view of the harbor and the city. The lobby areas had some unique paintings and tile works. I really was impressed with the banister for a stairway.
- this was the head at the top.

The lobby also had a large chandelier of sorts with lanterns.

The hotel was close to our choice (but probably not T.Y.'s) of a dinner venue. We went to Outback Steak House.

After our meal, we strolled the area - I recognized it as an area I had frequented before. In fact, Ken and I had eaten there before.
The place was hopping and we went into several stores (with golf apparel) and walked down some side streets that were lined with bars, eateries and fortune tellers.

I realized that today was July 4th. No fireworks, but here are some lights.

Ken and the guys had a 5:00 tee time, but I enjoyed sleeping in until 7:30 or so. I took off walking back to the area that we had been the night before and did a bit of shopping before I met the guys at McDonald's (apparently T.Y. knows Ken very well) and we caught the 1:00 p.m. ferry back to Okpo.

Ken is taking a nap right now.

thank you for your help

2008-07-02T11:39:00.014+09:00

Ken received the following email the other day.

-----Original Message-----
From: US Embassy - Seoul [mailto:seoul_acs@state.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 10:47 AM
To: Adcock, Ken
Subject: Anti-Government Demonstrations in South Korea

The U.S. Embassy in Seoul is transmitting the following information
through the Embassy's warden system as a public service to all U.S.
citizens in the Republic of Korea. Please disseminate this message to
U.S. citizens in your organizations or to other Americans you know.

The U.S. Embassy urges American citizens throughout the Republic of
Korea to exercise caution during demonstrations and vigils protesting
the resumption of American beef imports and the policies of the Korean
Government. The protests, which began eight weeks ago, have become more
violent in recent days. Korean authorities stated on June 29 that they
would crack down further on violent protesters. They have begun using
water cannon and fire extinguishers to stop the advance of demonstrators
and have stated that they reserve the right to use tear gas.

Up to this point the demonstrations have not been overtly anti-American
in nature, but American citizens are nevertheless strongly urged to
avoid the areas of the protests and to exercise extreme caution if
within the vicinity of demonstrators. The center of protests in Seoul
has thus far been Seoul Plaza in front of City Hall, with demonstrators
frequently attempting to move north along Sejongno toward the Blue
House, the Presidential residence.

American citizens should stay current with media coverage of local
events and be aware of their surroundings at all times. The U.S.
Embassy in Seoul will continue to keep the American citizen community
informed of any changes in the overall security situation via this email
system and the Embassy websites at http://seoul.usembassy.gov and
www.asktheconsul.org.

The Embassy encourages all U.S. citizens to register their presence in
Korea with the American Citizens Services office at the U.S. Embassy or
via the Internet at
http://travel.state.gov/travel/abroad_registration.html or
http://www.asktheconsul.org/.

I know that this has been going on for the past couple of months, but so far, in Okpo at least, I haven't experienced anything I would say was anti-American. In fact, let me tell you about my experience last Sunday.

Ken had gone to play golf on Sunday. The weather had been rainy but around 12:30 it cleared up and I decided to take advantage of having the car to get out of the house. Since we don't have Target, or Marshalls, or Dillard's, or Pottery Barn, or TJ Maxx, or Anthropologie, or - I think you get the idea - I decided to head out to take some pictures. I took a route along the coastline where we had been a few weeks previously. I wanted to get some pictures of the rice fields I had seen
and possibly go to some beaches. I came to a beach that had a gravel clearing beside it for parking. I parked, walked down, took a couple of pictures
and decided to head out. But when I tried to back up, my car wouldn't move. I got out to look under the car and couldn't really see anything of significance that should hinder my car from moving. At that time, an older man was driving by in a small truck. He stopped, looked under the car and proceeded to get a big rope out and attach it to the back of my car. We gave it a try, but my car wouldn't budge. He motioned to me to wait and he would be back. He returned with a little tractor of sorts.

Once again, he attached the rope to his tractor and we gave it another try. Once again, it hardly budged.
He then set out in the direction of the beach and returned with some men. They opened the hood and assessed the situation. They then tried to lift and/or push the car. But no luck. With the hood open, I could see a rock sticking up into the engine area. By then, a couple of women had arrived on the scene. One of them might have been his wife. I forgot to mention that Ken had accidentally left his cell phone at home, so I hadn't tried to call him. However, I have an "emergency card" in my wallet with phone numbers of people to call on his project and such. I called the number for Hertz (where we have our car rented) and got someone who spoke Korean. I handed the phone to the man and he talked for awhile. Then the lady talked to them for awhile. By then, a wrecker that apparently the man had told to come arrived. I think the man told them my car was a rental and they left. We all settled down to wait for relief.

Not knowing what to say or do, I took a couple of pictures of the area.

Our numbers had increased - there was now a little boy
(the older woman explained with her hands that he was eleven and big for his age) and girl and another man on the scene. I tried to motion that they didn't need to stay but maybe they wanted to be on hand to see what the American woman with the curly hair (it was quite humid) would do next.

By then, Ken had arrived home and called me. I told him I would call when I was on my way home. Somewhere along the line the eldest lady started patting me on the shoulder and for some reason it made me a little teary. Not crying or anything, just eyes welling up a little. It can be frustrating in another country when you cannot speak the language. I was just so thankful for their help. Not that I couldn't have called someone to help, but it was sweet of them to come to my aid without even asking.
The wrecker arrived. It raised the front of my car up and there was a piece of concrete with rebar (is that how you spell it?) tangled up around it. I guess the rebar had caught the underneath of my car because the concrete wasn't very large. I actually think the episodes of trying to pull my car back caused the piece of concrete to rise up and get further up under the engine. He assured me my car was okay and I was free to head home, as was everyone else. I hope I didn't offend the man that came to my rescue. I tried to give him some money but he wouldn't take it. So all I could do was to bow to everyone and say thank you. I didn't stop to take any pictures on the way home.

comments on costco, crockpots, chili, chips and cheese

2008-06-25T11:11:00.027+09:00

Once in a couple of months or so, Ken and I try to head to Costco in Daegu. You can find alot of staples that you usually can't find here - or that you can find here but the price is doubled. Brenda and I decided to head for Daegu, which is around 2 1/2 hours away, one day recently. Brenda's husband picked Ken up for work so that I could have the car. We had a GPS from the office in it with Costco programmed in, so we felt pretty good about finding our way. We actually made it there with only 2 turn arounds, which is pretty good.

I bought a crockpot. A staple in Ken's diet is chili (especially when I am not here). He mainly like to make "nuclear nachos" out of the chili. Nuclear nachos is basically chili and grated cheese over tortilla chips. He used to order this at a restaurant in Norman, Oklahoma, when he was in college there. For some reason, the name stuck and we call this concoction nuclear nachos. Anyway, Ken also does not like kidney beans in his chili. He prefers pinto beans. So we try to bring a few cans of Ranch Style Beans back to Korea with us whenever we go to Texas. I also have brought back some dried beans on occasion to make a pot of beans. Ken came up with the idea of making beans to go into the chili so that we didn't have to bring cans of beans in our suitcases. So when I saw this crock pot, I decided to buy it to make beans. It is a Rival crockpot and it was packaged in an English language box. The only difference is the plug - so that we can use it here without a transformer. However, I got a kick out of the packaging. First of all, the instruction are entirely in Korean.
Fortunately I know how to turn a crockpot on to Low, High or Warm. But it made me think about the instructions of objects you buy in the U.S. The instruction booklets are sometimes huge because they have everything written in English, Spanish, French, and a myriad of other languages. However, I have never noticed that Korean is in that list. Maybe they are paying us back by printing their instructions in their country only in Korean. It makes sense.

I also thought the enclosed cookbook was pretty interesting.
They have it divided into Korean food, Chinese food and Western food. The Korean food section had the usual Korean mixtures of chicken, veggies, seafood, etc.

And the usual dishes with an egg on top.

And the usual dish with red chili paste.

And all the soups had cute little garnishes on top.

But my favorite dish was in the Western Food Section.

Who would have ever guessed that you could make a pot pie in a crockpot?

Back to Costco. I bought my usual supply of ground beef, cheddar cheese (for only $9 instead of $15), tortilla chips and lunch meat. We were the only foreigners in the place, probably since it was a weekday. We also had the biggest baskets of food. I chucked two big bags of peanut M&M's into the basket for Ken and had 2 Korean ladies eye me, then turn to their other two friends, say something, and then all of them turned and stared into my basket. It is so frustrating to not be able to say "I only come here 3 times a year, so I stock up" or "I have 10 children at home - I give each of them 2 M&M's a day" or something of that sort. But I just smiled at them.

For some reason, we couldn't get the lady to talk on the GPS. But we made it home with zero turn arounds. And the guys were excited that we had food and that they didn't have to go. Brenda and I decided that next time we would explore some of the area around Costco. Daegu is known for making textiles and we saw some interesting looking buildings we could try out before we stock up on cheese and chips.

cloudy day collage

2008-06-21T08:23:00.028+09:00

We are now officially in the rainy season, or jangma, as it is called in Korea. I think the only day it did not rain this week was Thursday. Supposedly the rainy season is from the end of June to the end of July. I am sure I will get sick of it soon, but I seemed to keep busy this week.

Since it cloudy outside, I thought I would try to add some color with a montage of photos and my ramblings.

I know I haven't talked about my art class lately. But here is one of my latest - I just need to finish a little bit of a wash around her feet. I liked the way she turned out, so I think I might actually get her framed. I have now started a detailed scene that has taken me forever to draw and outline. This scene is from a book and I think I need to go buy a magnifying glass to really look at the people so that I can draw them correctly (in their proper attire and such). Mr. Park usually draws the pictures for you if you want him to, but I have been trying to draw my own.

One day this past week, Ken and I met at Quizno's for lunch. Okpo's only places to get fast food is Domino's, Dunkin Donuts and Quizno's. The menu is pretty much the same and is heavily populated at lunch. We were sitting in the back and I noticed a large glass container sitting on a hutch with something I couldn't make out in it. I got up and looked and there were hundreds of tiny origami paper cranes. When the waitress brought our food, I asked her about it. She said that she made those when she was pregnant for good luck. You are supposed to make 1000 of the paper cranes. I went home and looked up the 1000 crane thing. It ended up being very interesting. First of all, Wikipedia said "A thousand paper cranes is also traditionally given as a wedding gift by the folder, who is wishing a thousand years of happiness and prosperity upon the couple. It can also be gifted to a new baby for long life and good luck." But even more interesting was what I read about about the original 1000 cranes. It started in Japan - a little girl named Sadako Sasaki from Hiroshima was almost 2 years old when the atomic bomb landed on her city. Ten years later, she developed leukemia, or the "atomic bomb disease". A friend of Sadako's told her the Japanese legend that anyone that folds a thousand paper cranes would be granted a wish. Sadako folded 1000 paper cranes before her death. I have provided a link to tell you more of her story. I also printed out some instructions for making a crane. It probably took me 30 minutes to make the first one. I can't imagine how long it took her to make 1000 (maybe 9 months?) - and hers were so so tiny.

However, I also found someone on ebay selling 1000 prefolded cranes for $50.00!!

I am sure you are all waiting for your knitted socks and scarfs to arrive in the mail any day. Well, I am still knitting here and there but not with the Norwegians. I don't know where they all went to and I miss them. I know that for awhile they were spending all their free time sunbathing on top of Beverly Hills III (one of the apartments here). I guess that when you come from a cold country like Norway, a warm, sunny day is alot more enticing than knitting. Anyway, I have played around with making flowers (sorry, no socks and scarfs at this time). Here are a couple of them. I will probably attach them to a pillow or something. And hopefully my Norwegian friends will return in the fall.

When I was in Texas this spring, my sister and I took a road trip down to Austin. While we were browsing the stores of South Congress, we noticed a small airstream trailer across the street with a big cupcake on top of it.

Of course we crossed the street and discovered that it was called hey cupcake! and had a line of people buying cupcakes.
Even though we hadn't had lunch yet, we had to indulge.

Here is Shannon digging in. Yum.
And what a darling idea.

Speaking of Texas, on Mother's Day my father took us on a tour of Clark Gardens. If you are visiting this site, please click onto the link to see the gardens during different seasons of the year and to read the history of it.

Daddy actually works for the Clarks and has built numerous buildings, waterfalls, arbors, gazebos, a chapel and most everything else at the gardens. He retired from the Army and then became a building contractor. He sort of eased out of that when he started building at the gardens. He has really enjoyed his work there.

It was cool and windy but we still enjoyed the flowers

and the scenery.

I am going to end with a picture. This bulletin board is hanging over my "craft table". It has a collage of pictures and items that are important to me and/or I like at the time. Here is a part of it.......I especially love the pictures of the girl and the little dog boy.

See you soon my little ones.

a selection of shoes

2008-06-12T14:54:00.021+09:00

When we moved into the rowhouse, it was pretty much furnished. We had all the necessary furniture, electronics, sheets, towels and a somewhat limited selection of kitchen and dining utensils. However, there was one item I didn't expect to inherit when we moved in......shoes.

We have the usual Korean entryway with a shoe cabinet.
It is quite handy, especially since I don't have too much room in the bedroom closet to store shoes. Even though I don't always take off my shoes when I enter, I find that friends always seem to even if you tell them it isn't necessary. Come to think of it, I always take my shoes off when I go to their homes. It just seems like the thing to do.

Anyway, the cleaning lady always takes her shoes off when she comes to clean. And we have a ready supply of slip on shoes for her to wear when needed.

These are in the downstairs bathroom.

These are in the room off of the kitchen that has the dryer in it.

These are at the back door. I think I need to get rid of them as they are starting to shed foam whenever you wear them.

These are outside one of the doors to the balcony upstairs.

For some reason, there aren't any in the upstairs bathroom. Whenever she cleans the bathrooms, she just hoses down the floor and walls with the attachment on the shower. I don't know if you remember, but I commented on this attachment in the downstairs bathroom - there isn't a shower or tub, but we still have a shower attachment on the wall. Anyway, she has a supply of shoes to put on when she goes outside to hang the sheets up to dry or to air out the bathroom rugs on the balcony railing.

Ken needed some sandals to wear to the beach, so I had the occasion recently to go into a couple of the shoe shops in Okpo. There is a multitude of slip on sandals along the street before you go in. They even have ones that have something like a dust mop on the bottom. I'm sorry I don't have a picture of that but I promise one for the future. I guess you wear them around the house to keep the floor dusted. They have tons of adorable children shoes - so bright and colorful, like most of the children clothing here. Yes, these are little girl's shoes - my daughter would have gone straight to the ones with rhinestones and pearls when she was little!

One last note. For some reason, I collect little shoes. Maybe it started with wooden shoes from The Netherlands when Ken worked there. But I have added a few to my collection since we have been here. These are some shoes I got in Hong Kong at a street vendor -
they are replicas of what women wore when they had their feet bound.

I also got these in China - I don't know the significance, but I thought they were cute.

I bought these in Okpo off the back of a truck that was loaded with all sorts of straw items, like baskets and such. These are called jipsin, or traditional Korean straw shoes. They were originally worn mainly by commoners and farmers. In present day, they are still sometimes worn to funerals. This is to show respect to the deceased and also to prevent you from slipping while walking to the grave site!

good day sunshine

2008-06-09T10:29:00.032+09:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. Not only have I been busy, but my computer has been acting up. I put Adobe Photoshop on my computer last week (no, I don't have the slightest idea of how to use it yet) and everything slowed down to a crawl. So after alot of deleting and defragmenting, everything seems to be better for the time being.

This past Friday, June 6th, was a holiday in Korea - Memorial Day.I went to painting class and Ken only worked a half day on Friday. It was a gorgeous day, so we headed to the beach for some fun in the sun. The weather hasn't been too great lately, with clouds and/or rain and we welcomed some sunshine. Ken promptly plopped down on a lawn chair we brought and I did my usual wandering up and down the beach looking for shells and sea glass. Pickings were very slow. However, there is always a plethora of other items to be found. Of course there is the usual sea life.

And evidence of the people frolicking on the beach.

Driftwood and other pieces of bamboo and wood.
Ken once made the comment "What if we were walking on the beach and found a body part, like a hand or a foot?" - don't ask me where that came from...! Anyway, how about a leg?

My next usual order of business on the beach is looking at the scenery and the people.
There were the usual young couples.

I like this mother with her phone, taking pictures of her daughter.
Note the shoes - I don't know if you can see the heels, since they are buried in the sand.

After we were significantly tanned, or burned (in Ken's case), we got in the car and drove around enjoying the beautiful scenery.
There are tons of yellow daisy-like wildflowers along the road right now.

Sorry for the picture out of the windshield, but there usually isn't enough room on the road to pull over. Speaking of taking pictures out of the car, how about the ride this cutie is getting on the back of a motorcycle?
We had such a great day on Friday, that we repeated it on Saturday and Sunday. (I think it was mainly because Ken wanted to get his tan a bit more even! LOL) On Saturday, on our drive after the beach, we stopped at Haegeumgang.
They have an observation area where you can get a great photo of the are. You can see the people walking out on the rocks. We have climbed out there in the past, but have yet to take the ferry out to the rocks. We also came across a small beach on Sunday that had some unbelievable stone work and landscaping being done.
We have no idea what it is for.
There is no building behind these steps, but maybe someday? It is very close to the point where the bridge from mainland Korea (Busan) to Geoje Island will be. With this, I have to interject a sad note. Alot of the beaches have so much trash on them. I am sure with the tide coming in and going out, it is worst at some times more than others. I am not saying that all of the trash is from people that come to the beach - it is from the sea itself.

But my collection of sea glass is growing.

dunkin donut darling

2008-05-27T15:03:00.012+09:00

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

2008-05-26T14:13:00.009+09:00

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

2008-05-19T15:49:00.003+09:00

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

2008-05-17T09:07:00.001+09:00

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.

pink snow

2008-04-07T16:11:00.009+09:00

I guess I didn't have enough of the cherry blossoms. On Sunday, I took a drive along the road to the shipyard to take some pictures to show you that we have a goodly amount of cherry blossoms in our area.

Cars were lined up along the road with people taking pictures of their children/boyfriend/girlfriend/etc. alongside the trees.

Ken was off playing golf, so you won't see any of me in these pictures!! One thing I noticed though - the bark of the trees is very dark, almost black. It makes for such a contrast to the light pink flowers of the trees. There are no leaves on the trees at this time - only blossoms. I don't know if pictures do it justice though. If you don't usually click on the pictures to see it close up, do it this time.

But alas, good things have to come to an end. It rained last night and alot of the blossoms were on the ground this morning. It looks like it snowed pink petals. There were little children gathering the petals up and throwing them like they were snowballs out of my window. I grabbed my camera and went onto the balcony, but they had unfortunately headed home.

By the way, I ended up not moving from the row house to the apartment. I decided that I liked to walk out my front door to the outside instead of a hallway. Enough said.

checking out the cherry blossoms.....again

2008-04-06T15:11:00.004+09:00

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The cherry blossoms are in bloom again, so a trip to Jinhae for the Cherry Blossom Festival was definitely in order. I signed up for the same trip as last year with a couple of friends of mine. We caught the bus in Okpo and headed to the ferry station where we would take the one hour ride to Jinhae. Well, there turned out to be a glitch in the plans - the ferry was sold out. The trip organizers said that they had been doing this trip for years and this was the first time this had ever happened. Reservations weren't allowed either. We were given several options but elected to ride the bus for 2 hours to Jinhae. It actually turned into 2 1/2 hours due to heavy traffic. However, the plus side to this is that we did get a wonderful view from the bus of all the cherry blossoms along the way. The bus dropped us off at McDonald's and we had a quick bite to eat before heading to the festival site.
It was a beautiful day, so several different performances were going on
including this one with youngsters performing a drum and gong (I guess that is what you call it) routine. The costumes were colorful, including some hats that reminded me of clown hair.

There were the usual booths that sold anything from traditional Korean items
to the usual festival wares

and carnival booths. Remember the booth last year with the singing dolls? They were back again with not only the Truman Capote and Miss Kitty doll, but a new Rambo and Britney Spears doll. We had just eaten or I might have indulged in some bubbling silkworm pupa.
Or maybe a bottle of centipedes.
It was so crowded this year. On the day we went last year, it was drizzling most of the day, so I guess alot of people stayed away. Brenda, Wendy and I agreed that next year, a weekday trip was in order. And possibly going on our own earlier in the day. Because we soon had to catch the ferry back and really didn't have enough time to explore everything we wanted. But luckily there will be next year.

spring again

2008-04-01T09:56:00.009+09:00

I can't believe it is April already and a year has gone by since I last spoke of springtime. The weeks just seem to fly by.

One day the trees are bare and the next day they are dressed in pink

or purple

or white.

It is still not really warm yet - the wind still has a nip to it at times. But we have had some beautiful days lately. I will be going to the Cherry Blossom Festival again this week. Hopefully the weather will be nice to us this year, last year it rained some of the day we went.

On another note - we are moving out of the row house to an apartment. We really hadn't thought of moving but I was at a friend's apartment and fell in love with it. My main complaint about where we live is how dark it is. I need alot of sunlight in my home and this place can be a cave (especially in the afternoons). We (mainly I) deliberated for awhile because it is nice not to have to take an elevator and such. But this place is brand new and is on the 17th floor with a wonderful view of the water. So here we go - probably sometime this week!

korean chivalry

2008-03-24T10:32:00.009+09:00

Since we have been here, I have spotted a somewhat curious (in my opinion) Korean way of life. I have mainly noticed it with the younger set, but I will keep my eyes open for anyone my age doing this.....mainly because I think I wouldn't mind Ken doing this for me sometimes. What am I talking about?

Men carrying women's purses for them.

You see alot of men carrying what I would call "manbags". But this is actually them carrying their girlfriend's/wife's/fiance's/friend's purse. While we were in Seoul last weekend, I was able to capture a few photos of this phenomenon. They were quickly taken on the sly and in a hurry, but I think you will be able to grasp what I am talking about. Click on the picture if you want a better view.

Pretty interesting with this cute little green number. And look, he has his manbag with him too.

Now we are talking! How about that silver bag?

This is my favorite. He is able to carry his and her purses on the same shoulder!

the amazing race seoul

2008-03-18T11:22:00.013+09:00

We started Saturday morning by going to the Itaewon area of Seoul and visiting the War Memorial Museum. This truly is a great place to visit while in Seoul. It houses war memorbilia from all the wars and conflicts that Korea has been involved in. We ended up being there for 4 hours or so! There are tanks, helicopters, airplanes, etc. around the building that you can look at and even go into. Inside, there were 3 floors of all sorts of items to look at, along with several areas you could watch documentaries of events (especially the Korean War). Just a little tidbit of information - the island that we live on housed POW's from the Korean War. In fact, Gohyeon has a POW Museum that Ken and I have been meaning to go see. (We have actually toured the outside, but it was closed on the day we went.)

From there, we headed to the streets of Itaweon. This area has a large concentration of expatriates due to a nearby military base. We strolled the streets for a couple of hours exploring all the street vendors and antique shops. We actually saw a Norwegian lady that I knit with in one of the shops! What a small world. I could tell that Ken was winding down, but one of the main areas I wanted to visit was Insadong Street.
It is a pedestrian only street (at least it was on the weekend) and houses many tea shops,
art shops, antique shops
and Korean souvenir stores. I definitely didn't get enough time here - it will be my first stop when I return. There were also alot of trendy boutique shops.
After dinner (yes, we ate at TGI Fridays one night and Tony Romas the next night in case you were wondering if we ate at any wonderful restaurants. Remember that we gravitate to anything western when possible!), we returned to the hotel to collapse and watch one of the blackmarket DVDs we bought on the street.
We had already purchased return bus tickets for 9:30 the next morning. We thought that if we caught a cab around 8:15 we would safely be there in plenty of time. After all, it was Sunday morning and hopefully traffic would be light. What we didn't count on was foot traffic. The Seoul Marathon had begun that morning. We got into the cab and circled the block before we realized that we wouldn't be able to get through for the time being. So we ditched the cab and headed down into the subway. After riding a few stops, I realized that we had gone one stop too far and we had to get off and turn around. I think Ken had decided that there was no way we would make the bus. We had to get off at one point to transfer to another line. It was at this point that I decided we should try the cab again. I felt like some of the people probably feel on The Amazing Race when they are in the cab trying to get somewhere quickly. We made it to the bus in time - I think it left maybe 2 minutes later. It was such a nice trip - I will leave you with a picture of one of the beutiful floral arrangements in the hotel.

doing the dmz

2008-03-18T09:27:00.017+09:00

As I mentioned in the previous post, Ken and I went to Seoul last weekend. The bus ride up there was uneventful. It took around 4 1/2 hours at the most and the bus was very nice - had seats that reclined and foot rests. We stopped around midway and we were able to go to the restroom and get something to drink and/or eat. The subway was right outside the bus station, so we hopped on and headed to the hotel. We stayed at the Lotte Hotel, which was downtown. It really is a beautiful place and was such a convenient location.

We got up early the next morning and boarded a bus bound for the De-Militarized Zone, or DMZ.
(I am not going to bore you with alot of history. But if you are interested, just click on the underlined words and they will take you to more detailed explanations of where we were.) The bus had 2 tour guides - one that translated into Japanese and the other spoke English. They both were very good and kept us entertained with little facts and stories on the 45 minute bus ride up there. After going through a checkpoint where we had to all present our passports, we arrived at the location of the 3rd Tunnel. There are 4 known tunnels that South Korea has found between the North and the South and this is the closest one to Seoul. It was discovered in 1978. A North Korean defector has said that there are 20 of them. North Korea denies it, but South Korea feels that these were built for possible invasion. We donned hard hats
and rode a monorail down into the tunnel. I had a wave come over me of "I shouldn't be doing this, it is claustrophobic for me" as we first started down the tunnel, but it quickly subsided, thank goodness. It was very narrow going down. Once we got to the bottom, we were able to walk in the actual tunnel until we got to 70 meters (I think that is right) of North Korea. We were not allowed to take pictures in the tunnel. Picture taking was limited - the guides were continually reminding us when and where we could take pictures. We then boarded the bus and headed for the Mt. Dora Observatory, where we could see North Korea.
It was interesting to note that most of the trees were cut down on the North Korean side. Our guide said that this was due to the fact that they needed the fuel and also so that spies are more easily spotted. There is also a flag on the North Korean side that supposedly is the tallest in the world.
It was difficult to take any pictures due to the fact that we were only allowed pictures from behind a certain yellow line. However, there was an abundance of binoculars to look through.
Our tour guide said that we were fortunate in that it was an extremely clear day.
We then stopped again at Dorasan Station . This is the last train station going north.
I made a couple of friends here. They don't smile much though.

Our last stop was at Imjingak Park, the site of the Freedom Bridge. This is the only bridge connecting North and South Korea. After a Korean lunch (we sat next to a man from Minnesota who was in Seoul to run a marathon), we boarded the bus back to Seoul.

Even though you really don't see a whole lot, this was quite an experience. Just to know that you are so close to a country that is so shut off from the world is something you don't do every day. It is sad that it has to be this way. Our tour guide said that there are 100 million Koreans separated between the two borders. Unbelievable.

going to gohyeon

2008-03-12T10:46:00.016+09:00

Ken and I are headed to Seoul for a long weekend on Thursday. I can't believe we have been here for over a year and have only seen the Seoul airport. Well, more on Seoul later - after our trip! Yesterday morning I headed to one of the towns next to us - Gohyeon. It is larger than Okpo and I go there often to Tesco Home Plus for grocery shopping. It also has a shipyard - Samsung Heavy Industries. The downtown area has more shops than Okpo and I have prowled around the downtown in times past.

We have decided to take the bus to Seoul. There is an express bus (meaning no stops) to Seoul leaving several times a day from Gohyeon that takes around 4 1/2 hours. There is also a fast speed train leaving Busan for Seoul that only takes around 2 1/2 hours. However, we would have to take the ferry (45 minutes) from Okpo to Busan, get to the train station, and catch the train. Maybe some other time - I wanted to try the bus this time. I have also wanted to try to take the bus from Okpo to Gohyeon. I had asked around and it seemed easy enough. So I took the bus to Gohyeon to buy tickets for the bus to Seoul.

I got to the bus stop and found a young man waiting. I said, "Bus to Gohyeon?" and he nodded yes. I knew it was 1000 won and that they didn't make change, so I had my money in hand. Well, a bus came and the young man got up to get on the bus. Then he turned around and made a motion like don't get on this bus. So I didn't. Well, I didn't realize that there were different bus lines so I made a quick call to Ken to ask a secretary at the office. She said most all of the buses go to Gohyeon and to just ask the driver before you get on. I followed her instructions and hopped on the next bus. It took around 20 minutes to get there, which really wasn't too bad (maybe around 10 by car).

I decided to wander around the streets a bit before I went back to Okpo. The towns around here don't really come alive until 10-11:00 in the morning. (FYI- some of my pictures today seem abit blurry because I was trying to take them quickly on the sly. But if you want to ever see a larger image of any picture in my blog, just click on it and you will see a larger image. Then just press the back button and it will take you back to the blog.)

This place looked like it was getting ready for a grand opening.
Even the cotton candy didn't seem to have someone to manage it when I arrived.

However, things gradually became animated. The marketplace had the older women peddling their vegetables and fish.

The shops and stalls opened - selling anything
from shoes

to flowers.

Trucks were parked on the side of the street selling fruits and vegetables. By the way, the strawberries are good.
And if you need a new springtime blouse - no need to go into a store - they are arranged quite nicely on the sidewalk by the bus station! (Maybe a new outfit for our trip for Seoul?)

Also, as I returned to the bus station, I passed by the establishment that earlier was getting ready for their grand opening. Most business celebrate this with large arrangements and sprays of flowers, decorative banners and balloons.

This restaurant was also using "go-go girls".
You see alot of this here, not only for grand openings but for sales events. They alternate between dancing and talking about their product and/or establishment. There is always music, loud speakers and cute little outfits. Something, huh?

Well, the rest of my trip was uneventful. I purchased the tickets to Seoul and managed to get back on a bus that was headed for Okpo. There were fewer stops on the way home. It's funny how proud I can be of myself for the littlest things.....like riding a bus in Korea!

taking pictures at tesco

2008-03-02T12:22:00.044+09:00

My husband headed out this morning with some friends to play golf. Since I am still coughing and sniffling, I had a leisurely morning drinking coffee and reading. However, I decided to head over to Tesco for a couple of items we needed. I have found that the best time to go is when it opens (at 10:00) on Saturday and Sunday. Parking is plentiful and you can mull over things a little bit without being pushed aside. I usually keep my camera in my purse for any opportune photo opportunities and today was no exception. It is expected that people will take pictures of tourist attractions, festivals, pretty scenery, etc. But whenever I take pictures of daily life, I worry that I am offending the Koreans in some way. So I try to be very discreet when taking pictures on the street and such. It was very slow when I arrived at Tesco, so I thought that I would take the opportunity to take a few pictures I have wanted to take for some time. I actually think the young lady saw me and thought I was stalking her, but I managed to take a little video of her greeting the cars as they arrived in the parking garage.
Everyone has their own little way of doing it and some are more elaborate than others. She was sort of middle of the road. There are the usual aisles of juice, paper goods, diapers, cereal, etc. Some aisles are more plentiful than others in their options. I guess you could equate a cereal aisle in the states with a ramen noodle aisle here - tons of different varieties. My favorite ones are these - they are quite spicy though. There are some items you might recognize. And there is the Spam of course...! But if you are in the mood for something different, you could purchase a can of this. Or this. There really isn't a frozen food section like we know it. You can't buy the usual frozen vegetables, juice and prepared meals. They do have a small area with ice cream though. I usually pick up a couple of peppers at this area. There is usually different items, such as shrimp (don't get that - I found that the heads are still on!!), calamari, things that look like corn dogs (??) and various vegetables. You use some tongs and pick what you want and the lady either serves you (there is a counter to eat at) or she packages it up for you to take home. We also have a meat area for take home, which I have on numerous times. Or if you wish, you can purchase some mixtures that you can take home and cook yourself, which I haven't. The produce area is pretty good. You can buy alot of the items we have in the U.S. I buy iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms, oranges, apples, bananas, potatoes, etc. Some of the items are prepackaged and some you put into a bag yourself and take to a lady at a scale who weighs it and slaps a sticker on it. However, a few items puzzle me. You have to buy a bag of onions and a bunch of bananas. I can hopefully get through the onions before they spoil but I never get through the bananas. They do have alot of vegetables that I don't know what they are. However, I think this is a type of radish that I ate at a restaurant recently. It was pickled and quite good. I will leave you today with something I have wanted to show you for a long time.
I didn't care if anyone saw me, I was going to get this.

knitting with the norwegians

2008-02-29T14:28:00.005+09:00

I have been a little under the weather this week with a cold. So I have just been staying in most of the time trying to kick it. I did get out on Wednesday afternoon to play mahjong and this morning for painting class. I also made time on Thursday morning for one of my new favorite projects - knitting. I have wanted to learn how to knit for quite a while. I actually have a couple of books on the subject, including "Knitting for Dummies". Whether from impatience, lack of motivation or just plain stupidity I never quite picked up the knack of casting on the stitches (which starts the entire process). I could actually knit, but I just couldn't start the knitting if that makes sense.

When I returned last fall to the U.S., I picked up various craft supplies to bring back, like some embroidery, cross stitch, etc. I also brought back my trusty knitting needles and yarn in hopes of finally learning how to knit. Well lo and behold, when I attended one of the Wednesday morning coffees the first week I was back, I learned that there was now an informal knitting group!!

We meet on Thursday morning for a couple of hours. There are quite a few women from Norway, along with a smattering of British and French ladies. I was the only American until I brought on a couple of other American women that are now just as addicted to it as I am. There seems to be alot of expatriates from Norway and Great Britain here due to the fact that they deal with alot of shipping in their countries, I guess. The shipyard doesn't just deal oil related projects. In fact, the drillships that Ken's company are building are the first ones to be built here.

Back to knitting - I finally grasped casting on thanks to a lady from Wales. I did find out that the Norwegians knit differently. I don't really understand how it is different, but they sure do knit fast. I decided to stick to the standard way since I didn't think that I would always have a Norwegian on hand to help me. Anyway, after much practice, I now have a potholder! (Actually, I have knitted alot more than this but this is the first thing that I have declared a purpose to my knitted piece.)

Now onto a scarf or a blanket - baby-sized, of course.

you make me smile

2008-02-24T15:19:00.013+09:00

I definitely have a magazine addiction. Not just any magazine - mainly ones relating to home, house, garden, decorating, shopping for the home, etc. I don't really feel bad about my addiction because I inherited it from my mother.....it is genetic. Both of us subscribe to various magazines. Sometimes a magazine will thrill us and sometimes it will fall out of our favor. Maybe a couple of years will go by and then we "rediscover" that same magazine and resubscribe. We also buy from the news stand but that can be risky - as evidenced one time when my mother bought the same magazine three times! Sorry Mama.

Anyway, when living overseas, it is difficult doing without. But my mother (and now my mother-in-law) are saving magazines for me to look at when I get back to the U.S. for a visit. I read some of them while home and save some to take back to Korea to savor on those days that I really need a good magazine. I know that I could get overseas subscriptions. However, I know from past experiences that it can not only be expensive, but you are lucky if you receive the magazine at all.

With the advent of the Internet, I can now log on to the magazine sites and read about some of the things I am missing. But it is not the same as sitting in a comfortable chair with a cup of coffee and relishing every page of a magazine. But it will have to do sometimes. As you can see from my site, I have numerous websites that I visit that make me smile and make my heart sing. One site that I am enjoying right now is doe-c-doe . She devotes a day for different passions, such as books, fabrics, embroidery, etc. Please take time to look at her website and enjoy, I know I certainly do!

Back to the point of this post! She was discussing the magazine Marie Claire and renewing her subscription. I remember when I lived in France and bought the magazine periodically to gaze at the new products and home interiors. Unfortunately, I was not fluent in French, but I could sometimes get by with my reading of the language. Anyway, when I saw her post, I remembered that I had bought that magazine here in Korea a while back. And as every magazine addict knows, you do not throw a magazine away for a good long while. You read it over and over and memorize every little object in the pictures that make you happy. I don't know about other addicts, but eventually I go through my magazine and scour it one last time. I will tear out the pages that I want and I paste it into a notebook that I keep (actually several notebooks). Then I might throw it away. However, there are some magazines I keep forever...!

I guess I keep regressing. Here is the magazine cover I bought almost a year ago when I was yearning for some inspiration. For some reason, I haven't seen it since. Unfortunately, I haven't picked up Korean the way I picked up French. Thus I can't read too much of this magazine. But I did enjoy the pictures. I really like this bag.

And these rabbits you could paste onto the wall.....

And the back splash in her kitchen.....

And the clock on this page........

That probably has to do with this page that I cannot read......

Thank you to everyone that makes me smile - whether it is my mother or my mother-in-law, doe-c-doe, my painting teacher, the images I see in Korea every day or the many websites I enjoy.

full service

2008-02-18T14:35:00.010+09:00

Yesterday Ken and I headed out in the car to the grocery store. It was cold and windy as usual, but we stopped to get some gas. The gas stations are not the names that we are accustomed to - they have names like Hyundai Oil and S-Oil. Gas is also sold by the liter and it takes 3.79 liters to make one gallon. I noticed that gas is around 1650 Korean won for 1 liter. And 1650 won is equal to $1.75 today. So correct me if I am wrong, but that comes to $6.63 a gallon!

However, before you draw any conclusions, let me enlighten you on a few things that occur whenever you pull into a gas station in Korea. First of all, there is only FULL SERVICE as far as I can see. You pull in, an attendant (usually in a uniform) rushes out and sometimes manages to bow to you as you pull up to the pump. Yes, bow. We then tell them "full" and they proceed to pump the gas for us. There is only unleaded and diesel - I haven't noticed all the different grades of gas here. After you pay, they give you the receipt and also a little gift. Usually it is a packet that you open up and find Kleenex in it. We have also gotten raincoats and white cotton gloves (driving gloves, maybe???). Yesterday we had another first - the man handed us two warm cans labeled Maxwell House.
Since it was so cold, we gave it a try. It was really good, creamy coffee in a can. I have seen some machines here that are labeled hot and cold drinks but never paid much attention to them, except for this one in Okpo with a telephone attached. It got Ken and I to thinking about how they can manage to heat the closed cans up just right without getting it too hot or exploding them. And if the FULL SERVICE gas stations are worth the extra three or so dollars a gallon.

Maybe if they added cleaning your windows and checking your oil????

happy birthday kipperman!!!

2008-02-17T13:00:00.004+09:00

Today is Kip's birthday. I wish I could be there for a celebration with him. Usually he gets a McDonald's hamburger and some ice cream. I am sure that this year will be celebrated appropriately with his foster family (my parents). I can't believe he is only 14 years old, I feel like he has been with me my entire life. Anyone that knows him, knows that he is really an a little angel in a poodle costume.

It was a hard decision not to bring Kip to Korea with us. We miss him terribly but know that he is in a home that loves him (in fact, my mother has taken all these pictures of Kip and sends them to me!) and caters to his every whim such as..... he gets up way early, eats and goes back to sleep; he just stands at the door to be let out and expects you to be watching and know that - no barking for him!; he sometimes likes to be hand fed; he can't hear very well anymore so you have to take that into consideration; he likes Sunday morning breakfast (actually, he likes any breakfast...., or lunch, or dinner); he likes to sit at the table with the family whenever invited, whether it is for food or games;
he doesn't like to be outside much anymore; I could go on and on! We just felt the flight would be too long for an older poodle that was set in his ways. Plus, I would be going back and forth from Korea to Texas a few times a year and that would mean more trips. I do miss him terribly though, especially whenever I see a dog in Korea.

There are stories about dogs in Korea and how they serve dogmeat at some restaurants, and unfortunately it is true. The way it is done is a cruel practice and hopefully it is on the decline. I really don't want to get into specifics because it upsets me so. On the other hand, you do see an awful lot of pampered dogs on the streets.

And there are several pet stores in town that have the little ones in the window with all their clothes and dyed ears!

Yes, those are shoes....!

To close, here are a few more pictures of some of the little ones I have seen around town that are hopefully loved and appreciated for their companionship and loyalty.

happy valentine's day

2008-02-13T20:20:00.010+09:00

I want to wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day. I roamed around my home and took some pictures of red items in celebration of the day. I hope you enjoy them.

Socks bought in the Korean market in Okpo.

Trinkets bought in China.
Little shoes (which I love) bought in China.
Chopsticks that are packaged with the noodles you buy here.
A stamp I bought on the street downtown that has my name written in Korean (I need to find out which way is up - it might be upside down or sideways!!)

The flowers that my sweet husband brought me at lunchtime today.

it sure is chilly outside

2008-02-12T13:47:00.000+09:00

I don't remember it being this cold last winter. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but some days I just can't get warm enough. We have had alot of sunny days but they seem to be windy too. I am just thankful we aren't dealing with several feet of snow like alot of people do in the winter. We did have a light brushing of snow a couple of weeks ago though.

Ken and I took the ferry to Busan on Saturday just to get out of town for a change. It was sooooo cold. But it was nice to have a change of scenery and to roam the marketplace and to eat some American junk food. It was hilarious about how indecisive Ken was over whether to go to McDonald's or Outback Steak House. As it turns out, we decided to go to Outback for a couple of appetizers and then Ken got a Big Mac afterwards. My, my, aren't we the gourmets of American junk food?

Back to being cold. Even the pig heads in the marketplace had plastic coats on for the day.

In case you want to get another look at the pig heads, here is a picture of a woman chopping at them.

I hope you aren't planning on ham for dinner tonight. You might want to rethink that.

After all of that, I will end with a cute photo of a little man that was standing outside a shop. He was definitely ready for the cold day.

say hay boke-mahn he pah du say oh

2008-02-07T11:17:00.001+09:00

In other words, "please receive many new year's blessings". Today is Korea's Lunar New Year, or Seollal. The actual date each year is different because it is determined by the lunar calandar. This is probably the most important holiday of the year for the Korean people. Everyone travels home to be with their families, traditional food is prepared, ancestor worship ceremonies are held and they enjoy the food and companionship of being with their families.

I have noticed that the Koreans are very big on gift giving. This time of year is no exception. You can see various gift packages in the stores with anything from fruit to alcohol to fish to meat. Some of the stranger gift packs have tins of tuna, cooking oil and/or Spam in them. As I have mentioned earlier, we have received various gifts of fruit, wine and ginseng this holiday. Ken and I were at the grocery store last weekend and noticed one gift we haven't received - a $300 beef gift set.
The first picture shows three packets of beef for approximately $310 U.S. dollars. It really isn't a huge amount of meat either. This can be seen in relation to the size of boneless chicken breasts pictured besides some of the meat in the second photo. We haven't received any beef gifts, but we also haven't received any Spam either. I am thinking that we are probably in the middle range in the hierarchy of gift giving!

Last year was "the year of the pig". The year of 2008 is called "Mujanyeon" that stands for the year of the mouse. Get a glimpse of all the Korean new year signs . For some reason, the names of some of the animals are different from the Chinese signs. For example, mouse is rat in the chinese zodiac and sheep is goat, etc. Last year, you could see pig related items all over, especially plastic piggy banks. I guess all of the mice will be showing up any day now, although I can't imagine a mouse piggy bank. I will let you know about that.

While looking up the zodiac signs, I found a neat website that lets you figure out what sign you are. It also talks about your attributes and compatibilites. I was hoping to be something colorful like a dragon, even a pig would be cute. But I am a goat (or a sheep according to the Korean signs). It actually is quite on track with who I am. It says that goats are excellent care-givers - I guess being a nurse goes along with that. It says that home and alone is where goats feel most comfortable, where they can express themselves artistically, whether it's by painting, cooking or participating in whatever artistic endeavors they enjoy - I wonder if that includes watching HGTV and reading home decorating magazines? Ken is a dog (not really - that is his sign - LOL). He was pretty interested in reading about our signs. One thing he picked up on mine is that wood goats (my kind of goat - you will understand when you look at the site - it depends on the year you were born) need to spend more time caring for their own selves. How true, how true. I guess the lunar new year is a good time to make one more resolution.

birthdays and boxes

2008-02-05T11:26:00.001+09:00

I had a birthday last week.

Since we had previously been invited to dinner that night with some of the employees of Ken's project and the shipyard, we celebrated with them. We went to a restaurant that I haven't been to before. It is close to the harbor area and they specialize in snow crab legs. Anyway, we feasted on wonderful (and huge) crab legs that were already cracked for us. Ken had sweetly brought a birthday cake for me and we commemorated with song and candles. My computer had been returned to me that day and I received my camera the next day. What a wonderful birthday!

Due to the fact that I seem to be getting older, I have had a renewed interest in vitamins and the ways and means of staying young (I wonder why...?). I bought a book in the U.S. on the subject
and have been reading parts of it since I have been back. This leads me to the subject of ginseng, or insam as it is called in Korean.

Ken has been receiving various gifts from various people in preparation for the Lunar New Year. We have gotten the usual fruit, wine and baskets of Korean sweets. One thing we got was a box of individually wrapped boxes of Korean Sliced Red Insam.

It has the consistency of a hard gummy bear and......I am tasting it again to describe the taste to you.......it tastes like I would think bark would taste.

It is not foul or awful tasting, but it is not something I would pick up to eat as a snack. On the outer box, it described in English that it is to be eaten before drinking, while drinking and after drinking, which I assume means alcohol. There was no mention at all of the medicinal qualities ginseng is to possess.

Yesterday we received another box of ginseng. I then realized that another wooden box I retrieved from the trash last spring (don't tell Ken) was probably a box that contained ginseng. The same plant picture is on the front.

Anyway, this ginseng was vacuum packed in large pieces. I guess that this is what it looks like before it is sliced into the smaller pieces. I am not going to open this because I will give it to someone that will enjoy it, like my cleaning lady or some of the Korean men at Ken's work. Bark taste or not, I did save a few boxes of the sliced ginseng to nibble on for health reasons!

But I am going to keep the box.

computers, camera & communication

2008-02-02T18:37:00.000+09:00

I am a few days late in posting this, but since my last post my computer went kaput. Ken took it to the office and had the IT guy working on it all last week and I finally got it back on January 31st. It had to be completely reworked and all my favorite little things were gone but thankfully all of my pictures and music were saved. I am gradually getting it back to my comfort level. And as I mentioned in my last post, the problems with my camera intensified. So I spent all last week depressed and anxiety-ridden (not really, but maybe sort of) without two of my favorite things. It has really made me see how much the computer has helped us feel connected with our families and friends while living here. We didn't have that luxury when we lived in Scotland and France in the early 1990's. I also remember when Ken was out on a drillship for a couple of months at a time in the 1980's and the only way to correspond was on a ham radio once in awhile, and he also could send an email to the office once a week and they would mail it to me!! The families of the soldiers in Iraq have it so much better with emails and cell phones. Just think of the previous wars and the lack of communication then. How hard that must have been on families.

Anyway, I am connected once again and all is right with the world. And I got a new camera! When I was home this fall, I had considered buying another camera but never got around to it. As usual, I couldn't decide what I wanted. I contemplated upgrading from a point and shoot camera to a DSLR. I am writing this like I know what I am talking about, but I actually don't know what DSLR means......I just equate it to a camera that is more technical and thus might take better pictures. I researched a bit and just never bought one. Well, when my camera went beserck I went back to my research. I decided not to get a DSLR camera but did get an upgrade from my other digital camera. My mother had gotten a new camera for her birthday in August (remember her great photos on Flickr ?)and I had used it a few times when I was home and felt quite comfortable with it. So that was decided. Ken had the IT guy at the office (everyone should have an IT guy!) order one. The only problem was that the handbook was in Korean but I downloaded and copied it in English from the computer. I love it - it has great zoom capability and the macro (upclose) is wonderful. Want to see a quick picture (of one of the shelves behind me)?

just a saturday swim in the sea

2008-01-20T16:31:00.000+09:00

Last Saturday, Ken and I bundled up and headed to Deokpo Beach to experience the 4th Geojedo International Penguin Swimming Festival.

We arrived around 11:00, just in time for the festivities to begin. It was cold, but there was a crowd of people
waiting to watch the swimmers rush into the cold water, including a few people from Ken's project. I have no idea what the water temperature was, but the air temperature averages 31 degrees in January, so you can be assured the water is cold.
We were quite impressed with the efforts put forth by the community to make us feel welcomed. People were passing out festival itineraries written in English and most of the announcements on the stage were translated into English (by Brenda, no less - remember she went with me to China).

They also had a food booth that served complimentary muffins, coffee and Ramen noodles. I think the other booths were serving some sort of fish dish. I guess they thought we wouldn't care for it, which is probably true in my case.

The preshow included some singers, dancers, bands and break dancers. After the announcements and introductions of dignitaries, the contestants began to get prepared for their descent into the water. Coats and clothes were shed - I did see a few people in wetsuits, but the majority just had on swim trunks and sometimes a shirt (with a swimsuit - not just a shirt - I wanted to clarify that). It wasn't only the Koreans that took part, there was a nice showing of foreigners, including one young man that Ken works with. A few women participated in the venture - we saw a couple of women that work at the Foreigner's Club take the plunge! I used to teach swimming lessons in the summer in Virginia. I dreaded making that morning plunge into the water for the first class because the water was always so cold. Did I mention that it was summer? I can't imagine how running into frigid water would feel. Anyway, prior to the actual dive into the water, an announcer guided everyone though the regulatory Korean calisthenics.
Then the race was on, with was a mad dash into the water by all. Some people darted right back out of the sea, while a few made it up to their knees.
However, most of the contestants swam out to the waiting boat and collected their wrist band (which later could be exchanged for a medal). It was fun watching the various people make their way out of the water - most of them were red from the cold.

When the race was over, they then moved over to an area of water that was roped off with some fishing nets. Apparently there were fish in the nets that were let loose. Everyone was catching fish with their hands. And these weren't small fish!! I am very upset to report that my camera had been acting up and chose that occasion to not allow me to take any pictures of this part of the fun. I noticed that they had a booth were you could take your fish and get it cleaned. Maybe some of those fish were put into the fish stew they were serving???

The festivities were directed back onto the stage area, where there was a drawing for prizes, belly dancing and a hilarious Korean version of the gong show. It was all in Korean but we were able to get the gist of what was going on. They also had activities on the beach for children that included standing on blocks of ice and racing with flippers on your feet. We were starting to get a bit cold, so we ended our day there.
We had a blast and will definitely put it on our calendar to do next year. Maybe I will even swim in the competition. (Do you really believe that?)

here we are part two

2008-01-18T12:50:00.000+09:00

We arrived back in Korea January 15th. Ken had been back in Texas for three weeks for the holidays and I had been in Texas for three months.

Things are pretty much the same as when I left - with a few changes.

I was greeted once again by T.Y. (the agent) with a huge bouquet of flowers.

The employees were exercising to "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands" at the grocery store.

Flower pots lining the streets had ornamental kale planted in them for winter instead of the flowers that were there when I left.

A block of cheese is now 14 U.S. dollars.

The apartments around us, as well as the Foreigner's Club, have a new coat of paint.

Our bed is still as hard as when we left it....it might actually be harder.

I still was winded walking up the hill to the apartment, but I didn't worry that I would have a heart attack like I did a year ago.

(It is still steeper than it looks though!)

We still surf the channels on the TV looking for something to watch.

We ordered fried chicken from McMurray's and they delivered it to us on a scooter the first night we were back.

I was happy to return. To return to life with my husband, to return to my painting classes, to return to my friends (however, a few have moved on sadly), and to return to everything that living in a foreign country offers. After living here for a year, leaving and returning again, I can clearly see everything that I need to take advantage of while living here. As a mentioned in an earlier post, my life is simple here. I have time to do alot of the things that I don't unnecessarily make time for while in the United States. Wish me luck in all my endeavors - I will be sharing them with you as time goes on.

kim in korea........sometimes

2008-01-12T10:12:00.000+09:00

I know I have been negligent in writing the past three months.

However,I haven't been in Korea since October.

When Ken was assigned this project, we had just moved to another house in Texas. Our thought was that we would stay in this house forever when we bought it. It had all the criteria we thought we were looking for - it was on a golf course, it had a swimming pool and it was a location that was conducive for Ken's work until he retired.

Ken usually works on projects that are for only a few months at a time, but this project in Korea was scheduled to be around 3 years. Our daughter had just graduated from college and was returning to Houston to job hunt. After living in the house for a year, we came to conclusion that it really and truly wasn't the house for us. We absolutely loved alot of the features of the house - all the covered patios and balcony, the pool, the transom windows, the hardwood floors, the curving staircase with the wrought iron banister - to name a few. However, the floor plan really wasn't something that was great for us. I think that a one story house will be of prime importance in our list of musts next time. Anyway, we put it on the market and sold it to the first person who looked at it on the first day of it being listed. This all happened more quickly than we had anticipated, so we were at a loss of what to do at that time. We decided to rent a 2 bedroom apartment with a 2 car garage in which our daughter would live and we would be there whenever we were in town.

Well, it didn't take long before we realized that this really wasn't a great answer to our housing dilemma. First of all, we should have put a whole lot more things in storage and a whole lot less in the apartment. Whenever I visited, I felt like I was always shifting things around and making piles of stuff in our bedroom. Secondly, we felt like we were intruding on our daughter and the life she was trying to create for herself out of college. Last, but not least, we still spent alot of time while we were home at our parents' house. Both of our parents live within 30 minutes of each other in the northern part of Texas - a 5 1/2 drive from Houston.

The answer came when the elderly man that lived next to my parents passed away. It took awhile for me to come around (Ken was more set on this than me), but we ended up buying the house.
I finally realized that our daughter has a new life of her own and that when we came home, visiting our parents was more important and fun.
Anyway, to try to cut this saga short, we bought the house and I went back to get it a little more presentable. It was built in the 1970's, with the prerequisite popcorn ceiling, wood paneling, and gold and brown tubs and toilets.
So I spent most of the fall getting the house ready for us to live in whenever we were home. My father, who is a builder, helped me sooooo much. I really enjoyed some of the projects, like wallpaper, that we took on together and it was great to get to work with him in this way.

Ken and I have always wanted to build a house someday and this definitely was an eye opener into all the decisions that have to be made. I really don't care about windows or doors but those decisions have to be made. Paint color is more difficult than you think - do you know how many shades of white there are? The absolute most difficult part is getting painters, plumbers, counter top installers, etc. to actually arrive at your house and actually do the work. All those TV shows I have watched on HGTV and TLC on flipping houses came alive for me at that point.

It finally came to a close. There are definitely more things to be done, but we can comfortably live there whenever we go home. I don't have piles of stuff everywhere - I actually have empty drawers and cabinets. We elected to not take everything out of storage and move it there because we had a ready supply of furniture from my parents. My mother closed her gift and home accessory store the year before and there was a wealth of items she had kept because she couldn't bear to part with them. The only large items I had to purchase was a sofa, a couple of chairs and a mattress. I used her cast offs (if you could call them that) and then picked up a few odd items from antique stores in town. For those that don't know me well, I would like to interject a few comments. I am someone who loves to decorate her home. I pore over home magazines and my first stop in a store is the home decor area. I have a definite style to my previous homes. However, everything was in storage. It really was a freeing experience to move into a home with nothing. It makes you realize how much "stuff" you carry around in your life and how little you really need. It was so much fun. I used entirely different colors than my usual repertoire. I went with greens, blues and some brown.

I hated being away for so long but I would do it again in a heartbeat. I don't know how long we will keep the home but we feel it is a good investment nevertheless. All I know is that on Christmas Eve, we had our daughter, both sets of our parents and my sister and her husband (who, incidentally, live across the street!) over for dinner. It was such a wonderful evening. I didn't have my usual Christmas dishes, I had a small tabletop Christmas tree and we sat at 2 separate tables to eat with mismatched place mats and dishes.

But we had everything.

made in china

2007-10-02T13:49:00.000+09:00

The shipyard was pretty much closed down last week due to the Chuseok holiday, so most of the employees of the project chose to take a break and go somewhere. Ken and I went to Shenzhen, China with another couple (Norman and Brenda) and a single man (Martin).

The actual reason for the trip was to play golf - alot of golf. And the other actual reason for the trip was to go shopping - alot of shopping.
I wonder if you can guess which 3 people played golf and which 2 people went shopping!

We actually stayed at a place outside of Shenzhen called Mission Hills Golf Resort. Ken and Martin had heard great compliments of the place from another golfer. There are 216 holes of golf. There are even lighted courses that can be played at night. I apologize to everyone that would like to know more on the golf courses, but this is MY blog. I went shopping, not golfing!!!

After a harried trip to the Busan airport (it was foggy and there was a huge traffic jam) early Wednesday morning, we arrived at the Hong Kong airport around noon. We had a driver scheduled to pick us up at the airport. It took everyone some time to figure out how to fit 3 sets of golf clubs, luggage and 5 people into the van but we were soon on our way to Shenzhen. After a drive through Hong Kong, immigration and Shenzhen, we finally made it to our destination.
The guys were so excited that they decided to fit 9 holes of golf in before dark and the girls were so excited that they decided to fit a couple hours of shopping before they got too tired. (I guess you have guessed who golfed and who shopped!!) Brenda and I were a little disappointed about how long the taxi ride was back and forth to Shenzhen (45 minutes to 1 hour each way) but that didn't stop us from going in each day. I think that we had read that it was 20 miles away but I guess we didn't count on the unbelievable traffic.

I need to comment on Shenzhen and the traffic at this point. Shenzhen was quite different from Shanghai and Hong Kong. It definitely wasn't as cosmopolitan or pretty. Alot of the goods come from the Shenzhen area, so it is supposedly less expensive to shop here than Hong Kong and Shanghai. A couple of times we were traveling after dark in the cab and I could see some of the building that looked like warehouses with the lights on. I had visions of all these Chinese workers making so many of the products we use daily that say "Made in China". When you see things like this, it really makes you realize how different our everyday lives are and how very, very fortunate we are. Pause for thought.

Well, we think the Korean traffic rules are bad - they have nothing on the Chinese. Sometimes I would just sit in the back seat and close my eyes. It wasn't that the taxis went real fast - they couldn't due to the snarl of traffic. It was mainly the lack of any road rules, even on the freeway. If you had a three laned road, there wouldn't be just three vehicles lined up in each lane. Oh no, you could have 3 cars, one big truck, one SUV and maybe a couple of bicycles. Or you could have one bus, 2 small cars, one big truck and a motorcyle. Or you could have 4 cars, one bus and maybe someone walking in the road. I hope you get the idea. Here is a picture of someone just walking around the traffic. And everyone just honks at each other all the time.

Back to the important business of shopping. After reading up on the internet, Brenda and I first decided to go to Louha shopping center. After going there, we ended up shopping there for 2 more days. It was a huge place with 5 floors of endless stalls of everything from tailors and fabric to handbags, shoes, Chinese objects, clothing and jewelry. Of course, they had tons of knock-offs. You would sometimes be in a shop and they would hustle to put everything away in bags because they heard someone was coming. You could get knock-offs of everything, even Hello Kitty items. I guess if you can knock-off Chanel, Hello Kitty is a breeze.

They also had tea shops that sold a myriad of loose tea

and also hard blocks of tea.

We were also invited to sample some of the tea - the picture is of Brenda sampling some jasmine tea.

We managed to fit in Kentucky Fried Chicken one day
and a Ramen noodle restaurant that I think is a chain. We had some tasty Japanese fried rice and dumplings there.

The last day, wanting to try a new area, Brenda and I head to Dongmen market area. This area had alot of open air shopping but you could also go into some of the buildings and they would have several floors of shops. There were also street vendors selling food of all sorts. People would just be lining the streets eating bowls of noodles and other things on sticks that I wasn't too sure what they were. I wanted to take a picture of something someone was eating on a stick that looked like a fried scorpion but I didn't want to be rude. So instead I settled for these small birds that looked like they were fried whole and then skewered through the head. If we had more time, I would have liked to observe someone digging into that....or maybe not.
The first building we headed into was 8 floors. The bottom five floors were filled with stalls that were decorated quite trendy considering where they were located. I am sure that this was "the place" for the young girls to shop. There were manequins everywhere that were dressed in clothing and funky wigs. There were also endless "salons" that did makeup, nails and hair. Sometimes they even spilled out into the hallway.
We were constantly asked if we wanted a manicure and they would show you their brightly painted and jeweled acrylic nails. I passed.

We also found another building that had Chinese handiwork and souvenirs. You could purchase carvings, jade, paintings, incense, etc. But one of my favorite finds was the last place we went. The bottom floor had different shops that housed art supplies and paintings. I found a wonderful one that will look great in our house in Mineral Wells.

The next floor was the musical instrument floor.
There were drums, violins and a type of stringed instrument that they were actually playing in the shop. It reminded me of the instrument I have seen in Korea, but the music was much more pretty.

The top floor had an assortment of shops selling dried items. I say items because I don't really know what they were used for. I am guessing that they might be used in some medicinal capacity or something. There were mushrooms, dried lizards of some kind
and some legs of an animal (maybe a deer or something).

It was a nice end to the day because we felt we saw some of the "real" places, not just the regular tourist spots. Unlike other places, we saw no westerners.

After another discussion on fitting 3 sets of golf clubs, luggage and 5 peoples into the van,
we headed back Sunday morning to the Hong Kong airport to Seoul to Busan and then the drive home to Okpo.

Ken had to make a last trip to Burger King in the Hong Kong airport to celebrate the wonderful time we had.

flowers, fruit, friends and Chuseok

2007-09-20T14:55:00.000+09:00

We have another Korean holiday coming up next week. Chuseok (everyone seems to pronounce it chew sock, so I guess that is correct)is held on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month. Apparently in ancient times, they worshipped and held festivals under the full moon. Presently, this holiday is a "thanksgiving" of sorts where they visit ancestral grave sites and observe the rites of clearing the grave site and offering food and drink to their ancestors.

Anyway, it also seems to be another occasion to give gifts. This week, we have received kiwis, oranges, cakes and wine from different Korean businesses such as the agent and the management company that we rent from.

I have a book called CultureShock! It discusses various customs and cultural differences, as well as everyday living in Korea. I have pretty much read it all but I still look up things I can't remember from time to time. I know that the Korean people feel that good business relationships are built upon strong personal relationships. One Korean man explained to Ken and I one time that the friends he made when he was younger are his friends for life. And they spend alot of time, money and effort on these friendships because sometimes these relationships are a key factor to their success in business. Anyway, I looked up the passage on gift giving in the workplace and it stated that not only do the gifts show respect and appreciation, but they also serve in getting someone to think more kindly of you. It went on to say that that these gifts are commonly given during important Korean holidays and that if you receive such a gift, it is important that you reciprocate. I wonder if Ken knows that. Better check.

Speaking of gifts, I received a few of my own yesterday. I had a morning coffee for the women and wives of the project at our apartment. I had been wanting to do this for some time and finally got around to setting a date and sending invitations. It was nice because not only the wives attended, but the four women that work in the office (one works for the company, the other three were hired to work on site here) were able to come. By the way, look at the beautiful orchid they brought me.
I also received more flowers and fruit. It happened to be a box of grapes and I cleaned and put some out. I then learned something new - they don't eat the skins of the grapes. They put the grape in their mouth and then spit out the skin and seeds. You are left with a plate of grape skins that they say are too sour to eat.

Anyway, I think that the coffee (or tea party, as some called it) was a success. I plan on doing it again sometime. We all are different ages, nationalities and with different backgrounds and interests, but we are all here for the same reason. So if we can make a few more friends along the way, so much the better.

oh, my goodness......i'm famous!

2007-09-18T14:31:00.000+09:00

The other afternoon I went strolling around Okpo. I usually will get out in the afternoon when it is cooler but I really haven't done that since I have returned since it has been so warm. After all the rain we have been having, it was nice to walk around town.

While walking, I met up with two friends of mine and we went into a little shop that sells Korean chests, pottery and souvenirs. As we entered the store, 2 other expatriate women were leaving. One of them turned to me and said, "I think I have met you before." I didn't recognize her and we both started to try to figure out where she might have met me. All the sudden she exclaimed, "You're Kim in Korea!" I immediately became very flustered and somewhat embarressed. It turns out that she moved here 2 months ago from Brazil. She had gone online to try to get some information on Okpo and came across my blog. I was trying to remember what pictures of myself I had posted when she said, "you are in it too!", to one of my friends. Then I realized that she was referring to one of the photos on a recent blog about our visit to the Geoje Art Center. I then had to explain everything to my friends, who aren't as up-to-date as me on the blogworld. (I am just being facetious, of course.)

I started all of this for myself and family members, but it was sort of flattering to meet someone that took time to read my blog. I am sure I will come across her again on the streets of Okpo. It was really nice to meet her and she let me take her picture............!

kim's grill (or is it mr. kim's grill?)

2007-09-12T13:22:00.000+09:00

Since coming to Korea, I have had to shift my way of cooking somewhat. I don't necessarily mean the kind of food (however, that has changed drastically) but the way I prepare food. I do have a gas cook top and an extremely small oven (with only one small rack that a 9x13 inch pan can hardly fit on). But coming from Texas, we used the outside gas grill year round. Alot of times I would just put some chicken, burgers, pork chops, etc. on the grill and then just round out the meal with salad or vegetables and potatoes or rice. Of course, sometimes on the weekends we would get fancier and Ken would grill fish or steaks, but I usually did it myself during the week. After selling the house and living with Bailey temporarily, I had discovered the George Foreman grill. It was a small one, so I usually had to cook the meat in increments but I liked cooking with it nonetheless.

While in Korea, Ken and I have been on the lookout for one here but to no avail. We do have a small outside charcoal grill but it is not as convenient or quick as a gas grill. Last week we were scanning the channels for something to watch on TV and somehow stopped on one of the channels that was advertising a "George Foreman type grill" - but I think it was Mr. Kim or Mr. Park or Mr. Lee selling it instead of George! Like in the U.S.,you will find shopping channels on TV, which is where we found this. Most of them concentrate on food or cooking. Have a gander at some of them.

Anyway,we quickly wrote the phone number down and Ken asked the secretary at the office to call and order us one. It wasn't too bad for here ($45) and it arrived the other day. We were thrilled and I will be trying it out tonight. I'll let you know how it goes. You probably wonder why we just didn't bring one from the states. Well, the electricity is different here and we would need a transformer to convert a U.S. plug to run anything with a heating element. We do have a transformer but it is a small one to run a mixer, etc. I bought my blow dryer here.

More on scanning the TV channels...! We have some sort of cable and satellite TV here. After awhile you get to know which stations will have English speaking shows on them, but that doesn't mean they will always be in English or what time they will be on. We have 2 channels that usually have movies on them but lately we have noticed Desperate Housewives on one of them (I think it is a season or two behind). We also have a couple of channels were you can chance upon shows such as CSI, Prison Break, House, Ripley's Believe it or Not or Numbers. There is a BBC channel that sometimes has funny British shows and we do watch alot of Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. There is also a "chick channel" (Ken never usually watches it) that you might catch Bravo shows such as Project Runway, Next Top Model, Ambush Makeover, etc. Luckily for Ken, there are several channels with sports. Sometimes you can catch American baseball and almost always golf but it is commentated in Korean. They especially like the LPGA because there are alot of top women golfers that are Korean. Of course, there is CNN and BBC News. The problem with TV here is that you never know when things will start. When you come to a channel, there will be something in Korean at the bottom of the screen with a time frame on it (for example, 7:50-8:40). You may watch an entire program with no commercials or sometimes there might be a couple. Mainly the commercials are before or after the program, so it is hard to judge when something will begin or end. Their commercials are usually very short but numerous. Hope you enjoy some of them!! (By the way, I didn't tape these but I have seen all of these on TV. This person was able to video them better than me.)

Now if Ken and I could only agree on the remote control! He will start to look for something to watch and stop on a channel and watch it for awhile regardless how long ago it started. In other words, he will stop to watch something that has already been on for an hour. I think we should quickly go though all the channels to see what is on and what time it starts. Then we should decide what to watch. What do you think??

korean brush painting #3

2007-09-10T10:59:00.000+09:00

I am still taking painting class every Friday morning with Mr. Park. It is one of my favorite things I do while here in Okpo. I spent most of the spring doing the 4 seasons - everyone does some of the same pictures at first and these are some of them.

I enjoyed doing them but they really aren't, as a group, one of my best I think. The two pictured are winter and summer.

Since I have been back I have completed "kimchi pots in the snow" and am now working on some pine trees in the snow.

I also have been taking a bead class since I returned. It really isn't too much of "my thing" but it actually has been sort of fun. And I have met several new people while taking the class.

Just a sampling of my new handiwork....!

That reminds me, here is a picture of the beautiful jewelry box that was given to me by the shipyard.

friday night in jangsuengpo

2007-09-09T05:44:00.000+09:00

I realize I am behind on posting but I seem to have been busier than normal. Hopefully I can get back on my regular schedule and get some of my thoughts down on paper (or computer)!

Ken and I had a pleasant surprise on Friday night. The company that leases our apartment to us gave us some tickets to the Geoje Island Art Center, which is located in the town south of us called Jansuengpo. We weren't quite sure what we were going to see but we knew it had something to do with music and dancing. When we arrived, we saw a few other people we knew and were able to sit together to watch the performance. The theater was fairly full with mainly Koreans.

It began with 6 men and women sitting on the stage with various instruments. The women were dressed in beautiful traditional Korean dress. There was one woman playing a wooden flute and four others playing stringed instruments. I looked some of the instruments up and found that one of them was called a guhmoongo.
It is larger than it looks in the picture (maybe 3 or 4 feet) and was played either with a bow, a stick or by plucking with fingers. The other stringed instrument was a haegum, which was played rather like a cello except for the fact that it was quite a bit smaller, more like a violin.
The music itself was not the most pleasant sounding I have heard. I could not imagine how they were keeping time. They could have made a huge mistake and we would have never known the difference. Ken later said he was worried that the whole presentation would be this, but I thought it was entertaining to watch the musicians.

During the presentation, there were 2 different dance numbers. One was with fans - I actually found a picture on the internet that looks like the dress they wore.
There also was a lady that came out onto the stage with much acclaim who talked and sang. It became obvious that she was telling a story of some sort. What surprised me was the audience. They would shout out words and sometimes sing along. Even though we didn't understand, it was fun to watch.

However, the most amazing part of the show were the 5 Korean drummers. They first sat on the stage playing various drums and percussion instruments. They were absolutely wonderful. I couldn't believe how long they could keep it up and stay in rhythm with each other. Talking about it doesn't do it justice. After a short break - there was some more music and dance - they came back out from the back of the theater. They marched down the aisles with some very interesting hats on. When they got on the stage, the purpose of the hats became apparent. I also found a picture of one of them that is exactly how these men were dressed.

The long ribbon twirled around and every which way while they danced and played these amazing drums. Dependent on how they moved their head, the ribbon would follow along. It was truly astonishing, especially since they were energetically dancing and playing the drums at the same time. Hopefully we will have another chance to see this while we are in Korea.

When it was over, they all went outside and you were able to take pictures.

What a great experience!

much ado over fruit

2007-08-28T16:10:00.000+09:00

I think that I have mentioned T.Y. in the past. He is the agent that Ken's company uses. Agents are helpful in foreign countries because they help set up apartments, custom clearance, etc. T.Y. (I usually don't like to use people's names in the blog that I don't know well but since we just use his initials I think it is hopefully okay) is very nice. He arranges transportation to and from the airport. He has arranged and played golf with Ken numerous times and we have also gone out to eat in Busan with his wife and partner (getting out of Okpo for the weekend Feb. 26, 2007). It was he that greeted me with a gorgeous bouquet of flowers at the airport when I first arrived (here we are Jan, 12, 2007).

Anyway, a couple of days after we returned this time, the doorbell rang and it was the driver that had patiently brought us home from the airport with a wonderful basket of fruit. I have been wanting to comment more on the food here and I guess this is a great time to talk about the fresh fruit. First and foremost, like most everything else here, it is not inexpensive. They have the usual oranges, bananas, and apples. You can sometimes find lemons but I haven't seen limes yet. They do have kiwi and pineapple. I have seen and eaten cantaloupe but haven't purchased due to the price. This past weekend, Ken and I paid $8.00 for half of a SMALL watermelon...luckily it was wonderful. I have had Asian pears in the U.S. and love them. I was hoping that they would be plentiful and cheap here. Plentiful yes, cheap no. If you haven't had one, buy one and try it. To me, it is a cross between a crisp apple and a pear. I personally love them and eat them at every buffet we go to. It just hit me that I haven't seen strawberries at the grocery store but I have eaten them numerous times at dinners....I will have to let you know more on that. I have noticed lately that purple/black grapes are plentiful at the grocery stores right now. The basket had some in it and they were absolutely wonderful. By the way, the fruit on the right is an Asian pear.

The only thing I wasn't sure of was this....
I noticed at Tesco they were also labeled yellow melon. They were okay but kind of tasteless. They probably have another name that I don't know. The fruit on the right is a peach. It is larger and whiter than the peaches back home.

Back to the original storyline...! I sent a thank you note to T.Y. for the fruit.

Today Ken received an email as follows:
Ken,
I was impressed much by your kind letter today and could not imagine you gave me such a letter because it was beyond our normal customs. By the way, I'm very happy to have such a letter from a man who support me all the time.
Thanks and Regards,
T.Y.

To which Ken responded:
T.Y.,
The thanks goes to my wife, Kim. She wrote the card because she enjoyed the fruit very much and wanted to show her gratitude.
Regards,
Ken

To which T.Y. responded:
Ken,
That is more honourble for me. Please tell my pleasure to Mrs. Kim Adcock.
Thanks and Regards,
T.Y.

I love being in a country where a fruit basket and a thank you note have such importance.

feels like one hundred

2007-08-22T13:31:00.000+09:00

Current Conditions (as of 1:00 PM)
Today's forecast °F | °C
Mostly Cloudy90°F
Feels like: 100°F
Barometer: 29.7 in
Dewpoint: 75°
Humidity: 63%
Visibility: 6 miles
Wind: 10 mph SW
Sunrise: 5:50 AM
Sunset: 7:06 PM
UV Index: 9 Very High Observed at Pusan / Kimhae International Airport.

It is so very hot. I don't know why I expected otherwise - and it really isn't that different than Houston. I guess I am just used to swimming pools and air conditioned malls during this time of the year. Everyone I know seems to try to just get out in the morning and hole up in their apartments in the afternoon. I tried to ask the lady that cleans our apartment when it would get cooler. From what I understood, she said that from 8/8 to 9/9 is hot and then it would get cooler. I am going to hold her to that - on September 10th, I want to walk out of my apartment and feel cool air on my face.

At least I don't work in the shipyard. Ken took me for a tour (in the air conditioned car) on Sunday afternoon. He wanted to show me all the different parts of the drillship that now actually look like a ship. It really is amazing. All the parts are made and then put together. I don't have a mind that works that way to figure out how things are made. So I am in awe of those who do. Anyway, there is alot of concrete in the shipyard so you know it must get hot. There are also many huge hangars that probably don't have alot of ventilation. Ken said that whenever the temperature reaches 33 degrees Celsius (91 degrees Fahrenheit), the men get an extra 30 minutes for lunch.

We do have air conditioning in our apartment that works very well. The brand name is Daewoo Carrier - I know they have Carrier air conditioners in the U.S. There are actually 2 built in wall units upstairs and a wall unit downstairs that plays a little tune when turned on and off. ( I am sorry - I have tried several times to download a little video of this and have failed for some reason. Maybe I will be able to figure it out at a later date....I will let you know.)

clap your hands

2007-08-18T13:16:00.000+09:00

So sorry that I didn't say goodbye in June! But it was such a whirlwind time prior to going back to Texas. We visited Hong Kong and Singapore, we came home for a couple of days and then I headed for Houston. More on all of that later because today I just want to enjoy being back in Okpo. Not that I didn't have an absolutely great time in Texas - but it is nice getting back to your own little "spot" in the world, albeit Okpo, South Korea for the time being.

We actually got here late Tuesday night, but jet lag has gotten the best of me the past few days. I do think that I am better today though. At least Ken had work to keep him busy this week. In fact, they had the keel laying ceremony for the first drillship this week. And he had a golf outing with some of the shipyard and company men today. It is so hot and humid here (but actually not that different from Houston). I hope it is cooler for the men today - he went to the Muju Golf Resort. It has skiing there in the winter, so he will be at a higher altitude and thus cooler. Maybe.

I, however, headed out at 9 a.m. to the neighboring town of Gohyeon to hit a favorite "dollar store" and the Tesco grocery store. I needed some more clothes hangers at the dollar store but I didn't seem to come back with any. I did come home with this cute jar. It is larger than it looks(probably 24" tall) and will look great back home somewhere.
I guess I will schlep it back in my backpack on the airplane in December!

Tesco seemed the same. Being a Saturday morning, it was quite busy. I don't think I have mentioned this before but - what is so interesting in my grocery cart? Walking down the aisles, not one or two, but numerous people seem to be enthralled in what I am buying. Being that I am in Korea, it really isn't too much different than what they have in their carts. Maybe it is the three bottles of Coke Zero (they don't have 2 liter bottles - it is 1.5 liter). Otherwise, I don't have a clue. They even had their exercise break while I was there, except the song was more like "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands" instead of the "Hokey Pokey".

Even though I didn't clap my hands, I was happy today.

umbrellas are not just for rain

2007-05-27T11:33:00.000+09:00

Thursday was Buddha's birthday and Ken only worked a little in the morning. We packed a lunch and headed to the south part of Geoje Island. We didn't really have a plan - just to get in the car and see where it took us. One of our stops was Hakdong Pebble Beach. As the name implies, it is not a typical sandy beach. It is completely covered with smooth stones. It is said that if you walk on it barefooted, the stones are supposed to increase your circulation and energy. Since my toe is still tender I chose not to do that this time, but maybe some other time. We have been there before, but decided to get out of the car for a breather and walk along the sea wall. It was a gorgeous day and really quite warm.
Alot of Koreans were out and I was struck by all the women with their sun umbrellas. The women here seem to be very diligent in their efforts to keep their faces out of the sun. They also wear alot of visors that have larger than average bills on them. And they use umbrellas for the sun - I caught a picture of some brightly colored umbrellas for sale on the street of Okpo last week.

P.S....
I am sure that the women on the beach wouldn't be pleased to know that Ken and I went to another beach on Saturday to deliberately get some sun.

not really about korea

2007-05-25T15:00:00.000+09:00

This post isn't really about Korea.

It is about me.

I have discovered a world I didn't know was out there until recently. My mother introduced me to this world. She will probably cry when she reads this, but she has made me cry (with sweet tears!) with some of the pictures, cards and emails she has sent me. She is so talented in so many ways, including using the computer. She had a scanner, a digital camera and anything electronic way long before me. And she taught herself all of this. I have always been impressed with that. By the way, please look at some of her wonderful pictures on Flickr.

Anyway, she showed me the world of blogs. I knew about blogs, but I didn't know THE WORLD OF BLOGS. There is everything out there. And most importantly to me, people out there like me. People that like to make things, that like pretty things, that see pretty things in ordinary things, that like to make pretty things, I could go on and on. If you haven't already, check out some of my favorite blogs I visit. In fact, check frequently, because I add more every time I log on. These are talented and creative people that live every day to the fullest with their love of all things beautiful. I know I am gushing but this really comes from my heart. My husband works for a company that builds unbelievably mechanically engineered machines because he is an engineer. I respect that fully, but my heart and mind function a totally different way. I can walk into a shop or a home and just melt because it makes me happy. I can see some fabric and just imagine how it would look on a chair or a pillow. I could go on and on but I don't want to bore everyone with my thoughts, loves and wishes.

Actually, I wrote this blog because a friend of mine in Korea tagged me. I have read many blogs in which people are tagged and participated in swaps. I was really intrigued by it all. Finally I was tagged. Nicole tagged me. You are supposed to write 8 random things about yourself and then "tag" 8 more people to do the same. Kind of like a chain letter. The only problem is - I don't know many people that have blogs. I read alot, but I don't converse with them alot (except for Becky, who Nicole already tagged).

So I guess I will write the 8 random things about myself anyway. Anyone that reads this is free to pass it on from me....what fun! Here are the rules....
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves
2. People who are tagged write a blog post about their own 8 random things and post these rules
3. At the end of your blog you need to tag 8 people and post their names
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Eight random things about me MEME
1. I wanted to teach handicapped children when I was in high school. However, I started out college as an art major and I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing.

2. My absolute favorite flower is a peony but I absolutely love the smell of chrysanthemums.

3. I played the flute and piccolo in the band in junior high.

4. I do not have a middle name nor is my name Kimberly, just Kim.

5. I once won $1000.00 at a convenience store in Las Vegas.

6. I have a fear of heights.

7. I am constantly starting projects but never finishing them.

8. My husband and I had our first date on March 1, 1980 and our wedding on December 27, 1980.

There you go - me in a nutshell.

keeping busy in korea

2007-05-16T14:19:00.000+09:00

Okpo is a small town and sometimes it is difficult finding something to do. Of course, I have the usual coffees, painting class, playing mahjong, etc. But alot of the errands, duties and stresses of life I had in Texas are just not here. Admittedly, there are different ones, but they all just don't seem as urgent. Maybe it is being in Okpo or just the time of my life, but things are more simple now. I take time to read more books, cook meals, and paint. With that being said, some days can be downright boring. You walk the streets alone or with friends, share a cup of coffee and analyze everything on every shelf at the little discount shops. I never thought I would be so enthralled by children's erasers or hair bows, kitchen utensils or key chains.

Yesterday was not one of those days.

I went to mahjong at the foreigner's club. I don't know if I have talked about it before, but a group of us from painting class decided to start playing on Tuesday mornings. Only one of us knew how to play, but she has taught the rest of us. It is quite addicting and once or twice we have played all day. There are 4-6 of us that play fairly regularly. Sometimes we have more, sometimes less. Alot of times, we stay for lunch and play after lunch. Yesterday was once such day and I played until 2:30 or so.

When I went home the cleaning lady was still there and 5 men putting ceiling fans up in the living room and bedroom. A few weeks ago, Ken was asked if there was anything that needed repairing and such. He made a list of things for us and for the other 2 families that live here that work for his company. On a whim, he wrote down ceiling fans. These buildings are at least 30 years old and I understand some of them are in quite disrepair. I think that the management company has had difficulty renting and retaining renters, so they are trying to work with us. In fact, one of the other ladies is getting a door like mine. At the same time, there were people in the little backyard weeding. There was a flurry of activity for some time.

After everyone had left, it was around 5:30 and I started to cook some meat for tacos. I walked into the living room to turn on the TV. The remote control was on top of the TV and I accidentally knocked it off behind the TV. The TV stand is very heavy, so I had to stretch to reach it. I couldn't get to it, so I stood up to go to the kitchen to get something to grab it with. Somehow, as I stood up and started walking, I stubbed my toe. Of course it hurt. I just had on socks and when I looked down, I realized something was not right in my left sock. It took me a minute to do it, but I finally took my sock off and saw that my little toe was definitely not where it was supposed to be. It wasn't hurting too bad, so I decided it was dislocated. I hobbled down three doors to Nicole's house. I asked her very nicely if she could put my toe back into place. Looking back, that wasn't the best of ideas but it didn't really hurt. She wasn't too keen on the idea. Then, Jackie walked up from several other doors and refused also. Looking at a toe that was at a 45 degree angle from the other toes had just horrified them. By now, my toe was becoming alot redder than the others and starting to hurt. So I went home and called Ken.

We went down the street to a clinic called Fatima (I don't know why) but it also says Foreigner's Clinic on the outside. It was recommended by several other people - the physician speaks English. Being a nurse, it was quite the experience for me. I also want to interject that it isn't unusual to see people walking down the street with hospital pajamas on. I guess they are allowed out sometimes. When we checked in, all they needed was my Foreigner's Resident Card. No questions about drug allergies, past illnesses, and no vital signs. I guess they save that for people that really need that. Then I sat down to wait. It wasn't long before I went into the Dr.'s office and told him what was wrong. I was then sent across the hall to X-ray. No lead apron - I guess they decided I was too old to have children. Then the Dr. came back in to tell me it was broken and he was going to reduce the fracture. Essentially that means to put the toe back where it was by manipulating it. With 2 people holding onto my leg and the Dr. pulling, he finally did it after 2 excruciating tries. I think that in the U.S. you might get a local anesthetic or something for pain. They rex-rayed it and pronounced it in place. I was then taken across the hall to a room that contained around 6 cots. No sheets or paper on them, just the vinyl. They put me on one cot, then decided to switch me to another one that a man was lying on with an IV. They got him up and told me to lie down. No cleaning in between us. I hope he wasn't contagious. All of the beds were full with a variety of things - people with IV's, sutures, cast removal, wound care, etc. I was thankful I didn't need any of that because it wasn't the cleanest place in the world. And despite the Foreigner's Clinic sign on the front, Ken and I were the only foreigners I could see. My X-rays were on a view box for everyone to see - it was quite obvious it was broken at the joint where the toe meets the foot. After taping my toes, wrapping my foot in ace bandages and applying a splint and boot to walk in, I was ready to go. All that for only approximately $130.00. Pretty good deal for an emergency room/clinic visit. And for an exciting day in Okpo.