Oohhh February...

2011 thus far has been filled with lots of snowy, freezing-your-face-off kinds of days and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a hardcore case of February Blues at the moment. (February is my most dreaded month of the year because I'm so, so over winter by this point.... If I see one more snowflake I might throw up in disgust.)

In order to keep our spirits up during this time of brutal weather, Ken and I resolved to bundle up and venture out to visit a new restaurant and/or coffee shop at least once a week, just to give us something to look forward to every now and then and to help us enjoy life in Toronto (in spite of it being an icier version of hell on earth). We've found a number of gems during our new weekly assignment, and most of them are a stone's throw away from our living room window (which is dangerous for our wallets during those lazy, I-don't-feel-like-cooking days... which are frequent). Here are a few of our recent discoveries:

Korean Food. Wha--?

It's been almost a year since we left Korea and I hadn't the slightest craving for anything even remotely Korean... until a few weeks ago.

Thankfully, we only had to walk a few blocks to Korea Town where we were met with Kimbop-Chungoos galore to satisfy such random cravings. (Although the mounds of snow piled on the sidewalk made the walk long and treacherous and perhaps not totally worth it.)

It was a yummy dinner that made my little heart miss Korea a teensy bit. I was also pleasantly reminded that Korean makes for really great winter food (the red pepper paste is particularly... warming, if nothing else). Would you believe we actually devoured four bowls of kimchi? I never thought I'd live to see the day.... Suffice it to say, we've now had our Korean-food-fill for the next year.

Burgers.  Not just any burgers, mind you. Craft Burgers. 

Organic, fancy-shmancy deliciousness. (I tried my burger with avocado, gorgonzola cheese, and rosemary-garlic mayonnaise... aaaand my mouth is watering at the very memory.) 

This place is amazing and I'm pretty sure it's the best burger I've ever had. What's even more amazing? It's literally a two-minute walk from our apartment. (Dangerously convenient.)

Coffee. I'd been moaning and groaning about the lack of good coffee shops in our area for the past nine months of living here only to discover there's a great place five minutes up the street (and I won't be winning any awards for my observation skills).  

Tiny, artsy and maybe the best macchiato I've ever had. They also have a stack of magazines and board games available for their patrons, which I thought was a nice little touch. (I'm going to make this place my Saturday morning ritual.) 

We've been to a few more mentionable places over the past couple of weeks but we forgot to haul our camera along for those excursions, and because a picture is worth a thousand words (and because we now have a camera worth using) I'll provide more on the subject another time. 

As for the rest of our free time during these awful winter months: It's been spent watching lots of movies and episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (me, not Ken), wasting time on the computer, and playing lots of card games and board games.

 Some a little more thought-provoking than others....

As you can see, I'm running low on subject matter, so I shall also re-mention this little guy who is now occupying the rest of our free time:

We are in serious danger of becoming weird dog people, but it can't be helped. (To prove my point, here's a little Flickr album I created just for Bubba.)

He's had a number of naughty-as-heck moments this week, but he's really sweet most of the time.

Of course, it helps that he's really cute. (If he were ugly, he would have been thrown out the window days ago.)

That's all I've got, people. It's been a slow winter, but things are good... and boy am I ever looking forward to spring. 

Quit staring! And other ramblings.

I'm currently sitting in Starbucks in Haeundae; the usual spot where I plunk myself down whenever Ken and I decide to have a healthy break from each other. He's usually a lot more creative with his Liz-less outings (exploring new parts of the city, going to the movies, etc.), whereas I usually make a beeline straight for Starbucks as soon as we part ways. I hate donating any of my paycheck to this place, but they're one of the few coffee establishments around here that supports my internet addiction--on top of my coffee addiction--by providing free wifi. (I have some issues.) Anyway, I noticed a woman sitting behind me a few minutes ago who won't stop staring at my computer screen. She's failed to realize that I can see her reflection clearly in my screen and can therefore see the way she keeps craning her neck to see over my shoulder. (I hope she understands English so she'll stop once she reads this.)

In some notable news, I've started my application process to obtain permanent residency in Canada (the plan is to move there come March when we're finished teaching in Korea). Honestly? The process makes me want to jump out the window... which is precisely why I'm updating my blog right now and ignoring the stack of application forms currently sitting next to me, waiting to be filled out. I have made some progress, however. I had the required medical exam done last week by a designated doctor (designated by the Canadian government, apparently) to prove that I'm healthy enough to depend upon Canada's health care system. The exam went relatively smoothly, but the blood test rendered my arm bruised and bloodied for a couple of days after. Ah yes, let me whine about that little story for just a moment....

It should be noted that I hate having my blood taken and I'm usually a pretty big baby about it, whether or not the situation warrants it. This time, however, it was slightly warranted (slightly). First, I was a little horrified to find out that I would be having my blood taken at a small table in the corner of the busy waiting area of the hospital. Much to my dismay, I was the only foreigner in the hospital and thus gained quite the audience for my blood-taking procedure. I was pleased, however, when the needle went into my right arm and the whole process went on without incident (read: without me fainting), and I couldn't help but look around the room proudly while mentally saying, "See? I'm a big girl. I can handle needles!" But (there's always a "but") when the nurse pulled the needle out of my arm, you would have thought she had just removed the cork from a champagne bottle. A stream of red went shooting out of my arm and all over the table in front of me. First of all, I had no idea my blood was capable of gaining such height. Secondly, it was quite embarrassing when the nurse let out a horrified shriek the moment it occurred and recoiled from my arm with a look of total disgust on her face. Needless to say, it drew a whole lot of unwanted attention. People were pointing and staring, and I wasn't just imagining it. The worst part? They couldn't find any band aids or tape to get my angry blood under control. Which led me to question: What kind of a hospital doesn't have band aids? Anyway, I was left holding a wad of tissue over my arm for half an hour before my vein finally saw it fit to stop overreacting.

Once I was finished with the above ordeal and I was declared perfectly healthy by the doctor, Ken and I decided to spend the rest of our afternoon at my favorite temple in Busan (Beomosa), which was conveniently located only one subway stop away from the hospital. Sadly, we realized upon our arrival that most of the temple was being renovated, so it wasn't nearly as charming as it usually is. Regardless, we took a couple of pictures before we meandered away.

(The green tarp provides a lovely background for this picture....)

(A big bell.)

In other news, Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving and since most of my friends here (plus the husband) are all Canadian, we made a huge dinner on Sunday to celebrate. I've never seen a turkey in this country, so we settled on roast chicken for the occasion and it was the next best thing. The menu was complete with vegetarian gravy, mashed potatoes, a broccoli and cauliflower casserole, carrots, and rice flour rolls. It was the best meal I've had in ages. The dessert, as always, was by far my favorite part. There was pumpkin pie (thank you, Costco!), butterscotch pie, and apple crisp... and I ate an obscene amount of all three. Needless to say, I had a Thanksgiving-dinner-hangover the next day.

(Here's my plate on the first round... I think I had three in total--yikes!)

And here's a picture of Ken smoking our new hookah pipe that our friend Kevin brought back from Thailand for us:

It's small, but it works perfectly. It's great for cool autumn evenings like tonight. Yay for blackening our lungs!

OK, enough of this blogging business. I really should attack this pile of application papers.... Ugh. Oh, and the nosey lady who I previously mentioned no longer seems to find my computer screen very interesting. She just up and left.

I'm a Pro

I am an expert at many things. Unfortunately, the world as a whole doesn't tend to deem these things--these arts, if you will--as conventional and least of all worthy of any sort of income. Of course, I blame the world for being far too narrow-minded, and I truly hope that someday it will become more open to the finer things in life, such as:

1. Coffee drinking. I could drink enough coffee to turn the ocean from a deep blue into a syrupy, coffee brown. And I probably do. I'm quite good at consuming coffee and I'm even better at making the distinction between "good coffee" and "bad coffee," "light coffee" (usually bad) and "dark coffee" (almost always delicious, assuming it isn't dark because it's been sitting on the burner for an ungodly amount of time and scorched beyond drinkability). My taste for coffee is honed right down to the very region of the world where the coffee is grown. I can taste the difference, and believe me, I have a preference (Latin American grown, in case you're wondering). Of course, I do my best to support fair trade coffee, even though I spend an obscene amount of time (and, sadly, money) at Starbucks. Side note: I'll quit giving that particular capitalist establishment my business as soon as I leave this country (hey, Rome wasn't built in a day).

2. Globe trotting. If the job to travel with no strings attached (read: no other work involved) existed, I would be the best in the business. Granted, I've only been to a handful of countries and I'm not exactly the best traveler in terms of roughing it (I nearly faint every time I see a cockroach), but I love traveling more than I love my iPod or my cat (another story within and of itself), and that's saying something. Traveling to new and unseen places, eating new and delicious (and sometimes disgusting beyond description) cuisine, and meeting people from all over the globe are what I consider to be my niche in life. If only I could get paid to travel instead of paying through the rear to do it. I've come to terms with the fact that I will probably never retire because (a) I won't have anything to retire from and (b) I will never have the money to do so, thanks to my traveling addiction. But, hey, you only live once. Oh, and while I'm on the topic of traveling, I would like to announce my upcoming travel plans: I'm going to Japan for a little over a week in July to visit Osaka, Kyoto, maybe Tokyo, and to climb Mount Fuji. Seriously. I'm going to climb it.

3. Wasting time. If this were an art, I would be Leonardo Da Vinci. I'm the queen of wasting time. Doing what? you may wonder. I don't know. "Wasting time" usually means not doing anything noteworthy or memorable.

4. Reading. (See previous post.)

5. Thinking about life and/or the meaning of it. This might fall into the category of "wasting time", but I sometimes feel like I've figured it out and, consequently, feel productive. However, I'm a little bipolar in that I swing back and forth between enlightenment and total cluelessness, the latter of the two being most prominent. I find myself frequently asking "Why am I on this chaotic Earth?" or "What the @#%# am I doing with my life?" These are the questions most people ask at some point in time, but I seem to obsess over them. I fill pages upon pages in my diary asking these questions in different variations (e.g. "Should I join the Peace Corps next year? If so, what's the point? No, I think I should go to Spain to learn Spanish and to find a rich European man. Wait, scratch that. Graduate school in Australia. But maybe...." so on and so forth). Needless to say, I don't have life figured out and I probably never will (the only real conclusion I've come to).

If I could acquire some form of income for any or all of the above, I would be a billionaire. But thanks to the world we live in, only brainy people like Bill Gates are recognized for their supposed "talents". But as they say in French, "C'est la vie". And now I will stop wasting your time while I'm wasting mine. People.com is calling, and so I'm going to move on and continue my #3 art without imposing it on the rest of the world.

Tick Tock

I am a devoted coffee drinker. I realize this statement could be taken lightly or seen as a mild exaggeration, but my need for coffee is not to be underestimated. I require coffee every morning, or I simply cannot function as a productive member of society throughout the rest of the day. On the days I miss my morning cup of java, I can be seen wandering through the hallways of my school like a zombie, with my eyes half shut and a scowl on my face, ready to attack the first child who screams too loudly in my exhausted, overly-sensitive ears. Even though I view this as being an entirely normal problem to have on the unfortunate, coffee-less days, some might see it as either a serious character flaw, or an addiction to caffeine. And although “addiction” is taboo in every society, I accept and nurture the latter of the two options, because—hey—everyone is addicted to something, right?

I live in a country where sanitation is a little more advanced than some of its surrounding countries. I have, however, been strongly advised on a number of occasions not to drink the tap water here in Korea (I think this is the general rule of thumb in most countries). I have faithfully adhered to the unwritten rules of avoiding tap water like the plague for the entire eight months that I’ve resided here, but today I had to make an exception. I rolled out of bed this morning at a reasonable hour upon the premise that I would have a good cup of coffee in my hands in only a few moments. I shuffled out to the kitchen, rinsed out the coffee pot, put a new coffee filter into the coffee-filter-thinger on my coffee maker, carefully measured two scoops of Starbucks coffee grinds, and then reached for the bottle of drinking water that is usually sitting next to the coffee maker. But much to my confusion, my hand didn’t grasp on to a large plastic bottle; it only scooped up a handful of air. In my zombie-like state, I stared at the empty counter space for a full minute before it registered that I was out of drinking water. Crap. I contemplated my options for a few minutes, and after weighing the pros and cons of walking down to the corner store and buying more water or risking it with the water from the tap, I finally opted to take my chances with the tap. I was, after all, too exhausted (read: lazy) to walk down eight flights of stairs and half of a block to the local Family Mart just for a bottle of water.

Before meandering into uncharted territory by taking my first sip of Korean tap water, I decided to do a little bit of homework first. I Googled “how to kill tap water germs” and found an article that claimed if I boiled the water for a full minute it would kill any harmful germs. I looked at my coffee maker and realized the water wouldn’t come anywhere near the boiling point, but it would, however, be exceptionally hot. I decided to leave the coffee on the burner for a full ten minutes, thinking that maybe ten minutes on a hot surface would do the same damage to the water germs as one minute of boiling.

I’m currently sipping carefully on my iffy-coffee, waiting for something to happen. I’m not sure what to expect really, if the worst should happen. I’m assuming “the worst” would be acquiring a parasite of some sort, but I don’t really know. Only time will tell….