Apple Pie (and other things)

I have an insane sweet tooth and I love to bake. (Juuust in case you were wondering.)

I especially love pie and I'm always looking for an excuse to bake one, but rarely have such an occasion. As it turns out, I chose a wonderful husband who doesn't have a sweet tooth whatsoever (the horror), so if I bake a pie I'm solely responsible for its consumption. (That's not to say I haven't baked loads of goodies without rhyme or reason since we've been married; I just try not to make a habit out of it... unless of course you count oatmeal chocolate chip cookies which are a regular part of my unbalanced diet.) 

Anyway, Canadian Thanksgiving was last Monday and what better excuse could I have to make a pie? None, I tell you. Since we stocked up on apples at a farmer's market the previous week, apple was the pie of choice. I enthusiastically went about throwing the whole thing together the morning of Thanksgiving and pulled it out of the oven just before leaving to have Thanksgiving dinner with Ken's family. 

One word described that pie:

Ugly. 

Lumpy, oozy and slightly burnt around the edges. And see my lovely attempt at pie design? 

(It was supposed to be a palm tree.)

On the bright side, it tasted pretty good so I think I have future potential in the pie-baking department. I just need a little more practice and maybe a new husband who likes sugar. 

On an entirely different note, the above picture is in black and white because I was trying to disguise half of my face. Yes, half of it. I had a couple of moles (literally) burned off of my right cheek only days before by a dermatologist, and the procedure left my face in a sore mess. I don't have much in the line of photoshop skills, so when I tried to erase my big ol' wounds in color, this is what I ended up with: 

(Don't mind the crazy eyes.)

It was a slight improvement from what my cheek actually looked like last week, but not by much. (I'll spare you the unedited photos, as the majority of the right side of my face was pretty icky looking.)

The Bracebridge Fair

As you probably noticed from my previous post, Ken and I were up in Muskoka last weekend to have our pictures taken. (It was a lot of fun.) 

We finished our "photo-shoot" in the early afternoon on Sunday and then started out on our slow journey back to Toronto. Much to my small-town-girl excitement, we happened upon a little fair about an hour into our trip. With some time to kill and seven bucks to spare, we decided to stop by and see what Bracebridge had to offer in its fair-department.

T'was the best seven dollars we've ever spent.

The 800-ish lb. pumpkin. (That's what the sign said.)

The End. 

{You can see where I got tired of making collages.... Laziness is my middle name.}

Cider, parties and cakes, oh my!

Fall is starting to make its somewhat welcome appearance here in the land of Busan. Normally, Fall is my absolute favorite season, but we had such a dreary, drizzly summer with only a few good beach days that it just doesn't seem like Fall should be creeping its way into the year yet. Regardless, I'm embracing it. I made my first soup of the season tonight (Thai Chicken Soup) and I'm already devising ways I can make homemade apple cider soon, which seems to be ridiculously hard at this point, but I've decided to make it happen even if it kills me (... which it just might).

A quick sidenote on why I should go to the trouble of making apple cider myself: After spending three Fall seasons in Korea, I've realized that apple cider (or even the concept of it) doesn't seem to exist here. SO, I've decided to take it upon myself to make it from scratch and introduce it to those under my influence. (Although, by the time I'm done with it, I might turn everyone off to it completely.)

The weekend before last, a few good friends of ours threw a small "Happy Marriage" party for Ken and me. The party was complete with homemade Indian food (yums!), a homemade wedding cake (yums again!) and an amazing night at the norae bhang (a singing room). It was a whole lot of fun and it made me extra thankful for the friends I have here (and for my recently acquired husband, of course!). One of my favorite things about the whole night was the cake topper my friends Andrea and Meaghan made out of marshmallows.

(You will notice that the marshmallow version of me is complete with a toilet paper veil and a cupcake paper skirt.)
(Here, Ken and I are taking turns being jerks while cutting our cake.)
My good friend from college, Mel, and her boyfriend, Gino, gave us these cute little ducks as a wedding present. Apparently this is a traditional Korean wedding gift, as ducks are monogamous (a fact I was not aware of prior to receiving the gift).

And while I'm posting pictures, I'm going to upload a photo I took of a carrot cake I made a couple of weeks ago. (Geez Louise, I seem to be turning into Betty Crocker!)
It's a healthy cake, made with almond flour and agave nectar, so it's bad-sugar and bad-flour free! Plus, it's the best darn carrot cake I've ever had. And, obviously, my amazing photography skills don't do it justice.

And, without further ramblings about parties and my kitchen experiments, I'm off to bed. I just realized I have to teach in eight hours (groan, moan, sigh).

Fall, Sicknesses, and Poopy Pants

Obscene amounts of overtime at work and lesson-plans fit for 40-year-olds instead of 4-year-olds--I believe that's where I last left you. Since then, the overtime has dwindled into non-existence and the lesson plans have become more manageable (i.e. I've quit following them verbatim). Life is finally starting to settle down a bit in the grimy city of Ulsan. Fall is trying to make it's way into October, but it's failing somewhat miserably. There were a few days of chilly breezes last week, but they have quickly been replaced by sticky humidity and mildly warm temperatures. Maybe most people would be okay with summer lingering a little longer, but I miss the cool autumns that force me to bust out my sweaters and hideously pink (but ridiculously comfortable) fuzzy slippers. But maybe by the time November rolls around, the weather around here will finally decide to act according to the season.

With the changing of the seasons--no matter how small the changes may be--inevitably comes various illnesses, most typically the flu and head colds. I have not at all been immune to any such illnesses. If anything, I seem to be the carrier and primary sufferer of them. I have yet another head cold at the moment and it is acting suspiciously like a sinus infection (green snot and the works!). This weekend was number four out of the five weekends we've been here that I've been too sick to go out and do anything. (Poor me, yadda yadda. Remedy advice is welcome.) To top off the boredom that has been spawned from my current situation, I'm feeling a teeny bit guilty for exposing my itty bitty students to the nasty germs that seem to be seeping from my pores. A number of my students were absent due to flu-like symptoms on Friday, and I can't help but feel somewhat responsible for infecting the little tykes. (Then again, since Koreans insist on working through sickness and health and expect their foreigner employees to do the same, can I really be blamed?)

Moving on to other student-related news: I have a little boy in one of my 4-year-old classes named Jimmy, who I think is at least borderline retarded. Aside from his odd behavior during class (he randomly screams in neither English nor Korean at times and then stares off into space with his mouth gaping open for sometimes up to 10 minutes), he seems to have a hitting problem (he doesn't discriminate between teachers and other students), and he is always running into things--namely the wall (he likes to hit students and then run away while looking over his shoulder and, consequently, usually ends up in a head-on collision with the nearest wall or door). There is clearly something askew with the poor little guy, but his mother seems to be in complete denial and insists on sending him to a regular kindergarten, in spite of his inability to interact normally with other students, let alone with the teachers. All of that aside, Jimmy has a pooping problem. As in, he does it frequently. And he usually does it in his pants. While teaching his math class on Tuesday, I suddenly got a whiff of something fowl that resembled a ripe, poopy diaper. The smell was so strong that it immediately hit my gag reflex and I let out a dry heave. The two students on either side of Jimmy crinkled their noses up a little bit, but simply scooched a few more inches away from him, without tearing their faithful little gazes away from the chalk board. This was my first sign that maybe this happens to Jimmy a lot. I signaled a nearby Korean teacher to haul Jimmy out of class, as the foreign teachers are not allowed to take a student into the bathroom (a rule that I'm even more thankful for nowadays). She returned with Jimmy, who was clad in a new pair of pants, about 15 minutes later, a disgusted look planted on her face and a relaxed and rejuvenated look on his. On Thursday, my hunch about Jimmy having a pooping problem turned out to be correct, as the same scenario repeated itself in my P.E. class. Lucky, lucky me. Here's hoping I can keep my gag reflex under control for the remainder of the year.

Well, the believed-to-be-cold-medicine (one can never be sure when they don't speak the language of the pharmacist!) I took earlier seems to be kicking in and I'm getting a little too drowsy to be writing my deep, insightful stories on life in Korea. But I promise, more stories will come....

October

I love autumn. I love it even here in defiant little Korea, where the leaves refuse to change color and the weather remains too predictable to pull my favorite sweaters out of their hiding place in my wardrobe closet. Because even though there are few visible signs of autumn here, I can smell it in the air; fall has a subtle scent of crisp breezes and of the color orange, even when the actual weather doesn’t seem to want to comply with the season. The steam softly spiraling into the air from my cup of tea and the aroma of my glowing, scented candles are helping my imagination in my pursuit of the feeling of autumn, even though my window is wide open and I have a fan blowing in my direction. But I refuse to be disheartened by the persistently warm air that is hanging stagnant in my apartment.

Autumn represents change, and it is during the fall season that I begin to dream of what my life could look like in the not-so-distant future. Restlessness, without fail, seems to consume me during the glorious month of October. As I’ve been sprawled out on this crunchy, black leather sofa in my living room, basking in my pseudo-autumn environment, I’ve been clicking through my blog posts from last year at this time. I came across a post I had written about a trip I had taken to Chicago last fall, and as I was reading through it like an old letter from a long-lost friend, I suddenly noticed a developing pattern in my life: October, for me, means it is time for a drastic life-change. And as I’m sitting here marveling over how much my life has changed over the past twelve months, I realize—with a jolt of excitement and a pang of frustration—my feelings at this very moment seem to differ little from my feelings at this time last year.

Korea has pulled me apart and put me together again like a jigsaw puzzle, all in one year. It has been a tumultuous year, a good year, and an enlightening year; the kind of year I think everyone needs to experience at least once in their lifetime, if not a few times. My decision to come here, although somewhat unclear and difficult at the beginning, was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I have learned more about life, relationships, culture, and even myself in this one year than I have in any previous year I can remember. I have made many dear friends during my time here who have made my life all the richer by simply existing in this small corner of the world. And yet, as I sit here in my dark living room, listening to the sounds of the street drifting on the autumn air outside of my window, I realize every chapter in life has to close at some point.

October is a month of change, and my decision, although unstable and a little bit terrified at the moment, has been made. My future is still very unclear, but I know Korea will not be a part of it for much longer (and I truly hope these are not famous last words). This revelation of sorts is both gut-wrenching and curiously exciting. I have no idea what looms before me in the cold months ahead, but I thrive on change and thus have a growing desire to soak up these last few moments in Korea, and then move on. I am now waiting for the air to cool, the leaves to change, my sweaters to make their long-awaited debut, and new opportunities to arise and be taken advantage of.