Happy 2012!

 Our good friends, Kyle and Natasha, were in town this past week from Charlottesville, Virginia, and we were so excited when they asked if we would like to spend New Year's Eve with them this year (we, of course, said yes).
  
The whole of New Year's Evening was spent chatting and catching up, playing Nintendo Wii (the guys), playing with our cameras (the girls), chowing down on hors d'oeuvres from Loblaws (have I mentioned I'm slightly obsessed with the new Loblaws that opened up the street from us?), and playing "What?" (funnest game ever).  Of course, we turned on the TV and watched the ball drop in Times Square and there was definitely some party-favor action mixed in there, too. (It was a whole lot of fun.)

Even Bubba The Grouch was feeling festive last night....

Bubs was also doing his best to work on his New Year's Resolution of being more sociable and less I'm-going-to-bite-your-fingers-off-if-you-even-look-in-my-direction. (He has a very long way to go this year, but he did fairly well last night, all things considered.) His good-ish behavior may have had something to do with the adorable gift-set Kyle and Natasha brought for him:

(The cheesy ball is Bubba's new favorite toy in the whole world.)Last night was a pretty fantastic way to ring in the New Year and I'm feeling quite optimistic about 2012 (sans the whole end-of-the-world thing, but whatevs).And now I'm off to come up with a couple of New Year's Resolutions (that I will no doubt break within moments of making them).                                                                   Happy New Year!

The Twindigs Take Toronto!

Last week my dear friends from Nashville, Krista and Nicole, came to visit me in Toronto! It was a last-minute trip that wouldn't have happened had their original plans to travel to Israel and Egypt not been postponed until next year, which was undoubtedly very sad for them but incredibly fortunate for me. (I'm admittedly selfish.)

Anyhoo, the twins (yes, twins--both hot and single!) came last Monday evening and stayed until Friday morning for a few days of city-exploring, shopping and catching up. Thank God the weather was next to perfect during their stay, as I was told that Nashville has been nothing shy of a sauna all summer long. Yay for breaks from the heat! Too bad Toronto has turned back into a sauna this week. Yuck. But I've strayed off topic, haven't I?

Here are the highlights of Nicole and Krista's Toronto adventure!

* A trip up the CN Tower, which was a little scary, but everyone had fun while I spent a lot of time with my eyes closed. (It should be noted that part of the elevator and part of the observation deck have glass floors, which is nothing shy of uncomfortable when you're standing 1,122 feet above the ground.)

Here we are, gearing up to go to the top:

(Picture taken from Krista's camera.)

Here's a hazy view of the less-interesting side of the city from the observation deck:

(Picture taken from Ken's camera.)

Looking down into the Sky Dome while the Blue Jays played a baseball game (because that's what they do):

(Picture taken by Ken, through the glass floor that I refused to stand on.)

And here's the only proof that Ken was actually with us: 

(Picture taken from Ken's camera, and boy do we look awkward.)

* A short trip through Kensington Market, followed by a really long walk to the Eaton Centre (because I, the ever-trusty tour guide, got hopelessly lost). We only spent enough time in Kensington Market to eat lunch, but spent a whole lot of time shopping at the H&M in the Eaton Centre once we found it. Priorities!

* A trip to St. Lawrence Market, followed once again by more important outings (like shopping a major clearance sale at Urban Outfitters). 

* A day-long excursion to Toronto Island, which was by far the best part of their stay (for me, at least). The weather was warm, sunny and not humid, and aside from an hour-long wait in the ticket line for the ferry, the crowds were minimal. We spent our day there eating over-priced food, laying around on the beach, briefly sticking our toes in the frigid waters of Lake Ontario (and deciding anyone who swam in it must be crazy), walking around, having tea and expensive desserts at maybe the cutest cafe ever:

...and getting lost on a random trail that we thought would lead us back to the ferry. (We eventually found our way there, but not before being chased by bugs and traipsing through poison ivy.) 

(Pictures taken from Nicole's camera.)

T'was a good day and week, and I was so happy to have the ladies here for a visit. Now it's back to the lonely job-hunt! *moan, groan, sob* 

P.S. If you're wondering if I ever take any pictures of my own, the answer is: Yes, I do. I took this one of the city skyline from Toronto Island:

 

...and this one of my expensive dessert at the above-mentioned cafe:

 

Both from my very own camera! So there. Be proud of me.

Birthday & Beef

Story #1: My Birthday Adventures

My birthday this year (January 2nd!) was spent in a freezing cold airport in northern China--waiting for a flight to Seoul--for most of its entirety. It was an exhausting day but, thankfully, I have some dear friends who surprised me with a birthday cake while we were sitting in a Chinese KFC in Dalian, China (a city that turned out to be surprisingly huge, considering I had never even heard of it before... but I suppose it is China).

The cake and surprise were great but, needless to say, my 22nd birthday (ahem!) won't go down in history as my best birthday ever. My most unusual birthday? Perhaps.

Ken, however, redeemed the last birthday of my twenties this past Friday evening. He very kindly called together a group of ten people to have a little belated-birthday party for me, in all of my mopey, nobody-loves-me glory. (I'm a master at feeling sorry for myself!) It started out at my favorite Thai restaurant in Korea for some yummy green curry and ended in my favorite noraebang in Haeundae (my favorite because it comes complete with a view of Haeundae beach, allowing us to serenade the unaware-people going for a stroll along the shoreline). It was the perfect little birthday outing and I wouldn't have wanted to celebrate it any other way! And without further ado, here are some photos of the evening's highlights:

Here is Mel at the Thai restaurant, trying to take apart her "shrimp" plate that she had ordered (she had no idea it would look like this):

Does anyone else find this entree a little terrifying? Kudos to Mel for eating the whole thing (except the legs and eyeballs)!

Now, from here on out, the photos are about to get blurry and grainy. The reason for this being that, once again, we only took video and forgot to take actual pictures that night. Since I've found uploading videos on this blog to be next to impossible, I decided to take a few still-shots from the birthday videos. As I've mentioned before, I'm either really bad at doing this, or getting a clear shot from Ken's video camera is simply impossible (I have a feeling it's probably the former, though). Here we go....

Here are the ladies singing "Mama Mia" at the noraebang:

If we're looking a little too serious about this business, it's because most of us only really knew the chorus of the song.

Here are some of the boys singing "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" (a song they take very seriously, as indicated by Ken's delicate grip on the microphone and Kevin's emphatic hand-motions):

Here's my birthday cheese cake, courtesy of Costco, complete with ten candles (very gracious, considering I'm practically old enough to be a 10-year-old's mother--eek!):

An evil-looking picture, no doubt! Here's the only other still-image I could grab of the cake-event, taken while Mel and Gino sang the Korean-version of the "Happy Birthday Song":

Hello, crazy eyes!

And, last but not least, a picture of our impromptu dance party that took place while Ken bellowed out the notes to "The Twist":

Just a teeny bit embarrassing, I'd say! But a whole lot of fun, nevertheless.

And now moving on to our 2nd story: The Bulgogi Adventure

For my birthday, Mel and Gino generously gave me a gift certificate to a new, fancy bulgogi restaurant in Haeundae. Now, bulgogi is a Korean food I like because--hey!--you can't go too wrong with beef, right? Unless, of course, it's raw. Well, last night Ken and I decided to take advantage of my birthday gift, so we meandered on over to Bulgogi Brothers (the name of said restaurant) for an early dinner (which also happened to be the first meal of our pathetically lazy day). After arriving at the restaurant and being seated in a cozy booth in our own little corner, we were surprised to find the entire menu was in Korean! (Duh, we live in Korea, but usually popular restaurants include an English menu around here, so we were ignorantly surprised, nevertheless.) We can both read Korean, but we understand very little, so we decided it would be a safe option to simply order the standard "couple set" and see where that would take us. Guess what? It took us to an enormous tray of raw beef! Some of the beef was meant to be cooked on the grill in front of us, but a fairly large portion of it was not meant to be cooked at all. That's right: We accidentally ordered beef that was meant to be eaten in its raw form! Eww. Now, if I hadn't known the meat was supposed to be eaten like this, I would have given the restaurant some points for presentation:

...but it was meant to be eaten like this, so they lost some points (even though it was our own fault for not learning enough Korean to understand the menu).

Anyway, to make a long story short, we both ignored our gag-reflexes and tried to pretend like eating a raw, freshly-killed-cow was great. Ken ate his entire share of it and I put a large dent in mine (I was quite proud of myself). Truthfully? It didn't taste too bad. It tasted like... beef that happened to be raw. The texture, on the other hand, was a bit repulsive. I was proud of myself for eating as much as I did because I'm extremely sensitive to texture, which makes me a bad candidate for mushroom-eating of any kind. Raw meat? I would rather eat my toenails, thank you very much. But I did it! And here's what I looked like while doing it:

The look of terror on my face isn't even remotely fake. Coincidentally, the sign in the background resembles the exact thought in my head at that very moment.

And here's Ken, not handling it much better than I did:

To be fair to Bulgogi Brothers, the rest of the meat was pretty good (the cooked meat). It was definitely high-quality meat (or maybe I'm just assuming it was, since it was pretty pricey). Here's a not-so-flattering photo of some of our other entrees:

And there you have it. Our bulgogi adventure. To top it all off, it gave us both diarrhea just a few short hours after eating it. Of course, it may have been more psychologically-induced than raw-beef-induced. Regardless, my new New Year's resolution? Become a vegetarian!

And again....

I'm a liar. I didn't make apple cider with my friends on Sunday and I celebrated Halloween again, despite my earlier anti-Halloween declaration. So, let's start with Halloween, shall we?

First, it should be noted that I can't always withstand peer-pressure. There were Halloween parties going on all over town on Saturday night, but Ken and I (acting like a couple of old fogies) decided to sit at home in protest while sipping on tea and teaching ourselves how to do the moonwalk (we're weird old fogies). However, a couple of texts and a phone call later (from peers who were pressuring), I found myself running around the house trying to throw together a costume with only ten minutes to spare. Now, I would like to think that I'm a creative individual in times of crises but, alas, I'm not. The best no-prep-time costume idea I could come up with was "white trash" [insert sheepish wince]. Aside from probably being a snobby and/or politically incorrect costume, I'll be the first to admit that it was lame. But, as mentioned before, I only had ten minutes and a limited wardrobe to work with (keep your "What's so different about you dressing as white trash?" comments to yourself, thank you). The costume kept getting more elaborate as the night progressed and I'm pretty sure I just looked like a gangster wanna-be idiot by the time I went home. Regardless, it was a fun night. My friend's (Mel) boyfriend's (Gino) band (got that?) was playing at a local venue that night and they were really good. They looked good, too, as all of the band members were dressed up as ajummas. Anyway, without further ado, here are some Halloween pictures that you've all probably seen on Facebook already:

Gino and his ajumma band (picture stolen from Mel's Facebook):

Andrea, Mel, Meaghan (great costumes) and me (boooo!):

Looking a little bit scary:

OK, now moving on to the apple cider thing. It didn't happen. We (Meaghan, Andrea, and I) made chocolate cupcakes instead (from this chocolate cake recipe and this coconut frosting recipe; I highly recommend both!). The apple cider thing might have happened if we wouldn't have had a couple of disasters with the cupcakes....

First it was this:

(Some of the cupcakes caved in.)

Then it was this:

(The icing turned into a mucus-y goo.)

(And here we are being unnecessarily dramatic about it.)

Anyway, with some quick thinking and some tweaking here and there, we finally managed to salvage the whole kit and caboodle, but we were left with no time for the apple cider adventure. Maybe next weekend? Here are the cupcakes:

I realize they don't look very appetizing, but they tasted really, really good (especially considering they're relatively healthy).

And off to bed I go.

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).

Japan, I love you.

I am on my fourth day in Japan and loving it. Why I decided to move to Korea and not this lovely country is entirely beyond me. Japan puts Korea to shame in almost every sense of the word (which is a huge insult to Korea, given their tumultuous history with Japan... but it`s true).

We (three foreigner friends and myself) spent our first few days in Hiroshima, better known as the city that was nuked by America. It was a very eye-opening trip and I would be lying if I said I didn`t consider renouncing my American citizenship by the time I finished walking through the A-bomb museum. What a terrible tragedy. And, perhaps not terribly surprising, the States has never issued a formal apology for wiping out tens of thousands of innocent lives in one of the most inhumane ways known to mankind. Notwithstanding, I loved the city of Hiroshima and I`m amazed at the way they`ve been able to recover over the last few decades.

I`m now in Kyoto and loving every moment of it. This city is beyond gorgeous and I really want to forget even going back to Korea and just find a job here. We spotted three real geishas wandering the streets yesterday afternoon. I was told before I came here not to get my hopes up about seeing them because they try to avoid public attention, but I was lucky enough to snap a few pictures of them. (I will be posting my pictures when I return to Korea, since I was an idiot and forgot my USB chord). The temples and gardens are insanely beautiful here in Kyoto. I found a huge Zen temple today and wandered around the gardens for a few hours, taking a few moments to journal and read every now and then (until I was attacked by an enormous green spider... nature didn't seem like such a great idea after that little incident.). I love this city!!

OK, this internet time is costing me an arm and a leg. Japan is a lot of things, but it sure isn`t cheap. So, I will bring this to a close and leave you with one of my feeble promises to post pictures soon. Have a good day/night!

A Hodgepodge of E's and I's, P's and J's

If you know me well (or if you even know me at all) you probably know that I have a mild obsession with the study of personality types. OK, maybe "mild" isn't a good adjective to use here; it might be a major obsession of mine, but--hey!--everyone has their quirks. I am particularly fascinated by the typology test known as the "Myers-Briggs", and I must admit that I put more stock into it than I probably should. I find it, however, to be surprisingly accurate in most instances, and I find that it feeds my desire to put everything inside of a tangible box: "You don't understand me? Well, it's probably because I'm an ENFP and you're an ISTJ. End of story." To the curious interest of some and the incredible annoyance of others, I have made most of my friends (and sometimes even new acquaintances) take the test; sometimes more than once. I then proceed to analyze everyone accordingly from that point on: "There you go again straightening the card pile. It must be the 'J' in you." Some might write this off as a serious character flaw of mine, but I might heartily disagree. I view the process of studying personality as incredibly important in understanding our fellow person and for the development of healthy relationships. Call me a nerd, but it's the way I roll.

I recently had a group of my friends here in Korea take the typology test one night while we were crowded around a friend's living room for a game of Euchre. They pretended to be annoyed and proceeded to give me an exceptionally hard time for being weird and adamant about the test, but I think they secretly enjoyed it and found it almost as fascinating as I do. I mean, honestly, I didn't make them take the test; I just nagged them about it for a few hours until they begrudgingly complied. After everyone had answered the questions and tallied up their scores, I looked over the test results and was intrigued by the overwhelming number of NF's sitting in the room. (For those of you who know absolutely nothing of what I'm talking about at the moment, I highly recommend reading up on the many different personality types. It really is enlightening and fascinating, at best.)

Ever since I arrived in Korea, I have been increasingly intrigued by the many different breeds of foreigners who reside here. I mean, honestly, it goes without saying that there are definitely some odd ducks in this pond. We're all here for different reasons, whether it be financial, social, or an escapism of some sort, but there is something that most definitely ties us together somehow. I used to think our "bond" revolved around a generational issue: We're all trying to figure our lives out, so we're in Korea seeking money to pay off our sky-high debt and to take a stab at the adventurous unknown. I still think our reasons for being here and the tie that binds us are undoubtedly generation-related. I don't think I need to make a hard case to prove that most of us who fall within the Generation X bracket are exceptionally lost and desperately trying to discover our niche in life. If you're a Generation X-er and you feel satisfied with where you are and the path you have chosen, I would venture to say that you might be one of the lucky few. Or maybe you just don't possess an ounce of self-awareness.

Back to the personality test. Although I think Generation X-ers share a common life-placement-problem, I think we all deal with it differently, perhaps based on our personality types. As I'm learning about my fellow Gen X-ers on this side of the globe--the Gen X-ers who are searching for an answer to the big "What?" anywhere other than home--I'm finding that our personality types are astonishingly similar. Now, my question is this: Does our personality type determine the course we might take in life? Are certain personality types inclined to travel and live life on "the edge" (is that what this is??), while others are more career-driven and home-based? Am I putting way too much stock into standardized testing, or are they insanely accurate?

Take the test and let me know what you think. I love, love, love talking about this stuff (and I apparently have way too much time on my hands).

Will You Be My Friend?

For those of you who are familiar with the myspace.com phenomenon, you've seen this question before--conceivably more than once. My myspace page* is constantly bombarded with messages from random people (mainly weirdo foreigners here in Korea) asking to be added to my friends list for various reasons. Most of the requests resemble one of the following: "I'm new here and you seem like a cool person. Want to hang out?" or, "I'm looking for love. I think we might be good together!" and, finally, the creepiest one to date, "I'll pay $5000.00 for one night with you. No sex--all you have to do is tie me up and torture me" (cringe, gag). Of course, my curiosity always leads me to click on the requester's profile link to find out what kind of moron would have the audacity to ask such a ridiculous question. I'm usually not surprised to find that he/she typically has a grand total of three or four friends listed on his/her myspace profile, but I'm continually baffled by the overwhelming amount of messages I receive from such people in a given week.

I realize we live in an era where digital relationships are not only feasible, but widely acceptable. However, when I receive a superficial (and sometimes nauseating) message requesting my friendship or, moreover, my services, I have an overwhelming urge to respond with "No." A solid, resounding "No!" followed by a reply message that might read like this: "You're weird, and there's a reason why you only have three friends on your myspace page." I usually refrain from responding in this manner, however, because I'm quickly reminded of the fact that the Internet--in all of its glory--is curiously addicting and that these poor (and perhaps somewhat demented) souls are the by-product of a generation that is gradually being sucked into a cyber world. They lack real-life skills because their very existence is consumed by the Internet and, therefore, they need a digital method to find digital friends that will hopefully lead to real-life relationships.

Or maybe these people are just plain weird.

Regardless, I can't find it in myself to retaliate with an ugly response to the plethora of odd requests I get on a weekly basis. Instead, I delete most messages without responding, while hoping to the Lord above that my myspace page will lose some of its popularity amongst the socially challenged.

You have to love living life in the twenty-first century.

*http://www.myspace.com/lizmcclintic