Forgotten Pictures

Ken and I were going to go here today for a much-needed break from city life but, sadly, we woke up to pouring rain this morning. And, yes, it's still raining cats and dogs at 2:30 in the afternoon, with no signs of stopping. (The little picture to the left is Toronto's weather as predicted by Google... for the whole day. *sigh*)

As a result of the crappy weather, I've been forced to kill time inside all day; first making a heart-stopping breakfast of eggs and greasy bacon (so much for becoming vegetarian), then putting the finishing touches on my useless resume (it won't be useful until I can legally work in July), then cleaning already-clean parts of the apartment, and, finally, sorting through picture albums on my computer and organizing them simply for organization's sake.

Which leads me to this post, of course. I found some pictures I had neglected to post online before, so I've decided to rectify that sad little fact. (I'm bored and have little responsibility at the moment, so why the heck not?)

Here it goes!

1) Our Korean boss's daughter's wedding. 

Yu-Jin's wedding occurred only a week or two before Ken and I bid Korea adieu at the beginning of March, so these pictures got lost in the mayhem of moving from one side of the planet to the other.

(Her dress was by none other than Vera Wang.) 

The overall wedding was rumored to have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and this was the precise reason cited when we asked our boss why she hadn't paid us on time before our contracts were finished. (We were eventually paid in full, but not before putting up a huge, stinking fuss.)

The above picture (taken at the extravagant wedding reception) may have been posted during Facebook-days-gone-by, but I think it's cute enough to post again for posterity.

2) Our Centum Star apartment. 

Our apartment in Busan may go down in history as my favorite. Of course, it didn't occur to either of us to take many pictures of it before we left, so I only have a few grainy shots I snapped a few moments before our couch and table were hauled away by their new owners. 

Ugh, my heart hurts a little bit every time I think of that amazing window. I miss waking up to its view of Jangsan Mountain every morning. As it stands, we're waking up every morning to a view of everyone in the condo across from us waking up. (Money sure buys you a lot more in Korea.)

3) A weird wedding present. 

Our sweet school principle in Ulsan made a little wedding present for Ken and me shortly after we were married:

Cute idea, but they wouldn't fit in either of our suitcases before we left, so they ended up in the recycling bin. *Guilty cringe*

4) My Valentine's Day present.

(My sweet tooth was over the moon.)

5) The picture from Hawaii that didn't make the Flickr cut...

...for perhaps obvious reasons. But I'm posting it because you can't help but smile a little bit when you look at it, right?

And that's all for now, folks. I'm off to go read the most boring book I've read in awhile:

I'm determined to finish it, if for no other reason than principle. (It was a winner of the Nobel Prize, so I figure it has to get interesting at some point, right?)

Sad Times...

I'm sick of moving. Because I hate it. I'm especially sick of moving from one continent to another, picking and choosing which of my possessions to keep and which to get rid of, loading up box after box only to realize I have too many boxes and therefore need to get rid of more things due to the unsightly costs of global shipping. The hardest things to part with? Our furniture. I love our furniture, but we have now sold each item on our furniture-to-sell-list. I've never been one to get too attached to any of my possessions, but this time around I'm finding it harder to part with some things. These things in particular:

Our couch. I love our couch. It's so comfortable, and the best part? We bought it brand new for an insanely cheap price (if only furniture in North America were so cheap...). As of February 24th, this cozy, lovely thing will no longer be ours:

An Unimportant Note: This was the picture taken for the classified ad; this isn't how our living room is actually set up. 

See the bookshelves and lamps there in the picture? Those are also some of my faves and those, too, are gone. *sigh*

Our table. I love our little table. As of February 27th, it too will no longer be ours. 

                                      

I know it's small, but it's the perfect size for dinner and games and whatever else we might use a table for (insert questionable joke...heehee). 

Our futon and our other table.  These two are long gone and now we have a useless, empty room in our apartment. 

                                 

OK, maybe the room isn't entirely empty now. We may have started to use the floor space for our dirty clothes in lieu of a laundry hamper....

Our food processor. I know these things are a dime a dozen in North America, but this baby was hard to find in Korea and I have cherished it every day since we discovered it. 

                               

(This is also a picture we used for the classifieds.... It isn't usually set up so nicely on the floor in display-fashion with all of its attachments.)

There are lots of things I'm going to miss and lots of things I'm going to have to buy all over again when we move to Toronto (Canadian government willing). We hardly have long-term plans for our stint in Canada, so who knows how long it will be before we do this all over again (I fear not long). But I suppose for a girl (or woman, depending) who doesn't care much for stability, I shouldn't be complaining, as I'm usually chomping at the bit to move on. It's just the process of moving on that I hate so much. However, I am looking forward to the new things awaiting us in the Great White North (sans the cold and snow), I just wish I could fast-forward through the transitional, starting-all-over-again part of it. 

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!

Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas Eve here in Korea. It's Christmas Eve eve back home, in the Western Hemisphere. I love Christmastime and this year is no exception, but I'm feeling particularly homesick at the moment. The song "I'll Be Home for Christmas" just took its turn on my iPod's Christmas playlist, and now I'm feeling mopey and nostalgic (but mostly mopey). Regardless, Christmas is a time for remembering old traditions while making new ones, right? This year just happens to be leaning toward the new way of celebrating the holidays and, hopefully, some of the old traditions will be reinstated next year when we're (hopefully) home.

Our little Christmas tree now looks downright itty bitty, thanks to my lovely parents. They sent an enormous Christmas package last week loaded with a heap of wrapped Christmas gifts for Ken and me. You'd better believe I've had in incredibly hard time not tearing into any of them before Christmas morning, but I've refrained! Those tempting Christmas presents, combined with Ken's and my stockings--our new Christmas tradition (it's amazing how much stuff (and how much money) can fit into one stocking!)--make it feel more like Christmas at home, instead of Christmas in Korea. So, tomorrow will be filled with presents, friends, Christmas parties and Skype dates with family, all of which will distract us from the 10,000 miles that separate us from where we'd rather be. It will be good. I still miss seeing my family, though. And snow. And safe eggnog (it's a miracle I didn't die of salmonella poisoning from the eggnog I attempted to make last year).

Here's a picture of our teeny tree:

OK, a few gifts are missing here. Our tree looks more loaded now than it did earlier when I took this photo. But taking another picture is just too much work when the battery in your camera is dead and you can't find the charger....

Anyway, without further ado: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the McMunday's! (Ha!) Hopefully we'll be seeing your lovely faces in 2010!

The "Wedding": Four Months After the Fact

Note: This post is probably only of interest to my mother.

I borrowed Ken's camera last week to take pictures of the furniture we're trying to sell off before leaving Korea, and I found a bunch of pictures and video from our "wedding" trip to Seoul still on the camera! That fateful trip was way back in September and I had apparently forgotten the photos even existed. Ken said he is going to put them together in one presentable movie but, impatient as I am, I decided to jump the gun and post a few of them here. (Note: This is only a preview of what might take years to finish.)

Pictures first. Here we are on the KTX train heading to Seoul, clearly feeling a little apprehensive about practically eloping:

And here are the mountains of paperwork we had to fill out for both of our embassies:

The number at the City Ward's Office that terminated our single-hood (dun dun dun!):

And this:

which resulted in this:

Now time for some exceptionally boring video. It should be noted that I have a bad habit of muttering, so don't even bother trying to understand what I'm saying (even I can't decipher what's coming out of my own mouth). It should also be noted that when the camera is turned on, we both suddenly feel like we have an audience and things immediately become awkward. So with that little disclaimer, here we go....

Wandering the streets of Seoul, trying to find the City Ward's Office:

Our impromptu attempt at the wedding march:

[Awkwardness Level: High]

*So embarrassing!*

Here we are, signing our lives away (this video is unnecessarily long, so feel free to skip it all together):

Oh my gosh, my fingernails are disgusting! Moving on....

Here is our comfortably modern W Hotel room, where our official honeymoon took place:

And I apparently wasn't paying attention to the fact that Ken was recording.

Here is a picture of the fridge in our room:

Please excuse my cheap side for just a moment: Do you see the blue bottles of water in the door? $14 a piece! And do you see the tiny bottles of mango juice above the water? $12! The small bottle of champagne was $85, and the Cafri beer (one of Korea's own) was something like $20 a bottle. Thank goodness I happened to look at the price list before thirstily opening one of the water bottles, otherwise we would have been in for a sore surprise upon receiving our final bill.

And last, but not least, a picture of our first wedding present ever, given to us by one of our least favorite students:

(Not sure why Ken is topless....)

And that's all for now, folks. Geez Louise, I don't think I'll ever put videos on my blog again, as it literally took 20 minutes for each one to upload. Did I do it the wrong way, or does it always take so long??

He's got looks that books take pages to tell....

Last Saturday was a big night: Ken and I, along with a few friends, made the long drive to Seoul to see my new (second) love live. Mika.

Mika is so weird, so fun, and so talented (and I definitely have a crush) so you can imagine how excited I was when I found out he would be performing in South Korea of all places.

!!!

The venue in Seoul was surprisingly small, considering how popular Mika seems to be these days (unbeknownst to me until this past summer when some friends introduced me to his first album.... I'm extremely out of touch with pop culture these days). I was glad it was such a small place, however, because Ken and I didn't feel enthusiastic enough to fight our way to the front of the crowd and subsequently got shoved to the back of the venue. Still, we were able to see Mika and his band clearly and managed to grab some pretty awesome video (Ken did all of the videoing, so I really shouldn't pretend to take credit). We didn't, however, think to take actual pictures, so I had to grab a few stills from said videos and--believe me!--they don't look good. (I should have let Ken do it since it's his camera, but I was getting impatient.) Regardless of the disasters I created, I'm posting a couple of stills that didn't turn out too bad:

The man in all his fantastically weird glory....

The show was a.ma.zing. Quite possibly the best show I've ever seen. Those of you who have heard Mika's music know how crazy-high this guy can sing (per Wikipedia: rumored a five-octave vocal range; he apparently claims it's only three and a half), and hearing him live didn't even remotely disappoint. He was jumping all over the place and still managed to hit all of those ridiculous notes. I would even venture to say he sounds better singing in real life than he does through my iPod! And, really, you can't say that about every musician, can you? And for some added fun, the show was full of lots of golden confetti (I found some in my underwear after the show, and I'm still not sure how that happened...), black lights, and huge balloons for the crowd's bouncing pleasure. T'was a good night indeed.

And I will conclude my Mika-promotional-post with a terrible still-image I grabbed of Ken and me while we were waiting in line before the show:

(Most unnecessary blog picture ever.)

Moley Christmas

In Korea, planning for Christmas proves to be a disaster nearly every year. My first Christmas in Korea wasn't a big deal, as I was due to return to North America a mere two weeks after Christmas anyway. Nevertheless, it wasn't really the same not having family around, not having a Christmas tree, and eating kimchi chigae in lieu of Christmas dinner.

My second year in Korea, I had a Scrooge of a boss who didn't feel the need to grant me any time off for Christmas. I was allowed one week of vacation at the beginning of December (he purposefully chose that week because it wasn't the two weeks I had requested) and since I didn't consider that enough time to go back to North America (24-hours of travel both ways isn't much incentive to go back for a short time), I went to the Philippines instead and celebrated Christmas day with a group of other stranded expats when I returned to Korea.

My third Christmas in Korea was actually spent in Indonesia, although it was almost cancelled one week prior in a moment of nostalgia and homesickness (a look at my bank account and the thought of jet-lag prevailed, however). My Indonesian Christmas turned out to be a good one, as it was the day Ken proposed, so I really can't complain.

This year I solemnly vowed to come home for Christmas, no matter what stood in my way. I've been looking forward to a traditional Christmas all year, as I haven't had one with my family in three years. I didn't take into account, however, that airfare might shoot up to about $2,500 for a ticket to Detroit. That, on top of the promise of being jet-lagged the entire holiday, caused me to rethink my previous vow. Then I started the application process for residency in Canada and realized I wouldn't be able to legally work in Canada for awhile after my arrival, thus creating a greater need to penny-pinch. Needless to say, Christmas this year was starting to look like a bleak, two-week vacation of sitting in gloomy Korea, missing my family and feeling sorry for myself. That is, until some friends of mine found super cheap tickets to Shanghai!

Now, I've already been to Shanghai some years ago (the above picture is legitimately mine). I really loved the city, plus it's far better than sitting around here doing a whole lot of nothing for two weeks, right? Right! Ken hasn't been to Shanghai, either, so it will be fun for him to see it. The other bonus included in this little excursion is a connection we have in Shanghai who is allowing us to stay in his apartment for free for a full week! The whole trip should cost about 1/5 of the price of one ticket home. It certainly won't be as nice as Christmas with the family, but it's something to look forward to at the very least. Especially the food!

Yum! (This picture is not legitimately mine.)

Now it's time to completely change topics. Let's talk about the moles on my face.

They have been a cause of vanity-related grief and annoyance my whole life, but never to the point of caring enough to have them removed. Within the last couple of years, however, they've started to grow (much to my dismay). Now, I'm quite vain and there is no denying it. My laziness, however, prevails over my vanity more often than not (hence my bad showering habits), even if my vanity turns into a legitimate health concern. After months (even years) of making excuses for why I couldn't have those pesky moles removed, I finally decided to make an appointment last week with a cosmetic dermatologist here in Korea... and last night was the big night! The doctor used a laser to remove all three moles from my face and I'm happy to report that I was in and out in only ten minutes, pain free! My face, on the other hand, is a huge mess at the moment. Since a couple of my moles were obnoxiously perched on top of a couple of veins, they bled quite a bit and now my face is covered in bandages. And this is how I will look for the next six weeks:

Lord only knows how I'll look once these things are taken off. Ironically, my number one concern has nothing to do with appearance at the moment. I'm too preoccupied with the reaction my face seems to be having to the bandage tape. It itches so badly that I kind of want to scratch my face off. And I can't touch it. Argh.

It's going to be a long six weeks, and I think I'm more excited about having my bandages taken off than I am about Christmas in Shanghai (but I'm still pretty excited about Shanghai).

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.

Tales From The Classroom

I taught some of my first grade elementary school kids the word "toot" the other day. While some might find this a completely unnecessary word to teach ESL kids who are learning basic conversation skills, I have reason to disagree in this case. I have a chronic fart-er in this particular class who has the most pungent flatulence quite possibly in the world and he just. can't. control. it. While most people have the ability to hold in such stinky-ness, this poor little guy has either failed to learn how to hold them in, or he just doesn't have the muscular capacity required to accomplish such a feat.

Anyway, in an attempt to keep the student from gassing the entire classroom and everyone within it on a daily basis, I told him to raise his hand and urgently say, "May I go to the bathroom and toot, please?" if he ever felt the slightest inkling that it may be coming (there's no reason he can't ask politely). I asked him if he thought he could at least try to hold it in until he escaped the classroom doors, and he solemnly swore that he would try to the best of his 6-year-old ability.

It worked.

Yesterday, while I was dryly giving a lecture on the importance of not hitting the person sitting next to you, Ben urgently raised his hand and shouted, "May I go to the bathroom, please? I have a toot!" I even more urgently yelled, "Get out of here!" and off he went. Those of us who remained in the classroom sat on pins and needles wondering if the smelly student would wait long enough for the stench to dissipate before he reappeared. Thankfully, he decided to wait a bit. He came back in a few minutes later and proudly announced, "Miss-uh McClintic," (that's what he calls me) "My toot is very long and it make a loud motorcycle sound!"

Call my teaching methods subpar, but it made me proud.

Randoms

I was looking through my picture file today and found a few random photos that never made it on to Facebook, Blogger, or Flickr (not that I've used Flickr in ages, anyway). Since I have the day off today (thanks to the Chuseok holiday) and I'm currently sitting in Starbucks and focusing very hard on being nonproductive, I decided to throw some of the pics up here. So let the randomness begin....

The Market:

Ken and I shop at the Haeundae street market as often as we can (you know, supporting local business and agriculture like the good people that we are). I realized the last time we were there how accustomed I've become to seeing things like these on a relatively regular basis, so I had Ken (my personal photographer, apparently) snap a picture of it so we could shock and awe people back home:

Yes, these heads previously belonged to hogs and, yes, you see these at nearly every Korean market place. At least they appeared to be happy about being decapitated. Have I ever eaten the meat of a hog's head? Probably, but it sure didn't look like this on my plate.

We bought nuts and (what we thought was) brown rice at this stand once. Upon cooking the "rice," however, we realized it definitely wasn't what we originally thought it was. It was chewy and tasteless... and we still had no idea what it was. Needless to say, I chickened out and took my brown-rice-business to a grocery store chain (I'm a little ashamed of myself).

The Great Flood of 2009:

A couple of months ago, Korea had it's largest rainfall in over 80 years. Lucky for us, we got the day off due to flooding. Unlucky for the city of Busan, some of their streets ended up looking like this:

Under the water is a street. Over the water is an overpass for walkers and bikers. I'm just guessing, but the water seemed to be about 15 feet deep. Ken took some more pictures of the flooding (and all of the stupid people who insisted on driving their cars through the flood and promptly got stuck), but they apparently didn't make it onto my computer as I can't seem to locate them. Ah well. Moving on....

Norae Bhang:

I've mentioned the norae bhang here before, but for people who don't know what it is, let me just say: it's my number one favorite thing about Korea. A lot of Westerners refer to it as Korean karaoke, which is accurate. But the difference between Korean karaoke and North American karaoke is that it isn't a bar and you get your own private room in which you can bellow away with no one there to boo you off the stage. You can rent rooms of various sizes, but the average "singing room" can accommodate four to eight people and it comes complete with microphones, tambourines, a huge selection of Engrish and Korean songs, and (the best part) a strobe light. Ken and I are big norae bhang nerds, so we frequently go on Friday nights (just the two of us) and sing until we can't sing anymore, which usually takes about three hours.

These three are our favorite norae bhang partners, for obvious reasons. Andrea and Meaghan really get into it, and Kevin is an accomplished tambourine player.

Ken frequently gets annoyed with me for messing up his songs. I've been officially banned from "Phantom of The Opera."

Cooking Adventures:

Here is a picture of a coconut chicken curry we made (adapted from the mango chicken recipe on Elana's Pantry... we couldn't find mangoes, so we had to improvise):

And, yes, we might have the ugliest plates (or bowls... I'm not really sure what this thing is) on the planet. But they were free!

Ken's Hair:

A couple of weeks ago, Ken decided to shave his head. He does it on a fairly regular basis, so this news isn't normally noteworthy. This time, however, he accidentally put the wrong attachment on his razor and didn't realize it until after the first swipe:

And THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is what I have to look forward to in the future:

Try not to be jealous.

And this concludes my randomness for the day. I feel strangely productive, considering the amount of time I've just wasted.

----------------------------Update!------------------------------

I forgot to include a picture of our '96 Avante piece of crap that GOT HIT TODAY by a Korean lady who apparently wasn't trained to check her rear-view mirror before backing up. Our poor car got crunched as we were following her out of a parking lot this afternoon. Fortunately, the front license plate took the brunt of it and rendered our bumper dent-free. Phew! Anyway, as much as I love the car, this picture is a teensy bit deceiving. It doesn't look nearly this lovely in real life, plus it is currently covered in about a 1/2 inch of crud and has a recently-crushed license plate perched precariously on the front bumper: