Mayonnaise at Plymouth

According to the English Wikipedia entry on mashed potatoes, in addition to boiled potatoes, other common ingredients include garlic, cheese, bacon, sour cream, onion, mustard, or various herbs. I don't read Korean, but if I could, I am sure the Korean Wikipedia entry on mashed potatoes would tell readers that other ingredients include boiled eggs, corn, mayonnaise, and of course raisins.

As I said before, Friday at school we had another cooking class. This month the kids have been learning about healthy habits, including healthy eating. I generally put mashed potatoes in the comfort food category more than the healthy food category (and in my world there is no overlap between those two categories). But I guess relatively speaking, it is healthier than the strawberry sundaes we made last month.

These mashed potatoes tasted more like egg/potato salad. The kids each had a cup and a spoon, and in their cup they mixed together half a potato, one boiled egg, mayo, milk, salt, pepper, raisins, and corn. I don't fully understand the Koreans love of corn. A plain cheese pizza has corn on it. Spaghetti sauce has corn in it. You can buy boiled ears of corn from carts on the street, which a lot of my student do then give them to me as presents. Ummm, thanks?

Here's a picture of my "mashed potatoes"

Ahh, doesn't that just conjure up images of family, the Macy's parade, football, and a delicious feast, with a big pile of that drowning in gravy on your plate between the stuffing and the green bean casserole?

My kids had a similar reaction. While some of them did seem to enjoy it, a lot of them told me it was "bery bery bery bery not yummy"

Here is a video of Cassiopeia "cooking"

And their reaction:


And then there is Big Dipper...what can I say? While most days their behavior is much better than Cassiopeia's, they are definitely a bit, ummm, how to put it nicely? They are the slower of the two classes (and actually according to a recent IQ test, the slowest in the school). They found some other uses for their cooking utensils.

kidlets

Yesterday was another cooking class. I'll write more about that sometime, tomorrow maybe. But in the meantime, here is a video of my Cassiopeia kiddies.

no flowing creative juices here

I've been asked by several people why I hadn't written anything in a while. Truth be told, I haven't been feeling all that creative lately, so I am afraid what I am writing will be boring. I am not saying I am unhappy or bored with my life here. That is not the case at all. I just don't feel like anything exciting/blog worthy has taken place in my life the past couple of weeks.

But, because I like to give my 3 faithful readers what they want, here is what I've been up to since my last post.

20 minutes ago, I ate a bagel. It was the first bagel I've had since January. It was delicious.

I saw two car accidents this week. On my walk home tonight, I counted 4 cars driving without headlights on. I generally don't like to think stereotypes are true...but some are.

Two new teachers are starting at work this week. I am excited for this. I am losing my title of "new person" and being upgraded to simply "newish"

I can usually start my washing machine on the first try now. I still am unsure what a lot of the symbols mean and this learning process is destroying a lot of my clothes. But the important thing is that I can consistently start the machine. Small steps.

I was out walking the other night, and I came across a man selling puppies on the sidewalk. For about 5 seconds I seriously thought about getting one. Until I remembered that most days I can't be bothered to clean up my own messes or make myself food. I would be a most unfit pet parent.

I met two guys from the US Army last night. They both claimed to be huge football fans, and told me it had been forever since the Bears had been in the Super Bowl, blah blah blah. I made some mention of 2007, and they both laughed at me, and openly mocked me saying the Bears were not in the 2007 Super Bowl, told me I didn't know what I was talking about, etc. Thanks Google. They told me I put them to shame as men. I don't really even care much about football, so I also put them to shame as football fans. I enjoyed a most satisfactory gloat.

A line from a student who was telling me about her former English teacher "She was, you know like you. She was blond and fat" Ouch. Does this dress make me look blond?

Did you see those Huns? They popped out of the snow like daisies

disclaimer-I'm too tired to do any sort of proofreading or even to say anything that makes any sense. Please ignore all misspellings, typos, sentence fragments, nonsensical writing, etc.


China. Whoa. Words fail me. But in the interest of not forgetting anything, here I go.

Honestly, China had never really been too high on my places to go list (and yes, that list does actually exist). I wanted to go, but not with the same aching desire that I have for other places, such as Germany, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Japan, Thailand, India, etc. But, I had a week off of work in July, and we found cheapish tickets to Beijing. So we thought, what the heck. Why not? It turned out to be one of the best decisions I've made thus far.

China was like Morocco, in that it was sensory overload. I wanted to take pictures of literally everything, which is how I ended up with over 600 (which, by the way, they are all on my shutterfly page now, if you are curious. They are not labeled, sorry mom, but they will be within the next 8 months, winter project). It never quite sank in that people live there. That is people's home. They think of China with the same warm fuzzy feeling that I get when I think of the US.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of my vacation is the heat. Holy moly. I love heat. I love summer. I love sun and high temperatures and while I don't love it, humidity does not bother me. But this was too much. The coolest day we had was 35, which is around 95 in real degrees. Most days the high temperature was 38-40, which is 100-105. But that wasn't the problem, so much as the humidity. I never got any numbers, but I've never felt anything like it. The Chinese joked that it was their "free sauna" and sweat I did. I sweat like I did not know it was possible. A walk down the street left me (and everyone else in the city) dripping. I showered twice a day. I ended up having to wash all of my clothes in the shower because after wearing them in the afternoon, they were too gross to wear out at night. To make matters worse, Beijing tap water is not safe for drinking. So I constantly had to carry around massive plastic bottles of water to keep from passing out from dehydration. It was not my most environmentally friendly trip.

Another thing that stood out in my mind was wow, this country is not an ally of the us. We joked a lot about the communist thing, but in reality, it was weird. The army was everywhere in Beijing. And I looked at them, and it was weird to see someone in person who in theory could be fighting against the US. The hostel I stayed in got an English Chinese newspaper, which I read every morning. One day there was an column written by some Chinese journalist, saying that the US/South Korean military drills in the Yellow Sea gives China the right to conduct drills in the Gulf of Mexico. Ummm...

The Chinese love to haggle. I got good at it. They will do anything to not lose a sale, so walking away worked like a charm. "How much? For you, friendly price!"

The food, cheap, mouth watering, mmmm. I ate a lot of street food from some very questionable places. Somehow, my stomach showed me a lot of love and I did not get sick. If only I knew what I was actually eating. But maybe it is better that I did not know.

Chinese babies don't wear diapers. The modest ones wear pants with a giant slit down the back. Other ones just didn't wear anything.

Facebook really is blocked in China. Weirdness.

I've been asked by a lot of people how China compares to Korea. Chinese are nicer. Koreans are better looking. Korea is cheap. China is dirt cheap. Seoul is smoggy. Beijing is sometimes don't see blue sky for weeks and woke up every morning with a stuffy nose and sore throat kind of smog. After two months with Korean chopsticks, Chinese ones are darn near impossible to use now. Korea is rebuilt. China is old. Korea lets Americans come for free. China makes them pay a year's salary and promise their first born in exchange for a short term travel visa. Korean food is delicious but spicy. Chinese food is delicious. I can say three words in Korean. I can only say 2 words in Chinese. I tried for over an hour one afternoon to get a taxi in Beijing. I've never waited more than minute for a taxi in Seoul. Overall, Seoul is (for me anyway) a way more livable city for a foreigner.

But like I said, it was an incredible trip, and has made me want to see more of China, if only that visa wasn't so expensive. Here are a few videos.

There are three little videos from the drum tower. None of them are that awesome because I like to watch it in person, not through a video screen, so I just kind of hold without looking. Sorry :P The other two are from the Summer Palace, and some traditional Chinese theater something or other. There was a sign, but it was all in Chinese.

back at it again

I'm back in Seoul after a great week in Beijing. My camera tells me I took 629 pictures. Around 500 of them are probably of the puppy that lived in the hostel. I'm working on figuring out how Picasa works, so I'll post more pictures in a few days. And I'll write more about my trip. But right now I have to go to work. Ugh, Monday after vacation, grades due this week, student comments due this week, pouring rain outside. This week might be rough.