Beijing Adventure Part III

We were fed SO much on the trip that I started to wonder how Chinese people stay so small!  For most of the meals the food was placed on a large Lazy Susan type thing in the middle of a table of 8 to 10 people.  They would keep bringing out dish after dish (some that we could recognize and some that we couldn't) until the table was so overloaded that you had to balance the dishes on the edges of the layer below.  Everyone would just spin the Lazy Susan and grab whatever they wanted with their chopsticks when it went by.  They also served yummy hot green tea at every meal.

  Here is Hubs enjoying one of the spreads!

One evening our tour guide also took us to "Wangfujing Street"  a famous strip of street vendors that sells pretty much any kind of food/weird thing you can image on a stick.

Here is a close up to give you a better idea.  I"m not sure what everything was but the little brown ones in the middle are silk worms and the two on the far right hand side are squid tentacles and baby octopus respectively.  Yum! :)

Oh and I almost forgot the starfish and sea urchins!

We had already eaten so "unfortunately" only had room to try the strawberry and kiwi crystallized in sugar.

Beijing Adventure Part II

The second day of our trip we went to the Great Wall of China!!!  It was so surreal to actually be there!

We could see where there have been some repairs and restoration done to the original structure but for the most part, the section where we were at had been preserved very well.   People are doing a good job of protecting the cultural relics.  And caltaral relics too whatever they are. :)

In the area where we were, there were two parts open for tourists to climb.  We took what our tour guide called the "hard" side.  He should be referring to it as the Stair Master Supreme Side.  The stairs were STEEP!  And uneven.  See Hubs on the left side just above the waving Asian woman (or was she falling. .hmm. . )?

Those stairs were in the first 1/4 of the climb.  The number of people on the stairs decreased dramatically the higher we went.  As did our energy to take out the camera. :)  The stairs kept curving around as they went higher so we thought that we could see the end but when we reached that point there was another 200 steps to go.  Then when when reached that point there was a few more hundred.  Then when when we reached that point. .  okay you get the idea.:)

Here I am VERY relieved to be "at the top"

And Hubs too! (doesn't he look like he is on a postcard?)

We were so tired from walking all the way up there that Hubs tried out a different route to get down.

Beijing Adventures Part I

Last weekend we took a trip to Beijing, China!  We had SUCH an awesome time!

First stop was the "Forbidden City" where the Chinese Emperor used to live.  These pictures don't do justice for how impressive, ornate, and expansive this area is.  It was amazing!

All the doorways (like the one behind me) require you to step up and over.  Our tour guide says it is because the ancient Chinese believed that the devil and evil spirits didn't have knees and they couldn't follow through a doorway that required stepping over.

 

The guide books say that there are 9,999 rooms total in the Forbidden City.  Our tour guide said that the number of actual, usable rooms is little less because that count includes some rooms that just consist of four pillars without walls.  Regardless which way you count it. . there are a ton of them!

The level of detail on everything including pillars, doors, and roofs was incredible!

Next stop was Tian'anmen Square, China's main government building area and location of the famous protest/tank incident.

The soldiers were doing some sort of formation or ceremony with a crowd of Chinese people watching.

This little guy was more interested in peeking at us than watching the ceremony. :)

Icecream Adventures

From my understanding desert is a fairly new idea to Korean culture.  Traditionally their meals don't include it and at many restaurants it isn't even offered on the menu.  The few times we have been served desert in an restaurant here it has consisted of some type of fruit rather than a sweet baked item.  Desert as a "snack" or at another location after you meal is really starting to catch on however.  They are particularly partial to Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin Robbins.  They are seriously EVERYWHERE!  I can think of at least four within a few block radius of where we live!  Baskin Robbins is good but since our most favorite adventure thus far has been to Italy, we are a little partial to Italian style ice cream called, "gelato".  Needless to say we were thrilled when we spotted what appeared to be a little Italian style coffee shop that sold gelato.  We were even more thrilled when we checked it out and the the atmosphere and the ice cream were great!

It was a really good find and I am sure we will be going back often!  However I'm not sure that we will be trying some of the Korean specific flavors of gelato that we saw advertised. . . 

Advertisement/Employment Adventures

We often come home to advertisement fliers tapped to our door.  

Usually we can’t read them but sometimes when walking around downtown we have recognized the restaurant or business they were advertising.  Imagine my surprise when I got home today and saw a flier on our door with some words I recognized. . . . 

My NAME!  AND my PICTURE!!!

Don’t worry, I’m not wanted for a crime or missing.

I’m a new teacher at an after school language academy here in Pyeongtaek!  

I get to teach English as a second language to Korean children ranging from Kindergarten to Junior High during the afternoons!  It is quite the new experience for me.  I am enjoying it very much but also have a whole new respect for both moms and teachers.  My Mom is  is BOTH so I am pretty much am in awe of her.

*Editors note- I DID know I had the job before seeing the flyer on the door but I DIDN'T have any idea that I had been hired just in time to make their fall advertisement distro or that it would be posted on every door in my apartment building.  Yikes!

Chuseok Adventures!

Last week was a Korean Holiday known as "Chuseok" (pronounced as "chew sock" with a extra hard "K" sound at the end).  I have heard it described as the Korean Thanksgiving or just a time to enjoy the Autumn Harvest and honor their family.  It is a BIG deal here (probably their second largest holiday of the year, with New Years being the first) and results in VERY congested roads as most people travel to their childhood home or to where their oldest living relatives live.


In honor of the holiday Mark and I decided to attempt to cook an authentic Korean meal at home.  We had beef bulgogi (a common dish here, basically just thinly sliced, Asian marinated, grilled beef), rice, radish kimchi (kimchi is a Korean staple. .served at pretty much EVERY Korean meal including breakfast and consists of various spicy, fermented vegetables.  So far we have tried, cabbage, cucumber, and radish kimchi with radish being our favorite.), and pork and vegetable dumplings.


Here is a pictures of our feast!

The bulgogli is on the back left, dipping sauce in the middle, rice on the back right, kimchi on the front left, and dumplings on the front right.  Now don't be too impressed because we did buy the kimchi and the dumplings already made.  Maybe next year we will try to make it all ourselves.  Anyway, the meal was DELICIOUS. We really have loved all the Korean style food we have had so far and this was no exception.  So yummy!


However when it was time to eat we discovered that we didn't have chopsticks anywhere in the house!!  So much for our "authentic" meal.  Hubs tried his hands at substituting forks for chopsticks, but it just wasn't the same.

Don't worry, in an attempt to avoid this ridiculousness in the future, chopsticks are now on my shopping list.

Souvenir Adventures

I don't know what these are for sure, but be warned you are all getting them for Korean souvenir gifts. 

 I mean really.  . .can you think of a reason why you wouldn't need a giant plastic pig?