Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Food

Sept 17th
Last night we went out for dinner to a traditional Korean restaurant. We sat on the floor and each person got a dish of pumpkin soup and water kimchi. Then many dishes kept coming out and I tried almost everything. Lots of it was very spicy. I liked the mushroom dishes the best. There were many kinds of sauce, each dish had a different flavor. Then there was Korean rice which was purple!!! Very purple and it tasted just like white sticky rice. Cherry and I watched Charlie and the chocolate factory the new version and ate mango cakes, which arenÂ’t mango and arenÂ’t cakes. They were balls of bread with weird yellow stuff in the middleÂ… the b read was great but I wasnÂ’t a fan of the sort of sweet yellow part. Cherry wasnÂ’t sure what it was. We also had grapes but their grapes have a thick skin that you peel off first. When you pinch the bottom of the grape the skin slides right off. I slept well. My mattress is very firm which is perfect. For breakfast I had seaweed soup ( the broth tasted like miso soup) it was good but the seaweed was slimey :p. Also white rice and another kind of soup, a spinach dish (I like the spinach) and two other dishes that looked spicey. I spoke with Eunice about the schedule and she told me Hoyeonoyeun gets home between 2 and 3 depending if he wants to play outside and Cherry is home at 3. Cherry plays piano and cello!!! I will spend about 1.20 h with Cherry reading and such and before Cherry I will be with Hoyeon for anywhere between 30 mins and 2 h. Depending on his behavior, he is very disobedient. Supper is at about 520 and at 6pm Im going to yoga with Eunice (Cherry doesn't go on Mondays because she has her science tutor in). I think tomorrow Eunice and I are going to the bank so I can get money exchanged and maybe to look at cameras and pick up a few things. One thing I found weird was that Eunice and Cherry's father don't share a room. Eunice sleeps with Cherry and Hoyeun shares a room with the housekeeper (who often acts as a babysitter). Eunice does the finances at a hospital and she and her husband both leave at azbout 930 am. I definitely have to learn Korean. This will take up much of my free time until I have a decent grasp. Hopefully, we all know how I procrastinate.
Ciao for now.

Getting there

September 15th 2006
Woke up 230am. Ugh. Had some rice krispies and off to the airport. Had a chocolate icecap, buttercaramel flavor shot. Met Melissa at the e airport. All good. Went through the carry on check thing and I was chosen for a random search! They went through everything and messed up my bags, barely got them closed. Anyways the airplane was tiny. Melissa and I joked that it was Fisher Price or “made in china”. Switched her seat and the lady who was supposed to sit next to me come on looking a bit confused and Melissa offers the seat back but the lady was more than happy to take the single window/aisle seat. (side note: just noticed that my clock on my laptop says 347am. Hehe its 347 pm here) Here comes the fun part. We first got on the air bus/train going in the opposite direction, not so bad, only took an extra 10 mins. Got to the right terminal. All good. I go to check in. Now they cant find my bags on the computer and there’s something wrong with my ticket… Something about the people in Hali entered it in a weird format. All fixed in 10 minutes. No problem. Say bye to Melissa and head to customs. Get my seat on the airplane. Plane starts to taxi off to the runway. Oh wait, nope… we go around in circles with a bunch of other planes for an hour and a half…. Boy was I fascinated!!! There are these TVs in the seats ahead of you and headphones. Now the TVS don’t just play a movie, they had a whole list Xmen3, The sentinel, DaVinci Code, a special about the movie/book, Lucky number Slevin, and about a half dozen others. Also cartoons (lilo & stitc h)… Anyways, you can play games like solitaire, mahjongg, shanghai, Othello and a few other arcade style games. That kept me entertained. Then there’s this thing where not only can you keep track of the flight, where you are, altitude, temp, kms left etc. there are 2 cameras, one from the piolets view, straight ahead and the other is from the bottom of the plane, looking straight down. Wicked, except it was mostly white and clouds. OK food. Well there were these “crackers and nuts” which was like what you get on any plane that crunchy bits etc. that was the snack. Then lunch was a choice of teriyaki chicken with sticky rice, salad, “Japanese delicacies” which smelled real weird and I couldn’t stand the smell, and then a maple cake which was more like a mousse or sugary blob. Very yummy lunch. Oh and really cute little tiny soy sauce bottle. Lots to drink, I had coke and green tea, oh and then this lemonade but it wasn’t bitter or sweet like ours, very light and yummy. For supper they served penne pasta with salmon cream sauce, salad, roll, fruit, DANONE la crème yogurt peach flavor. Very nice. And cookies. So that’s all great. VERY LONG FLIGHT. So because the plane left so late from JFK I ( and a bunch of other passengers) missed the connection by a few minutes (plane boarded at 2 left at 225, we arrived at 237) so then after having people send me up down left right etc. I finally got to the terminal for my new flight. Which doesn’t leave until 540pm. Nice. An hour and a half left now. I am roasting. The plane was just above comfortable. And while its perfect temp outside but overcast, its still toasty in here!!! Couldn’t nsleep much at all on the plane, maybe 2 hrs. and now Im dead tired. Ciao