Sunday Sept 24

Did you know chestnuts are pricklier than cactus?
Well... We went harvesting chestnuts. I thought this was weird but hey, its Korea. So first of all chestnuts actually hang off trees in softball size prickly shells. The shells aren't hard unless they've dried out. So Green prickly balls. Then you step on them (MUST wear sneakers). You put one foot on either half of the ball and then kind of let your feet (with lots of pressure) slide towards the ground so you are in effect opening the ball... Like when you use your hands to pull an orange apart from the center. Then get the prickly ball out of the way pick up the chestnuts, usually 2-3 in a ball, and inspect them. White ones arent ripe, soft ones are bad, and anything with a hole has a bug in it. All in all it was great fun. Then you take your bag of chestnuts and get it weighed. You are charged by weight. 4kg is the lowest. Well we had less than 1kg (after a couple hours of all 5 of us... well Hoyeon didnt do much, and Cherry kept getting prickles in her feet somehow... So less than 1kg they GAVE us more nuts and didn't charge anything, even gave back the entry fee... It was great fun tho. We have yet to roast the nuts.

We then went to a traditional Korean house, which really was a small village of houses. Most of the houses were like a restaurant dining area. Some showed Korean crafts, there was a shop, big cages with birds, chickens, bunnies, and a greenhouse with asian plants. So there are these little paths between houses and around the area with tons of old Korean items laying around (not in a messy way, but in a display way). All above the houses were strings like a net, which held up vines and Korean pumpkins, gourds, and cucumbers. Anyways, it was so busy. We had many small dishes of traditional Korean food. There was a mushroom dish, the mushrooms were kind of battered and fried I think and had a sweet yellow sauce. My favorite thing so far.

We finally came home and Cherry decided that she wanted to make pancakes from the night before (shubu shubu). So we went and got the ingredients and made regular and chocolate pancakes with whipped cream.

Good long day.

Still dont have a digital camera but have been taking pix with my old 35mm cam. Will TRY to scan them when they get developed.

Ciao

Saturday Sept 23

I had very simple kimbob today. Thin sheets of slightly salted seaweed (check out those s's) and rice. You take the seaweed sheet and put rice on it and fold or wrap it up. I absolutely LOVE this.

We went to a traditional Korean restaurant and had shabu shabu (I think thats right). Which is kind of like doing a reclette and a fondu. In the centre of the table is an element deep in the table. Then a large frying pan/pot is put on top of the element. A broth is poured into the pot and left to boil. Once boiling, a plate of very thinly sliced beef is brought out along with a dish of vegetables. You toss these items in as you go and the beef cooks super fast (5 seconds).After all of that is eaten there is little broth left. In goes a few more chopped veggies and lots of rice. This is left to thicken until, yup looks like someone got sick and is thick as porridge. Reluctant to try, I did and loved it!

I also visited the hospital Eunice's husband works at. This is more of a cosmetic surgery clinic than a hospital. Eunice does the finances and other paperwork for the hospital. And oh yeah, the Kim's own it!!! So not only do they have money, they have a fair bit of it. Next year they are sending Cherry and Hoyeon to a private school in New Jersey where the family will be moving. $20,000 USD per kid per year to go to this school. I told Eunice that $20,000 would likely pay for 2 years of university for me. They want Cherry to go to an Ivy League University. Holy crap. And yeah, Cherry is very smart, definately not the grade 2 level she is currently at. I'd say at least grade 5, at least.

Ciao