Hi everybody. I’ve been used to sitting down to blog with an idea of what to write. We went here and did this, went there and did that. This settling down (sort of) for a bit is an almost new feeling. We’ve been doing stuff around here, but mostly have been having a domestic life. We watch TV, read and sit at the computer, go shopping, and see friends. We go for lots of walks in the hills behind our apartment, or go to one of the temples which are usually in forest settings, or to Busan. It looks boring on paper, and sometimes it is, but so is constant travelling. I’m fine with this. So far, Myung is also. The other day she said she feels like a tourist here too because she has been living so many years in China. Here is a picture in the hills.
I guess I’ll use the pictures I’ve uploaded as a guide. As I said, we visit friends and make food. I have pictures of kimchi making at her friend’s, Il Hwan and Gwong Ja, place. About three times a year, most Koreans make a large quantity of kimchi. It’s a two day production during which you cure overnight as many salted heads of Chinese cabbage as you want. Then you rinse off the excess salt and apply red pepper/garlic/whatever your tastes are paste between all the leaves. They also like ot make it out of radishes, green onions, carrots and assorted greenery I don’t recognise. Then you put it away for at least a month. Most Koreans have a special refrigerator just for keeping their kimchi.
Kimchi is good, for sure, but I must say I’m getting a little bored with the limited flavorings of Korean dishes. They almost only use red pepper, which tends to bury every other taste, garlic, sesame, onion, soy sauce and fish sauce or boiled down fish. Spices are virtually unavailable. We went to Seoul last weekend for Parents Day with her sisters, when Koreans venerate their living or dead parents, and went to a store with western things. Oh bliss, we bought a jar of Italian seasoning. They had many of the other spices westerners are accustommed to, but I was happy for just that for now. I’m trying to introduce Myung to raw veggies and salads, with mixed success. She doesn’t like raw broccoli, or cauliflower. And raw bean sprouts appals her to the point that my eating them is a lively conversation topic between her and her friends. On the other hand, she likes lettuce, cole slaw, salad dressing, and veggies they eat raw also, like cucumber and tomato. We got some balsamic vinegar and white wine vinegar in Seoul, and they are a hit with her.
Oh, I wanted to buy some cheese that isn’t individually wrapped American cheese, but at $8/lb for cheddar we passed. If we were big meat eaters, the price of beef just fell by almost half now that Korea is allowing importation of American beef. Maybe we’ll eat some of that. US beef sure is a hot, complicated political topic here. Until this week it has been banned, supposedly because of mad cow disease, but it’s also a rallying point against the conservative president. Anyway, it’s flying off the shelves. there have been all kinds of sometimes violent demonstrations, sometimes involving hundreds of thousands of people. The only “meat” we’ve made for ourselves is fish, which is much more affordable, anyway, than chicken, pork or beef. I’m getting rather fond of mackerel flavor food. For those of you who are thinking, “Hmm, mackerel. Not my favorite”, remember it’s buried in red pepper. It’ll clear your sinuses right now.
I’m going to have to write this in stages. Today we are going to Gyeongju, the capital of the Silla and Unified Silla kingdom, which to make a long story short are the first unified Korean kingdoms from 57 BC until the 14th century. There are several historical and world heritage sites. We went there a couple of weeks ago.
This time we’ll see some different stuff and watch some performance. It’s about an hour away by bus. I’ll return to this probably tomorrow.
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It’s “tomorrow”. Gyeongju is really a nice and interesting place. Here are a bunch of pictures. Note the burial mounds like around our apartment, the ancient Buddhist rock sculpture, the pretty paths and generally exquisite beauty you see everywhere in Korea. This time I’m in a few because some are off Myung’s camera. The last is of a little musical performance we attended in the evening after going around on my first bus tour since I can remember.
That last one is just some artist by the rock carvings. I don’t think his stuff was for sale.
Let’s see, I had a train of thought when I left off and got sidelined by uploading and adding the pictures to this blog. I wonder what it was? Oh, I think it was mostly just about our daily activities. We do a lot of outdoorsy stuff. I’ve uploaded these pictures of woods and temple walks. I like this first one of a monk feeding the fish in a pond near the temple Gng Yurl and Yung He attend.
We’ve been to Busan a few times. We went to a baseball game on evening. I’ve always wanted to see quality ball in a foreign country. There are eight teams in the Korean league. The teams go by the name of their corporate owners. Hence, the teams have names like the Samsung Lions and the Kia Tigers. There is a big retailer here called Lotte, and Busan’s team is the Lotte Giants. It’s pretty good baseball, about Double A. We went to the Giants/Tigers game. By the way, He Sop Choi was playing for Kia after fizzling in the US majors. Now he’s fizzled for Kia and is in the Korean minors.
We went to the beach. Here that is, along with the path toward a lighthouse at the south end of the beach. This is definitely not your secluded hideaway.
One night we went to a performance of traditional music and dancing. After these programs there is usually audience participation in after performance fun with the performers.
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As I was writing that, Gung Ja called and invited us over to have grilled clams. They went clam digging and got hundreds, maybe thousands. Myung and I both had about a hundred clams each. Whew. I haven’t had a hundred clams since 1988 when my old friend Mary and I were in Croatia and a relative of hers in the restaurant business in Dubrovnic set us up with a mile high plate of shellfish. This, I think, was more massive than that. Whew. I should have brought my camera.
So, maybe that gives you a picturee of what things are like for me nowadays. It’s rather like a typical retirement, especially about watching too much TV. It will be interesting to see how long this will be fun. I’m thinking it would be nice to stay through the fall, when the colors are spectacular. It looks like Myung is happy to be situated. She’s just going with the flow. Playing house is working for her. What do I write next time? It may be interesting, I don’t know, but I will write soon and let you know.
Be well, all of you.
