Korean Baseball Game

After our first attempt at a Korean baseball game was shut down by rain, my friend Joeanna and I finally made it to a game on her last night in Korea. I especially wanted to go to an LG Twins game, because they had the same name and similar logo to my beloved Minnesota Twins. Luckily, this game was the LG Twins versus the KIA Tigers.

Inflatable red clappers errywhere

I hate to admit this, but baseball games in Korea are soooo much more fun and exciting than baseball games in America. First of all, you can bring your own food and beer into the game! Families brought full pizzas and boxes of chicken in the stadium. Many people (myself included) brought in their own beer from one of the many convenient stores outside the stadium, and even if you wanted to buy beer there, it was only about 3,000 won! Amazing!

Ominous weather. Luckily, no rain that night.

Not only was the BYOB concept great, but the fans are a whole other story. For both teams, there were songs and chants that everyone took part in, songs for specific players, songs for whatever was happening in the game, even Justin Bieber's Baby was turned into a baseball chant. The fans' enthusiasm was contagious. I had no idea what was being said, but I found myself clapping and yelling at everything. My favorite thing that I really think baseball fans in America need to adapt are what I called "the Clappers". They are long inflatable tubes that you inflate to the fullest and clap together to make a loud, annoying sound. Not only do they make a lot of noise, but they are a hoot to clap together.

Keg-on-a-back. America, do you see this?

I forgot to mention that they had cheerleaders at the baseball game. AND instead of selling beer in cans or bottles, guys with kegs on their backs came around refilling cups.

Cooking Day: Sandwich Rolls

Another Cooking Day at the Inje English Village, and today's recipe? Sandwich Rolls! As mentioned before, the Western cooking recipes we use are slightly adapted to Korean tastes, and what ingredients Korea has to offer.

The original recipe. Luckily, we modified it.

John is unsure of the Sandwich Rolls

I don't know where the first recipe we had came from. It called for a sauce made with mayonnaise and strawberry jam, and for us to spread butter on the bread before spreading the mayo-jam concoction. Thankfully we decided not to use butter, or the mayonnaise/strawberry jam sauce. We changed the sandwich toppings and used ham, cheese, crab, sliced apples. We also changed the spread to just strawberry jam.

Jenny and Mille

I had the students flatten the sandwich bread with a rolling pin to make the bread thinner and easier to roll once finished. One of my students called it "paper bread". Then we would spread the strawberry jam on the bread. At this point I would yell "spread the bread!" to my students because it rhymed and I love things that rhyme. No one found this amusing. 

Mona, Lilly, and Rose enjoying their Sandwich Rolls

Next, we placed a slice of ham on the strawberry jam. I couldn't control my rhyming self so I yelled "ham on the jam!". Same response from my students: nothing. At this point I gave up. Which was a good thing, because I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with apple. Anyways, we added sliced apples, cheese, and pieces of crab sticks to the roll. Then we rolled the bread up like a tortilla or kimbap.

The inside of my Sandwich Roll

The Sandwich Roll was interesting. Like the Chicken Tortillas and Cheese Canapes, it was unique with so many different flavors that shouldn't go together, but it wasn't terrible. I wouldn't recommend making it at home for yourself, but if you find yourself teaching a cooking class that's making this, try it!

Music Monday

This band probably has one of the coolest names of any artist/band I have reviewed in the history of my Music Monday. KAKKMADDAFAKKA. Say that ten times fast.

Kakkmaddafakka is a seven piece indie rock band hailing from Bergen, Norway. Their music is a beautiful blend of indie-rock-pop and even a touch of reggae. I have been unsuccessful in my attempt to illegally download a free copy of their most recent album Hest, so this is based of a couple of songs that I sampled. I mean, what?! I would never try to illegally download music...

All the songs make me feel happy on the inside, and I usually start a one woman dance party while listening to them without even noticing. Their songs are catchy and melodic, and the lyrics are simple and comical (and in English!) The lead singer, Alex Bindenes, sings a lot about young girls, touching girls, other guys' girls, sandwiching on the dance floor with girls, and being an "original G". Kakkmaddafakka obviously has no intention of being taken seriously, which I think makes them awesome. I think they're great and I think they definitely have the potential to be bigger and better. I couldn't pick a favorite song, but I will leave you with their "Gangsta" music video, which made me literally LOL.

I lied. I can't pick just one. Here's "Your Girl", the very first song I heard by Kakkmaddafakka that really caught my ears. (This is basically a video of the band members making out with girls, so this might be NSFW.)

If you ever have the opportunity to see them live, do it. I haven't yet, but I heard they have backup singers (who are men) and who sometimes dress in matching costumes.

Orange Nails Errywhere

It's that time of year again. The time of year where I'm confused as to why most of my girl students have orange fingernails. They all can't possibly have the exact same taste in nail polish. That would be absurd. Well apparently there is a beautiful tradition behind the orange fingernails.

My youngest girls' nails

Fingernails are dyed using Garden Balsam (봉숭아), a flower grown in Korea that is usually used after heavy rainfalls (so about end of July-August). You can buy a powder to dye your nails, or you can go out and find the flower in the wild and do it yourself, (I don't know how to do this). The dye is strong, so be careful; your fingers can be stained for up to two weeks.

The Garden Balsam

And the the cute tradition behind the orange fingernails, if the color stays on your nails until the first snowfall, then you will marry your true love. Aaaaw, how cute is that?? I also heard that in way back in the day, the Garden Balsam was used to ward off evil spirits. Wow, no evil AND you marry your first true love? Amazing.

(Information found at Daughter of Korea)

My Day at a Cat Cafe

Dreams DO come true! I finally went to a Cat Cafe.

My friend Marjan was visiting from Minnesota and this was our second weekend in Seoul before she left to head back home. Going to a Cat Cafe has been on my Korean Bucket List since I even knew such a thing existed. Luckily, we were shopping around Myeongdong and when we needed a break I saw a sign. I knew this was a sign, figuratively and literally. We had to go in.

Taken with Instagram

The rules of the Cat Cafe are simple:

1. Go up to the 4th floor via stairs or elevator
2. Enter
3. Take in the glorious view of cats draped everywhere around the cafe
4. Pay 8,000 won per person
5. Choose your complimentary beverage (typical coffee shop drinks offered)
6. Find a place to sit and store your belongings
7. Play with cats for as long as you want!

The cafe had a great variety of cats: they had a Scottish fold, a hairless cat, various fat cats, and a Persian cat with a very unfortunate haircut. There was even a board in the front with information about each cat, the breed of cat, it's name, and other various information that was written in Korean.

Upon entrance I freaked out. I squealed at a pitch I didn't even know I was possible. I then proceeded to run around the cafe like a crazy woman and took self portraits of me and cats that were half asleep and allowed me to exploit them. It was amazing. My inner 13 year old and taken over my body, and there was no stopping her. After a green tea latte, she finally calmed down. You basically just chill out and enjoy your drinks while watching cats sleep and play. You can purchase treats at an additional cost (about 2,000-4,000 won) that you can feed the cats with. I recommend doing this, because some of the cats flocked over to me as soon as I ripped open the packet of tasty seafood. You cannot pick up the cats or hold them, but you are allowed to pet the cats to your heart's delight!

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER.

This cat cafe in particular was awesome. This was my first and only, but I heard other cat cafes can be dirty, smelly, and sometimes the cats aren't well taken care of. That was not the case here. It was clean, smelled nice, cats were well groomed and well fed, there were many platforms for the cats to climb and jump from, and there were many secret cubbies for the cats to sleep in and hide from people like me.

If you want to check out this cat cafe, all I can tell you is that it's in Myeongdong in Seoul and it's near a Pizza Hut and maybe a Guess store. My best bet is to walk the main streets and look for a sign, or a person in a cat outfit. Good luck!

Sign on the entrance

I would also like to note, that I am not a crazy cat lady! I love all animals. There are even dog cafes in Korea you could check out, though they aren't as common as cat cafes.

My Not-So Secret Love Affair with Korean Food, Episode 2

My love affair with Korean food continues.
Warning! NSFW! XXX! FOOD PORN! 

Gee, where do I start with my Korean food love saga? Since it is summer, I will start with a Korean summer dish, Naengmyeon (냉면). It's a cold soup, perfect for the Korean summer heat. The noodles are usually handmade and made with buckwheat, or at least the one I ate was made with buckwheat. I was a little put off by the idea of cold soup, I like my soups scorching hot, but this was surprisingly delicious and incredibly refreshing. A cold beef broth was poured over the noodles, boiled egg, seaweed, and various vegetables in the soup. It kind of reminded me of pho, because we were able to add our own vinegar, mustard sauce, and sugar to create a flavor that matched our taste buds.

Naengmyeon (냉면) on Buddha's Birthday

Next up is black chicken, also known as Ogol Chicken (오골계). My initial thought was that was was going to be normal chicken with some sort of black sauce, like a jajangmyeon sauce. Nope, it was black chicken, with black feathers and black skin and incredibly delicious! Every part of the chicken was cooked, skin and organs included. This black chicken is supposedly very healthy and my Korean friend who introduced ogol chicken to me said that it's good for your skin too. Woo! Eating tasty food AND getting a ton of health benefits. The chicken was freshly butchered as well which was pretty cool and pretty unsettling when I saw the chickens running around the yard when we left. But man, was it tasty. The chicken itself definitely tasted different and more flavorful than the usual white feather chicken, and the marinade was perfection.

 Ogol Chicken (오골계)

Apparently there is a famous fish soup restaurant in Inje County that we had the pleasure of going to for lunch at work last week. The restaurant was on a side road cutting through the mountains, just off the shore of a river, so the view was stunning. The soup is called Chueotang (추어탕), which translates to loach soup. According to my extensive Google research, a loach is a small elongated, bottom-dwelling freshwater fish. The soup's deliciousness went above and beyond my expectations. I was anticipating the fish to be in big chunks, with a fish head staring at me from pot, but the texture and consistency of the soup was surprisingly smooth and slightly flaky. It was spicy, but not too spicy, and had bits of tofu and dough flakes (which I think are called sujebi), and it tasted perfect with with a bowl of rice. FUN FACT: apparently the loach fish just sleeps and doesn't eat anything during the winter, so it is usually consumed in the fall.

Chueotang (추어탕)

On Teacher's Day we took a trip to Incheon to check out another dam owned by K Water. We went to a seafood restaurant in the area that the Korean president frequents, so that was pretty sweet. Most Korean restaurants specialize in a specific food, so the specialty of this place was a seafood soup. It had mussels, clams, crab, squid, shrimp, scallops, and probably other mysterious crustaceans that I was unaware of. I can't say the soup really wowed me, but what really got to me was the size of these bowls and the amount of seafood in each bowl. Unfortunately, I lost my camera with the pictures of the bowl, but fortunately I took some photos with my phone, so you kind of get an idea of what we had. If you look at the pictures below, you can see what sort of seafood was in the bowl, and you could kind of get an idea of how big the bowls were. The soup itself was delicious, but I can't say I would eat it again. I am a self proclaimed soup fanatic, so I enjoyed it, but the broth really had no flavor except for the very prominent seafood flavor.

Tiny crab

Charlie cutting up the octopus into smaller pieces

Another interesting eat is Sanchae Jeongsik (산채정식) also known as, Mountain Bibimbap. I discussed bibimbap in a previous post, but as a quick recap it's a big bowl of rice with vegetables, red pepper paste, and a fried egg. Sanchae Joengsik is famous in the Gangwon region (my province) so it was a treat to try our area's specialty. It's basically just bibimbap, but the vegetables were fresh vegetables, picked from the region's mountains, thus the name "mountain bibimbap". It was cool to kind of "create your own" bibimbap. The mountain vegetables were presented on the table, along with the different sauces and other various foods to add, and we were given a big bowl of rice to customize our own sanchae jeongsik. And of course, the spread included various kimchis, and my favorite, kimchijeon (kimchi pancake). I'm a mushroom enthusiast, so the fresh mountain mushrooms blew my mind. Again, I apologize for the lack of pictures, but my camera ran away.

I will conclude my NSFW food post with one of my favorites dakgalbi. I mentioned it previously, but this wasn't just your ordinary dakgalbi, this, my friends, is CHEESE DAKGALBI! At our favorite dakgalbi restuarant in Inje we usually order the cheese dakgalbi (치즈닭갈비) which is just dakgalbi with melted shredded cheese on top, but the taste is so freaking unreal I can't even describe it.

Dakgalbi with cheesy tteok and ramyeon noodles

At a restaurant in Hongdae (my favorite area in Seoul) we had dakgalbi, with ramyeon noodles and cheesy tteok! Tteok (떡) is one of my favorite Korean foods, it's a rice cake made with rice flour. This medley of deliciousness was amazing! I highly recommend trying dakgalbi with cheesy tteok. It's insanely delicious.

Welp, I hope this post left you all salivating at the mouth and itching to come to Korea to eat tasty food with me. And in case you were wondering, with one month left in Korea, I still haven't broken into my emergency box of macaroni and cheese.

"What Teachers Make"

Thank you Justin S. for posting this. Shout out to Momma Foroozan who is one of the most amazing mothers, teachers, and women in the world.

"Why won't I let you go to the bathroom? Because you're bored. And you don't really have to go, do you?"