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?"

Music Monday

This is a very special Music Monday  (so special that it's not even Monday in Korea anymore) dedicated to Mr. Beaver who has left us in the Land of the Morning Calm to seek out new adventures in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Connor introduced to me the wonderful band, The Vaccines, and we had the opportunity to see them live in Seoul at the Super!Sonic music festival AND we got to meet them. It was amazing.

Best buddies.

The Vaccines are a indie rock group from London, who remind me of The Strokes and a bit of The Walkmen. Their debut album "What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?" was released in late 2010 with positive reviews. One of my favorites is Wetsuit, a nostalgic song about being young and carefree. The lyrics in the song, for example "We all got old at breakneck speed, slow it down, go easy on me" remind me of Fun's We Are Young in the sense that it's a feel good song about youth.

I can't pick one favorite song from album, because they are all great. The Vaccines' lyrics are quite relatable, the songs are danceable with quick guitar pop and accelerated drums. I will leave you with Norgaard, a slightly creepy, upbeat, energetic 100 second song that will leave you grooving in your seat.

Music Monday

I'm an sure you have all heard about Gangnam Style so this song needs no introduction. Enjoy the video, the catchiness of the tune, and some horse dancing.

Here is a must read a friend posted about the song, discussing the meaning behind it, why it's hilarious, and that it is actually quite witty. Read it RIGHT HERE! (Includes a horse dancing GIF for you viewing pleasure.)

Now for the best parody of the song: Hongdae Style!!!! I've only been out in Gangnam three or four times, however I go to Hongdae almost every weekend. I love Hongdae. It's special, magical, magnetic, amazing. Watch the parody below and see one of my favorite places in Korea.

It's a lazy Monday morning, after an exhausting weekend, so I apologize for this non-descriptive, half-ass post.

Korean Students Speak

Oh wow. This blog is truly inspiring.

http://koreanstudentsspeak.tumblr.com/

"The Korean education system is notorious for "teaching to the test" and not encouraging creative thinking." The group of Fulbright English Teaching Assistants  who created this blog and this project are promoting the freedom of expression. Students writing about anything from their favorite K-pop star to Kimchi to Dokdo, and some express their frustrations with school and the pressure involved.

 
Amazing blog. Check it out.