Thanksgiving: the time for renewal and change

I'll start out this post by telling you about our awesome Thanksgiving holiday. We recently bought a small counter top oven with a rotisserie attachment. It's not quite big enough to fit a turkey in, but that doesn't matter too much as a turkey here in Korea costs an arm and a leg, and we had to work all day on Thanksgiving so we wouldn't have time to roast one anyway. We planned out a suitable menu of alternatives that we could quickly prepare after school, and when we got home turned on the little oven, roasted a chicken, made stuffing, mashed potatoes, and corn. It was ridiculously good. The whole house smelled like, well, Thanksgiving. Then we wrapped some fresh Gyeongsangbuk-do apples in homemade pastry, filled them with cinnamon, sugar, and butter, and baked them until we had a single-serving apple pie for each of us. It was a great reminder of how much we love home, and really got us pumped to visit the U.S. of  A. next month...because...

We're staying in Korea for another year. This brings a couple of changes along with it, but right now we feel like a job you have is a job you hold onto because it's just a little bit too scary at home. Carolyn is going to have to change schools for next year, but we're going to stick through it and hope for the best. We think that another year will leave us with enough savings to have a nice little wedding, a nice big honeymoon, and get settled and ready to start our new life together back in the U.S. We could certainly have less cool reasons to stay here in Korea for another year, and you know what, Korea isn't a bad place to be. Next year we're planning on getting to a few festivals that we missed this year, and another trip to somewhere warm and beach-y in Southeast Asia, along with shorter trips to Japan and China. After that we're probably going to want to make our next few trips in Europe and South America.

That's the news here. We're just up late on a Saturday night, watching TV shows we've found on the internet, and Carolyn is doing some handicrafts (she's got a skill...she could totally have a rockin etsy shop.)

Home Cooking, Korean Style

Tonight we had the awesome experience of having a home cooked feast thanks to Carolyn's coworker Hyemin. Hyemin invited us over to her parents' house for a meal as her parents wanted to meet us. Her father picked us all up near our apartment block at about 6:30 and drove us the short distance over to their apartment. Their apartment is on the 14th floor and has an amazing view of Sangin-dong with a beautiful mountain backdrop.

The menu included bulgogi (by far the best bulgogi I've ever had), kimbap (similar to maki-zushi), fried vegetables, salad (grown on their balcony garden), and pickled radish wraps with various fillings. It was absolutely delicious...mashissoyo even! It reminded me to no small extent of the Anthony Bourdain No Reservations episode where he has dinner with his intern's family in Korea. We talked even though we don't speak the same language, enjoyed incredible food that tasted so full of the pride that it was made with, and got to spend time with a mom and dad. Even though they aren't our mom and dad it was nice to be around them for a bit and feel "under the wing" of a parent for a little while.

After the meal we relaxed on their enormous couch, and took a few pictures. Unfortunately Mr. J isn't in the photo with me because he was taking the picture, but Mrs. J was so cute when she said she wanted to sit next to me "because I'm handsome" that I had to include this photo.

Like any mother, Mrs. J wouldn't let us leave without leftovers to take home, so sitting in my refrigerator are 3 rolls of kimbap, and about a pound of her amazing kimchi. I don't think I've ever had homemade kimchi until tonight, and it is infinitely better than any other kimchi I've ever tasted. It actually tingles when it hits your tongue, and the flavor is just gorgeous. I could not believe how good it was, and with my pound of kimchi I'm going to make kimchi fried rice, kimchi jjigae, and all sorts of good food to munch on.

This was one of the coolest things I've ever done, and I think I'll remember this meal for a very, very long time.