Cosmos and Cold Noodles

We went down to Lakewood to get some Korean lunch for my coming-home-from-mission anniversary day. And since we were out of kim (seaweed), we had to stop by Paldo World first to get some. Outside Paldo World was this big stand of cosmos flowers. Cosmos always make me think of Korea in the fall.  It's not quite fall here yet--we've just barely had our Pacific Northwest Summer, during which everyone is miserable for about a week or so because no one has air conditioning here, and then it goes back to normal. 



I got some naeng myun at Chung Ki Wa. By this point the warm weather had broken and Saturday was rather cool, but I'd been thinking about cold noodles all week so I went ahead and got some anyway. (As it turned out it was not the best naeng myun I've had... I like Chung Ki Wa but they seem rather inconsistent. It had apple slices in it instead of pear. I've never seen that.)



The kids mostly ate lots of rice and kim, and whatever else we could tempt them with. I gave Kate the half-a-hard-boiled-egg out of my naeng myun. She has recently discovered that she likes hard boiled eggs. (We hardly ever make them. Doug is not a fan.)



I also got some kimchi jjigae to go, to take home and eat for leftovers. It's always better the next day!



Here I am at Dae Dun San, in Korea, surrounded by cosmos (looks like some daisies in there too).  This was taken in early October, 1992. 

Hoppy New Year!

Get it? It's the year of the rabbit. (Hee hee)

Doug, Andy, and I went down to O Bok Jip and I got some dduk guk for lunch, so I could be a year older. (You can see my previous post about dduk guk here.)



It was pretty tasty. (The way I make it is a bit different, but also tasty!)



I brought along two packages of kim, and Andy gobbled them both up. Yum!



Our neighbor Hyun Ju gave us a hanbok that used to belong to her daughter Sky (하누리). After Kate got home from school I asked her if she'd like to put it on and take some pictures.



공주 케이트.

It was so funny watching Kate suddenly doing the princess thing. She's always been more into the dragons and dinosaurs. I think this may be the first time she's actually played dress-up in a dress. She was just having a ball. (After taking pictures we played Kingdom, and I was the dragon.)



Here's what the hat looks like in the back. (The hat was just a little too big and kept sliding down to her eyes.)



Kate's idea of posing. Cheese!



새해복 많이 받으세요!

침례식

Our neighbor Hyun Ju (정현주) and her older daughter Glory were baptized this last Saturday. They've been attending church for a few months and taking the discussions with the missionaries, and decided to get baptized. Our neighbor Catherine (also Korean) gave the talk on baptism, and Hyun Ju asked me (!!!) to give the talk on the Gift of the Holy Ghost. In Korean. Whew. I probably wouldn't have been up for it a few months ago, but I have been getting a lot of Korean practice lately. It was a little choppy but it went okay. And it was just cool to be able to do something like that again. I was happy to be asked.

I was hoping that we could all go, but Doug's mom came up from Klamath Falls that weekend, so Doug and Kate went to the Seattle aquarium with Grandma while Andy and I went to the baptism. (The aquarium is cool, but there was no way I was going to miss the baptism!)



Hyun Ju's husband works on Sunday and hasn't been to church, but he was able to come to the baptism and I think it was a good experience. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming. (That red blur in the bottom corner is somebody stepping in front of the camera, but this was the best shot I got for people's expressions.)



Mom and girls. Sky's too young to get baptized, she just happens to be wearing a white dress. (With ladybugs on it.)

I found out that I had Sky's Korean name wrong. (For a whole year now.) I thought her name was 하늘이, but it's really 하누리. (Which sounds almost the same.) The confusion stems from the fact that her English name is Sky, and 하늘 does mean Sky. I guess I'll have to go back and change my previous entries.

After the baptism we had watermelon (yum!) and 콩떡 (bean rice cake) and everyone stood around in the hall visiting. There were quite a lot of people who came. The members are great. I've been up to the Korean branch (for church) four times now and really enjoyed it. (I'll enjoy it more when Andy's old enough to go to nursery--just one more month!)

Typing Practice (한글로!)

Links:

Language packs in Windows
 
한컴 타자연습 typing tutor (I have not tested this download--might have adware)

Korean keyboard stickers

Virtual Korean keyboard

(I get a lot of hits from people looking for info on typing in Korean, so I thought I'd list those links at the beginning. Now, on to the post!)



I've been using the IME pad to input Korean. If you write the character you want on the pad, it brings up a bunch of options that it thinks matches, and then you click the right one. If I'm writing a lot, I use my graphics tablet and pen. This has generally worked pretty well for my needs.

It is a bit clunky, though, and it doesn't always work the first time. Especially if I'm writing quickly, sometimes it doesn't recognize what I'm trying to say, and then I have to clear it and start over, more neatly.



A while back I exchanged a few messages with a guy on the Straight Dope board who disparaged my use of the IME pad and told me that touch typing was definitely the way to go. He said, "It's much easier and it's a blast to see the reactions of my students and other visitors to my office when they see me typing Korean quite rapidly on an unmarked keyboard!" While that did indeed sound like a blast, I did not have any particular motivation to put in the effort to make this happen. I was happy enough with my IME pad. It did the job.

Now I have motivation. Facebook chat.

Kim Sang Kyung, one of my old mission companions, is on Facebook now. I sent her an invitation about a month ago and she joined, but it took her a while to figure it out. This last Saturday I got to chat with her. It was so fun and not easy. The faster I tried to write, the more the IME pad wasn't giving me the right characters. And clicking back and forth between the IME pad and the chat window made things hang up a bit.

But it was a hoot. A great, frantic, shrieking bundle of exhilaration and frustration.

"Ack!" said I. "I need to learn to type in Korean. For real."

So I gave it a try. It's pretty easy to find images of the Korean keyboard layout. But I wasn't happy with trying to hunt and peck, and decided I needed a real Korean typing practice program. I asked Amanda and she referred me to a program called 한컴 타자연습 (which you can download here). It's exactly what I wanted. (Note--the download that I had before is gone now--I don't know if this one might include adware or other annoyances.  I will see if I can confirm or find a different one.)



This is a great program. (And cute! It's for kids.) I've been playing with it for a few days now. My speed is pretty lousy, but it's getting better!



At this point I'm touch typing on an English keyboard. Since I'm not a total masochist, I have ordered some Korean keyboard stickers that I found on Amazon. But I'll keep practicing while I'm waiting for them to get here!

열심히 연습할거애요! 재미 있어요.

I have a pretty good collection of Korean fonts, too. Let me know if you're interested!

Korea videos--church and temple

When we were in Cheonan we attended the local branch. I got permission to film part of a hymn (unobtrusively from the back) one Sunday, and then we got some of the general mayhem after the meeting.



Sister Cho Kyung Sun (조경순) also served in Taejon mission, and was in my greenie house in Gwangju. Her husband was the branch president in Cheonan. I remember going to church there that first Sunday and seeing her. "Hey, I know you!" That was cool.

The Tices were another American couple that was there teaching. We discovered that Sister Tice's sister was friends with Doug's brother Al's ex-wife. Kind of an odd connection. And after we got back home I realized that I had a book by Brother Tice, that one of my Young Women's leaders gave me when I was fifteen. We just recently got back in touch with them, and found out they're in our area now! It's like we keep following each other around.



The temple in Seoul. I love the way you walk up the street and turn the corner and Bam! There it is. They do have a sign, in English and Korean, out on the main street, so hopefully that helps people find it!

We ran into Sister Jung Su Jin (정수진) outside the temple. She'd been a stake missionary in Gwangju. There was one sister missionary who was serving in the little visitor's center by the church (which I hear is not there anymore), and Sister Jung filled in as her companion for a while. At the time I couldn't really say much in Korean, so it was fun to run into her again and actually be able to carry on a conversation. She was serving a mission in Seoul.

After I got these videos put together I thought I really should get ahold of someone in Cheonan, so I got the number for the missionaries serving there now, called them and got Sister Cho's number, and called and talked to her. She has four kids now. When we were there she had two little girls. Now she has two boys as well.

I asked about Sister Yoon Jung Hee. (윤정희--she's not in the video.) She was always really sweet. I remember we had her and her husband over for dinner once, and then she fed us the night before we left Korea. Sister Cho said they were not in Cheonan anymore but had moved to Jinju. So I called the Busan mission office and got the number for the missionaries in Jinju. I talked to Elder McCain (who was serving there with his companion, Elder Elder. We had an Elder Elder in my mission too. Apparently not related). I asked him if he knew Yoon Jung Hee, and he said, "Yes, we just had dinner at her house last night!"

So I got Sister Yoon's number and gave her a call. It took her a minute to figure out who I was, which was kind of comical (well, it has been a long time!). We exchanged email addresses. I knew that her husband had family in the U.S. and occasionally came over to visit, but I was surprised to learn that his mom lives in Tacoma. Holy cow. He said he was just here a couple of months ago, and should be coming again this summer. I said, "Bring your wife this time!" It would be great to see them again.

You know that six-degrees-of-separation thing? In LDS circles it's waaaay closer.

Korea videos--at the hagwon

More videos! This is the hagwon in Cheonan where we worked.



Doug shows off a classroom with his "Trashman and Ratboy" wall, and some more of his creations in the teachers' room. Appearing at the end are a few of the kids that we worked with. It's kind of alarming to think that they're practically all grown up now!



Min Young shows off her mad gonggi skills. I love the bit at 1:49 where she does the quick hand sweep and picks up the two pieces that are farther apart. She was so good at that.



I have Min Young's original gonggi (not the ones she's using in the video). I bought several sets to bring home, and she liked the ones that I got, so she wanted to trade. Which I was happy to do because I thought hers were very cool. I remember sitting on the floor in the Seoul airport and playing gonggi with Doug while we waited for our flight home.

Next: Doug's class says hi!



Choi Ji Young pouts because she wants to look through the video camera. I think Doug let her, after this. (Note: the Korean last name 최 is generally romanized as Choi, which looks like it should be pronounced "Choy," but it isn't. It's kind of like a cross between "Chay" and "Chweh.")



The book spinners. Yong Il and Yong Ee are twins. Their names mean "Dragon One" and "Dragon Two."

Cities in Korea are divided up into sections called dongs. (That's with a long O, like "dome" with an ng sound.) The dong we lived in was called Ssang Yong Dong (쌍용동), which means Twin Dragons. The hagwon was in another dong, close by. One day it occurred to me to ask Yong Il and Yong Ee if they lived in Ssang Yong Dong, and they said they did. I thought this was hilarious. They didn't seem to see anything remarkable about it.

Aram is the boy whose cards Doug was reading through the camera. He was a funny kid. (I recall he appreciated Doug's sense of humor.) I wonder where he is now.

Doug just started a new quarter at school. He has two morning classes back-to-back, in different classrooms. A few days ago he stayed behind a little longer than usual in the first classroom, to talk to a student. A couple of students came in for the next class. One of them starting writing something in Korean on the chalkboard, and Doug read it (much to their surprise!). Turns out she's from Cheonan. In fact, she's from Bek Seok Dong, which is where Doug is pointing the camera in the first video when he mentions the apartments up on the mountain. Small world.

Korea video--Galbi with Mr. Ha

Here's the first of the Korea videos. I've decided I'm going to post Korean stuff on Tuesdays (for 한국 화요일).

While Doug and I were teaching English in Cheonan (in '96-'97, right after we got married) Doug took a kumdo class. Kumdo is what's called kendo in Japan--the fencing with bundled-bamboo practice swords. I went along at first to help translate (and came down with a case of kumdo elbow after doing the quick head strike 500 times). After we started actually hitting each other I stopped going.

In the class was Mr. Ha, a forty-ish restaurant owner with two kids. His full name is 하종률, which I think he romanizes as Ha Jong Yul. (Or something like that. Though the last syllable is really more like "nyool.") He spoke absolutely no English at all, but he and Doug managed to communicate well enough in their classes, and he would give Doug a ride home afterward.

Mr. Ha fed us at his restaurant a few times. On New Year's Day we went over to the restaurant and ate, and then went with him and his family over to his brother's house and ate more. We spent the evening eating, playing yut nori, eating, singing (we still have the song book they gave us), and eating. We had a wonderful time and went home completely stuffed at 1:00 in the morning.

In the weeks before we left Korea, we were able to go back to Mr. Ha's restaurant with a borrowed video camera, and record the experience for posterity.



(If you watch it at youtube the picture is bigger.) You only see Mr. Ha for a couple of seconds. I wish we had gotten more of him. It was also pretty noisy, so you may not be able to catch everything. (I could add subtitles... should I do that?)

Mr. Ha was unusual among our acquaintances, being not someone we knew from church or someone who wanted to practice English, but just a regular, nice guy. We kept in touch after we went to Newfoundland, exchanging letters a few times. In one letter he mentioned that he had sold the meat restaurant and started another place. The whole economy at the time was not doing very well, and it sounded like they might be having some trouble.

I sent Mr. Ha one of the cards that I made for the lunar new year, and it came back. I had no idea how I might find him, since he's not LDS and I couldn't use the same channels that I used to track some other friends down. Then Sister O'Bryan, whose blog I've been following, got transferred to Cheonan. I thought, "Hmmm, maybe she'd be able to find him somehow." So I sent her an email, giving her the information that I had. And then I thought, "Hmmm, I should try googling again." (I had tried this before, inconclusively.) So I googled 하종률 천안 and up popped this site. It's a restaurant in Cheonan. With owner Ha Jong Yul. And a phone number. I thought, "How many restaurateurs named Ha Jong Yul in Cheonan could there be?" (And I totally had to look up how to spell "restaurateur.")

It was way too early to try calling. I had to wait till evening, when it was about 9:00 am in Korea. Then I called the number on the site, and it was Mr. Ha! He was so surprised. Just completely gobsmacked. It was so awesome. I got his email, and we exchanged further news. He sent some recent family pictures. His kids are 20 and 22 now. The new restaurant is actually a fugu place. (Ooh, fancy!) He said he's also studying hotel management. Maybe he'll start a hotel and then we can go visit. Wheeee!

Korea calling

After I got home from my mission in '93 I wrote letters, in Korean, to a few friends and companions. This is a card that I kept tucked into my dictionary, where I made a list of words that I found myself looking up frequently. After Doug and I got married, went and taught in Chonan for nine months, and then went to Newfoundland, the list continued. (I can kind of tell what was happening when by looking at it--moving from words like "graduation" to words like "Canada" and "dialect.") I wrote to Kim Ji Won, who'd been a student in one of my classes; to Mr. Ha from Doug's kendo class, who owned a restaurant and made wonderful soon tubu jjigae (we spent a memorable New Year's Eve with his family); to Lee Soo Mi in Suncheon; and to Kim Son Mi in Nonsan. Somewhere along the way I stopped writing.

I've thought about my neglected correspondents every once in a while. Wondered if there were any poor sad letters wending their way to Newfoundland and then getting rejected and sent back. This year I finally made a card for the Lunar New Year, and planned to see how many of those friends I could get back in touch with.

I still might never have sent them, as February approached and they remained under my desk. But after we had the Korean lady randomly show up at church and I was just stumbling all over myself, I was seized with a sense of urgency. I pulled out my White Field Korean book and went over some grammar forms. I watched videos on youtube. Then, that Friday, I had planned to make keema matar (not Korean, it's Indian) for lunch, and realized we didn't have any garlic. Immediately I had an idea. I would borrow some garlic from our Korean neighbors. It was like a sign.

New Year's Blessings

Sunday, in addition to being Valentine's Day, was also the Lunar New Year. On Saturday we went with some friends to an activity at the Korean (church) branch in Federal Way. (They used to meet in Auburn, but moved.)

There are quite a lot of Koreans around here. I do occasionally work up the nerve to strike up a conversation in public (I met a nice family at the library once), but it's difficult. ("Hey! I don't know you, but I see that you're Korean! I want to talk to you!") 쑥스럽다. So I was looking forward to doing some Korean schmoozing, as I'd put it, in a no-pressure setting. Well, we didn't exactly have people running over to talk to us (the random Americans crashing the party), and I realized that if I wanted to meet anyone I was going to have to make the first move. (There were a few people there that I'd met before, so we weren't going into it completely cold.)

In remembering my mission lately, I've been thinking a lot about my Korean companions. I did send 설날 cards to a couple of them, but haven't heard anything back yet. So I was especially interested in talking to the Korean missionaries serving in the branch. There's a Korean sister and an elder, and their American companions, who travel all over the Seattle mission working with the Korean people in the area.

Well, I met Sister Kim and Elder Min, and it turns out they're both from my mission area! Sister Kim (김훈지) is from Gwangju (농성 ward, which is where Sister O'Bryan is serving right now) and Elder Min (didn't get the rest of his name) is from Daejeon 선화 ward. I told him I'd served there, and he said, "So who do you know?" and I just kind of went "Uhhhh..." Nope, can't remember any names. That was seventeen years ago! (I did remember a couple of names, later, but probably not anyone that he would know.) I neglected to ask if there was any chance I would have met him as a four-year-old.

Sister Kim was very sweet. I went over to talk to her, holding Andy, and she said, "Oh, baby!" and took him from me, exclaiming over how cute he was. Then I asked her where she was from and she said "Gwangju," and I just grabbed her hand and said, "자매님! That was my greenie area!" I told her all about how I've been thinking about Korea a lot lately, and practicing the language and trying to get in touch with old companions. (She said my Korean was very good.) I got her email address, so I can write to her after she goes home in April.

There was a lot of food at the activity (but no dduk guk) and some amusing jump-roping. We had to leave early because Kate was bored and cranky (and we wanted to give her a little time to decompress before bed.) I'd like to attend church there some Sunday, but I'm afraid it wouldn't be very interesting for Kate.

On the Tip of my Tongue

I've had Korea on the brain a lot the past few months. (More than usual, that is.) Since I made the banner and background for the Daejeon mission blog, I've been following the blog and sometimes looking up the names of new missionaries that Sister Perriton posts about. This is how I found Sister Rebecca O'Bryan's blog. She's a brand-new (greenie) missionary serving in Gwangju, which was also my greenie area. (Missionaries can't use the internet, but her sister is posting her weekly emails to the blog.) I always enjoy reading about people's experiences in Korea, but there was something about finding a missionary blog, especially somebody in a place where I'd served, that was a special treat. My mind was spinning for days with things I wanted to tell her. I was finishing up Mom's calendar and didn't want to get distracted from that, but once that was finished I sat down and wrote a snail-mail letter and babbled a bit about Korea and Gwangju and being a missionary. (I just got it off in the mail last Tuesday, so I expect it'll be a while before I hear back.)

People sometimes ask me if I've managed to keep my Korean. It's been over sixteen years since my mission, and twelve years since Doug and I taught English in Chonan. I like to think that I've kept it up pretty well. I often construct Korean sentences in my head, just for the heck of it (in the shower or whatever), or walk around the house singing a Korean hymn or children's song. I have quite a few books in Korean that I'll pull out and practice reading every once in a while, though not regularly. (It's been a while since I've done that. I gave up on Harry Potter after I realized the translation wasn't very good.) But when the opportunity comes up to actually have a conversation with someone in Korean, then it's all too obvious that it just doesn't come out as well as it used to.

Two weeks ago, Doug went out on a Saturday afternoon to get his hair cut. He went to a place nearby run by some nice Korean ladies. Later he told me that he'd talked to a lady there who was a social worker in Korea and had come over to improve her English. She asked him if he went to church, and he just said he was Christian, since they changed the name of the church in Korean a while back and he couldn't remember what it was. So the next day she showed up at church. We're not sure how she ended up there, since she never actually asked Doug where he went to church. After Sacrament Meeting a friend told me that there was a Korean lady there. Someone else was already talking to her, so I went over to help.

Her name was 지현 (Ji Hyun), from Seoul. She told me she'd picked Zelia for an English name. We talked just a little--I told her about where I'd been in Korea, and she told me my pronunciation was good (yes, I can say Daejeon, Gwangju, and Suncheon properly! Yay!). Then she asked what the topic of the day's talks had been. Well, the topic was revelation and I could not for the life of me remember the word for revelation in Korean. Which was really embarrassing because it was definitely something I should have known. I was pretty sure it started with 계 and just kept running through 계 words. (계획? No, that's plan. 계단? No, that's stairs....)

Then I asked her if she had a Book of Mormon and she said, "This is a Mormon church? I did not know that!" Oops. I answered a few questions in a mixture of Korean and English, but I only got to talk to her for a few minutes because she said she had an appointment. After she left we managed to track down a Korean Book of Mormon. We didn't see her the next week.

I was feeling kind of agitated about this for a while, and kept wondering if there was something I was supposed to do differently. With all the Korean-related stuff I've had going on recently, of course I can't help but wonder if there's a reason.

There is a Korean branch that meets in Auburn. A couple that was in our ward is attending there now. I'd love to go and do some Korean schmoozing in a no-pressure setting.

This week I've discovered the blogs of three sister missionaries serving in Busan mission: Sister Rose Hadden, Sister Alyssa Linford, and Sister Rachel Ogilvie. Sister Hadden and Sister Linford were companions at the Misisonary Training Center, and Sister Ogilvie was in the next group after them. I particularly enjoyed Sister Hadden's blog. She has a way of capturing everything that just brings it all back. I've enjoyed reading through it and remembering so many little things, and especially the sweet Korean sisters that I served with. Sister Ogilvie's blog was a lot of fun, too.

I also discovered that the current mission president in Busan is Ken Jenning's father. I just got a kick out of that.

I am determined to get back to Korea, somehow. I have no idea when or how this might take place, or for how long, or even who all it would involve. (It occurred to me recently that Kate probably wouldn't appreciate Korea very much right now.) In the meantime, I feel a need to get myself back up to speed (as much as I can, anyway) on speaking fluency. Last night I watched some Let's Speak Korean videos on youtube (these are actually pretty good--they use some nice colloquial forms), and went to bed with Korean in my head. 앞으로 더 열심히 공부 해야돼요.

Christmas Eve 김

Andy's first taste of kim. (Actually his second taste--we gave him one piece and he chomped it down, so Doug got the video camera.)



After this he wanted some more!

skinning the mission blog

I served as a missionary in Korea in 92-93, pre-digital era. We didn't have cellphones or digital cameras. A lot of things have changed since then.

There's now a Korea Daejeon Mission blog, kept by the current mission president's wife (Sister Perriton), where she posts pictures from conferences and comings and goings, and other events.

(The country switched to a different Romanization system, which means that the Taejon mission is now the Daejeon mission. I'm still not really used to this.)

I was looking at the blog recently and saw that she was using a background from The Cutest Blog on the Block. Nice, but pretty generic. So I wrote and asked if I could make a custom background and banner. I spent a day or so fiddling around and came up with something that seemed to me both appropriately Korean and mission-y. I sent it to Sister Perriton with instructions, and she was able to get everything installed properly. (I had to look up some information about working with the widget layout, which is what led to me redoing my own blog with widgets.)

Here's the full view. What you actually see will vary depending on your screen size and resolution.



Sister Perriton posted about her new background, and even dug up an old picture of me from the mission files. Whoa.

The words down the sides are from Doctrine & Covenants 4:6: "Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence." We used to recite all of section 4 at zone conferences. It's different now.

In 2005 they changed the name of the church in Korean. I, being rather out of the loop, did not find out about this till some time later. Just a few months ago I heard that they had re-translated the Book of Mormon. So when I was working on this I double-checked and discovered that yes, they re-translated the D&C too.

Talk about things changing.

Looking at the pictures of the missionaries on the blog makes me feel a bit nostalgic and homesick. I hope they're appreciating every minute. It goes by faster than you think.

Goldfish bread and walnut cookies (and seaweed!)

We've been getting to know our new Korean neighbors. I've had a few conversations with the mom while the kids are playing. My Korean is getting a workout. Some things come out just fine and some things I kind of get stuck on.

A few weeks ago she gave us some kimchi that she'd made, so I made jjigae. (I wasn't sure how it would agree with my nursing baby, but decided to give it a try.) We ate it with kim (roasted laver seaweed), which is, in my opinion, the very best way to eat it. And then we ran out of kim, so we had to go get some more.

We went down to Paldo World in Lakewood. (This was on a Tuesday, almost two weeks ago.) There are a whole bunch of Korean businesses down there on South Tacoma Way. And this sign:



which always makes me laugh, because in English it says "International Business District," but in Korean it says "Korea Town." (I think there are a few Vietnamese Pho places scattered in there, but obviously they don't count.)



Paldo World is a huge grocery store, with some other little stores and a food court around the edges.

I took along my camera because I wanted to get a picture of the goldfish bread and walnut cookie maker.



Here's the place, but there was no one there.



Then I noticed this sign, which says, "Every week on Tuesday, we rest. Thank you." (Why Tuesday is in quotes, I have no idea.) Bad timing on our part!

So I took a picture of this sign instead.

Goldfish bread and walnut cookies are both "street food" in Korea. I always wanted to get a picture of a goldfish bread maker on the street, but I never did. They use these big round irons over a gas flame--squirt the batter in, add some bean paste, close the lid, rotate the iron one stop, do it again--and by the time the fish comes around again, it's all done and ready to come out. A lot of foreigners don't like the red bean paste which is the filling (I heard that some of our missionaries once took a jar of strawberry jam to a goldfish bread maker and asked if he would make them a round with the jam instead of bean paste, and he wouldn't do it). I did like goldfish bread. Especially on a cold day when it's fresh and warm, right out of the iron. (I found some pictures on google--here's a good one.)

Walnut cookies are similar--little walnut-shaped cake things with walnut stuff inside. Chonan, where Doug and I taught English, is famous for walnut cookies. Seems like every place in Korea is famous for some kind of food.

Goldfish bread is boong-o bbang (붕어빵) and walnut cookies are hodo kwaja (호도과자). Which brings me to one of the few Korean jokes that I know. A girl buys a bag of walnut cookies on the street, comes back a few minutes later and complains, "There's no hodo in my hodo kwaja!" and the guy says, "Is there boong-o in boong-o bbang?" Ha.

We got our kim and a few other things, then went home and had jjigae for dinner again.



Here's one of the kim packages. We got a big pack that has twelve of these in it.



Kate couldn't wait for dinner but sat down on the couch with one of the packages and snarfed down the whole thing. And then had some more with rice.

Unfortunately the kimchi seemed to upset Andy's tummy. I guess I'll have to wait before doing that again!

15 년후

Or, "How did my scanner get so dusty?"

August 18th is the day I got home from my mission. I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, and it occurred to me that it was, in fact, fifteen years since I got home. I'm still not sure how fifteen years could possibly have elapsed since then, but after double-checking the math, I had to admit that this was actually the case. It doesn't feel like fifteen years.

We celebrated the occasion by going out to lunch. I also dug out a few pictures that I thought I'd share.



This is my last companion, Sister Kim Su Kyung, and me (err... I. "This is I." Nominative case. Yep.) at a zone activity. She was a sweetheart. We haven't kept in touch but I think of her every once in a while. My hair was a lot lighter back then! I was also frequently sunburned.

I was serving in Sunchon and GwangYang, way down south, as my last area. I recall it was raining, the morning that I left, which seemed appropriate as I was feeling very emotional and kept randomly bursting into tears. (Maybe not quite bursting, but a lot of welling up.)



There was a group of us going home at the same time, including two other sisters, Lee Su Jin and Kim Sang Kyung. Here we are in front of the Seoul temple. Sister Kim had been my companion for a couple of months, in Taejon. It was nice to get to spend some more time with her before going home. (Yes, I had companions named Kim Sang Kyung and Kim Su Kyung. Two different people.) I didn't ever serve with Lee Su Jin but I met her parents, later, when I was doing my summer internship at a publishing company in Seoul. As soon as I saw her father, I thought, "He looks just like Lee Su Jin!"



And here I am with my family at the airport, after a very long flight. (This was back when Barb was still shorter than me. Ha.) I was only home for nine days and then went out to BYU for the start of fall semester. I had kind of a hard time with the transition, just figuring out where I was and what I was supposed to be doing with myself. I felt like I'd been through such an amazing experience, and changed so much, but it was all inside, and there were things that were important to me that I couldn't explain to anyone else. I was so glad that I got to go back with Doug, later, and share some of that with him. Hopefully some day we'll be able to take Kate (and Baby Boy).



This was lunch today--kimchi jjigae. Our heat wave broke and it was cool and rainy. Just seemed like a jjigae day. (Doug had bulgogi.) Kate was a bit squirmy and kept trying to climb up the back of the seat, but she enjoyed the food and ate a lot.

Yesterday in church we heard from a young man (our stake president's son) who just got back from serving in Korea a few weeks ago (Pusan--though I think they're romanizing it as Busan now, which bugs me). I got to talk to him briefly afterwards. One thing that I really miss is singing hymns in Korean. There are a few hymns that we sing where I have to restrain myself from breaking into Korean on the chorus. It's amazing that I still remember so many of them.

One of these days I'll get around to scrapping my mission pictures. Maybe I'll use one of those photo-scanning services and do it all digitally. A big coffee-table book or something.

Rice Cooker and Spin-A-Lift

More from The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race! Challenge #5 was to scrap an interview with an inanimate object, so I decided to do our rice cooker, Lucky. We got Lucky in Korea almost twelve years ago, and he's still going strong!



(You can click on the picture to see it bigger.) 보시다시피 means "as you can see." Heh.

Challenge #6 was over at Sweet Shoppe Designs, where they do something called Spin-A-Lift. This is where you take somebody else's layout and rotate or flip it, and then use that composition to create a new layout. For this challenge one team member had to pick a layout from the other team member's gallery to rotate and scraplift, but also reverse the original subject matter. I used this layout of Karin's:



This is her daughter swimming. So I rotated the design clockwise and made a page about Kate not swimming.



(credits here)

Kate keeps looking at this photo and talking about going to the swimming pool. Maybe she doesn't remember how much she hated it. I guess we'll try again this summer.

Eating your age

Kimberly in China recently posted on her blog about the Chinese age system. The year that you're born is your first year, and your age goes up at each new year. (They do celebrate their birthdays but they don't get older on their birthdays.) They do it the same way in Korea, and there's also a food tradition involved.

Dduk (sounds a lot like "duck," with what's called a "tense" d at the beginning) is rice cake made with glutinous rice flour. It comes in a lot of different forms. One form is little white oval-shaped pieces, that are cooked in soup called dduk guk. This is the traditional dish for the lunar new year in Korea. They say that when you eat dduk guk on the lunar new year, you get a year older. They call it eating age. (This of course leads to the expected jokes, like "So if I don't eat it I won't get any older?" and "What happens if I have two bowls?")

So yesterday I made dduk guk, and I thought I'd share the recipe here.



You probably won't be able to find dduk outside of a Korean grocery store, but if you're lucky enough to have one in the area, this is what it looks like. (Packaging varies.) The stores around here keep it near the produce section.

Other ingredients are:

beef (thinly sliced, if you can get it)
beef broth
garlic
green onion
soup soy sauce (called 국간장, or regular soy sauce in a pinch)
sesame oil
black pepper
eggs

I have this cookbook called A Korean Mother's Cooking Notes that explains how to boil some beef brisket with garlic and green onion for two hours. I didn't do that. I just used a carton of beef broth from the store and added a little more water.

Put the broth on to boil with little of the garlic and some of the green onion, and a couple tablespoons of the soup soy sauce.

Cut up your beef into thin strips, mix with garlic, a little sesame oil, a little soy sauce (this is actually supposed to be regular soy sauce, not soup soy sauce), some of the green onion (probably mostly the white bits), and black pepper, and stir fry it. (This all a "to taste" kind of thing. I put in lots of garlic. And lots of black pepper.)

Beat up the egg and add the rest of the green onion (mostly green bits). The book just calls for one egg, but I used three. My sister Betsey likes to use a lot of egg, too.

Rinse the dduk. This is supposed to keep the slices from dissolving in the soup. I'm not sure how it does that, but I guess it works.

Drop dduk slices into boiling beef broth. When the slices float to the top (which doesn't take long), turn the heat off, then add the egg mixture and stir it so the egg cooks in stringy bits.

Put in the stir-fried meat. (This can be added earlier, if you want.) Add a little more sesame oil to the soup, if you like it.



My dduk guk is thicker than what you'll generally see in Korean restaurants. It turned out really well. This batch was particularly tasty. I think it was the beef broth and all the garlic, and the dduk was a really good consistency, too. (It's easy to overcook, and then it gets slimy.) Kate was not impressed, though. I got her to taste the broth a little, and she said it was good, but she wasn't interested in actually eating it. Apparently I have been remiss in my food-acclimatization duties.

새해복 많이 받으세요!

That's what they say in Korea--"Receive many New Year's blessings." This is a picture of Kate at a recent ward activity. We have activities every month at church (usually), generally with some kind of theme, and they like to do a Chinese New Year themed dinner around this time of year. I think it's kind of too bad to focus exclusively on China, when there are other cultures that celebrate the holiday as well (especially since we do have Korean and Japanese members in the ward). We have been insinuating Korean foods into the Chinese dinner since we've been here. This year I'd been busy working on design stuff and didn't have time to prepare anything, so we just went down to Paldo World in Lakewood and picked up a few things.

This is the year of the earth rat. Our friend Scott was born in an earth rat year. He's been through the whole cycle and will be turning 60 this year. We'll have to throw him a rat-themed bash. We can watch Ratatouille. (I googled "rat-themed party," out of curiosity, and came up with a story about rat-themed panties. I don't think Scott wants any of those.)



They had these little dragon decoration things on the tables. Kate spent the entire time we were there playing with them. (You can see she's got her coat on--the heat had been off earlier and it was very cold in the building!) We're probably going to be flying somewhere this summer (either to Ohio or possibly California), so we've been keeping an eye out for things that occupy Kate's attention. The dragons were certainly a hit. I'm not sure if it was the dragon-ness or the accordian-effects of the honeycombed tissue paper that she especially liked. We ended up bringing a couple of them home. Maybe if we put them away they'll be new and exciting again by then, and she can play with them all the way to Ohio.

The Adventures of Mr. Penguin (a tale in Chinese characters)

When I was first serving as a missionary in Korea, I lived in a high-rise apartment complex with an elevator. As I rode up and down in the elevator each day, staring at the information panel, I noticed one particular character. It seemed to draw my eye every time. I would stand there and look at it and think, "It's a penguin!" Eventually I learned that it was the character for "heart," but I still think it looks like a penguin.

As it turns out, the penguin is used in other characters as well. Like this one--the "heart" character and the "door" character. It's obvious: Mister Penguin drowns his sorrows at the local saloon. I started looking for the penguin in more characters, and discovered quite a few other things that Mister Penguin had been doing.




Mister Penguin discovers the necessity of wearing his seatbelt.









Mister Penguin looks out the window and wonders what his neighbors are up to.









Mister Penguin installs a large aerial on the roof of his house.









Mister Penguin shows up at his friend's house with a gift.









Mister Penguin blows out the candle on his birthday cake.









Mister Penguin is not tall enough to go on the ride.









Mister Penguin is unable to find a parking space.









Mister Penguin wards off vampires.










Mister Penguin is attacked by the Flying Spaghetti Monster