market

 all things slippery and sea born

a wealth of berries: goji and cranberries. did you know the goji berry is commonly known in Asia as a wolfberry?! as if I needed another reason to love them.

mmm, texture...

the top felt like worn leather

the bottom, puppy ears.

Don't let all the pink rubber fool you. 

She is not a squeamish lass.

There has been a serious lack of prepared food documentation.

Soon, te prometo. 

empty your cup

"We travel to encounter otherness. We travel to be surprised, amazed, perplexed, challenged, even disgusted by people who, like us, have two arms and two legs and love and pray and eat and shit, yet order the world differently. Maybe they're asking the same questions about how best to prevent terrorism, serve food, or conquer duality, but they come up with different answers:..."

an excerpt from "First Empty Your Cup" by Andrew Boyd, a reoccurring writer in the ever vigilant Sun magazine.(cue plug: an advert free literary magazine that is open to reader quipped contributions and is peppered with lovely black and white photography.) The lines above are the last lines from a story documenting Boyd's first venture into Asia, a quest for Zen in Japan.

Roots unbound,

abruptly

inverted  atypical  mystified

success of transition to epiphytic

remains undetermined

Cultural isolation is a strange and beautiful creature. One that feeds on all of your perspectives, opinions, judgements, and most of all, assumptions. Particularly enjoying the ones you didn't know you held. Day after day the feast takes place. Day after day, in some small or sometimes big way, you're stripped of what you 'knew', and placed wordless at the threshold of understanding.

-The elderly woman holding a napkin in the air is not staring at you with narrowed eyes because she thinks you're an ambassador of all things Western. No, silly, you have snow in your hair and she thought it was bird shit.

-The group of giggling teenage girls that are flocking closer and closer to your table are not gathering to sneer at your misuse of chopsticks but because they genuinely want to know what you think about kimchi, toe socks, and Lady Gaga.

-The taxi driver who laughs boisterously at your American citizenship, later asks shyly if you and President Obama are buddies because according to him, "He's a numba 1!"

In short, hold out on serving the assumption pie, because you never know.

Maybe, you never knew. 

An impending New Year is apt to make this gypsy reflective. 

A very Happy Happy New Year to each and every one of you all.  

I hope that it is full of life, love, and adventure!

snow falling on ginkgo

snow arrived Thursday night, little flurries at first

but by Friday morning

snow fell on the serious.

And after dinner with friends on Saturday night,

I found myself in an epic snow fight that lasted for seven blocks.

Being a Florida lass, born and bred

I reacted to all this snow just a puppy might react to someone frying chicken in the kitchen...

trazy.

Howling, jumping, turning circles with my tongue out, hoping to swallow a snowflake or twelve.

If I had a tail, it would still be wagging.

While this was not my first time experiencing heavy snowfall, 

this is my first time living in a place where this could happen regularly

or at all.

yeesh!

15 floors closer to the clouds

Perhaps it is human nature for the events surrounding a big change to seem surreal.

For a cloud of numb apathy to settle around your brain, in hopes of preventing sensory over load.

This continues for awhile and then shiz gets real.

It's inevitable.

This Saturday I moved into a new apartment. On the 15th floor, no less.

The place is spacious and has heated floors, yesssssss. Poor circulation be damned, my feet will not freeze this winter!

Shortly after moving in, I bought my first plant (a darling yellow kalanchoe)

and had my first pizza in the new hood. At a joint aptly named,  Pizza school.

side note: there is an unending supply of korean businesses with english names.

usually a conglomeration of somewhat random nouns.

examples:

skin food (cosmetics store)

noodle tree house ( mostly the first one)

mr. pizza love for women ( a pizza joint con salad bar complete with raw crab and no lettuce)

sexy cookie (there is no baking there)

salad bar and party (still not sure)

sand and food (sandwich cafe)

thinking is real (interior design company)

1% premium space (upscale clothing store)

dear baby (possibly infant stationery)

crocodile lady (circus sideshow outfitters)

Back to pizza school : had your standard cheese pizza with sweet potato, corn, onions, and a marinara sauce that quite possibly contained both honey mustard and barbeque sauce. surprisingly delicious.

During the meal, two separate rounds of teenage korean girls sat next to us and struck up conversation.

The second group was extremely complimentary. Apparently Korean tweenagers are BIG fans of blue eyes.

Sunday was spent cooking and wandering.

We happened upon fall colors, an impromptu market, and a group of rowdy boys.

 

 

Tomorrow the training wheels come off and I will be left to educate, herd, and prevent general disarray of approximately 50 eager young Korean minds for six hours. Alone. Wish me more than luck.

traffic lights and rice cakes

almost a fortnight into the Republic of Korea adventure....

a brief synopsis on some of the subtle differences I've noticed thus far.

every appliance sings, beeps, hums and whirls after the completion of a task.

a few examples:

-cell phones play a four minute promotional trailer every time you turn them on or off.

- most apartments have punch codes for the building entrance and each apartment. They produce a delightful jingle every time they're touched.

-the washing machine sounds like an ice cream truck after the load is finished.

side note: dryers are uncommon, every house has a drying rack either affixed to the ceiling, hanging from a wall or folded in the porch corner. the first load I washed took three days to dry, albeit the clothes were hanging in a room with no sunlight and no cross breeze. Three days. So much for the warm fuzzy feeling of accomplishment the washing machine's jingle gave me.

Grandma, my appreciation for your clothesline in the full Florida sun is wholly renewed.

eggs are sold in groups of ten not twelve.

red traffic lights are a suggestion. you only have to stop for a little while then feel free to proceed as you fit. no need to worry about the police, they cruise with their lights on. all the time.

taxi rides are generally inexpensive. 5,000 won (roughly 5 USD) tops.

a rice cake is not a light crispy snack. it is a chewy cylindrical food item that is spicy.

everything is spicy.

things that are the same in Korea and the States and quite possibly the all over the world.

little children love to sing.

taxis drivers are fearless.

overseas

overseas.  to traverse seas, by air or water,

migrating like geese or whales to new shores.

i remain amazed that in just a few hours (that sometimes stretch into days) time 

we, too, can reach new shores. 

overseas

what a strangely literal word that holds so much possibility.

in approximately thirty hours (driving + flying) i went from familiar woods and words 

to an unfamiliar land full of words that fall on ignorant ears.

Point Washington, Florida, United States of America

to

Gunsan, Jeollabuk-do, South Korea

the transition

thus far

has been

exciting

intimidating

and most of all

spicy

peppers, bok choy, and onions growing at one of the MANY urban farms in Gunsan.

Koreans are serious guerilla gardeners.

This farm is on the edge of Eunpa Lake Park.

a snapshot of Eunpa Lake.

approx. 6 blocks from my apartment

aforementioned apartment

Happy

   

the land surrounding Eunpa lake is a medley of forest, tea houses, farms and cemeteries.

yesss

 much like their approach to gardening, Koreans seem to part with the deceased in whatever spot is available

with a nice view

and ample sunlight.

In the states, our graves tend to be level with the earth, almost as if nothing ever happened.

No earth was touched to lay bones beneath.

Here, there are mounds of earth, in which I imagine the bones to be cocooned in a cave.

or maybe the dust of their bodies is in a small box underneath a mass of dirt.

I wonder what a Korean funeral is like.......

more soon.

much love.