IT'S CHRISTMAS!!

Yesterday was Christmas day here in Korea and like small children we woke up nice and early to see what Santa had brought us. Surprisingly, we seemed to have recieved more presents being here than we would have done at home, and it was really lovely to have so many to open! We started on the stockings, where we both had bought each other animal inspired head gear, Ed received angry bird ear muffs and Nina a panda hat. All the other presents followed including lots of English festive food and quite an impressive array of DVDs (including two copies of Zulu)!

After playing with our new presents for a couple of hours and Ed winning a few games of Trivial Pursuit, we started making Christmas Dinner. Unfortunately, due to our lack of oven we weren't able to have roast chicken/turkey but we managed to find a chopped up chicken carcas (for want of a better way to describe it).....
note Ed's face.

We managed to roast some potatoes in the portable oven we have, pan fried the chicken, boiled some brocolli and carrots and made sweet potato mash! All in all it was quite a successful attempt at an English Christmas dinner..... apart from the gravy. Ed found a recipe online which suggested making gravy from corn starch, water and beef stock but perhaps Ed overdid it on the corn starch and the gravy turned into a sort of mixture between apple sauce and jelly. Here are photos of our Christmas dinner:

After dinner we prepared some mulled wine and sat down to watch Elf filling us with lots of Christmas spirit! This was followed by a Christmas cake which we had bought from our snazzy local bakery. We then managed to skype everyone in our family before playing a few more games of Trivial Pursuit- Nina FINALLY winning, and watching some of our new DVDs. All in all in was a very memorable and enjoyable Christmas day!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

x

Making Kimchi

A couple of weeks ago, our director Glen invited us to her house to take part in the annual event of making Kimchi. Kimchi is the korean national dish which is made from cabbage immersed in a spicy paste and pickled. Koreans eat Kimchi with pretty much every meal, everyday and we were to make enough to last Glen's family a year! They even had seperate fridges to keep it in dotted all over their apartment.
So, together with Glen, her husband, her sister in law, and mother in law we all sat in the living room on special mats and started the process. We each had a bowl and with plastic gloves we would scoop a huge bit of red paste into our bowl, grab a cabbage and proceed to cover each individual leaf. Sitting cross-legged on the floor while doing this soon became very hard work, but while Nina coped with the pressure easily, Ed found the pins and needles too much and was demoted to playing with the children. They were introduced to a camera, which seemed to absolutely amaze them.

Our finished product was 18 boxes and as a thank you (to Nina) for helping out, we were given our very own box of Kimchi which we think will last us the year too!

Busan and other updates

These past few weeks have been a bit more chilled out as we've settled into living and working here. Saying that, last weekend we made a trip into the second largest city in Korea: Busan. We tested out the metro system and went into Busan from our neighbouring city of Gimhae. Our guidebook recommended a temple called Beomeo-sa which was situated on the northern tip of Mount Geumjeong in the north of Busan. We decided to get a cable car to the southern tip and attempt to hike to the temple. As we stepped off the cable car, the route we had so carefully planned became void due to the complex korean signposting. However a hero in the shape of a fashionably dressed small korean man came to our rescue and offered to guide us to the South gate of the Guemjeong fortress. Although the term 'fortress' sounds like something to behold, it was merely a big wall with four gates that outlined the mountain. We made our way from the South gate to the North gate and then down to Beomeo-sa. The route included several steep stretches and we were once again very lucky with the weather.
Here are some pictures:

And finally this weekend we decided to get into the christmas spirit early! After seeing Twilight at the cinema we popped into a huge superstore in Gimhae and picked up a christmas tree, decorations, lights and even some stockings. Ed's make shift angel undoubtedly steals the show.....