Things ain't what they used to be...

I was looking forward to being a student again. The thought of rising at 2pm on a Sunday, going to the shop for a tuna sandwich and 4 cans of Strongbow and then settling down on the sofa for a day of Pro Evolution Soccer seemed an attractive one, especially because at no stage in that process did I envisage taking off my dressing gown. The reality isn't quite matching up to the dream at the moment. Turns out that a 40 hour week and an MA is quite a lot of work.

Given the amount of work I did at undergraduate level, I feel reasonably sure that I could have managed a 60 hour week, my degree and still managed to establish Bolton as the dominant power in European football. However, my MA requires me to do things completely alien to me like order journal articles from Japan, keep proper bibliographic notes and read things outside of those which I'm expressly commanded to read by my tutors.

This Sunday morning I rose at 10am (after a luxury lie-in having stayed up to watch West Ham's annual charity drive for Bolton's ailing goal difference) and after a quick breakfast and shower set to work reading about the theories underpinning communicative language teaching (Canale & Swain 1980). I stopped at 12 and caught the bus to Gangneung to purchase some knee supports, dental flossers and a jar of olives. I read Jeremy Harmer's Practice of English Language Teaching (2007) on the bus here and back. Then I got home and went back to work until 5, when I stopped and spent a couple of hours cleaning my apartment, during which I even used two different hoover attachments. I felt a bit studenty using window cleaner in lieu of furniture polish, but not nearly as much as I felt simply old. I hadn't even finished work either; take me back to Exeter.

All this work doesn't leave much time for having fun, so I don't have much in the way of photos of exciting stuff in Korea. I would have some cool shots of penguins and Linda feeding an otter, if I'd remembered to take my camera to Sea World with me last weekend, but I didn't. It also doesn't leave much time for cooking, so in a new feature I present Cooking With Grev #1: 10 minute Mandu-guk.

Mandu is the Korean word for dumpling. They're not so different from either Japanese or Chinese dumplings really, though Korea tends to fry less and steam more (healthy). Guk is one of many seemingly interchangeable words for soup. Mandu-guk is the cheap and warming lunch that gets people through the Arctic winter in my part of Korea. If you want to know how to make it properly, I suggest looking at Maangchi's excellent Korean cooking site. Here though, is the ten minute "student" version.

You will need:

2 cups water

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp sesame oil

1 tbsp Korean beef stock powder

Salt & pepper

1 tbsp sesame seeds

6 largish frozen dumplings

Handful of sliced rice cakes

Handful of roughly chopped green / spring onions

1 egg

2 small sheets of seaweed

Steps

1. Add the water, sesame oil and soy sauce to a pan, and bring to a boil.

2. Add the beef stock, rice cakes and dumplings, plus a good slug of pepper. Boil for 5 minutes. While this is happening, chop the onions (if you haven't already) and beat the egg.

3. Add the sesame seeds and the onions, and boil for a further minute.

4. Take off the heat and then add the beaten egg. Stir gently otherwise it attaches itself to the bottom of the pan.

5. It should look something like this.

6. Pour into a large bowl, and crumble the seaweed over the top. That's it. Serve with kimchi and a saucer of soy sauce for mandu dipping.

There we go. I don't know whether there will ever be another cooking with Grev, but at least you know I'm not starving to death out here now.

Until next time...

A

Bits and Pieces

Digging through my camera's memory card in search of blogging material, of which there is plenty to come, I came upon some interesting photos that don't quite deserve a space of their own, but might be interesting to you nonetheless.

What are you eating?

Yes, this might not look too appetising, but I promise you it's good. This is Doenjang Jiggae. This is one of the most traditional Korean dishes. You can put almost anything in it (I used vegetables and tofu here) and then just add soy bean paste, garlic and an anchovy and you're more or less good to go. Serve with rice, and a selection of kimchi (four types above, all provided by my co-teacher).

The real beauty of this dish is the dish (sigh). The ceramic pot that this is in goes on the stove, and you cook the stew in it. Once it's ready you just pop it on a wooden block and carry it to the table. Your food stays hot for longer, and it halves the amount of washing up you have to do. Beauty.

What are you up to with your kids?

These are my kids in grades 1 to 4 of one of my elementary schools. I realise there aren't many of them, but there are only 30 kids in the entire school. We spent a couple of after school classes translating their Korean names into the Roman alphabet, and then making them into masks. I took these photos to help me remember their names. Not my greatest brainwave, given that none of their faces are visible.

How's the weather?

Right now the temperature is plummeting, as we head towards the bitter mountain winter. Apparently last year it got down to -27C here. Chilly. I bought a pair of tights the other day to wear under my trousers when it gets really cold. I somehow feel like less of a man, though probably still more of a man than I would if I didn't have the tights and certain important parts of my anatomy froze off on the ride to school.

The phot's above were from a couple of months back, when a few days of biblical deluges turned the trickle that passes through Jinbu into a raging torrent. This is maybe 6 times the size it normally is.

How about Korean aesthetics?

Bewildering. My friend Stacy and I went for a walk in the buckwheat fields, and came upon a gaudy bench and a plastic pillar box. Beats me who put them there, and why.

Probably about to throw in some awesome fall scenery then?

Yup.

What were you saying about Korean aesthetics?

That they're mental. Feature this London bus sitting in the grounds of the Kensington Stars Hotel in Seoraksan. Complete with all original signage. Almost made me pine for Willesden, but not quite. Quite why a country with such a beautiful natural landscape has stuff like this dotted about is still beyond me.

Get to Seoul much?

Not if I can help it, but with a girlfriend living just the other side of it it's getting more difficult to avoid. This sunset almost makes it look nice though, and I did feel good at this point. Mostly because I was going home.

Adios,

A

Chuseok Diary Part 3

We left the Jjimjilbang just before 9 on Friday morning, on the second and final leg of our cycling mini-odyssey. As you'll see from the photos, we could barely have chosen a better day for it. The sun was out and there was barely a cloud in the sky, and fall had drained most of the humidity out of the days by now. We immediately headed South down the coast from Gyeongpo beach, past Anmok. We went slowly, looking for somewhere to have a bit of breakfast, but found most of the towns to consist solely of closed raw fish restaurants. Finally, as we headed over the quite spectacular bridge below Anmok and towards the military base, we finally found a restaurant open, and headed in.

As far as I can tell, Korean breakfast doesn't vary greatly from any other meal in Korea. I always get slightly strange looks from people when I tell them that I just had toast for breakfast. The idea of having what is really just a light snack to most Koreans seems to be alien, and people struggle to believe I can get through a whole morning on just bread and a bit of fruit. In the restaurant we go to, there's certainly no breakfast menu, so we opt for Seaweed soup (Emily, definitely not me) and Galbi Tang (Tom and I), which is pretty much beef stew. As usual, this is accompanied by an array of spicy side dishes. I'm actually pretty good with stomaching kimchi in the mornings these days, but really I don't think I'd want to do it every day.

With appetites satiated we set off once more, turning away from the coast to work our way around Gangneung's Fighter Wing base. The jets are flying, so we're treated to almost constant flypasts of jets coming and going from the base. Without really knowing where we're going, we actually manage to work our way out of Gangneung with not too much fuss and even work our way back onto the coast road to escape the major highways. Today's journey is a lot more up and down that yesterday's, which was simply just up and then down. Still, before too long we've sailed past the warship and submarine anf arrived in Jeongdongjin, where we brake for Powerade, shade and cereal bars.

Getting to the beach can sometimes be tricky here.

After Jeongdongjin we make our first mistake. Looking to follow the coast road we instead take a turn into the hills. We realise this after it's too late to turn back, and so face a gruelling climb up a steep hillside in the hottest part of the day. Still, at least going up hills qualifies you to come back down them again, which is always fun. We detour briefly to the beach to see if there's a quiet coast road to follow, but find our path blocked by the large cement factory below. Getting back on the road does eventually afford us a nice view of Korea's sandy shores though.

By this time we're getting more than a little saddle sore, having been at it for 4 or 5 hours already. We power on for one more hour and reach the outskirts of Donghae, the next major city down the coast. We grab some lunch, Manduguk, which is basically dumpling stew and is very, very good. Then we make another big mistake (due to none of us having anything more than a tourist map) and proceed to take the main highway out of Donghae down to Samcheok. This proves to be a terrifying experience, with huge intersections to negotiate, including one expressway interchange, and enormous earth-moving trucks flying past us about every 30 seconds. Not really what you need after spending a full day in the saddle. It's mercifully short, though seemed longer at the time, and we soon pass a sign that tells us 4km to Samcheok. It's at this point we pick up a proper pavement, and so can get ourselves out of the road finally (Korean cycling laws being somewhat more lax).

We get to Samcheok and are treated to an excellent beach barbecue by our host Huy. His Vietnamese chicken recipe is a superb end to a very, very long day. Everyone's pleased to have made it, and made it in one piece. We stay Friday night, and then haul our bikes onto the bus a head back to Jinbu the easy way.

Odaesan Camping Trip & Other Stuff

Over the past few years I've been convincing myself that I don't really like camping. I mean, what's the point in sleeping in a tent on a yoga mat, when you have a perfectly decent house and bed at home. I think this opinion was informed by festival experiences, where you go to bed damp, shivering and blind drunk, and wake up three hours later feeling like death, having sweated all 18 pints of cloudy cider you put away back out into your kecks. Cue a few days of smelling awful, feeling awful and risking trench-foot / polio.

It's been a few years since I went camping just for the sake of it, rather than for the sake of seeing some bands I wouldn't really remember. However, recently I started to feel strange pangs of desire to head out into the woods and get back to nature. Well, not really, as what really inspired me was the food here. Korean barbecue, unsurprisingly, translates very well to the outdoor environment. Be a proper Korean and grab yourself a portable gas stove (complete with handy carrying case), a couple of pounds of pork, a tub of soy bean paste, some garlic and a handful of lettuce leaves and you're good to go. That's what we did, and here's how it turned out:

This was our chosen spot. Stacy and I had managed to acquire ourselves what turned out to be kids' tents (hers is the pink one, in case you were wondering), lending our campsite an air of healthy familial fun. That's not really how it turned out, unless you spent your childhood playing an amalgamation of at least three drinking games with your parents and sinking corn wine at an alarming rate, but there you go.

Avian visitor. Not easily scared off either. I guess he was in the market for a tasty pork rind.

Odaesan stream. Ain't nature wonderful?

And again.

We took a stroll up to Sangwonsa, and stopped at the tea rooms. Here's an omi tea, a pumpkin soup and two tree teas, not to be confused with tea tree, which was what I ladled onto my face for most of my pimple pocked youth.

Tea room interior.

Some of the art at temples here is really spectacular. Far more so than the buildings themselves in my opinion. This piece in particular I really like. I've not seen the musicians motif anywhere else around, and the fact that this is painted on the ceiling makes it doubly impressive, though harsh on the neck.

We were up at Sangwonsa just as the sun began to go down. Once it dipped behind the mountain the pines took on a slightly surreal blueish tinge, and everything felt a bit strange for a moment. My camera didn't do a very good job of capturing it sadly.

View out from Sangwonsa over the park. You have to hand it to the Buddhists, they know how to pick a spot. Also, every temple I've been too has satellite TV. Maybe this is my new religion. I could go hiking during the day, and watch live premiership football at nights. Throw in a bit of meditation (read: sleeping) and the odd mountain vegetable bibimbap and I'd be a happy man.

This was us discovering a fun new game of hide the coin in the big rock pile. Not as easy as Stacy is making it look above. In order to get the coing properly wedged in, it's necessary to actually tilt the rock pile (which is chuffing heavy by the way) and then let it drop back down on your coin. All of this at the risk of causing "a scene" in a haven of peace and reflection.

Temple bells are awesome. If you're into drone then they're pretty much a must. Boris have nothing on a monk bashing the crap out of one of these.

And here we are, living off the land, killing what we eat, unplugging from the grid. OK, we bought everything from a supermarket, but hey ho. This was absolutely delicious. Big pieces of succulent, fatty pork, soy bean paste and garlic wrapped up in a lettuce leaf. It's probably fair to say that none of us smelt too fresh by the end of the night, but this was one of my all time favourite meals. So good, in fact, that I photographed it twice.

"I look nothing like a crack-head." Her words, not mine.

Morning: If I was more awake I'd be worried that my new burner and the frying pan have changed positions overnight.

More morning: I'll leave you guys to make your own caption here.