Friday, August 9, 2013

My camp students & camp food

Billy is sleepy sometimes

Cliff, the athletic one, and Alex, the scientist, working hard

Top-middle is seaweed

Bottom-left is chapchae (glass noodles with veggies)

My kids are SO sweet!  The AC wasn't working in our classroom and
it's obscenely humid and hot, so they took turns fanning each other



The girls: Lucy (the shy one), Jay (the moody one), Carly (the outgoing one), and Scarlet (the conversational one)

The boys are super funny.  They played rock-paper-scissors and the loser had to fan the winner.
Here Billy is fanning Alex

Bottom-right is cold noodles in ice cold spicy brother with a watermelon slice...

I gave my kids nap time sometimes cause they're up so late at night either studying for their daily vocab tests
Or chatting with friends in their dorm room


Carly and Scarlet are often at the podium, choosing music videos to play on youtube
(the computer is inside the podium)

This is my roommate's student but she's super cute so I had to take a photo of her. 
She's very fluent (more fluent than my students) and she made up her own English name: Chelinda :D

That darned journal-entry I spoke of on Facebook

We had "bibimbap" one day for lunch.  The quotations are to indicate
that it was the worst bibimbap I ever had...  it was cafeteria-style with barely any veggies

Carly stuffed little hotdogs (enrobed in a bun) in her pocket because she loved them so much

There's Carly on the left!  Scarlet''s on the right

Monday, August 5, 2013

Jeonju weekend

Hi folks!  This past weekend, my roommate Mona and I went to Jeonju!!  It's east of Jochiwon, where I work.  We both fell asleep on the train on the way there, but thank the lord I happened to wake up 5 minutes before our arrival time.

Jeonju is very well known for bibimbap, my favourite Korean dish.  Bibimbap means mixed rice.  It's a bowl of steamed white rice topped with tonnes of cooked veggies (such as carrots, zucchini, bean sprouts, brake fern, mushrooms... etc) that are all arranged beautifully around the bowl.  It also has red pepper paste and an egg on top.  You're supposed to mix it all together with your Korean spoon and chopsticks (both with long handles, and the latter flat) and then enjoy!

Here are a tonne of  I took during the trip:

Cute Korean pose!

Pungnammun gate, build in 1768, is the only of 4 city gates that still stands

Mona said these dudes represent us!

In front of Gyeonggi Palace, which we chose not to visit

Cute Korean dolls!  I didn't buy any, cause I'm going to try to stick with functional souvenirs

Jeonju bibimbap, #1

I'm a happy gal!

A GIANT bag of mushrooms (you can get a sense of its size by comparing it with the slippers on the left)

Scary statue = scary Pam

Gorgeous flowers, despite the dreary day


Beautiful landscaping


BBQ squid

Jeonju is also famous for paper making!

A 600-year-old ginko tree

Cool tress!

I decorated a box in Hanok village!  It was plain white before I glued on all the paper and made my own design on the top

Baked hoddok! (Hoddok = a baked pastry filled with cinnamon and brown sugar).. but this one wasn't good because it wasn't warm

A squirrel photo for Jesse

A door for little people

Hanok village is just full of traditional homes like this one

I made my own paper at the village!!  I loved it, but lost it somehow on the way back home :(

At Deokjin park

Koreans make water bottles out of these gourds (probably just for souvenir purposes)

A huge and gorgeous lotus lake at Deokjin park






Korea and Jeonju's most famous bibimbap restaurant: Gogung

Our side dishes

One of the best bibimbaps I've ever had (maybe tied with the one in Myongdong area in Seoul)