Thanksgiving in Korea

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite American holidays.  Lots of delicious food (including yams) and corniness.  Last year, I missed it so much that I cooked a stuffed chicken myself and tried to celebrate with my family here.  This year, I had two great celebrations.  For the actual Thanksgiving day, one of the parents I met at the Cate reception invited me to dinner.  To be honest, I wasn't expecting much, but, besides all the amazing side dishes, there was a whole TURKEY! TURKEY IN KOREA!  And of course, many bottles of wine and pumpkin pies.  I wish I got a picture of myself biting into that gigantic turkey leg.  For the Saturday after, I got together with some friends and friends of friends for a pseudo Thanksgiving potluck.  I baked a pecan pie and a pumpkin cheesecake for the dinner and they both turned out very tasty.  It was a fun night with lots of food (again), corky wine (blame the bottle opener), and discussing random topics from politics to criminology to Korean laundry machines. 

I'm thankful for the obvious things in my life:  Family, both old and new friends, Mattdol, Juni, opportunities, colleagues, my new blanket, and gchat.

Internet access everywhere

I'm writing this while I'm sitting in a cab.  Seoul is indeed a wired a city.

Pod cars for Ithaca?

http://tinyurl.com/684gh8

Just hope they don't put the track across the gorges ;)

Cold in Seoul!

The temperature just dropped 10 degrees or more over a time span of less than 24 hours. It was so warm two days ago that I didn't have to wear a jacket, and last night, I was shivering in my new thick winter jacket.  Today, on the way home, my ears and hands were freezing and it's supposed to snow tomorrow.  Reminds me of Cornell :)

An exciting month!

November has been a very exciting month so far and the rest of it looks like it will be the same. This past week, on top of the regular baking and yoga classes, I had a really fun potluck farewell dinner at Tae's, went to a Cate reception to say hello and meet some parents, and went to Han-na Chang's concert. For the rest of the month, I have:

- 1 vs. 100: a popular trivia quiz TV show in Korea (Yes I'll be on TV)
- My cousin's wedding
- Thanksgiving cook-off
- Theresa and Zach's joint birthday party
- Raghu visiting from Hyderabad for two weeks
- And perhaps another concert

:)

Election

Today's the Big Day for America. It is the most exciting election ever in my memory and, for the first time, including the elections in Korea, I actually took some time to read about the candidates and watch the debates. Even all the Korean newspapers are covering the election in depth. And when I was on Facebook earlier, literally 99.9% of my friends' status messages were about voting (or supporting Obama).

Hope to see results that make sense. I'd like to believe that elections are not all about image marketing and people can actually set that aspect aside when making their voting decisions. But I already saw someone wrote "Voted for McCain and Sexy Palin". Yes, the person prefers a sexy VP over someone who can actually do the job. Heartbreaking, I would say.

Update: So it is Obama! :)

Random Topics

OK, two posts a night. I just have so much to ramble about my day-to-day experiences. I may officially give up writing about the Singapore/Hyderabad trip at this point :-P

YOGA I absolutely love it! I'm only doing weekly classes now but thinking of doing it at least twice a week next year. I had always thought yoga was overrated and a bit pretentious, with all the fancy mats and "yoga-wear" that cost a fortune. But after my third class, I became a fan. When I work out at the gym, I'm going really fast and hard, isolating the muscles I want to work out. But in yoga, you pace your breathing and movements, focus on balancing and staying still, and pay attention to how your muscles connect and work together when you work them out. I'm greatly enjoying this reverse perspective and the positive effects on my physical strength and flexibility, as well as my mood. I feel very stable and positive after every class.

COOKING I'm realizing more and more how much I love the creative, hands-on experience. Because I knew that, I did consider a design career but for the reasons that are worth a whole another post, I took a break from it. But I'm planning to pursue a more creative career path in a few years, and a culinary school has become a serious consideration, just because I, simply, want to learn everything about cooking. Learning the theories behind the reasons you choose a certain type of a pot or slice different veggies in different ways has always fascinated me, and coupled with the desire to be professional at what I love doing, I'm seriously looking into this. Matt suggested me to start trying things out now rather than waiting to make the big jump later, and I plan on spending more time in the kitchen and taking short-term classes. I've already started to cook more, and my two next major projects are the team dinner next week and Thanksgiving Extragavanza, which I'm planning with Theresa to bring Thanksgiving spirit to the lonely expats spending the holiday away from home.

JAMLEGEND.COM This game has become my addiction of the season. It's a fantastic, very well-made online version of Guitar Hero! It keeps your statistics in a range of categories and does a really good job to motivate you to compete. You can also duel your friends -- you play a song first and send the duel challenge message for the other person to try to beat your score. I hope they come out with real-time dueling and take away that Roxanne girl.

Happy Halloween!

It's already November 2 in Korea, but since I had a pretty good Halloween this year, I still wanted to write a quick post about it.

Just the night before Halloween, I got this urge to make something for the office. I quickly looked up some ideas online and decided to make evil pumpkin faces. The cookie recipe turned out fabulous, except it would've turned out tastier if I had better butter. The only available butter in the store downstairs was Seoul Dairy's butter (not that I would've spent 22 dollars on The Organic Valley's sweet cream -- taxes suck) and it smelled nothing like butter. The most fun part was "carving" the pumpkins. Just a quick baker's tip here: after you cut out the cookies, stick them in the freezer for a few minutes before sending them into the oven to prevent them from melting too quickly and losing the shape. It was a big hit at work! I baked a few dozens and they were gone in less than ten minutes :D

Our team dressed up for the costume contest on Friday. We just bought those Scream masks and a few other weapons, like axes and scythes, and won the best group costume. For the evening, I didn't do anything Halloweeny but went out to see Bank Job and had a few beers afterwards. The place was all fancily decorated with pumpkins and cobwebs, so that took care a bit of my craving for America-style, overboard festivities.

Then there was a big party on Saturday. In general, no Korean-Korean people dress up for Halloween but there are an increasing number of these costume parties as more foreigners are traveling to Korea to live and teach. I had a lot of fun with hanging out with Keith, Theresa, and Zach, seeing some crazy costumes, and meeting new people. I actually met some software engineers working in Korea/Singapore, which was great because all the foreigners I've met have been English-ee teachers. The night didn't end on the best note as we were all too tired to get ourselves into partying in Itaewon, but it felt good to celebrate Halloween. Oh, what was my costume? Just a plain, boring witch :-P

More pictures here!