lead up to the vote

The past couple of days in pictures:

Downtown spy dog.

Market meat store, that sells dog meat, but has a cat in the cage out front...?

Red bean and cream cheese stuffed crust. Something I need to try, along with pumpkin pizza.

Cheese dolsot bibimbap. 

:/ Is this supposed to be some kind of political/social statement, or just a case of bad English?

And my bed. So my school mistakenly got me a small bed when I first moved in, but no one bothered to correct or acknowledge that mistake and maybe hoped I would ignore it as well? Which made for wonderfully uncomfortable conversation that finally led to them agreeing to get me a bigger bed, since they were supposed to in the first place, even though they really didn't want to... Well, here's that bed, just hanging out in the hallway. Maybe one day it'll be in my apartment. And maybe one day I'll get some chairs for my kitchen table, instead of being stuck with chairs from my university's classrooms. One can hope.

But at least this gives Abby a chance to say goodbye to the old bed, since she refuses to get off of it. She didn't mind at all that I was pulling off the covers and sheets from under her.

sunday cattle call

Today it was nice and warm out, it's finally feeling like spring. I've been craving bibimguksu (cold noodles with pepper paste and vegetables) for awhile now (and generally like eating a lot of it in spring/summer) but have always been settling for bibimnaengmyun (cold chewy noodles and vegetables) and it just isn't the same. Today I decided it was time.

I came across a bunch of tofu places along the way, but happy tofu wasn't quite what I was looking for.

Some other time happy tofu, some other time.

 Finally, I found a noodle place that advertised bibimguksu. It looked like a pretty decent place from the outside, but after ordering and receiving my meal, I was left unimpressed. It wasn't horrible, it was just average. I don't know, some food tastes a little different in Chungju than it did in Daegu. Maybe I'm just a little pickier now than I used to be? It always seems to come down to the gochujang or red pepper paste...

Either way, I was inspired to pick up a plethora of rainbow guksu in preparation for spring, or as I think of it, my personal bibimguksu food season. The best way to avoid disappointment is to make it yourself, then you can make it to your own personal taste.

And some pictures from my leisurely bike around Chungju:

 I live in farmland, so biking outside of the city always involves lots of farms, fields and creepy scarecrows.

Vast expanses of fields, orchards, mountains and a tiny house.

A lonely looking dog waiting outside a budongsan (place to find apartments). The place was closed, so I hope someone eventually stopped by to take the little guy home.

chungju dam

After feeling tired and demotivated, I decided a 20km+ bike ride along the river would be a good idea, for some crazy reason. The weather isn't quite as cold today, the sun's shining and it's the weekend. It's time to start enjoying spring. And from my earlier visit to Tangeumdae park, I noticed there's a pretty lengthy bike path around Chungju that takes you to such wonderful spots as the Chungju dam, waterfalls and a national park. I opted to set my sights on whichever came first. And if you don't have a bike, there's lots of bikes available for rent, including (naturally) couple bikes!

The path, there weren't a lot of people out when I first started around 11, but a few hours later, on my way back, it was packed. And although there are nice red bike paths, you do get spit out onto highways for a few km to bike alongside traffic and pass over the railroad tracks. But there are plenty of signs and bikes spray painted on the road so it's hard to get lost.

 Beware, cars can and will drive anywhere and everywhere, even bike paths along the river.

 Unfortunately for the clever people that decided to drive on the bike path, they were thwarted by these stairs, and had to turn around. It started out as a nice leisurely bike, but then started getting a bit hardcore with the hills. Well, this is Korea, of course mountains everywhere can be expected. I just wasn't as psyched about feeling the burn while going up hills, as I was about leisurely winding around the river.

 Finally, after copious amounts of hills and stairs, I reached my destination, Chungju dam! OK, the pictures don't really do it justice, it's something you need to experience on your own. I seemed to be the only person that biked though, everyone else there looked like they drove, seeing as they had brought a ton of food and supplies with them.

And if you don't mind going up all of these stairs (or if you just drove up the mountain) you could walk out on this observatory over the dam! Taking a picture was more than enough for me though... Maybe some other time.

There's also a pretty nice park where you can use the exercise equipment, kick a ball around, lounge around, pick up food from the store, etc. Great place to bike and stop for a picnic, but the entire bike path was filled with perfect places to stop and rest or have a picnic.

Obligatory cow pic. My university's mascot is a cow, it's pretty fantastic and fitting for this area. I saw this farm on my way back and was actually stopped by some guy on a scooter who repeatedly thanked me for some reason (maybe because I'm a foreigner on a bike??). He had the official Good Chungju logo on his scooter and jacket, so maybe he was a city worker of some kind. Who knows?

People out golfing. The grass was pretty rough, so they were using balls that are much bigger than golf balls. It seemed more like a combination of croquet and golf. It was free to play though, you just needed to bring your own clubs and balls. All in all, a very nice (mostly) car/city free adventure. I'm definitely going to venture past the dam next time.

more elections coverage

With 100% more dancing! Next Wednesday is voting day, so all of the candidates have really been stepping up their routines.

triangles

It's April, and it's still cold and windy. It seems like the wind has been howling at my windows and trying to blow me over while biking for such a long time.  And even though I got a ridiculous amount of sleep last night, I still feel tired. It has been a long week, but at least it's the weekend.

This week I made triangle kimbap, I filled them with curry or tofu and kimchi. The seaweed is sold in ready to fold packages and it even came with the mold, so they were super easy to make. And since I've never seen a vegetarian option of these sold, this is the only way to go.

The triangles of Chungju, it's nice to finally see the grass turning green.

Curry from the German design student. Pretty schmancy, but only made me crave Indian curry.

 Abby hiding from the dreaded vacuum. I normally feel bad, but since she spent a good hour trying to ice skate across my face this morning in an attempt to wake me up to feed her...

And what being tired inspires in the kitchen, a giant pot of chili:
1 can each, baked, kidney and pinto beans
1 can tomatoes
2 small onions
4 cloves of garlic
5 오이 고추 small, mild peppers (I use these instead of bell peppers because they're usually
                                                     cheaper and easier to find, plus they're an awesome
                                                     snack dipped in dwaenjang/bean paste)
1 large potato
chili powder, salt, pepper and tabasco sauce to taste
olive oil, to fry the onions and garlic in, before adding other ingredients

And at the end, when everything is cooked, I add some TVP (textured vegetable protein) to absorb any remaining water. It's a good substitute for ground beef when you're making recipes vegetarian, although it's flavourless on its own. I never make lasagna without it.

What can you do with so much chili? Put some in the freezer for later, eat on it's own, over rice, have a messy chili cheese sandwich, or chili cheese fries. Plus chili is pretty hard to mess up, it still tastes good with weird additions (like radishes). Definitely one of the easiest meals I ever make.

 And what I'm looking forward to, more art time. I've started my first painting on the fabric I picked up in Seoul. I'm feeling a bit rusty when it comes to painting though, I've been spending most of my time on drawing and photography.

girls' day

It's almost midterms time! Which will mean I'll have to give a few tests, but essentially I won't have many classes (only afternoon classes!!) and will have lots of free time! Only for a week, but still. Plus, next Wednesday (the worst day of my work week) is voting day, so no classes! It's like my birthday is coming early!

For my graded classes, attendance is 20% of their final grade, and students have to attend a certain % of classes, just to pass. So, when students miss a class, there's hemming and hawing and (as I'm new to uni) stamped notes excusing their absences for various reasons. And this next excuse isn't new to me, I definitely got it when I taught middle school, but getting it as an official stamped excuse (at a university with its very own form!) is pretty fantastic:

The title of the note. I had no idea what this meant, so I took it to the office and asked the first person I saw that I thought knew enough English to explain things. She looked at it, got a scrunched up face and quietly said "girls' day." I wasn't sure if I heard sick or girls' day so I asked her again and she scrambled a bit on her computer, got out her smart phone and looked it up. Then she handed her phone to me and pointed out a phrase: menstruation! I immediately laughed.

In middle school, I had a student talk to my co-teacher about something, then he (yep, male co-teacher and younger than me) explained the situation. "She has magic day." (while making rainbow hand gestures). My response: "magic day???" Lets just cut this story short, menstruation! It's a magic girls' day here, comes complete with its very own excuse form and apparently can get you out of anything. Why didn't I know the full extent of magic day sooner?

sunday round up

Tomorrow is Monday, the start of a new week. Some pictures from the weekend of freedom:

Let's just go straight to food. A tofu restaurant I need to visit in the future. Unfortunately it was locked much to this man's dismay, as well as mine.

In the back dwaenjang and in the front, mine, chunggookjang. It was at a small restaurant (someone's home) and she wasn't super impressed that we wanted similar soups, but weren't willing to settle on one, but it was worth it.

Beer, with pretzel sticks and ice cream for sides. Super weird combination at a popular (maybe?) Chungju downtown spot.

Cannelini bean curry and basmati rice, thanks iherb!

Homemade pizza, the best kind. With mushrooms, broccoli, artichoke hearts and green olives on garlic and sesame crust. My favourite pizza topping is green olives, which never happens with Korean pizza. More incentive to make my own.

 A nice bike ride in the country side by my university where I discovered cows, with unfortunate nose harnesses, that seemed incredibly interested in checking out the foreigner on a bike. They definitely don't get a lot of traffic out here.

Cemetery that I bike by every day on my way to school. Cemeteries are a bit different than back home, as there are burial mounds, and the traditional location is to be buried in the mountains. Their living family members then take care of their burial mounds by clipping the grass and visiting during special occasions. Which is the same here, I saw a woman clipping the grass with hand held shears as I went through. This cemetery seems to only be for Christian/Catholic (ok, I'm not good with religions) Koreans though.

And two amazing finds in Seoul, thanks to The View From Over Here:

An old fashioned scuba helmet, if only I could afford it. Surrounded by lots of awesome trinkets at the flea market.

And cat newspaper fabric!!! I still can't believe this even exists.
So now I've got enough fabric to get started on new paintings, and a mini sewing machine for all future sewing endeavors. It was a good weekend.