Summer and weddings!

Recently I was invited to attend the wedding of one of the teachers who also work at the middle school where I'm teaching, and since I just love Korean weddings I accepted happily. We all piled into a bus which took us to Gwacheon, where we stopped at the building shown above - one of the weirdest pieces of architecture I've seen in Korea.
It contains several wedding halls and a huge buffet area.

Here is a shot of my colleague on her way to the wedding hall. Didn't she make a lovely bride?

This shot of the building is taken from the courtyard outside the buffet hall, and shows just why I think this is a very weird design - is it supposed to be a crystal, a space alien or simply an exercise in shapes?

This shot shows the lake next to which the wedding hall is situated, and on which the swan boats ply their trade. Truly an unique settting for a wedding, and they make sure that no-one need feel left out - with three wedding halls and an hour per wedding, they coin it!

New premises

I moved to Hyundae building, wonrum tower in Seoshin on the 24th of February, and here are some photos to share the epxerience with you.
Above is a view of the living room of my new apartment in the process of being set up. I am always amazed at how much stuff I have that has no clear purpose beyond being there. I'm not talking about the books and CD's and TV and bed and such, no, it's stuff like pillows that are there simply to fill space on the bed, or the stuffed animals, or the pictures - stuff that is simply there as a reminder of an event or a person who gave them to you.


This is one of my new animal neighbours - a male ostrich who shares his pen with a rooster and duck of indeterminate gender.


A view of the tower in front of the building. This straddles a fountain and gives the whole place a very surreal air.
My flat is on the third floor, and in this photo you can see the window of my kitchen just above the blue lettering.


And here is the galbi restaurant that is right next door - we share the parking lot with them. I was a bit worried, knowing that this is also the local noraebang (karaoke song bar), that the noise would be a problem, but luckily the building is wonderfully soundproofed and so far, the only sounds that do filter in are distant thuds when someone slams a door.

As I'm typing this, sitting in the kitchen, the setting sun is shining on the laundry hanging on the balcony. The flats are oriented on a north-south axis, which means the morning sun warms the kitchen and the afternoon sun the balcony.

It's great being in a new environment, but the stress of getting there is a problem. I've been thinking that my next move should be to a mobile home - that way I never have to pack when I want to move!

Some more food

I love eating, and Korea is certainly very food friendly in that just about any large shopping centre will have a food court. like the one shown above. The food ranges in price from 3000 to 15000 won, and covers quite a range of flavours, with the emphasis on those Korean staples such as bibimbap, kimchi stews, ramen noodles or buckwheat noodles. The food is prepared once you order, and is really fresh and tasty, as long as you like hot pepper spiced food!

This is what I ordered from the food court shown above - beef on rice with vegetables, or sobibimbap. It cost 5000 won and came with the two little kimchi side dishes and some bean sprout soup. The cast iron pot is sizzling hot, and as you mix the food it still cooks a bit more. On a cold winter day, it is a really great meal.

Finally, I have to share my latest bread baking - an attempt to recreate the Cape Seed bread, a rich and tasty health loaf. It started when I cleaned up my kitchen cupboard and discovered a whole lot of flax, sunflower, pumpkin and poppy seeds, as well as a small pack of raisins and dried apricots.
The recipe used two cups of rye flour and one cup wheat flour (white), about two spoons of each seed, all the raisins (about 100g) and the five apricots chopped up into pieces, and enough hot water with yeast, two spoons of sugar and one spoon of salt to make a soft sticky dough. This then got placed in a buttered tin and left to rise for the night, and baked for two hours at 180 degrees Celsius in the morning. It was every bit as tasty at it looks!

Snow!

The first snow fell in Korea way back in November, and early in November as well. In fact, we had snow for my birthday, 19 November. And, it was the usual snowfall - and inch or two - that I had been experiencing since coming to Korea in 2007.

However, yesterday evening and the whole of today, the 4th of January, snow has been falling almost non-stop and an estimated 12 inches have fallen so far. Not a blizzard by any standard, but heavy enough to make me say that I've never seen so much snow in all my life! The photo above is an example of how wonderfully snow transforms the landscape - this is the trash dump behind an abandoned restaurant that is now a fairy landscape.

The place where I live has a rich variety of dogs, and here you see one of them next to drift about two foot high. I know that dogs have the fur to cope with the weather, but it still pains me to see the callous disregard the Koreans have for them - the doghouse in the back is not for this dog, who has no shelter beyond the overhang of the puppy coop behind him.

A shot of the pines all decked with snow - a recent article has provoked much scorn from the English community for claiming that the Christmas tree originated in Korea and that they will be seeking compensation from commercial growers of these in the west.

This is the tree they are talking about!

And finally, a shot that I lucked in to - the snow and the branch combined to form an artistic composition that is well worth preserving.