Google Zeitgeist

Google recently released it's 2011 Zeitgeist. It included the top ten most searched for things in 2011, and a really cool video. Here's the top ten most searched for things in 2011.

10. iPad 2

9. Steve Jobs

8. Fukoshima

7. Adele

6. iPhone 5

5. Battlefield 3

4. Casey Anthony

3. Ryan Dunn

2. Google+

I must admit, this list surprised me a little bit. A lot of stuff has happened in 2011. There have been major uprisings -- revolutions even -- in several parts of the world. There were entirely new countries that were peacefully created in areas that have been entirely characterized by war and genocide. There have been significant tragedies and natural disasters in multiple continents. One of those natural disasters prompted a major nuclear meltdown, or near meltdown. There are major, major world economies who have presidential (or equivalent) elections coming up next year. There have been several major plays who have had shifts of power this year, some more peaceful than others. Even within America, there have been several significant policies passed, debated or repealed. I was glad to see that Fukoshima made the list, but I was suprised (a little) at how much entertainment and gadgets dominated this list. 

However, that surprise was nothing compared to what I felt when I saw the number one fastest rising search in the entire world. 

1. Rebecca Black. 

How did this happen? I just don't know what to make of this. So I'm not going to think about it anymore. 

In happier news, check out this video that Google also released covering some of the more significant events of 2011. I will admit to feeling a little more connected with American culture after watching this movie. Yes, there were a TON of things in here that aren't related to American culture at all... but I sometimes feel like I live in a Korean bubble, and I instantly recognized all of these events and pictures. So that's something, right??

Happy almost-end-of-2011.

Around the office

I had a morning full of exams, but in one class, it was a listening exam. The listening exam only takes about 30 minutes out of a 75 minute class period, so I found myself with some time to kill in the office. Really, I could have started grading the exams my students just finished, but instead, I decided to get lunch and have a moment of quiet.

This is my oh-so-inspiring lunch today. Strawberry yogurt, chocolate milk (it tastes more like dark chocolate and less like liquid pudding!) and a piece of sketchy cheddar cheese. 

This is what my office looks like. The desk with the map hanging above it is mine. We use the middle table as a general catch-all for student papers, a drop off/pick up point for our TAs, and anything else we happen to need. To my right sits Jonathan. He's from Wales, and he's been in Korea four or five years. Out of all of us in the office, he probably fits the absent-minded professor stereotype the best. He is always rushing around looking for things and  muttering under his breath. After we are done teaching for the day when we are all doing office hours and such, he tends to throw out the most random information. He's great fun. 

To my left is Ryan, from New Zealand. Ryan has been in Korea for about eight years. He and I teach a lot of the same classes, so we tend to collaborate a lot on lesson plans and extra activities. Also, he isn't very good with computers, so I fix things on his computer at least once a day. Out of all of my office mates, I probably know him the best. The other guys leave early on Wednesday, but Ryan and I have class until six, and some other stuff to do after. So we usually chat more about life in general on Wednesday night. 

The desk against the window belongs to John. He's also American, but he is significantly older than the rest of us in the office. He has been in and out of Korea for the past 20 years or so. He doesn't spend very much time in here on the days that I'm in, because he prefers to do his office hours alone. So he comes in on Tuesday and Thursday. I don't know him well at all. But he loves to talk about politics. Unfortunately, he is one of those people who assumes that everyone agrees with his political opinions (which I don't), so I often have to watch what I say around him. 

This is the view from the other side of the room. Jonathan's desk is on the left. The desk on the right belongs to Richard, from England. He has been here about six years, and he speaks quite good Korean. He tends to be the person that we go to when we have problems with the online system. He and I also spend quite a lot of time discussing linguistic differences between British and American English. This mostly happens when one of us says something that is idiomatic or culturally specific, without really thinking about it, and it doesn't quite compute. So then we have a discussion about meaning, regional variations and etymology. It's great fun. 

So this is where I spend my days. Or at least, some of my days. The boys are great fun, and they've been super helpful as I try to figure out what in the world I'm doing this semester. They also really appreciate chocolate chip cookies :)

Things I've Seen and Done, Part 9

Things are starting to hit the crunch time. This coming week is the last full week of teaching. It's going to be ABSOLUTELY INSANE. I have so much paperwork to deal with in the next few days. I might do something unprecedented and go into work on Thursday this week. This past week was also a little crazy. Part of it was school stuff, part of it was that I was involved in multiple Christmas music performances this weekend. So I have seen and done lots of things, but none of them were very interesting. 

This is part of the stack of textbooks I had to evaluate for the English camp I'm teaching in January. It will be switching things up a bit. I'm teaching six and seven year olds. 

I tried to make applesauce this week. I peeled and sliced all of my apples, and put in the recommended spices. I left it to cook just like I was supposed to! Unfortunately, the finished product wasn't very delicious. I've only ever seen one kind of apple in Korea, and I just don't think it was up to the job of making applesauce. 

Trash gets really complicated here. There are special bags you have to buy for different kinds of trash. There are multiple categories of recycling to deal with. These are the bags that you use for food trash (there are lots of rules about what does and doesn't count as food trash) that is full of the peelings from the ill-fated applesauce. 

I've done a lot of cooking this week. As a result, I've done a lot of dish washing. I also haven't had much time to play my cello lately. The result of this particular combination was the fingertips on my left hand started to peel. They peeled for three days before all of the callouses from my cello practice were gone. It's going to be rather painful to get them back again. 

I opened my last package of golden oreos this week. I pulled one out, and on one side it looked perfectly normal. Just like a golden oreo should. 

Then I flipped it over, and I saw this. Somehow, this one cookie had gotten put on upside down. It was a little strange. 

It made a nice design in the frosting though. For all of those people who can't eat a sandwich if the bread doesn't match, you'll be glad to know that I made sure to reassemble the oreo in the correct way before I ate it. 

There are tiny stores and road-side stands all over the city for shoe repair. Some of them have different names, but the name of this one made me laugh a little bit. It's called "goodoo byeongwon", which translates (literally) to "shoe hospital". 

Finally, I went to a Christmas cookie exchange over the weekend. This was all of the bounty before we started to divide them all up. It was a pretty spectacular way to spend a Saturday morning!

A productive -- if crazy -- day

This is my kitchen. I love my kitchen. It's one of my favorite things about this apartment. There's enough counter space to actually make things. The sink is large, there are lots and lots of cabinets. However, today, a war was waged in my kitchen that reduced it to looking like this:

What, you may ask, happened to the once brave and clean expanses of counter top? Where did the shining, empty sink go? I had quite a few adventures in the kitchen today, but I'm happy to say that all of them were quite successful. 

A good deal of what I did today involved stocking up my freezer with individual sized portions that I can just defrost after work. This was my freezer at the start of the day. Nothing terribly exciting. Pretty empty. 

This is what it looks like now. I'm excited!!

First off, I made a concentrate that I can use for broccoli soup. Basically, when I want to eat some, I just have to thaw the concentrate, heat it up and add milk and anything else that I want. My basic "cream of ______" soup recipe doesn't really use measurements. It's all about the ratios. So, you need three parts of chicken or vegetable stock, two parts of your vegetables, and one part of dairy. Your dairy can be milk, cream, half and half, yogurt, sour cream... Anything really. I also partially steamed several servings of broccoli and froze them. Maybe I'll make a stir fry or something out of them later on. 

I also made a base to use for tomato soup. I would just like to point out how neatly this tomato continues the apparent tradition of MASSIVE produce in South Korea. It's as big as my hand, and I have pretty big hands. Since I'm apparently incapable of making soup in small enough quantities for one person to reasonably finish in a few days, freezing it seemed like the only option. In fact, I already have a large container of potato soup left over from my last soup making attempt in the freezer. 

While all of the soup simmering was going on, I baked two and a half pounds of chicken breast, lightly seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper, then I shredded it to be frozen in smaller portions. I'll be able to pull it out and use it in a wide variety of dishes in the future. 

This is one pound of peeled fresh ginger. Apparently, when you peel an entire pound of ginger, the enzyme or whatever inside of the ginger that gives it a pleasant spice transfers itself to your skin in such large quantities that your hands will burn for the next hour, despite repeated hand washing. Just so you know :) I used this to make candied ginger, which was a first for me. 

The candied ginger is in the pot on the left. The pot on the right is Alfredo sauce that I also made to put in the freezer. A note to my future self: Don't ever make two delicate, time-sensitive dishes that both require constant stirring at the same time. 

When I was stirring the ginger in the pot, it was still a liquid. As soon as I turned off the heat and literally rotated to my right to dump the mixture out onto some aluminum foil, it had turned into something that was granulated and solid again. It was pretty amazing. Now I have a lot of candied ginger AND some awesome ginger infused sugar!

A close up of the ginger. It always reminds me of Christmas, somehow. Maybe it's the way the sugar sparkles like lights?

Next up was another new recipe. I'm going to a cookie exchange on Saturday, so I needed 3 dozen cookies. I posted a recipe for some red velvet cream cheese cookies on my facebook last night because they just looked so amazing. Unfortunately, that particular cookie recipe called for a box of red velvet cake mix. Which just doesn't exist in Korea. So I went to bed last night a little sad, as I contemplated my lack of red velvet. This morning, I woke up determined to find a way around this minor setback in my quest for red velvet cookies. I did some googling and found a recipe that I could make pretty easily here. I modified it a little bit, and decided to bite the bullet and give it a try. 

Here we have the finished product: Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Cookies. Oh. My. Word. They were amazingly delicious. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from a cake turned cookie, but whatever my expectations may have been, they were far exceeded. This recipe is definitely going into the notebook where I write all of my favorite recipes and cooking tricks. It might even be my new favorite cookie. 

Finally, I used some of that candied ginger to make ginger molasses cookies. This is an old favorite recipe of mine. I've made them lots of times. But it was exciting to make them with ginger that I'd made myself!

In the middle of this cooking frenzy, I got a text message from my school requesting my presence at a ceremony that evening, so I had to run off and leave my kitchen a complete disaster. This is one of those times I'm thankful that I live alone -- I don't have a roommate to drive crazy with stuff like this! 

A new addition to the household

My computer died last week. It was quite sad. Thankfully, it died in enough stages that I was able to salvage all of my data off of it. However, this left me in a bit of a bind. So I decided to go online and buy a new computer. This wasn't a big deal. I'd purchased computers online before. There were just two problems. 1, all of the computer buying websites are in Korean and 2, the model numbers are Korea-specific model numbers, so there were no user reviews available to browse.

In the end, I settled on one, held my breath and clicked "buy". Then I sat and waited, hoping that it wouldn't turn out to be a big mistake. A few days later, my doorbell rang, and I saw this sitting on my doorstep:

I brought it into the house, and opened up the box. There were surprises waiting for me. 

Thankfully, they were the good kind of surprises. The company threw in a free 4 GB thumb drive and a 4 port USB hub. 

Naturally, since I bought the computer in Korea, it has a Korean plug on it. This is quite useful for now. It was annoying to always use the plug adapters. They don't always fit into the sockets very well. It will potentially be interesting when I come back to America, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. 

This picture is pretty terrible, so you can't really see.... But when I turned the computer on, everything was in Korean. I got a little worried. I knew that with Windows 7, I'd have the option to choose my language, but for a moment I was afraid that some technician somewhere had helpfully set up my computer for me, and my shot at an English OS was gone. Thankfully, it wasn't, and my computer is all in English now. 

I'm quite excited about this. I now have a dual language keyboard. See the alt key next to the space bar? That lets me toggle between English and Korean. I have to set up some other stuff within the computer to do that, but it shouldn't be too big of a deal. 

This is how a spent a good portion of the evening on Tuesday. The soft light of two LCD screens and some Christmas lights. Everything is basically up and running now, so posting and such should become a little more regular. Hooray for this little adventure having a happy ending!

Things I've Seen and Done, Part 8

We had to get photos taken for the yearbook a few weeks ago. On Wednesday, I walked into my office and found a sheet of these on my desk. It isn't a particularly good picture. But it made me laugh. I'm pretty sure that my head isn't shaped quite like that. I didn't know it was possible for a scalp to stick almost straight up like that!

Support Bacteria! It Supports You! I noticed this on the side of a wall in my neighborhood. 

I was so incredibly excited to find this in a store recently. And it was only $5!!!! Oh, the simple joys in life. I bought four boxes to stock up for Christmas baking. 

Maybe I just didn't frequent coffee shops in America enough. But it seems like the coffee shops here have much cuter things with the passing seasons. 

I had to transfer all of my attendance marks to clean sheets because I have to turn them in and I've made notes all semester. I had to do this for six classes. I thought I was going to go cross-eyed by the time I was done. 

This is a hoddeok. It is similar to an elephant ear, only instead of being deep fried and dipped in butter and sugar, it is stuffed with a wonderful brown sugar/cinnamon/pine nut concoction in the middle. 

See that wonderful gooey stuff? It tastes amazing. But it is boiling hot. I've never managed to eat a hoddeok without burning my mouth. These only seem to show up at the street food stands in the winter. They are about  four inches across, and this particular hoddeok cost about $.70. 

I was waiting for a bus the other day, and I thought that this was an interesting picture. There seems to be a decent amount of construction going on in this part of town. 

Old habits die hard... Or not at all...

 When I lived in Lafayette with Katie, we had a running joke. One of us would make a pot of soup in the winter, but we'd never measure. We would just use whatever was in the fridge and make soup. This was great for cleaning out the fridge. This was bad as far as the quantity of soup went. There were only two of us, and we always had what we affectionately referred to as the "vat of soup" when it was done. 

When I came to Korea, I thought my days of soup vats were finished. You see, pots are ridiculously expensive here. Also, stoves are considerably smaller, meat cuts are entirely different, and chicken stock just doesn't exist. I've managed to find meat cuts that you can sorta, kinda use in something that almost resembles soup. And I've had bullion shipped over from the States. So I'd made a few batches of soup, but the closest I could get to the fabled vat was my crock pot. 

Then I was at Home Plus last week to buy a Christmas tree. I did get a Christmas tree, but I also happened to walk past the clearance aisle, and I saw a beautiful, stainless steel stock pot. And it was only about $15!! I was so thrilled that it went into my cart straightaway. I came home, and I realized that here was something that was truly worth making soup in. I could feed an entire army out of it! I made beef stew last week. It was rather nice. But I made a rather large pot. I've been eating it every day for a week. Plus I've had people over. Plus I've sent leftovers home with said guests. ::sigh:: Apparently when you no longer have a roommate, it takes twice as long to go through a giant pot of soup. 

Tonight, as I was walking home, I thought it would be a great idea to make another pot of soup. Potato soup this time. I decided that I would actually follow a recipe so I didn't have massive quantities of soup to deal with this week. I dutifully followed the recipe and chopped up 8 potatoes. The only problem was that instead of the nice, smallish pot of soup I was expecting, I ended up with this:

That's right. My giant stock pot is half full of potato soup. It's delicious, but I have SO much of it now. Katie, I'm sure that somehow this is your fault. I didn't have these problems before I lived with you. I feel that it is now your duty to come to Seoul and help me eat some of these giant pots of soup. I'll even make another one for you, since I think potato soup with cheese and milk would be a rather bad idea. 

For everyone else -- does anyone want some potato soup??