Back in the swing of things...

It was wonderful to be back in America for a month, but it has also been good to get back to normal life and routines. I didn't take nearly as many pictures in Indiana as I do in Seoul, so here are a few random highlights, although this certainly isn't a comprehensive overview. 

I always forget how much I love American beef. In Korea, I usually eat Australian beef. It's good, but not quite the same.... 

It was great to get to catch up with all of my friends and family. I got to wine and dine my grandpa at Bob Evans one morning. 

Thanks to wonderful stores like Hobby Lobby, I was able to reconnect with my inner craftster. 

Isn't it amazing? There's lots of pepperoni, REAL cheese, and it didn't cost $35!!

I made some Korean food for my family, but I'm not sure if they enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed the American food. 

It was amazing to walk into a shoe store, and know that they would carry my size. I stocked up for the year. 

I also reconnected with my past self. I guess this is proof that I've never liked mornings, and probably never will. I look just about like that now when I wake up. 

I did go through quite a bit of culture shock when I was back. I guess it makes sense, going from scenes like this: 

and this: 

to this:

My flight back was a little round-about... My flight from Chicago to Tokyo was delayed by almost 24 hours. I got on the phone, and after an hour and a half figured out a different way to get home. This was the good news. The bad news is that I now had a layover in Munich, Germany. It was almost 9 hours to fly from Chicago to Munich, then another 10 1/2 hours from Munich to Seoul. I was so incredibly happy to make it back to my apartment after all of that. Unfortunately, my luggage didn't make it until a few days later. But it was nice to not have to try to pull large suitcases up the big hill outside of my apartment. 

Things have been plunging ahead at work as well. The new semester starts on Friday, so we've been doing lots of meeting and preparing. It's going to be quite a busy semester. I'm teaching at least five different courses, possibly six different ones. It should be an adventure. We had a welcoming ceremony for the incoming Freshmen last week. The foreign faculty had to sing a welcome song in Korean. It was pretty terrible... They also made us put on academic robes and hoods and mortarboard hats and process through the auditorium and sit on a stage. As we were all donning our regalia, there were lots of Harry Potter jokes flying around the room....

Finally, just to leave off with a little bit of the whimsical randomness of Korea, here is a karaoke room mascot and the American Santa from the Santa display at my school...

Hello Kitty Cafe

Beth and I met up with another friend named Sarah while we were exploring Hyehwa. I knew this really good cafe that I wanted to go hang out in while we were there, but when we arrived, it was all full. So we had to find someplace else to go. As we were walking around the street, we looked up and saw this. 

We decided that it was pretty high up on the list of things that Beth needed to experience in Korea, so off we went. 

It was SO pink inside. It was almost too pink, and this is coming from the girl who did her Sophomore dorm room in Disney princess...

There were adorable Hello Kitty cameos on the walls. 

The bathroom was appropriately pink as well. 

"It's nice to see my tiny friends again" These reminded me of care bears!

The chairs even looked like Hello Kitty, complete with button eyes. 

Of course, the drinks came with Hello Kitty foam art. 

We also ordered what seems to be a distinctly Korean coffee shop tradition. This is called "Yogurt Bread", and it is literally a massive slice of white sandwich bread, sliced into chunks, topped with frozen yogurt and strawberry sauce. You can get honey bread, chocolate bread, cheese garlic bread... This was my first time to actually try some though. It wasn't too bad. 

The coffee mugs were adorable. I really do like the little Hello Kitty cameo design. I love all things cameo. I may or may not have come home with one of these mugs :)

Story Run

I have a new favorite restaurant in Seoul. Well. I don't know if it's actually my favorite, but it's pretty awesome. Beth and I found it while we were in Hyehwa. It started when we were wandering around in the early afternoon, and we saw this. We thought that it was just a cool book painted on a random wall, until we read the subtitle. Chicken and Tomato? What kind of subtitle is that? It turns out, this was an advertisement for a restaurant on the other side of the wall. 

We walked around, had a look at the restaurant, and decided to keep wandering. We wandered and wandered, and finally got hungry. So we decided to try out this interesting looking chicken place. Only we couldn't find it again. We walked in what might have suspiciously looked like circles to someone who was less informed for nearly 30 minutes. We finally found the restaurant and decided that it had better be pretty awesome after all the trouble we went to trying to find it. 

We ordered our chicken and they brought this to us. It is mozzarella cheese, half a cherry tomato, half a basil leaf, two tiny dried peppers and a few sliced mushrooms. 

We were also asked to choose two kinds of sauce. We didn't really have any clue what was going on at this point, but we picked marinara and garlic, because those were the two sauce names I could understand from the list that was given to us :) It turns out that they are little fondue bowls that stayed nice and warm on these little candle holder things. 

There was a definite fairy tale theme going on throughout the restaurant. These were the dinner plates, complete with the White Rabbit. 

This was the chicken we ordered. It's homemade potato chips on the bottom and chicken strips on top. Believe it or not, this dish was called "Alice Healthy Chicken" on the menu. 

Beth is pretty excited about starting the meal!

Here's how it works. You get a piece of chicken on your fork. 

You thoughtfully consider which combination of dipping sauce and add-on (cheese, basil, etc) you want for your chicken. 

Then you enjoy. It was surprisingly delicious!

It seemed like each of the dishes had a different character on them. I guess this is Alice, but I don't know that for sure. 

She was just kinda hanging out on what could be a cloud or a wisp of smoke, or even a magic rug. 

There was even the Little Prince drawn on the door. All in all, it wasn't too expensive (less than $10 per person), it had charm and novelty, and the chicken was quite good. I highly recommend it, but I'm not sure I could give clear directions for how to get there. It's close to Hyehwa exit 4 though. Walk straight out of the exit, don't turn left. It isn't too far down that road. 

What I've been up to

So things have been a bit quiet around here lately. That's more because I've been really busy than because there's nothing to write about. So now I have quite a few things to catch up on as far as blogging goes. But here's a sneak peak.

My friend Beth is visiting from America, so she and I have been out and about doing fun things, discovering quaint places and ridiculously cute things, and eating amazing food. I've also been teaching an English camp for elementary school students, and that certainly takes up a lot of time. Without further ado, here are a few highlights.

This is a chai tea latte. It will change your life. It's amazing. And the spoon has a face. 

The inside of yet another cute cafe. 

Some of my crazy kids during English camp. 

I found amazing elephant earmuffs!! Expect to hear more about these later. They've become quite significant :)

This is Beth's first proper meal in Korea. 

This is the strawberry smoothie that changed Beth's life. It was pretty awesome to sit back and watch. 

We were shopping for books, and we saw this series of English books. I'm not sure if I would feel encouraged or depressed if I were studying from them. 

More of my crazy kids. 

A hysterical translation of a text message. It sounds so apocalyptic. 

We got some free cookies! They were really delicious. 

Another amazing cafe. This cafe was amazing for a number of reasons. Again, expect to hear more about it. 

One of the reasons the cafe was so amazing was because it served REAL APPLE CIDER!!! Like, it had tiny pieces of apple floating around in it, and it was served with a real cinnamon stick. It was the most amazing thing I've had in a really, really long time. The strawberry smoothie may have been the best moment of Beth's life, but this apple cider was pretty close to mine. 

I got a ridiculously adorable passport cover!!

She winks at you!!

We got Korean style porridge for dinner tonight, and as always, it was a treat. I got pumpkin porridge with rice balls and red beans, which is a whole lot more delicious than it sounds. 

Finally, Beth and I got matching bear foot slippers with little claws that stick out. It was pretty amazing. And they were super cheap! I'm mostly just excited that I found shoes in Korea that actually fit...