Category Archives: Korean Differences

Seoul Cathederal

This morning I awoke and decided to take the train down to Seoul Cathedral. When Rebecca was visiting we talked a lot about church, God, life, and the family that you build within a church.

Rebecca wanted to attend an English service at the Seoul Cathedral while visiting, however time slipped away from us.

I decided that today was a perfect day as any to attend service. Plus, I wanted to share with her and others how the Cathedral and service was.

Seoul Cathedral is located beside Deoksu Palace and across from Seoul City Hall. You can take Subway Line 1 and get out at Exit 3. I was absolutely delighted on how easy it was to find the Cathedral after exiting the subway.

Please excuse the iPhone photo quality

(Once you reach the top of the exit 3’s stairs you will immediately see this wall, follow until you reach the opening street that turns left, keeping an eye out for the above posted sign too.)

The Anglican worship and Holy Communion is held every Sunday at 9:30 AM (in English) located in the Cathedrals Crypt Chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist.

Immediately while wondering and being completely astounded by the exterior of outside, I was approached, greeted, and led into where the English service would start.

There was a real sense of pride, geniality, and overall neighborliness. All the impressions and feelings a place of worship should leave you feeling.

The congregation was fabulously welcoming. It was wonderful to see and meet various nationalities present too.

The space was so unique. I was told that Reverend Mark Trollope is buried in the Crypt Chapel and his remains lie under a copperplate engraving of him, as shown above.

Happy Sunday!

Grab the map coordinates here!

Day 3 of R&S Invade South Korea

We got off to a late start today, but thats okay because we had no real formal plans in place. Typically I’m notoriously known as a planner, I drive Mr. B nuts needing to know or have some sort of back up plan in place. Since Rebecca’s been in town I’ve really surprised myself and we have been taking everything day by day.

Today Rebecca was interested in checking out some Buddhist temples near our home. We decided to hike up to the Soyosan Temple. The hike was really nice, we lucked out with another day of gorgeous weather in Korea.

We snapped some photos, people watched, and hiked our way up to the Temple.

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We all laughed and giggled at the air machines that the hikers were using to to spray off their hiking boots with. We also couldn’t get enough of all the little Korean children running around enjoying their summer weekend. What fun we had just people watching.

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After our short 2 mile hike we went to Lotte Mart and exposed Rebecca to a Korean grocery store. Rebecca described it as sensory overload, you know I’ve got to agree with her on that one. There are just people everywhere, loud speakers blasting with Korean, free samples of various foods, not to mention the endless amounts of foreign grocery goods to explore.

A shopping cart full later we purchased our dinner for the night. We decided to have a fun cook in Korean night.

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Mr. B cooked, Rebecca chopped, and I stirred, prepared the tofu and cleaned up around the kitchen. We sipped on Soju and some wine. Made Kimbap, pickled quail eggs, chopchae/japchae, Bulgogi, fried tofu, and grilled garlic chips. What a feast! We may have went a tad bit overboard…quickly realizing that we cooked entirely way to much food. Plenty of lunch leftovers to go around. Rebecca can now proudly say she knows how to cook chopchae/japchae and roll some kimbap. Memories I know I’ll never forget, I don’t think she will either.

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We cleaned up dinner and all watched Despicable Me. He-He-He! What a cute movie!!

Another great day to add to the books.

2012_06_17 Rebecca's Day ThreeJun 17, 2012Photos: 92

Biking And Mcdonalds

Wait…isn’t that any oxymoron?

No..no..just done all for the love of vanilla soft serve ice-cream. (Will explain further in a bit)

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day! The sun was out in full force and the temperature was actually in the upper 70’s. Ahh… I knew after church this morning whatever my plan involved, it was going to involve getting out and enjoying the amazing weather.

Fast forward to noonish, ate lunch quickly at home, texted back my friend, and made a plan that we were going to get out and about.

Biking! We decided to take the bike path that runs parallel with the subway and see how far we could go. We started in Dongducheon and road until we were in Nogyang. Needless to say we biked our little butts off. We had a blast though and that’s all that mattered.

So you are most likely scratching your head wondering where the vanilla ice-cream comes into play. Well, we decided if we road our bikes all that way we might as well get a treat for all that hard work. Besides, our bums hurt! We needed something to take the edge off, plus ice-cream makes everything 10x better!

The best part about the bike path is that you can ride as far as you want and not have to worry about riding back. Yes! You heard me right, you simply catch the subway back bike and all.

Cheers to Sunday adventures!

Things That Make You Go Hmm…

Sometimes you can’t help but go hmm… when getting out and about in South Korea.

Today, I had the chance to get out of the office for lunch with a darling girlfriend of mine.
We decided to give a place called New Chinese Kitchen a try.

The atmosphere was cozy and fun!

Plus, we made it in after the lunch rush so we had the entire place to ourselves. (Perfect for plenty of our girly giggles, and goofy pictures!)

The views of New City – Jihang’s tucked away streets aren’t too shabby either!

The owner’s sweet wife waited on us and was practicing her English skills. We asked what the best dish was and she was super excited to tell us various things about the menu and her husband the chef.

We perused the menu…

and a few things just made us sit there and go hmm…

After helping the owners review a text message she was composing to her son’s English teacher, we ordered our lunch.

We opted for Set A. Not entirely knowing what Set included…Hmm…however, we knew it included some green people and that in itself is pretty exciting, right?! When you travel around South Korea you will quickly learn that sometimes when things are translated from Korean to English they just don’t quite make sense.

Our lunch came out hot and prompt. We were totally digging this place for a meal switch up.

Hot loose leaf jasmine tea
A sweet cabbage
Shredded kimchi with a bit of a spicy kick
Crab meat soup
Sweet and sour beef
Noodles topped with seafood black bean sauce
Spring rolls
Green people with beef noodles
Desert -sliced up fruit

I know I sparked your interest with the green people dish and now want to know what exactly it is. Well, first we must say that the dish was rather tasty. It was green peppers and beef noodles with a side of two steamed buns.

After lunch we decided to swing by Dunkin Doughnuts for a sweet treat.

Hmm…decisions…decisions…Chewisty or a cheese pizza Special D (that had ham and cheese on it?)…What exactly is a chewisty? It turns out like the green people dish, it’s rather tasty too. A Chewisty is 8 small rice flour donuts bonded together into a ring.

If you ever find yourself strolling around the Dongducheon area with a hankering for some Chinese food, I’ve included the New Chinese Kitchen Menu just for you. The restaurant is located on the second floor above 7 Gram Coffee Cafe. Enjoy!

Unexpected

You know that unexpected moment when a dear friend text’s you to see what you are doing, they are in need of a girls day, you end up meeting them while out doing your casual Saturday randomness? Of course they are looking smashing…and you on the other hand woke up that morning not thinking you’d run in to anyone you knew because let’s face it…your in Korea! You left the house basically keeping it real. Forget about really trying to tame your frazzles, that never even crossed your mind. Then, you are having so much fun chatting, warming up over some 20,000KRW Budae Jjigae,~~eating~~ od’ing on sweets (come on folks FREE Krispy Kreme’s you know you can’t pass that up), walking around finding strange boutique with doll heads, arms, and legs detached, odd Engrish statements, and just plain laughing that you feel like you need to document it…no matter how hideous you look? Yeah, that happened to me today. Love you K! Thanks for the unexpected girls day!

2012_03_31 Ladies WeekendMar 31, 2012Photos: 17

I was scolded for taking pictures in the Too Cool For School cosmetic boutique. Reasoning was that this was their brand….no comment. Check out the oddly shaped mushroom puff to apply BB Cream.

We ~~walked~~ almost ran home once off the train because the sun set and the temperature dropped.

It took me very little time to snuggle into the rest of my Saturday night with a hot cup of chai spice black tea and some Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Good Night Loves!

A Baby Shower

You know what?

Baby Showers are kind of the best…

You get to decorate your special location party place all whimsical and what not,

Stuff it full of fun people.

Eat sweets

And gush over the baby and parents to be.

What a wonderful twist of spirits ending a hectic work week.

Tonight we celebrated with the M family as they eagerly await the debut of their sweet boy A.

2012_03_30 Baby ShowerMar 30, 2012Photos: 7

All week at work the Korean ladies have been discussing what exactly a baby shower is. “How do you shower the baby before it gets here?”, “what does it mean to shower a baby?” Honestly being one of three American women at my work, we never gave it much thought that a baby shower wasn’t something typical the Korean culture might celebrate.

Tonight one of the Korean ladies I worked with decided to celebrate with us and see exactly what a baby shower was like. We played games like guess what chocolate was mushed in the baby dipper, timed fill in the nursery rhyme, measure how round the parents to be standing together are, blindfolded feed the “baby”, and see who can drink apple juice out of the baby bottle the fastest (pretty hysterical to watch!). You know, all the works.

Being a foreigner in Korea you tend to forge together and make “families” with the people you go to church with, work with, are friends with. These people help bridge the gap and make home feel a little less far away.

We ended the night with gift opening, and of course CAKE! The parents and big sister to be were so thankful and appreciative of all the love and support displayed in that room tonight.

What a terribly fun night!

iphone Chronicles

My iphone tells me…

I’m obsessed with our cat, Bean,

I’m really trying to learn Hangeul, the Korean alphabet,

I have a handsome husband,

Korea needs to jump on the whole spring thing,

and food plays a disproportionately large part in my life.

the end. <3

We’ve Got One….

Thats right! After one missed highway exit that caused us to have to pay two highway toll fees, an hour standing at the little rest stop Hi pass office dealing with a sweet ajumma telling us she needed a business number confused by a US social security number, a teenage Korean Hollys coffee Barista translator, major props to our Russian Korean translator, and a very helpful little adashi that walked us through the Hi Pass paperwork and process AND let us drive out the back gate of the Seoul Hi Pass place to avoid toll charges, we Bees FINALLY have a Hi pass!! (breathe)

(Our neat little Korean Hi Pass)

(Now the Korean Navi has some Korean technology company on the dash)

(Seoul Hi Pass building located on Highway 1)

(Woot-woot!! Hi Pass lane!!)

We know what you are thinking. Honestly, why all this excitement about a toll pass? We had one in the states called an ez pass. In Korea they are basically the same. Well, they serve the same purpose. You don’t have to stop and physically had money at each toll booth. The pass allows you to sail right on by charging your pass.

The Korean Hi-Pass comes in different models all telling you one way or another just how much you have left on your pass. The model we purchased is solar powered so it doesn’t need to be charged or have cords dangling from it. It can be pre paid and recharged at any rest stop, or directly linked to your Korean credit card.

Pretty neat!!

We’re excited because now we can use the blue Hi Pass lane and keep on our merry traveling way.

Brrr…Korea!

Morning drive into work 7:30am, its pitch black dark and the moons still out! Brrrr Korea…you are so cold on this early Tuesday morning!

Fishy Friday

iPhone shots of Korean sushi dinner in New City(restaurant located directly across from women’s cultural center) with Mrs. B’s work ladies.

Much like most meals in Korea, the sides and various dishes just kept coming and coming. I found myself more and more impressed with each new item brought out to our table. Mmm! Korean sushi was a tad different but what a treat and experience!