This weekend we Bees took a trip to Cheongpyeongho (Lake) area. We cannot wait for summer to get here to go back and just take in all the peace and serenity the lake offers. Ahhhh… soon enough!
Oh yeah, we almost forgot, we stumbled upon these tall lady figures.. not quite sure what this is all about?!
Its Saturday! Wowie plans have certainly changed a few dozen times!
Finally, we were able to lock in some plans. Mr. B’s friend was in Korea for work a short time too! We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take him around. Off to Seoul we go.
First, we went to Namdaumun market. We walked around and let Bog experience some of the korean marketplace craziness. You know..yelling, getting body checked by teeny tiny ajumas, trying the kings beard candy, eat hoddeok, and check out the tourist goodies.
After walking around a bit we hailed a cab and told the cab driver to take us to Dongdaemun. Once inside he basically laughed and said that we needed to walk because it was only a few blocks away. So we got back out and walked a few blocks down and arrived. More shops and sights to see…and crowds to fight!
By now it was time for dinner. Again, hailed a cab. This time successful! Headed to the Maple Tree House (Danpungnamujip) located right behind the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon.
This was the first time we ate at the Maple Tree House. However, this was not the first time we Bees tried to find this restaurant. Ha Ha! Longgggg story.
After a nice dinner we walked back around the Hamilton Hotel in search of some dessert. We all agreed Paris Baguette. Ahhh!! In other words…heaven! Mr. B’s friend treated us to scrumptious Vanilla lattes and cookie cream puffs.
What a perfect way to end our Saturday night! We eagerly look forward to Mr. B’s visit again to Korea sometime soon!!
These are pictures from Mrs. B’s trip to the Inje Ice Festival this weekend. Hope you enjoy! The temps were quite chilly! Oh and no, she wasn’t brave enough to eat the live smelt fish….she just draws the line at bugs :).
Hope you are all warm and toasty wherever you are located.
Hip Hip Hooray! We FINALLY got some actual accumulated snow today. I looked out the window at work and saw large flakes slowly falling. I didn’t think it would actually accumulate to anything really. We have had a few random snow squalls that end as soon as they begin.
This really wasn’t anything major or really anything to write home about…well, I will rephrase that… to us, it’s blog worthy! We were excited to see some actual snow! Mr. B on the other hand, driving home from Seoul = not so fun.
I snapped a few pictures to share our experience with you all. I want to try to snap some of the snow covered mountains that surround the community we live in because they are just so picturesque as a backdrop when we drive to and from work.
How is the weather where you are? Is it unseasonably warm or have you been getting hit pretty hard with snow?
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!
Just another reason we love Korea…
We have rotisserie chicken trucks on the side of the street!
We love passing this truck on our many night walks after work. We often said in the past we were going to stop and pick one up but always forgot or just ate dinner and were way to full to think about food at that point.
However, tonight we did it! Yes! We bought a chicken from the rotisserie truck!
We have to tell you the smell the chicken puts out is just torturously amazingggg and it’s only 7000 won for the whole chicken! They stuff them with a bit of Korean rice and garlic. Plus for free he throws in a nice little pack of water kimchi too.
So, now you are most likely asking yourself, what did we bees make with our chicken?…glad you asked! Actually keeping up with our healthy meal choices we opted for…
Chicken, neutari mushrooms (느타리버섯) and Wild Rice Soup!
Here’s the recipe we modified and threw together tonight.
1 tbsp butter
1 small onion
1 tbsp flour
8 cups (64 oz) fat free low sodium chicken broth
1 cups water
2 large korean chopped carrots (you can use any carrot)
3 garlic cloves
2 celery stalks
1 small cooked chicken
1 4.5 box of Long Grain & Wild Rice mix
1/2 cup Korean white rice
4 oz. neutari mushrooms sliced (you can use shiitake or button mushrooms)
salt and fresh pepper
**(optional) 2 tbsp light sour cream
First, Melt the butter in a large stock pot on medium heat, throw in the onions, sauté until soft but not browned. Next add in the flour and sauté about a minute.
Pour in the chicken broth and water. Throw in the carrots, garlic, celery, and cooked chicken. Cover stock pot and let simmer about 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, add in the box of wild rice mix along with it’s seasoning and white rice too. Throw in your mushrooms, salt and pepper to taste and continue to let simmer on low, covered another 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.
** Optional: add in sour cream and more water if too thick, add to taste salt and pepper and serve!
(Remember the long soup sits with rice it will thicken up)
Hope you enjoy as much as we did tonight 🙂 If you are in Korea, get adventurous and try it out! We know you are going to love it!
Diving…. You read that correctly. Yes, we are aware it is the beginning of January and it is indeed very cold out. Mr. B and his friends decided they were going to bring in the New Year right, scuba diving of course!
This was my first time ever tagging along on a dive weekend. I think mostly because a typical dive week starts at 3 or 4 AM on a Saturday morning and doesn’t end until late Sunday night. I love my sleep way too much to pry myself out of the warmth of my big comfy bed.
Mr. B took it easy on me this time. Well…sort of. We didn’t wake up until 5 AM, and didn’t leave the house until 6:30 AM. Hey! I will take all the spare minutes I can have to sleep in.
We hit the road bright and early. It was really nice getting to see new parts of Korea! I was really excited to see the site of where the 2018 Winter Olympics will take place. The city is called Pyeongchang and it’s beautiful! HUGE mountains covered in glistening white snow… ahhh! How picturesque!
We passed some shopping outlets that I cannot wait to visit sometime soon, an ice fishing lake where we saw a few families ice fishing, a multitude of beautiful hotels and resorts, ski resorts, and of course the Seorak Mountains.
We arrived at the rest-stop at around 9:30 AM a bit later than we expected. We grabbed coffee and a sweet potato latte and waited for the others to arrive. Once we were all there we got back on the road and traveled another hour or so until we reached Gisamun Harbor, where 38 Marine Resort is located and the guys had made diving arrangements at.
A few miles up the road from the resort we passed a large statue of a mushroom mascot of Yangyang. Allen told us that the region is famous for its pine mushrooms that grow wild in the surrounding mountains. Pretty Interesting!
This area is really popular for divers and surfers. You may remember Mr. B posting awhile back in the blog about the 38th parallel, well, that is where we were again.
(Map picture taken off google search for 38th parallel).
The guys all suited up and just like that they were loaded into the boat and gone. CRAZY! The temperature at the beach was ranging 23-32 degrees. Mr. B’s dive watch showed that the ocean water temperature was 49 degrees. I was beyond shocked to see so many surfers this time of the year. BRRRR!!! Much too cold for me! However, I am a HUGE chicken.
I finished my book while we were there, took a stroll on the beach and checked out the local harbor area, snapped pictures, watched the waves divers and surfers. I really just enjoyed the peace and calmness that the beach gave off even more so in the winter. As far as the typical beach goer, I think i was the only crazy hanging around.
The guys got in 4 dives the first day. Mr. B was ecstatic! I worried about him being too cold, he was the only nutty one in the group with a wetsuit and not a dry one. He said he was a bit cold but not as much as he expected himself to be. Those words made me feel a little better about the whole dive.
The guys worked up quite an appetite after the diving. We quickly found our hotel, thanks to Allen, threw our stuff in our rooms, and piled into one car to go get some good eats.
We went to a typical Korean BBQ restaurant located in the city of Gangneung . The food was outstanding! Really, what BBQ place isn’t? Never a letdown! We had pork jowl marinated in soy sauce and samgyupsal (pork belly). We also ordered and shared a nice big bowl of spicy beef and fresh vegetable soup with egg and glass noodles. DELISH! I seriously could eat Korean foods every day.
After dinner we went for desert at Baskin Robbins. The location was perfect, sitting right around the corner. We each enjoyed a nice scoop of heaven and then swung by the Family Mart to pick up breakfast for the next morning.
We got back on the road and checked in to our Korean hotel. We took some pictures to share with everyone. The place was brand new and get this it only cost us 50,000 won because the guys are Scuba divers! Yes! That’s almost like saying $50.00 US dollars for a night’s stay. I guess the Scuba diving card comes in handy! The rate without the scuba card was 80,000 won, still not bad at all.
Once we got back the guys hung out a bit and tried on Mr. B’s new dry suit. It wasn’t too long before we all were tired and decided to retire to our rooms and go to sleep.
The next morning we got up and meet at 8 AM. The sun coming up over the ocean was just beautiful! I snapped some pictures. When I was out on the balcony just about to go back into our room I heard what sounded like a cameras shutter opening and closing, Louis! Larry’s dive buddy Louis had seized the same opportunity to snap some quick pictures of the sun coming up so beautifully over the ocean and snow covered fields.
The guys wanted to get in two more dives today and that is exactly what they did. Another wonderful adventurous weekend to mark in the books!
So, how was your weekend? Would you be crazy enough to scuba dive in January??
38 Marine Resort Address: 138-15 Gisamun-ri, Hyeonbuk-myeon, Yangyang-gun
Phone: (82) 33-6710-3801
Happy 2012! It is now the year of the dragon in South Korea. What does the dragon stand for? It all boils down to representing the year of empowerment. (We like that!)
(At 2 pm today we got to watch Time Square drop the ball live in the comfort of our living room).
Since we’ve lived in Korea, we’ve been exposed to many customs and cultures of friends from all over the globe. We’ve learned that all of these cultures have various traditions and superstitions when it comes to the foods served in the first hours or day of the New Year.
The one thing in common all these cultures have is, they all say the best and luckiest of foods to eat, will help you to live long and prosper in the coming year.
Almost all Of these traditions surround foods that symbolize money in the hopes that the New Year will bring promises of new wealth.
Greens are popular because of their similarity to stacks of green paper money. We Bees are from central pennsylvania, our PA Dutch traditional food to eat on New Years Day is, pork and sauerkraut. We throw in some hot dogs (turkey to keep it healthy, and also because Mrs.B can’t stomach normal dogs) and of course mashed potatoes.
When we lived in the south we learned that they too eat a similar meal, but they throw in black-eyed peas. These symbolize the rich wealth of coins.
So what does our meal exactly mean or stand for? Well we’ve grown up being told that the cabbage (sauerkraut) represents money, but the pork also has significance as well, pigs are sturdy strong creatures, they root in the ground with their snouts, it is always in a forward direction, symbolizing a year of progress and moving forward. Yes, it really is as simple as that!
What is your traditional “good luck” food in the New Year? Well, whatever it is, we wish you good fortune in the new year! Cheers, and Happy New Year!
Some of our dear friends are leaving to go back stateside this week. They are truly going to be missed!
We wish them the very best of luck and know when we visit California one day we will meet back up again. 🙂
We are ever so thankful for the acceptingness, niceness, friendship, and just compassion this couple has given us both since we’ve been in South Korea.
Mac and Candy, we miss you already! Please keep in touch! We hope you enjoy the nice warm temperatures and get a good giggle thinking about us while we are freezing our butts off this winter in the arctic of Korea.
iPhone Pictures of our duck dinner
Diving with Aquatic Frontier, the weekend of 26-27 November 2011. The owner, Allen Rivera, was able to conduct 4 diver specialties including: wreck diver, deep diver, night diver and peak performance buoyancy as well as conduct a Rescue Diver certification. Aside from an extremely busy weekend we were able to get some great diving and video in now that we are ending the year. Come dive with Aquatic Frontier in South Korea.