For some reason when I found these photos today, the song "A Long December" popped up into my head which only contributed to my reverie. I have been missing our old home. I miss this ratty tree that shielded us so well from our neighbors across the way. I miss the muddy little creek, hidden by spindly trees and prickly brush, that curved around the back of our house. When we moved to the East Coast I never thought I could hold such strong feelings for my new environment, and yet that is where I often find my mind drifting these days. When I think of 'home' it is this version of home, this house with its weathered deck perpetually littered with crunchy brown leaves, that my mind returns to repeatedly. I think of the chilly air, the gently rustling leaves, and the faint smell of cigarette smoke wafting over from our neighbor's backyard patio. I think of our kitties -- all three of them -- happily lounging outside all day, from late morning until the sun set low in the sky. And just like that, I have snapped all the way back through the dimension of time and space to the exact moment when I stood on the second floor, feet firmly planted on our old cream-colored carpet, leaning precariously over the rusty railing of our bedroom window to capture those few ordinary, precious, fleeting, golden, moments.
I don't mean to keep posting old photos but I can't help it. Something about this season; this time of year. Every time I start updating my blog with more recent photos I get sucked right back into snapshots from a previous time, place, and life. These photos pop up like an old friend I haven't seen in a while, and I cannot help myself but to stop and sit a while to revisit old memories. No wonder I never get around to posting photos until years after the fact.
For some reason when I found these photos today, the song "A Long December" popped up into my head which only contributed to my reverie. I have been missing our old home. I miss this ratty tree that shielded us so well from our neighbors across the way. I miss the muddy little creek, hidden by spindly trees and prickly brush, that curved around the back of our house. When we moved to the East Coast I never thought I could hold such strong feelings for my new environment, and yet that is where I often find my mind drifting these days. When I think of 'home' it is this version of home, this house with its weathered deck perpetually littered with crunchy brown leaves, that my mind returns to repeatedly. I think of the chilly air, the gently rustling leaves, and the faint smell of cigarette smoke wafting over from our neighbor's backyard patio. I think of our kitties -- all three of them -- happily lounging outside all day, from late morning until the sun set low in the sky. And just like that, I have snapped all the way back through the dimension of time and space to the exact moment when I stood on the second floor, feet firmly planted on our old cream-colored carpet, leaning precariously over the rusty railing of our bedroom window to capture those few ordinary, precious, fleeting, golden, moments.
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For those old enough to remember, there will always be the time before and the time after. Everyone knew someone. Everyone was affected.
Maybe it was less the actual event than it was experiencing the same collective moment on a shared timeline. The time before symbolizing an era when we were young and carefree and innocent. Though maybe it was never like this. Maybe I'm over idealizing life before 9/11. Maybe 9/11 made us all realize what was always there. My experience of New York falls in the time after -- my first trip to NYC was a couple years after 9/11 when there was still a huge hole in the ground. Time had passed but the memory was still so fresh. We were still hopeful; still at the beginning of a new timeline; still believing we could put it all behind us and be better people; a stronger country. I don't remember a New York with two twin towers and yet that's still what I see whenever I look at the skyline. I always see that empty space. I always wonder what could have been.
On a slightly more upbeat note, have you seen this video about the last known living 9/11 rescue dog's birthday in NYC? Working/service/rescue animals are such unsung heroes. Love.
We optimistically thought we would get away on Labor Day weekend, even up until Friday night when I went to pick up Sly from the Airport after returning from a short trip back to the states. We were somehow convinced a little trip was a possibility. I suppose it was. We could have jumped in the car and driven somewhere, or, done what we seem to be doing a lot of lately and booked a last minute flight.
Living overseas makes us feel like if we don't do *something* every single weekend or holiday then we are wasting our time. What we really needed was a vacation from vacation. This Labor Day, as if on cue, the weather was chilly and skies were gray and overcast. We closed our windows for the first time in a long time and pulled on sweat pants. Sly finally had time to repair our ancient tv with a part he purchased months ago and I streamed the first football game of the season -- the Texas - Notre Dame game (ND manhandled Texas) -- on the worst, most delayed stream ever. I texted my sister and old childhood friend throughout the game as we normally do during every Longhorn football game. The first game of the college football season always marks the changing of seasons for me and even though I was thousands of miles away, watching a crappy delayed stream at 9am in the morning, it still felt the tiniest bit like being home.
Sly made pizzas from scratch -- dough and sauce. We made a goat cheese and veggie pizza and a veggie and anchovy pizza. Homemade pizza is definitely the way to go in Korea.
During the game Sly asked me which team my dad -- an ND alum -- would have rooted for. My sister and I think he would have cheered on the Longhorns, despite their very poor showing. Sigh. Hook 'em.
Wing sauce!
Max has always loved watching us cook, and especially loves peering into the oven. Many times we will catch him sitting solo by the oven door watching the food cook. Somehow Max understands that the things he likes to eat -- pizza, wings, cookies -- come out of that hot rectangular box. (Note: we don't feed Max pizza, wings, and cookies, but he has stolen a bite a few times when we weren't looking.)
Sometimes when Sly is checking on the oven Max will jump on Sly's back to catch a better glimpse. When oven timer goes off he rushes to the oven and meows to let us know the food is ready. Max also has a strong attachment to Sly these days. Not that he wasn't attached before, but it's especially evident now. I think it has to do with Sly being away a lot of the time. When Sly is home, Max is glued to him.
Sly bakes the wings instead of frying them. They aren't as crispy as pub style hot wings but somehow Sly always manages to get them nice and crunchy. Notice our tiny oven. It juuuuuust barely accomodates our ceramic baking tray. It also only has one rack. I'm just glad we have an oven -- many Korean kitchens do not.
We usually save our meat eating for the weekends. While I'm more of the day to day planner/cook, Sly is the weekend chef. On the weekends he asks me what I feel like eating and 9/10 out of 10 I want to eat a hamburger. Since it was the beginning of football season, I requested hot wings. Wings and football -- takes me back to being in college and eating Pluckers chicken while watching the game. Football season always makes me so nostalgic for Austin, or maybe college life in general?
We had a hard time finding blue cheese dressing, or rather, blue cheese dressing without a ton of unpronounceable crap in it, so Sly ended up making the dressing from scratch. Simple but so much better tasting. We have been eating the left over dressing on salads all week.
In addition to gorging on food all weekend we watched a few dumb movies and cuddled with our kitties. It was nice to have everyone home, together, doing the same normal things we would have done regardless of location.
Fall is my favorite time of year and I hear it's beautiful in Korea. As much as I'm looking forward to it I can't deny that I'm a little sad I'll be missing out on all the fall festivals, football, and American holidays like Halloween and Thanksgiving. I know we'll probably celebrate in our own way out here but I know it won't be quite the same. I'm okay with that though. Different is good. Different is why we moved overseas. Different means new experiences, new adventures, and maybe even new traditions. Ten years from now -- wherever we are -- I'll probably still be eating hot wings but instead I'll be reminiscing about fall in Korea.
TOP to BOTTOM; L-R: Dinner with our real estate agent-turned new Korean friend, 1600+ Pandas, our babies
"fireworks fantasy" at Boryeong, animal shaped ice cream in Seoul (with weird cereal pieces at the bottom, beach concerts in Boryeong Chimac Fest, super moon over the city, chicken + beer fest (before we found the craft beers)
TOP to BOTTOM; L-R: Snorkeling selfie in Hawaii, water fountain show at Suseong Lake, mud festival
Our new slate flooring in our VA home, Itaaewon, Seoul, Beijing Sunset at Waikiki, more chimac festival, Changdeokgung Palace (why are we doing this?)
One word to describe our first summer in Korea: HOT. So very hot. So very humid. And we both grew up in Texas so we know a little thing about heat and humidity. Air conditioning exists here but Koreans have a thing about not having drastic changes in temperature so even public places with AC were kept to a lukewarm temperature. Our house on the 17th floor was for the most part ok without AC, but there were several weeks when we just couldn't tolerate it any more and had to blast the AC unit in the living room and sleep on the couch. As for the gym in my apartment -- they refused to turn on the AC but ONCE THE ENTIRE SUMMER. It was literally like working out in a sauna. Or doing hot yoga. Without the yoga.
Besides being hot we spent a lot of time cramming in as many festivals as we could -- Chimac fest (chicken + beer), Boryeong Mud Fest, and visited Seoul twice. Sly traveled a lot for work. His trips were often last-minute and short so I wasn't able to travel with him except to Hawaii. Hawaii was a damn good trade off though. We took separate flights on separate days and after a brief stop in Beijing I finally met up with Sly. I know it seems like our life is consumed with travel but I think living in another country makes every post seem that way. We're trying to do as much as we can while we're here, and I usually end up blogging about the bigger (more picture-worthy) events in our lives. But I want to remember the in between moments as well -- the more boring, less photogenic, day-to-day stuff that filled up our days. Some other summer happenings and memories: + Tensions between North Korea and South Korea were pretty high at the end of August. Korea feels so safe that sometimes I forget we are technically living in a war zone. We just happened to be up in Seoul while all of the missile strikes and moving troops to the front line and unaccounted N.Korean submarines was going on. Sly's bro and family were in Seoul with us visiting from Japan and immediately changed their flight so that they could return to Japan in case things went sour. Then when things sort of settled (i.e. peace talks) they changed their flights back so that they could stay. Sly and I were pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. Since we live here it's not like we had anywhere else to go, and we knew that if things really escalated that there was an escape plan for us (and the kitties) in place. I don't mean to make light of a stressful situation but this sort of thing happens a lot between North and South Korea especially during the scheduled military exercises that happen twice a year. As my friend put it, "send the North Koreans a case of Johnnie Walker Black and call it a day." As always, a much more eloquent and insightful explanation of these events can be found here. + After tensions simmered down between North and South Korea, the Pacific was hit with Typhoon Goni. Korea rarely feels the full force of typhoons, thanks to the typhoon-blocking countries of Japan and the Philippines, but evenso it was super windy and pouring rain for what felt like weeks. + Our house in Virginia that is currently being rented out flooded while the tenants were away on vacation. Our water heater exploded, the drain near the heater was somehow clogged, and the entire lower level had to be ripped up and replaced. For the most part the damage was covered by insurance, but things like the water heater and the upgrade in materials + labor was not (we chose to tile the floors instead of re-carpeting). One the one hand we always hated having carpet down there (we hate floor to floor carpeting in general, but especially so in the walk-out basement) so we got to finally finish the floors with slate tile the way we always wanted. On the other hand, we don't get to enjoy our remodel, not to mention the whole thing was (is) super stressful. What's more fun than home repairs? Orchestrating home repairs from abroad. Icing on the cake (and unrelated to the flooding): our built in microwave needed to be replaced. + While we were in Hawaii Sly's grandmother passed away. She had been sick for some time so it wasn't totally unexpected but of course that didn't make it any easier. We were staying at our beach bungalow in the North Shore at the time (no electricity, wifi, etc) so we spent a day driving to the nearest Starbucks so that we could use their wifi to make travel arrangements for Sly to fly back to LA from Hawaii so that he could be with family. I'm sad that I never got to meet Sly's halmoni, but also thankful that I was able to know, and continue to learn about her, through her cooking. + We have lived in Korea for over 8 months now. Some days it feels as if we just arrived. Other days it feels like we have been here forever. Eight months, and beyond being able to read Korean, I still barely know the language. I suck. My goal for the next eight months: apply myself for once. + Sly and I were on a major health kick this summer. (Notice the use of the past tense -- we took a break for a while with all the traveling but are back at it.) We are generally pretty healthy in terms of eating and staying active and Sly lifts weights consistently, but we really became focused on it this summer. I started weight training (not Crossfit, else you would have heard about it by now, right? :-D ) and loved it! Well, loved it as much as one can love going to the (world's hottest) gym. Maybe one of these days I'll go into more detail but in general I feel pretty douchey talking about stuff like this. + The cicadas were out in full force -- and boy were they loud. Some of them managed to fly all the way up to our apartment where they stuck and made noise on our window screens. While the kitties were intrigued, we were not. Yuck. + We found a local pet sitter to look after our kitties when we were in Hawaii. The kitties stayed at the sitter's house which was also home to a dog and another cat. They were pretty much terrified the entire time though Max befriended the other kitty (he loves other cats). Rufus came home with a bad case of feline acne which he has had in the past . It was most likely caused by stress and not eating out of metal/ceramic bowls while at the sitter. Poor guy. Don't worry, they are both back to their spoiled selves and Rufie's fuzzy mouth is on the road to recovery. + One of the worst things about living abroad is not having *as much* contact with friends and family. One of the best things: snail mail! We have received a couple care packages, some hand-written (!) letters, and lots of postcards. Snail mail, like long emails, pen pals and telephone calls is such a dying breed. I love that i'm able to Skype with family (still feels so Jetson's like) but something about the written correspondence really bridges the gap of time and distance. + I finally discovered rash guards and surf suits! it took living in a country where people like to wear shoes and socks in the water at the beach to finally get on board with wearing long sleeves at the beach. I love spending all day on the water without having to reapply sunscreen every 30 minutes. My new favorite discovery is Seea swim/surf suits. So adorable, comfortable, and made in the USA! (PS -- a lot of the swimsuits are on sale now that summer is coming to a close. PPS -- these suits run small. Like American Apparel small.) + We found a new tasty sushi place downtown. After gorging on a massive set menu of food we got caught in a total downpour which led us to buying yet another umbrella. I wonder how many new umbrellas we will have by the time we leave Korea. + Books read this summer: Girl on the Train, Where'd You Go Bernadette, Boston Girl, and The Martian. All of these were beach reads. Currently reading: The Quick. PS -- if anyone else is on Goodreads, hit me up! I love seeing what others are reading/book reviews. + We didn't watch too many movies this summer except for Mad Max and the new Mission Impossible (while in Hawaii). Living overseas means we watch a lot of Hulu and Netflix, and have been catching up on shows we never watched the first time around, like How I Met Your Mother and 30 Rock. (And also Gilmore Girls for me.) On Hulu we were hooked on summer programming such as Wayward Pines, iZombie, and The Island with Bear Grylls. + One of our go-to summer meals was okonomiyake -- or Japanese cabbage pancakes. We have eaten a lot of these pancakes in the past, but never made our own. This summer we received so much cabbage in our CSA box that we were eating okonomiyake every other week. So good! The recipe is one of those that doesn't really need a recipe: shred cabbage (and other veggies -- whatever you want -- and mix with beat eggs and panko/bread crumbs until you get your desired consistency. Flatten and fry in skillet. Top with whatever you like -- we like siracha-mayo sauce (I mix up my own), Worcestershire sauce, bonito flakes, and sesame seeds. Cheap, easy, and uses up all the cabbage we keep receiving. + We learned that Korean corn is nothing like the sweet corn. One is waxy, chewy, tough and flavorless and the other is crisp and sweet. Guess which is which. + I ate the worst thing I have ever eaten in my entire life: hongeohoe, or fermented skate fish. If you like crunching into bones and the flavor of straight up ammonia, then you will love this dish. I have eaten, and liked, a lot of 'weird' foods in my life but this is just disgusting. Flavor: 0, Texture: 0. I'd give it negative points if I could. + I *finally* swapped out my winter clothes with my summer clothes. This was like two weeks ago? Now the weather is juuuust starting to cool off and I'm thinking that it won't be long before I need to switch them back. Most likely that will happen in May.
While there were so many new and exciting and weird things to explore our first summer in Korea, I also started to feel the tiniest touch of homesickness too. My family met up at my cousin's lake house this summer and even though we were able to skype with them, it just wasn't (obviously) the same. I kept thinking back to last summer -- how simple and perfect it was. The cooler weather and the arrival of my favorite season has made my heart long for Halloween displays and football season (complete with tailgating food), and Oktoberfests and Renfests with my sister and cozying up by our fireplace in our (newly tiled) den. Sigh. The only cure for homesickness is to dive back into our new home and plan more (mini) adventures.
Goodbye Summer. You went by too fast, as you always do.
dinner of champions
This week my dinner menu consists of: cheese and crackers, lots of fruit, veggie breakfast burritos, smoothies, sweet potato hash topped with a fried egg, Sly's homemade brioche bread slathered in jam, and the occasional salad. This can only mean one thing: the hubby is out of town.
As someone who was a long time singleton by choice it's funny to think that the moment Sly is away I revert to the most helpless version of myself -- one that apparently cannot do ANYTHING for herself. Like "oh I should probably check the mail." Pause. "Nah, I'll wait for Sly." Or, "Maybe I should move that heavy thing somewhere else." Pause. "No, Sly can do that." Was this what I was like before I was married? Or is this what it's like to be one half of a married couple? Will I ever act/feel like a real adult? In other news, it's been raining like crazy here -- thunder, lightning, the whole thing. It feels weird to be in the middle of a thunderstorm when living in the city. Alone. Just me and the kitties, cuddled up every single night. Here's to another week of to do lists that never get checked, crappy girly tv (Teen Mom 2 anyone? No? What about Project Runway?), and breakfast for every meal; every day. |
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