One of the coolest things about moving to a brand new continent is that you get to try a bunch a food that you probably wouldn't have glanced at before.

The other night on a teachers dinner, in what seemed like an experimental moment, our co-teachers wanted to see what we thought of cow intestines.In all honesty cow intestines was never something that was particularly high up on my list of things to nibble at. However, when you have a Korean co-teacher watching your every reaction, you have no choice but to smile, chew and swallow. "Try cow intestines..." smiled one of the more senior male teachers in anticipation. Its as if they are setting you up to fail all in the name of a good chuckle.
The two other foreign teachers next to me gave a defeated smile before dropping a small chunk of intestines into their mouths. Clunck, it landed on my tongue.
One of the younger Korean teachers joked, " an intestine a day keeps the doctor away"
I smiled sweetly and swallowed. They were definitely taking the piss.
 In reality, It just tasted like a very chewy, grizzly piece of something. It wasn't terrible.. but it really wasn't great.. and the worst part? There was an entire grill of it still to go!! I feel the pinnacle of the experience came when eating kimchi soup afterwards. A teacher next to me started to explain that the kimchi (fermented spicy cabbage) soup I was eating had been bottled about 3 years ago. "Oh... um... that's interesting..."

Grilled cow intestines

The good thing about all bad experiences, is that there are normally five good ones to compare them too.  A particular one that comes to mind recently is slow roasted rotisserie duck.
It was a treat for the staff on break up day for work done during the semester. At home, duck is outrageously expensive and would never be an entire staff meal. Here it is cooked on rotating stick in front of you, and eaten with an assortment of sauces and wrapped up in lettuce leaves.
Genuinely delicious!

Slow roasted duck

Another great experience a couple of weeks ago was when a friend (Robyn) took me for Vietnamese Shabu Shabu. When I saw the message come through, "We could go for Shabu Shabu?" a number of images went through my head. What the hell was Shabu Shabu I thought? I was in half a mind to message friends at home and sound awfully cosmopolitan," Sorry Skype later.. I'm just popping round to the local Shabu Shabu place"

Robyn cooking up a storm

When I finally arrived at restaurant, it was possibly the coolest dish of the year.
In a nutshell, we were given small pieces of thinly sliced beef, many types of vegetables, a pot of broth and rice paper.  The idea is that you are meant to throw the meat into the broth along with some cabbage and let it cook. The restaurant provides you with a bowl of purple looking water that you are supposed to dip your rice paper into, so that it becomes softer and gelatinous. In essence, you are meant to make a type of spring/egg roll, throwing the sauces, vegetables and meat into the rice paper. The entire experience was delicious.

Before the rice paper is rolled up

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Hi everyone I apologize for taking so long to post again.. I've started to get pretty busy, especially over the festive season.

For a Santa-lover like myself, the Christmas period has always been about family, turkey and warm weather. This year I experienced something totally different. Putting my Christmas tree up on the 1st of December, it begged the question, how does one celebrate the birth of Jesus in a country where most people are either fairly Atheist or Buddhist? It felt a little like trying to have Christmas on Mars.

As it was my first Christmas away from home, it was boldly decided, all old traditions were out, time to make some new ones! I feel that if you try to recreate Christmas in the same way you would at home, you will in all likelihood come off short and a little homesick. The reality is that South Korea doesn't really have turkeys, mistletoe, annoying family members or even shopping mall Santa's. So this year was about finding Christmas in new and interesting ways to celebrate and have a merry ol' time.

The Christmas tree in my apartment

Sanatacon.

The basic plot of Santacon is that everyone goes dressed up in Sanata suits out in Hongdae (a famous foreigner favorite clubbing area in Seoul) for one big pub crawl. The annual event, organised by foreigners on Facebook, draws in over 500 Santas a year. This year, the evening started out in Sinchon, where everyone got down into the Subway and rode over to the Hongdae district (Hongik University stop). Along the way, all the Santas' stood singing Christmas carols at the top of their lungs and scaring many non suspecting Koreans subway riders. I saw a poor elderly man quietly sitting on the subway, only to be horrified when a wave of red flowed into his carriage all at once.

Waiting to take the subway in Sinchon

 The evening was a great success! I was was one of the first to leave.. at the early hour of 6am. This was only after being told that I was behaving like a lame old lady. Tamrin told me that even Maggie Smith would stay out later if she had the chance. The rest of the girls strolled into the hostel at about 9am.

Maggie Smith

Outside Ho bar. Janet (dressed stylishly in an elf suit) asking everyone to shut up so that Santa can play his bag pipes. 

Coral, Tamrin in I in Hongdae park.

Norebang Caroling

Norebang roughly translates to singing room. I suppose there's nothing to get you into the merry season like caroling right?  A bunch of the foreigners in my town got together and sang Feliz Navidad on a giant pull down screen along with microphones an loud speakers. It was pretty unlike any carols by candlelight concert that I had attended but it was still well worth a laugh.

School Raffle

in an effort to teach the boys about Christmas spirit, I decided to raffle off a Santa bag full of candy. Any teachers who has ever taught English in Korea will know that candy is at the very heart of bribery in a  ESL classroom. For the raffle all the students had to do was guess how many pieces of candy were in the bag. Some students wrote 20, some wrote 400. I kid you not, one boy tried to work out of formula for how many pieces would be in it. In the end a 1st grader, Soon Yoon, guessed 285 on the dot. His entire class looked at him with envious eyes as he clutched on to the bag for dear life. I have a feeling he had to keep that well hidden in his dormitory from any lurking second or third graders.

Soon Yoon - The raffle winner!

Christmas Day

On Christmas day, most of the foreigners came together for a traditional Christmas lunch. It was delicious! With roast potatoes, chicken, gravy and even Simon's Christmas cake.

Eating Christmas lunch at Lindsay and Nigel's apartment.

Christmas cake!

A turkey hat!

All in all not such a bad Christmas away from home!! Happy New year everyone!