Eat.Travel.Bike

Take me back...

2011-03-02T21:10:00.000-08:00

I've been writing essay like emails about Europe to a friend because she is going to Europe for four months. Ughhhhhhhhh! All I want to do is to get lost in Europe again. Just drop me off anywhere, I don't care where it is, I'll find my way to all the good spots and back to Italy and France.

To be young and unemployed...those were the days

Noodle Sanctuary

2011-02-13T13:57:00.000-08:00

If you know me, and know me well, I love noodles. Ramen, Udon, Soba, Rice noodles...whatever it may be they hold a special place in my joyous, food obsessive heart. Even though I'm Armenian and grew up eating the best Armenian food outside of Armenia, noodles have that wholesome, home-cooked feeling whenever I dig in to some steaming hot, brothy, lipid soaked bowl of happiness. If there was ever a pill that made you happy the instant you took it, mine would be noodles.

Ever since I took a trip to Japan in 2009 - one of my favorite trips of my life - and lived in Seoul, Korea, noodles have become that missing link of my soul. How could I have not enjoyed your amazing essence before two years ago?!? In any case, we have found each other and you are now apart of my life.

Last night I ended up in Little Tokyo in downtown LA with my brother and two cousins and we decided to visit Daikokuya. There is always a line, which is a good sign, so we put our names down and visiting the nearby Far Bar for a drink while we wait. Contrary to the name, it's not that far. Just down the same block as Daikokuya. Sweet bar, lots of good Japanese beers on tap, cool patio. I found a dollar in the bathroom. Pretty stoked.

After 20 minutes of standing around, we went back to Daikokuya and our names were called. Once I walked in the little noodle bar, it brought me back to the narrow noodle shops in Japan. It's as if I walked through a portal and was right back in the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo at one of the narrow, greasy spoon shacks surrounded by freeways of fresh and frozen giant tuna being zipped around by miniature forklifts. It felt very authentic.

Before looking at the menu my brother told me what I should get. I knew what he was going to recommend me to get but I wanted to see it for myself on the menu. Ramen noodles with pork belly and a rice bowl of pork belly. This is what dreams are made of. After browsing through the menu and contemplating adding the extra flavor of pork back fat-saturated broth, I made the final decision of getting the pork belly ramen noodles, even though I and everyone at the table knew that is what we were all going to get.

After picking at a small salad, which was tantalizingly good, I had to let it go and save my appetite for the main course. When it arrived my taste buds started partying on my tongue. The massive bowl of noodles looked beautiful. Then came the smaller pork belly rice bowl. Together, they looked perfect. A match made in heaven. It made sense the same the way chips and salsa make sense. Or peanut butter and jelly, or milk and cereal. It looked so perfect I didn't even want to touch it. But, being a man of weak, moral fiber (when it comes to good food), I jumped in.

The first moment when you lift the ramen with your chopsticks out of the bowl is a thing of beauty. The steam just explodes out from the noodles. I knew I had to eat this fast or I would get too full, too quick and the broth would lose its heat. I dug in, switching from soup to rice bowl, soup to rice bowl. The sweetness of the pork belly mixes so well with the broth and noodles. All the amazing flavors coat your lips bite after bite. Even the egg is a nice touch. I don't even really like eggs but the whole egg gives it an extra boost of flavor. I cut it in thirds and the yolk is still runny. Mix it around in the broth before taking a bite. Mmm...that's good.

After laboring for a few minutes trying to consume as much goodness as possible, I was just not able to finish. I don't like leaving food on the table, I wish I could just give it to someone. But no one in LA wants discarded food. The busy waiters take our plates and we just sit there for a moment. Feeling the fatty, succulent juices run down the lining of our stomachs. Not wanting to move or talk, all I could do was take a little sip of water and let nature take over and digest what is one of the best bowls of noodles this side of the Mississippi.

Now, this was good. Really good. Really really good. One thing that I overdid was the scallions. I put a little too much extra scallions. I love green onions, but it is a little overpowering. The consistency of the ramen was very good. Firm and chewy at first, but softer after a couple minutes of wading in its pork broth bath. Although it was very tasty, you could taste the presence of the wheat flour when chewing. Which is fine but I'd rather not notice the floury essence of the noodles when I'm going to town on heaping, helping of some ramen.

All in all this was an excellent bowl of pork belly ramen noodle soup. I highly recommend everyone taking a dip into the Diakokuya noodle experience before it turns into a shadow of itself like the Kogi BBQ Taco truck. There's a location in Costa Mesa for you OC'ers. Check out their website. I'll have to check out the one in Costa Mesa and see if it holds up to its LA counterpart.

Next stop: Santouka. YES!

2011-02-11T20:48:00.000-08:00

What a total babe

2011-02-11T20:46:00.000-08:00

Dope

Shahen Style Moroccan Sardines

2011-01-28T23:57:00.000-08:00

I love fish. And pretty much anything that comes out of the ocean. Have you ever seen or tasted what's inside of a see urchin?!?! It's heavenly.

Whole Foods has been bringing in fresh sardines and they're only 3 bucks a pound, or was it 4? Nevertheless, that's fairly inexpensive for fresh, never frozen whole sardines. I grabbed a couple pounds and made my way home.

Sardines are probably the healthiest fish for you. It has more Omega-3's per serving than salmon. And, the sardine population is decently plentiful right now.

I didn't exactly know how I wanted to make these sardines so I researched a bit. The Moroccan's have a way of frying them up and stuffing them with a traditional sauce called Charmoula. In fact, this sauce has been used all throughout northern Africa. I decided to make my own version of this sauce, which usually consists of different herbs, oil, lemon juice, garlic, cumin, salt and pepper, among other ingredients. This sauce is going to be my filler between two fried sardine fillets.

You will need the following:
Whole Sardines
Chick Pea Flour (or your flour of choice)
Grape Seed Oil
Charmoula Ingredients:
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Lemon
Curly Parsley
Red Pepper Flakes
Salt
Garlic
Cumin
Dried, Crushed Oregano and Mint
Paprika

To make the Charmoula, mix together the olive oil, parsley, cumin, dried herbs, paprika, red pepper flakes, and salt to taste. Finely chop the garlic and add to the mixture. Add the lemon juice as you mix to get the consistency of a paste like substance. You don't want it too watery.

First, wash your sardines. Just stick them under the sink and give them a good rinse. Once it's clean and shiny, cut the head off. Go ahead, just chop it off. Then, you must gut the fish. Sardines are very delicate, so you can't hold the fish too tightly, or else it will just pulverize in your hand. The best way to do this is to get the sharpest, non serrated knife you have. Start from the opening of the headless sardine and gently cut along the belly all the way to the tail. Gently pull out all the excrements and rinse the sardine.

.

Here comes the tricky part. You're going to need to de-bone the sardine. I've found that the best way to do this is to stick your thumb between the backbone and the meat of the sardine. Gently push your thumb closer and closer to the tail until you've reached the end, and the backbone should just lift up as you inch your thumb to the tail. Just pull the rest of the backbone off and all the ribs will come with it.

You then should have a nice, flimsy sardine fillet. Give it one more rinse and put it on a paper towel, meat side down. Once you've finished filleting all of your sardines, it's time to drench them in the flour of your choice. I use chick pea flour because it gives a fantastic nutty flavor. Flour the skin side of the fillets and put half of them skin side down on a plate. Add the Charmoula on the meat side of the fillet, be generous. Pat it down just a bit to make it more stable on the fillet.

Take the other breaded fillets and cover the fillets that have the Charmoula on them, like a sandwich. Push them down just a bit so they stick well. Then, it's time to fry. If you have a deep fryer, go ahead and use it. If not, I use a tall, non-stick pot. This way, the fireworks of the hot, burning oil won't be able to jump out too much and bite you in the hands and arms and face. Cover the bottom layer with grape seed oil. Don't use olive oil, it has a very low burn threshold. Grape seed oil is excellent for high heat frying. Place the sandwiched fillets in the pot and fry on medium high on each side for about 3 minutes or so. This will depend on the amount of oil you use, and the degree of heat. You want each side to be golden brown.

After you're done frying, set them on a plate with a paper towel so the paper towel can soak the excess oil. Wait for about a minute, but eat them hot. They are best enjoyed hot and eaten like a sandwich, with a nice, cold lager.

Buon Appetito!

ooooooooo, i love you so

2011-01-28T22:07:00.000-08:00

Pretty obsessed with this song right now. And the Cassius app is pretty sick too. I bet this song/band will blow up pretty soon.
I remember the first time I heard them. I think it was in 2007 and it was their song Toop Toop. Excellent song. Been listening to them for years now. The following year, I was visiting Amsterdam while studying in London. I was at a club, I think it was called moon, with my good friend and traveling friend Charlotte and I was stoned out of my mind...damn hash brownies; their song Toop Toop came on and it was a pretty damn entrancing moment. Never forget it.

Sandwiches Portray Your Personality...So Choose Wisely

2010-10-19T00:14:00.000-07:00

Sandwich...such a weird word. I guess it's fitting since sandwiches can be ever so complex, and so simple and dull at the same time. We all grew up with sandwiches. Whether it be a peanut butter and jelly or a sliced turkey sandwich, we all ate them. And they are oh so good. But now, we are older, more sophisticated, at least I hope, and have a more refined, experienced palate. Yet, I still constantly see people making extremely lame sandwiches. This isn't kindergarten anymore. You can leave the crusts on your sandwich, it won't bite. I still don't understand why people take the crusts off their sandwich. It's one of the best parts!

A sandwich can be a work of art, or a work of trash. You can get some good ol' dead white bread from the super market, lather on some gunky mayo, and top it with rolls of meat, which I see quite frequently to my amazement - Disclaimer: loads of meat doesn't make a sandwich better, quite the contrary. Or, you can create a beautiful work of art. Get some fresh, crusty artisan bread, and top it with ground mustard, fresh vegetables and cheeses, and finish it off with a nice, thin cut of meat. Your sandwich should be worth your time, otherwise, don't even bother.

The way you choose to create a sandwich can really tell a lot about a person. Like for instance, a long time friend of mine always had sandwiches with Wonder Bread, mayo and some type of meat. To this day I know that he still has his sandwiches that way. Now you can say that he grew up eating sandwiches like that, which is a valid statement, but we are grown men now that have a much more refined palate and we can taste all sorts of different, wild things. It is not ok to eat such a lame combination of food when you're able to be an independent adult. This crummy, meat-mayo sandwich is a very dull and simple sandwich that takes less time to make then to pop popcorn in the microwave. Interestingly enough, he is also a very dull, simple human being. All it takes is a little bit more effort and time to make a sandwich that will blow your mind away.

One of my favorite sandwiches I made was about 4 years ago. I still remember every bite to this day. I started with some rustic artisan bread from Trader Joe's and toasted the bread to a tender crispiness. I first sauteed some filet mignon strips in a dollop of olive oil and added red bell peppers and crimini mushrooms. Splash that with a little red wine and turn up the heat for a few last seconds. Then, I spread some Dijon Mustard on the bottom toasted bread, added the sauteed filet mignon and peppers and mushrooms. Then, a key part, cut some slices of raw Gruyere cheese and put it on top of the meat and veggies. Instead of putting the slices of cheese when it's still in the pan, this way it will only melt a little so you can still get that hardy texture of the cheese. Then I topped it with a slice of tomato, onion, avocado, some fresh baby spinach leaves, alfa alfa sprouts and another lather of mustard on the top piece of bread (I love mustard). Pour yourself a tall glass of Amber Grolsch or a Pale Ale and you got yourself a mouthwatering meal.

Now you can judge me.

Next time you're craving a sandwich, please choose wisely.

Back in the Game

2010-09-28T23:41:00.000-07:00

I'm back baby!!!...(Frank Costanza after grabbing the spatula and crackin' an egg over a skillet because Estelle's cooking is "dry, mushy, and oily")

After a long absence from traveling and no desire to write in my blog, I decided to start up again. Inspiration points from my aunt Annie and Donald's traveling/blogging.

So, after living in Korea for six months I'm back in good ol' southern California. Extremely glad to be back from Korea. Even though teaching and living in Korea was very fun, exciting, and down-right fucking crazy at times, couldn't be happier to be back. As much as I complain about So Cal and it's infamous knack of dullness, traveling does make you appreciate home, especially California. We have it good here. No, not good...GREAT! There's no other place in the world that has the amount of opportunities, freedoms, luxuries, wealth, conveniences, diversities,...I can go on forever.

When I arrived home in late February, much to the chagrin of everyone except two of my favorite people - you know who you are - it was definitely an awkward time in my life, to say the least. Although, it was quite an interesting feeling that no one in the world, except for me and one other person, and good old Uncle Sam, knew that I was in California again. It's a very grounding feeling to be somewhere and literally no one else in the world knows you are there. You should try it sometime.

Anyways, started to look for a job and had many interviews. Got some call backs, actually got hired twice, turned them down because it seemed like I was one of the more intelligent and most experienced people in the whole company. When the president of a company is trying to sell the legitimacy of his company to a prospective employee...just say no!

Then, happened upon an open position with DC Shoes. Applied, got a call back, drove my happy ass down to Vista, San Diego, unshaven, wearing jeans, and lit it up at the interview. Got a call back the very next day and I guess you can figure out what happens after that. Now, I love my job so much. It is exciting, fun, laid back, stressful, friendly, comfortable, down to earth...sounds like I'm describing a person. I got to meet Torah Bright, who I'm legally engaged to according to certain laws in other states, yell and wave my hand at Rob Dyrdek, meet Ken Block (co-founder of DC Shoes), shake Bob McKnight's hand, and have many free lunches all paid for by Quiksilver's plastic. I always think that if I didn't come back early from Korea, I would not have acquired this job. So I am forever thankful for those past circumstances.

Horseshoes anyone? Just another day at the office

And now, I have the best boss anyone can ask for, I work with super cool people, and I get to meet and talk to beautiful women all day. La Buona Vita.

Next post, I think I will talk about sandwiches. I see an inordinate amount of people making half-assed sandwiches with processed meats and dead bread. C'mon people.

Starting to get bitter cold....bitter!

2009-11-18T04:27:00.000-08:00

The temperature has started to hover down in the low 30's during the day and the high 20's at night. The air is dry and the wind creeps up on you like that creeper guy who always finds the unattended lady at a club to creep up on. I was out for five minutes before, I couldn't feel my extremities. What extremities? Hahaha sorry, I had to go off on a Seinfeld tangent there.
It is freezing though. Even though I have thick mittens on the cold seems to find its way and attack my poor little fingers. And on top of it all, my school doesn't put on the heater for some reason. I had to beg them to close some of the windows. Thank god they are catching on now.

And everywhere you go in Korea, there is a little restaurant. All these "greasy-spoon" restaurants everywhere. I don't understand how this city has so many restaurants. Where do they get all their food? Well, I guess since 95% of their meals consist of rice, roots (kimchi), and water (for soups) it's not that difficult. But literally, every corner, every street, every alley way will have lines of greasy-spoon and normal restaurants.

Getting the hang of Korea

2009-10-28T04:48:00.000-07:00

There really isn't a more bizarre place than Korea. Well, at least in my travels, and I feel like I've been to a decent amount of places. I haven't been doing much lately. I've been strapped with tending to lesson plans that I do not want to do and going to functions with my co-teachers. Although, a couple of weeks ago I did go hiking. Now, if you do not know, hiking is the national pastime here in Korea. They take it seriously, and I mean bloody seriously. This isn't a baseball game where insouciant people carelessly watch a ball being thrown and hit for three long hours, sitting on terribly uncomfortable plastic chairs. However, I do like doing that from time to time.

Koreans have a sense of pride in their hiking abilities and the many mountains soaring from every orifice of this countries terrain. From the big, bitter cold mountains of the east, to the dewy sweet hills of the south, to the smoggy yet elegantly beautiful rocky points of Seoul, Koreans are scaling these soaring, jagged mountains. When attempting to climb these mountains, you will pass by a bountiful number of Koreans, from ageless grandmothers to tiny little grandchildren and great grandchildren. They all have the best equipment, from head to toe. On the way up you'll find it to be fairly easy going up rock after rock, step after step. Koreans do love their steps. Once you get to midway point, you'll find that someone is waiting for you up there with a mid-sized cooler and a fanny pack. Open it up and it's full of popsicles. What a treat huh!?! I got a melon popsicle, honeydew melon to be exact, and was energized and ready to scale the rest of the mountain.

It gets so steep towards the top of the mountain that it looks like im climbing the back of half dome (Yosemite). On one side of the top of the mountain, it's so steep that you have to climb up using a rope. Once you get to the top of the mountain it's pretty breathless; it will take your breath away...no really, it's really smoggy up there. You look around to the other mountains and you can barely see them because of the pollution. Gross for sure!
Check out this dude pretty much climbing a vertical rock wall.

Coming back down was actually more difficult than climbing up. The narrow paths, which fit one human being, that lay between giant boulders makes it pretty difficult, not to mention the other hundred Koreans using the same narrow path to climb up. You get huge traffic jams and countless situations where you have to squeeze between rock, person, and nothing under you. It's pretty freaky. I thought I was going to tumble down the mountain a few times like a snowball gaining mass and speed down a snowy ski run. At least there are metal wires implanted in the ground to help you hold onto something. I definitely need gloves for my next climb.

Oh guess what?!!? I got a bike. Yep, I bought a cheap Lespo road bike. For less than 140 bucks it's more than anything I could have hoped for. I haven't ridden it much yet, just back home from the subway stop. The tires are kind of flat and I haven't had time to find a bike shop around where I live.

This Saturday, Halloween, I plan on doing a road race, fixies included, from one area in the east of Seoul to the west. Winner gets free brakes and a hub, I believe. Probably won't win because I have never ridden along the streets of Seoul yet. Should be interesting.

Anyways, I'm getting pretty sick of eating MSG in pretty much everything that I eat. I buy fresh fruit, vegetables, and greens for dinner at home. But since Koreans are obsessed with MSG and I eat lunch at school everyday, I consume my fair share of MSG. Go to the market, anything that is in a package has MSG. They are in love with it here. How do they not know it's a killer. I asked my co-teacher about it and she said it is almost impossible to avoid it. She doesn't like it as well but most people in Korea doesn't give a rats ass about it's negative health effects because it makes everything "taste good." That's what everyone says. I have to disagree completely. It makes everything taste the exact same. It's gross. Add some salt and some garlic and you have the same exact thing and one gajillion times better for you. Ugh! Don't like that at all. Complete detoxification when I return home.

Alright, it's time to take to my lesson plans. It never ends. I'm hoping to go to the Speedom this weekend (Velodrome in Seoul). Wish me luck!!! I've been putting it off the past two weeks. Hopefully I won't have anything to do Sunday so I can take the hour long subway ride there.

Check you guys out later.
Ciao

Bikeless for a year leaves me with other adventures

2009-10-06T04:02:00.000-07:00

Being without my bike for one year is really sad. Like, I kind of get depressed sometimes. It may sound laughable, but when you are super passionate about something and it's not in your midst than you will understand. So, being bike-less gives me the opportunity to explore more by foot, and bus, which is awesome. Traveling around by foot gives you a different perspective. You can stop whenever you want and explore something you might have missed by biking or even taking a bus.

This past weekend was Chuseok holiday in Korea. It is termed as the "Korean Thanksgiving." Everyone goes back home to visit their parents. And if you are married or have a significant other, you must go see their parents as well. So, I had a 4-day weekend and decided to go to the east coast with two of my friends for a little getaway. We stayed in Donghae and visited Samcheok just 20 minutes south by bus.

Donghae has amazing natural beauty along the sea. It was a pretty cool place but also a pretty weird one, too. First of all, there are mostly men living in and/or visiting this city. I guess there are a lot of Russian prostitutes around that Americans, French, and other vacation-goers frequent according to our taxi driver. City officials wanted to make Donghae a very pretty resort town, somewhat like the coastline of Dana Point-Laguna-Newport. But it either failed miserably, or they are "still working" on it. The main beach there is pretty empty. There are a couple convenient stores, coffee shops and restaurants along the boardwalk. There's also a small, half-assed fair along the beach. There are only like five or six rides and a couple of mini-games. It's really barren and looks as if a tornado went through it and they just left it as is, still working the few rides that remain. On a bright note, I fit inside this tiny-spaced Korean Robocop and enjoyed myself pretending to shoot evildoers; not too bad.

My friends and I visited the Donghae port and witnessed what goes on in a Korean port. Lots and lots of different types of fish and squid. Oh how they love their squid here. Buckets and buckets of fresh squid. Not to mention the gazillion dried squid hanging above you at all times wherever you go. It was interesting to see how a small Korean port functions like and what it looks like. After exploring the fish/seafood market, our stomachs screaming for fish carnage, we stumbled into one of the restaurants across the street from the market. We ordered sashimi. When you order something in Korea, it ALWAYS comes with side dishes and/or kimchi. While waiting for the cook to cut the live fish just caught hours ago, they served us fresh squid, seaweed soup, and what I could only describe as a seafood ceviche. Everything was amazing! Then the sashimi came, on a bed of what looks and tasted like plastic, see-through noodles. This plate was huge. We ended up eating probably a whole fish worth of sashimi. We were beyond satisfied.

The next day we took a bus to Samcheok. Traveling by bus is great. You get to see things you definitely cannot see by plane and even by train. We arrived in Samcheok and were on our way to Hwanseongul. This is the biggest limestone cave in Korea and one of the biggest in Asia. This cave is immense. Incredibly beautiful as well. There are some openings and areas in the cave that are probably 100 meters in width and height. Truly amazing place. The cave is lit up with hot colors of green, blue, red, and orange along the bridges and stairwells. It makes the cave look like a Nike sneaker. It's actually pretty cool. Here is a link to my pictures of the cave.

That night we went back to Donghae and went to Chuam beach. It was my favorite beach. Pretty small but very quaint and it reminded me of the beaches and coves of Laguna Beach and Corona Del Mar. After taking a bunch of pictures of a famous rock structure jetting from the ocean floor, we ended up at this small little family owned restaurant that also had two rooms upstairs if you wanted to stay over. It was across right on the beach. Incredible views from dinner. It was so pleasant. We ordered sashimi again, go figure. It was great because it was so fresh. We met and talked to an older couple sitting behind us and at the end of our meal they must have ordered us fish head soup because it wasn't on our bill. As the waitress, a high school aged girl who was most likely the daughter, cleaned up our table she kept asking us if we wanted something. Not knowing what the hell she was asking us she pointed to this big bowl of fish head soup that the couple behind us was eating. They said it's good for digestion, so we obviously said yes. Wow, it was soooo good. The broth was absolutely exquisite. So many pleasurable flavors roaming around in my mouth. I could down a huge bowl of that. The green veggies made it light and the fish head added all the great flavor. The fish was tasty too. We were so satisfied. We said farewell to our friends and went to have some coffee at this little place on the cliff overlooking the water and beach. Great way to end the night.

The next day we went back towards Samcheok and went to Haesindang Park, a park dedicated to phalli). This park has many wooden, granite, and plastic statues of penis's. There is a legend about the reason for this park here, check it out, it has a good short version of the legend and some really good pics. We toured this park for a short 40 minutes, messed around, as one could imagine, and headed back to the bus stop to catch our bus back to Seoul...we were late. Nevertheless, we reconciled being late by buying 5 grilled whole fish from the street market in front of the park for less than five dollars. It was damn good. We got back to Samcheok bus terminal and caught our bus back home to Seoul.

Arriving back in Seoul felt overwhelming to the say the least. After spending the weekend on the beautiful east coast, roaming around the picturesque beaches, eating fresh fish, looking at penis statues and exploring a massive cave, coming back one of the most dense cities in the world just suffocated me. I had to close my eyes for a moment and catch my breathe. Then, I was back on the packed subway trying to get home. I was so tired. I then managed to drop off my things at my apartment and join my friends for a night of karaoke. I guess I wasn't tired anymore.

After a nice, relaxing weekend, I thought it would be difficult getting back to work but it wasn't too bad. The morning was horrid, but once I got to school my mood changed for the better, thanks to Jess mostly:)

Click here to view my pictures of this past weekend.

I still miss my bike. At least I know it's in good hands. Thanks Urs!

From New Folder (2)

previous blog with some entries

2009-09-15T02:25:00.001-07:00

http://niceassbass.unifiedblogging.com/

Beginning of a loooongg year on Mars...aka Seoul, Korea

2009-09-15T01:19:00.000-07:00

This post was written August 31th.

Soooo…Korea. WTF?!?! This is the weirdest place on earth. Arriving into Incheon is like any other advanced airport, until you step outside and see the space-aged type aircraft control tower. When you see this thing it looks like it came out of a star trek nerds mind. The funny thing is that it’s actually quite impressive. Not to mention the phallic statue outside the airport.

I arrived in Suwon at the Hyundai Learning Center. This is a major university campus. Excellent, top notch facilities. A techie’s paradise! I was to spend a week at that facility. The first moment I arrived I knew we were going to be quarantined, since we weren’t allowed to leave the campus for the whole week and we had to take our temperatures everyday.

My room was pretty nice. Clean, air-conditioned, nice desk, the fastest internet ever. No complaints. We were fed a traditional Korean meal breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In other words, kimchi three times a day. Hahah, the main dish was different everyday, though. So, all 450+ public school native English teachers were trained at this campus. We had classes from paper craft to classroom management. It was all very informative. Met so many awesome people along the way, too.

So, after a week long of waking up, eating kimchi for breakfast, going to class, eating kimchi for lunch, going to class again, and eating kimchi for dinner, we finally got to leave Saturday to meet our co-teachers and to move into our apartments.

Both my co-teachers are amazing. Their English is excellent and they are way too nice. Thanks SMOE for confusing the hell out of everyone and scaring everyone about bad co-teachers. Anyways, they showed me around a bit and took me to get my subway card. I said farewell to them and then went on my way to find the school I am going to teach at for a year. Ha, funny to see in writing that I’m going to be teaching English. Kind of weird. Oh and by the way, I teach at an all girls middle school. I’m pretty much a celebrity.

The area I live in is not bad. I guess it’s kind of poor, but not too poor, I mean there aren’t gang shootings and bums everywhere (see Compton, CA). There are a lot of street vendors where I live selling anything from fried chicken feet to what looks like a hybrid of a banana and a watermelon. I don’t know. The first thing I did when I had time…can anyone guess?!?! No? Yea, that’s right….I bought fruit. Good job. I was deprived of fruit for a week at the quarantine facility…aka District 9. I bought 2 nectarines and 2 plums and some apples. Everything was surprisingly good.

That night I went out to the foreign district of Seoul called Itaewon and went to an Irish Pub to meet a bunch of the other English teachers from orientation. Cheap booze and loud obnoxious music, what more could anyone want? Right…I then went to this hooka bar afterwards because I couldn’t hear myself think at the pub. I never really liked hooka until that night. It was super relaxing and very cheap. I took a nap, most probably because I was still jet lagged, or maybe it was the “California Dream” flavored hooka.

That night I slept in the subway with some other English teachers because the subway closes way too early and I was about 45 minutes away from my apartment. It wasn’t bad. We woke up to about 50 people waiting for the subway. Interesting night.

The next day I went to the Costco here. Wow. 2 stories. Food on the bottom floor. You have to go down this magnetic escalator with your cart to get to the bottom floor. There was a sashimi/sushi section. I wanted to go get something but there were so many people there. It was like someone threw a bloody piece of meat inside a piranha tank. I bought some salad ingredients, go figure. It’s like a freakin zoo at the Costco here. Crazy stuff.

Today was my first day of work. I don’t teach until next Monday. I met all my other co-teachers and some other teachers. I also met the principle and vice principle. It was kind of intimidating to meet the principle. It was like I was being interviewed by the CEO of Google for a high position. Some lady brought us hot green tea. We drank.

I then sat around until 2pm. My main co-teacher took me out for lunch. I ate bibimbap. It was good. I don’t really like eggs or ham, otherwise it would have been awesome! It's like a salad with a bunch of different veggies mixed with rice and topped with hot pepper sauce. Bomb! All day while I walked through the halls all the students would stop and giggle at me and yell HI! HI! HELLO! NICE TO MEET YOU! And wave at me vigorously. It was fun. I’d be super enthusiastic back at them. At one point some girl saw me, ran from her class while the instructor was teaching to come and meet me and say hello. Ok.

Anyways. I’m done for now. I got a big presentation tomorrow. Presenting to like 50 teachers about where I’m from, where I graduated, blah blah blah, all that good stuff. Should be interesting.

I’ll try to do an entry at least once a week. Enjoy.

Ciao