Vietnam

Preface Vietnam was fantastic. Christa agrees that it was even better than our Japan trip, and that was pretty damn great, too. We spent the first day in Hanoi, then rode the overnight train west to Sapa, where we stayed an all-too-short couple of days, then back to Hanoi, before going all the way to Halong Bay on the East Coast. The week before we left, I bought a brand new 2 gigabyte memory card at Yongsan electronics market in Seoul. On Wednesday evening, shortly after taking my 750th photo, the card froze up. The son of a bitch wouldn't let me take any more pictures, or review any that I had already taken. Naming Error. Naming Error. Naming Error. I'm still semi-hopeful that I'll be able to recover them (while Christa is in flat-out denial at the idea that they may be lost) but need a bit of technical wizardry which I've not been able to lay my hands on yet. Christa took some photos, of course, but not that many, as generally she relies on me, seeing as my camera is better, and she knows that whatever she takes a picture of, I'm just gonna take 5 more of from different angles anyway. With all this in mind, I'm gonna start from the end and work backwards, with the hope that I'll have had some luck with the photos by the time I get back to Wednesday. So, without further ado. Sunday We arrived back at the Village at about 8:30am yesterday morning. There's only a 2 hour time difference between here and Vietnam, but our flight had left at 0:45am, and I can never really get comfortable another to sleep for long in the tiny aeroplane seats, so I was pretty shattered. I was actually getting a little giddy from exhaustion when we did arrive home, and didn't think I'd need to sleep for long. Planning to get up again for lunch, I went to bed at 9am. I woke up again at 8:08pm feeling refreshed and slightly confused. Saturday After lunch we left the tranquillity of Halong Bay for the chaos of Hanoi once more. The traffic around the Old Quarter where most of the tourism is based is crazy. Everybody and their Grandmother travels by motorcycle, and it's not at all unusual to see three or four people on one bike. Our guidebook testifies to somebody witnessing seven passengers on one bike, and I totally believe it. Traffic lights and pedestrian crossings are rare, so crossing the street requires a definite strategy. Ours was to walk slowly enough that any oncoming traffic could avoid us, rather than the other way around. Panic and try to run across and you're toast. We had five hours to kill before we were due to leave for the airport, and since this was to be our third stint in the city, there wasn't all that much left that we wanted to do, so after a final bit of souvenir shopping, we decided to partake in our favourite pastime, that which we were doing, oh, about 97% of the time last week: we went for something to eat. Hanh (almost pronounced 'Hi') - our guide,at Halong Bay - had recommended two dishes that we were not to leave Hanoi without trying. Indeed, if we didn't try them, then we hadn't really been to Vietnam at all (at least so says the New York Times Hanh was quoting). The restaurant gave us the menu: We decided to go with the fish. With only the one dish on the menu, I expected they'd make a good job of it, and they certainly did. I'd love to defend Korean food, and there many dishes I love and will miss when I leave, but it can't really hold a candle to that of its neighbours. Vietnamese food is so fresh and varied, whereas Korean is usually pickled or fermented, and tends to rely on the same few core ingredients (pepper paste, soybean paste, pork, kimchi). I don't think I've seen a fresh herb since coming to Korea. Also, not that I'm endorsing French Colonialism, but it did leave the Vietnamese with a sound understanding of how to bake, unlike the Koreans, whose best efforts at bread and cakes mostly come out of the oven already tasting two weeks old. Anyway, the fish, with peanuts, fish oil, butter, and a handful of different herbs, was delicious. The place was so popular that we were practically being ushered out of the door to make room for the next guests while I was still drinking my beer. Stuffed as we were, we still had one item left on our list: Bún Chả. Hanh had said it was untranslatable into English, while our waitress' best attempt to describe it was 'green pork'. Put in such seductive terms, how could we say no? It was plainly just meatballs with dill (those people really love their dill), and we actually had eaten it a few days before, only we hadn't learned the Vietnamese name for it. And it was good, though far from the best we ate that week. I may write to the NY Times and tell them to get out more. The banana smoothie I drank with the meal was far more memorable! And sadly, with that final meal inside us, we waddled back to the hotel to await our taxi, and homeward bound we were.

Oh yes, they treat us well!

The school got us all Seollal gifts! I am disproportionately happy: We see these gift packs in the shops whenever there's one of the major gift-giving holidays coming up, and they always make me smile. Finally I have one of my very own. You can get proper luxury all-Spam sets too, but I'll settle for this. Seollal is The Lunar New Year by the way, and the reason we have the three-day weekend to enjoy starting tomorrow. I'll be living it up down in Gyeongju, so I can guarantee there won't be any more postings until (I'll optimistically say early) next week. Sae hae bok mani mani bahdeusaeyo! Happy Korean New Year!

Second posting in 3 days!

On Monday we visited a jazz club in nearby Hyehwa, a surprisingly happening district I've never been to before. Cade met the (famous) drummer with the band below on the subway a few days before and had been invited along. It was just like a proper jazz joint ought to be: bare brick walls, candles, cosy. The second band featured a big black American pianist...he looked like someone fresh off the plane from New Orleans but was too much of a jitter for me to get a decent photo. I don't know jazz as well as I'd like, but it sounded pretty good to me. Last night Kiwi Tony invited Irishman Daragh, Georgian Alicia, and myself for dinner with the local policemen that he teaches English. As practice for them, he wanted to invite a variety of different accents to come along, hence the mix of nationalities above. We ate shabu-shabu, a Mongolian-inspired dish, which originated in the 13th century as a way for Genghis Khan to efficiently feed his soldiers. Each person has a pan of boiling water, into which you can throw whatever you fancy from the spread on the table: lots of vegetables and mushrooms, oysters, clams, mussels and octopus, and beef sliced so thinly that it cooked in a few seconds, though Daragh was leaving in for 10 minutes as he wasn't so keen on the bloodiness. Afterwards the oldest Korean man, already pretty drunk from soju, announced it was 'Korean wine time', and we were dragged, almost literally, to an Makgeolli bar that he knew. Makgeolli is a milky-white rice wine that Jake (our designated driver) told us only old people really drink. It's supposed to taste sweet but was quite sour, and the older gent, Peter, ordered two kettles full, most of which he drank himself (although Tony put away his fair share too). Most of the conversation at this time revolved around trying to get Peter to stop calling me 'Lion'. 'Wyan' was about the best we got out of him, but I'm used to that by now...

99%

Christa bought me a present this weekend. We'd seen some chocolate in a convenience store Japan that was 99% cocoa (95% cocoa solids and 4% cocoa butter to be precise) which I didn't buy at the time, assuming it to be commonplace. Then we never found it again and I always slightly regretted not trying it at the time. Christa came across a bar on Saturday while visiting friends down in Chungju and remembering my sorrow, bought a bar from me. I guess it tastes just as delicious as you would imagine. Which is probably to say, not at all. I'm not sure what the other 1% is, possibly just some glue to hold the rest of it, as rather as melt in the mouth, it crumbled. It was powdery, and acrid, and left a bitter aftertaste in the back of the throat that could only be washed away with a large glass of milk. Truely, I don't know why they would make this. Maybe for cooking, as it's really not that different from cocoa powder anyway, which would surely be a lot cheaper. I love plain chocolate by the way, but I think 85% will be the threshold from now on.

Self Portrait

I saw Kiwi Tony leaving the 7-11 with his nightly ice-cream and decided to follow suit. Unseasonably delicious.

New Year's Resolution

At least one of my New Year's resolutions is gonna be to take more pictures. I'm constantly seeing things I want to snap, but I never have my camera with me. So I'm going to start taking my camera around with me more often, and take at least one picture every day. I'm sure this will last for about a week, but that's not too bad as my resolution life expectancies generally go. And what better way to start than with a nice bowl of the delicious Kimchi that accompanied (well, was one of the many accompaniments to) this evening's galbi (simple but ever-tasty Korean bbq).

New Year's festivities

Sae-hae bok mani badeuseyo! (the meaning is left as an exercise for the reader) This New Year's Eve definitely ranks as one of my better ones. We started out with a heap of sushi in Suyu - and it was actually good sushi, especially compared to the half-frozen mostly chewy slop we choked down last time. Unfortunately, to get the decent stuff we did have to sell out and go to California Roll - previously we were being snobby about it and refusing to go, as some of the varieties they sell - like their salmon and cream cheese roll - barely qualifies as sushi at all - but after a recommendation from Vanessa, we checked it out, and it was indeed pretty good (though in fact we were not keen on the cream cheese one we ended up with). We followed this up with a trip to Dragon Bar, where we're fast becoming regulars, though in was in fact totally dead. Me and Christa were the only ones there until Tony, Robbie and Carla turned up a little while later. After winning and then losing to them at darts (drinks for the winners being the prize) we headed to the City Hall area for the main event. Despite the ten thousand (or was it a hundred thousand?) people expected there last night, we still managed to bump into the other half of the SEV teachers that were out last night (and where did we happen to see them but right by the beverage section of the convenience store that we had all descended on to buy beer). It was a crazy sight to behold. There was a stage with (I'm sure) some famous Korean pop acts performing, but, though we tried our best to sing along, we really didn't know who or what we were listening to. Meanwhile, traditional Korean musical troupes wove their way through the crowds, dancing and banging their drums and cymbals in time, but the real spectacle was the never ending hail of fireworks that went on from the moment we arrived to the time we left two hours later. Street traders were wandering through the square with bundles of Roman candles for sale. A lifetimes' worth of correct firework protocol instantly forgotten, we were soon twirling the firecrackers around our heads as the Koreans were. Children barely taller than the candles were long were flailing them around like we might a sparkler back home! Quite amazing, yet as far as I know nobody got hurt. Try and spot the cute little boy jumping for joy at the tail end of the video... At midnight, the old Boshingak bell tolled 33 times, and what felt like a million fireworks were simultaneously set off - I'm sure it was quite a sight, but my eyes filled with ash and sulphur as they were, it was hard to tell. Suddenly Tony and his umbrella didn't look quite so ridiculous. After this the crowd very swiftly dissipated, and we followed suit. The rest of the night reads much like a typical night out in Seoul - many more drinks were had back at the Dragon Bar, there was lots of bad singing, and we finally made it home just two hours shy of sunrise - it's apparently a Korean tradition to get to watch the first one of a new year, but it was never gonna happen. Maybe next year.

Food

A fringe benefit of my Korean lessons is that I now know my way around the staples of a Korean restaurant menu, which means I can be much more adventurous with what I order. In particular, there's a chain of restaurants called Kimbab Cheonguk (or Kimbab (or seaweed-rice) Heaven), the menu of which me and Christa had to memorise in entirety for homework recently. We've developed a semi-regular habit of popping in there after class to grab something to eat. Our previous method of finding new dishes was to pick at random and hope for the best. With hindsight, I see that we were rather lucky to avoid the fish egg noodles, the pig's intestine sausages, and the ox bone and snail "hangover" soup. In fact, it's my current favourite place to eat, as the aforementioned delicacies aside (which we haven't (yet?) tried so shouldn't judge) , they do have some great food on offer. Especially on cold days like these, there's nothing better than a hearty bowl of stew or soup, which the Koreans do very well. Doenjang jjigae, and its extra-pungent cousin Cheonggukjang jjigae, is a soybean paste-based soup, containing vegetables and tofu, and sometimes shellfish including small mussels and shrimp. I guess I have to accept that there's really no way for me to make fermented soybean paste sound appetizing, but it really is delicious. I'm faced with a similar problem when it comes to Budae jjigae, (which translates to "army base stew" since it was first created from surplus rations from the US Army after the Korean War). This is an excellent sinus-clearer, as being based on a chili/soybean paste it is very spicy. Common ingredients include instant noodes, tofu, beans, hot dogs and Spam! Trust me, it's great. I'm not aiming to turn this page into a recipe book, so I'll hold back for now on many of my other favourites. Suffice to say that I am a total convert to Korean food. There's really nothing from back home that I'm missing right now, but I know I'll be craving some of the food here when I'm gone. There are those (I'm thinking of Emma in particular but she's certainly not the only one) who have never really appreciated the food here; the only reason I can suggest is that opinions have been too heavily based on cafeteria food - contrast cafeteria with real food back home and you'll see the problem. But, I shouldn't speak for anyone else. I love Korean food. Let's leave it at that.

Recap

Right, so I've written squat since Thursday, and nothing of significance since the Monday before that, so I think we're due an update. I turned 25 years old on Wednesday. It doesn't feel much different. My Korean age will remain the same until January, when I'll be 27, bluhhh. It was a pretty low key day as I was working in the evening and most of my friends were working the next morning. Nevertheless, it was nice; I was showered with some expertly-chosen gifts (mostly art materials, very cool), and had the Happy Birthday Song (or sometimes the Korean version, Sengil Chukahmnida) sung to me about seven or eight times throughout the day. After work I went round for a little celebration at Shannon's with cake and beer and friends. Thursday was a little stressful. We're having lots of Government-sponsored students this month, which inevitably seems to mean very low English skills. Trying to conduct a class with such low comprehension can be draining at the best of times, but this month I'm teaching theatre class, the lesson plan for which focuses on having the kids act out a short theatre piece. When only one of them can read the title of the play, getting them through their individual lines is total fantasy, which leaves me a little adrift at times. Friday was more of the same, but at least it was Friday. After graduation, a troop of SEV staff made their way over to Itaewan, to the final of the battle-of-the-bands-esque showdown that our friend Kane Sole was competing in. He was robbed of victory by a dodgy mike that meant the vocals could barely be heard (the sound guy adjusted the acoustics right after Kane's set) but was awarded with an 'honourable mention' at least. We had planned to meet up with Shannon's going away crowd afterwards, but the competition and MC dragged on for so long that all we wanted to do after the result was head home to bed. Saturday was a typically lazy weekend day - I could've done with doing some shopping and laundry, but the only productive activity I managed was a little Korean study. Me and Christa went out for sushi later in the day, which was both disappointing and expensive. The salmon was frozen solid (and it's not like it's easy to complain here) and the majority of the sashimi that we ordered was too chewy to enjoy. The highlight of the meal was Christa gamely taking up my challenge to eat the whole dollop of wasabi in one go. It had been making my eyes water even in small doses, so I was a little concerned as to what it might do to her, and there was indeed a moment she looked certain the throw up, but thankfully she managed to stifle the reflex before it got that far. At some point in the near future I want to write a post on some of my favourite Korean dishes; it seems that usually when I talk about food here it's because I'm drawing attention to some weird or wacky thing I've seen or tasted (and often I've only mentioned our cafeteria food, and we all know what school dinners are like!). There are some real tasty foods out around though, so I feel it only fair to redress the balance. For now, all I'll say on the matter is that on Sunday, me and Christa had a great lunch at a local restaurant before heading out for an exhausting day of Christmas shopping in Insadong, of which no more can be revealed at this time.

Hard to Swallow

For lunch today, we had fried egg atop kimchified rice (not bad actually), cuttlefish soup, radish kimchi, pasta salad, and a dish which I have come to know as jam-chicken (the true nature of the sauce never being made entirely clear to me). For dinner we had bulgogi (cheap beef stew), rice (with, I'm gonna say, millet), cabbage soup with rice cakes, eggs (of a size comparable with a quail's but who can say) and, sure, kimchi. Fair enough, all standard fair, and all in all, not the worst menu here. However. This week we have a horde of government-sponsored kids in attendance. Actually I think the Bank of Korea might have something to do with it too. Anyway. For reasons that we clearly don't need to know (maybe they're malnourished), these subsidised kids are getting an unprecedented fourth meal every night this week before they go to bed (the other being breakfast which I never get up for). This extra meal - which of course is only for the subsidised kids, and not for the teachers or the kids from families who actually paid for them to come here - tonight comprises of: fajitas, sandwiches (which Koreans just do not eat, like, ever!), an orange, and something - coffee? hot choco? - in a Starbucks cup! They have never given we who may appreciate such food anything remotely like that to eat... And you just know half of it's ending up in the trash.

Happy Pepero Day!

I do realise that for much of the world today is Remembrance day, a time of solemn reflection n'all, but we in Korea choose to celebrate the much more upbeat Pepero day instead - quite possibly the most commercial national holiday I've ever come across. Pepero is the name of a long chocolate-covered biscuity confection. Somehow, their manufacturer, Lotte, masters of Korea (they're behind everything) have managed to successfully push forth a national (albeit unofficial) day into the public consciousness. It seems to be much like valentine's day, but really just for kids, and instead of cards, all the shops have been selling special packs of Peperos with hearts and flowers blazened across the packaging. Really bizarre. Oh, and it's November 11th as the date (11/11) looks like four Pepero sticks. Likewise, the Corduroy Appreciation Club celebrate Corduroy Appreciation Day because it's the date that most resembles corduroy. You can't make this stuff up. In other news (if you're still reading) the SEV exodus officially began today, with Shawn and Melody of Canada being transferred down to Suwon (three hours away) to finally start the jobs they came here to do two months ago. Their apartment was the official gaming headquarters around here. On at least six nights out of seven, it'd be a fare bet that there'd be a card or dice game of some sort going on over at their place, so they'll certainly be missed. Emma leaves in exactly a fortnight, and Shannon will be leaving just after my birthday, so it's all gonna feel very strange around these parts come Christmas. Also, I have a sore throat. This would've been more newsworthy yesterday when I was actually off work because of it (and related symptoms) but there you go.

Japanese Food.

Since I spent the entire morning in bed catching up on a week's worth of sleep, I still haven't gotten around to sorting out my photos properly, so tonight, I'm just gonna focus on one aspect of our trip: the food. First of all, I would like to formally declare myself an official convert to Japanese cuisine. I loved pretty much every meal we ate, and thanks to Amy - who's from Taiwan and has been to Japan a few times already - we were able to try lots of different dishes in places where otherwise we wouldn't have even been able to read the menu. Even the airplane food was good, simple though it was - basically rice and shrimp with a few veggies and soy sauce (with which I'm also recently enamoured). Plus, free Ferraro Roche! Bonus! Our first proper meal in Japan was at a tiny little place in Fukuoka. It only had three tables, so I do wonder how they ever managed to wangle their way into the guide book, but it was so good. We all had ramen - light yellow noodles served in my case in a hot pork broth with spring onion. One thing I like about Japanese as opposed to Korean food (which is known for very strong, spicy, pungent flavours), is that you generally get to add soy sauce or chili seasoning to your own liking, so you can actually taste the underlying flavours, rather than just tasting *SPICE*. Thursday night in Osaka became Sushi Night. We ended up doing a little sushi crawl around the city, hunting out all the recommendations in the guides we had and trying a 'few' different types of sushi in each. And it was a revelation. I've bought sushi from the supermarket before, but this stuff was just on a whole other plane of existence. So fresh, so delicately flavoured with the soy sauce and wasabi (kinda like a Japanese horse-radish, though actually unrelated I think), I could've eaten nothing else all week. My favourite was tuna, but the salmon, egg, shrimp, mackerel and all the others I tried were all my favourites too. Like Korea, Japan's not huge on the desserts, but we did have a fair few helpings of ice cream through the week. The Japanese love anything green tea flavoured: you can get sweets, chocolate, biscuits, soft drinks, etc. They also have green tea ice cream, which I've never tried before though they sell it here in Korea too. Anyhow, it's yummy. Very refreshing. This was another of my favourites , eaten in Kyoto. I need to speak to Amy to find out what it's called. The main dish is a mixture of udon noodles, pork, tofu, onion and egg. I think there's other stuff in there two. Also, one of the side dishes (in the top-left) is a kind of fried soft tofu, a Kyoto specialty, and was wonderfully crisp on the outside, yet still soft inside. I want to go back just thinking about it. I love seeing food cooked in front of you too. Most of the sushi was made on the spot in front of us - and it's so quick! Sushi must be the ultimate fast food: just a handful of sushi rice and a slice of fresh fish and you're done. But in the other restaurants we visited, we still never seemed to be waiting more than five or ten minutes at the outside. On our finally night (in Hiroshima) we went to a building which housed a collection of mini-restaurants all devoted to Okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake). Actually, I think it was called something slightly different, as Hiroshima has a local version. It's basically a thin pancake layered with cabbage, bacon, optional items (shrimp, ginger, pork, cheese, etc.), fried noodles, topped with a fried egg and a generous dollop of okonomiyaki sauce and spices. Very delicious, and very filling, though we manged to consume three of them between us (at three different restaurants again!) I think the only disappointing meal I had is when one of the hostels served us a 'Western' Style breakfast. The Japanese style were much better, but while I could happily sit here and describe every single meal I had over the six days, I really must unpack...

Food

For nigh on three months I have been craving and resisting a certain chocolate dessert, Chocolate Thunder, in this Outback restaurant in town; tonight I went there finally with the singular intent of consuming said treat. Essentially a chocolate brownie piled high with vanilla ice cream and regular cream, I was most disappointed. Artificially cream, and I don't know what was up with the brownie but texturally it certainly lacked something. Give me frozen yoghurt and fruit any day. Most of the dinner conversation revolved around British/American/Canadian gastronomic differences. Everyone looked pretty aghast at the sight of me eating a piece of bread with a couple of fries on top, so of course we had to explain the whole chip butty concept. Potted beef seemed a bit alien to them too, although one of the Americans offered up the notion of something called a 'Solomon Gundy' (a pureed fish dish) prompting Emma to burst in to the rhyme, which nobody else had every heard of. Interestingly (if you're me), I've just pulled this from Wikipedia:

Solomon Grundy [the rhyme] is believed to have derived from the English food Salmagundi, which was integrated into the English language from the French in the 17th century, and is a salad of cooked meats, lettuce, anchovies and eggs, with other condiments. The name of the salad was corrupted in the 18th century to Solomon Gundy, particularly in the United States

Shannon's (29th) Birthday Cake!!

No post today

What do you want from me? You got three fabulous posts yesterday, you'll surely get some tomorrow, I'm sure I deserve a day off already? If you must know, I went to work, I ate pizza, I drank some beer, and I imagine I then went to bed. Nobody comes here at the weekend anyway.

Dangdaemum Night Markets

First observation: people is Seoul do not seem to observe time. The city is just as busy by night as it is by day. We were out until half eleven, and we could still see parents walking around with their kids as though on a leisurely sunday afternoon stroll. Despite or because of all this bustle, you do feel very safe here. I don't think I've ever seen anyone out on the streets drunk, though Koreans are known to like their drink. Score one for Korea. Resisiting the obvious 'street food' jokes, uou can buy puppies at the market. They don't seem to be popular pets though - very few of the kids have dogs and the odd few that we do see out and about are inevitably the smaller breeds that you can fit in your handbag. We're still not sure if we found the night markets or not. Granted, we found market stalls, and it's clearly night-time, but we were expecting something...other. Also, Christa had heard they were underground. It's a wonder how many of these guys make any money, as sellers with like-wares tend to bunch together rather than attempt to carve out separate niches for themselves. You'll pass 15 stalls selling shoes, then a dozen selling ties, usually with the same prices and special offers. With little to pick between them, I just don't get it. Street food. Occasionally tempting, but this woman is selling silkworm pupae and what look like tiny snail shells. Since that is all she's selling, one can only wonder which are supposed to served in the cornets. I'm more your pineapple-on-a-stick kinda guy thanks. What's he doing here? Observe Christa, unaware that I'm playing with my camera, looking ever so slightly dopey as we wait for Kane and Eva to turn up as our meeting spot. They didn't. So went home.

Praise the lord for Chocolate Digestives

When 95% of the meals that you eat are variations on a theme, the odd occasion when something different does crop up means that no matter how full your stomach, you feel COMPELLED to continue eating just in case you don't get offered it again for a while. Yesterday they served us ham (read: Spam) and fried eggs (along with our rice, natch). I ended up eating four and a half eggs. Today I had three cartons of strawberry milk. It wasn't even that nice a brand of strawberry milk, it was artificial tasting and too sweet, yet for sheer novelty value alone, strawberry milk day still remains my second favorite day after chocolate milk day. Today we tried breakfast for the first time. We'd heard good things about the Monday breakfast - the kids don't get here until later so they do 'Western' style food for the teachers - meaning bacon and eggs, we were told. Course when I say bacon, it's really closer to Spam. Anyway, we must've got there too late, as although the menu advertised cereal, French toast and scrambled eggs, all that was left was the cereal. They did then bring out more toast, but, well, I ain't no expect on French toast, but this was just limp bread dipped in oil, so I don't know if that qualifies as ‘French’ or not. That said, I did eat three slices of the stuff with jam (cf. paragraph one: this doesn’t mean it was good). Then they brought out more eggs, but by the time I'd finished my bread the others had wolfed it all, the greedy swines. There weren't enough spoons so I had to wait until Emma was done with hers before I could get to my cornflakes, so of course they were way too soggy then. Oh, and even the pineapple juice managed to disappoint.. My Korean is still woeful, but I did recognize one of the few words I do know, 'u-yu', written on the side of the box. It means milk. Pineapple milk. Yum.

Things I'm missing most today

• Wholegrain food. I wouldn't mind eating rice every day if it was brown. But I have only ever been able to find white rice, white bread, and white pasta, none of which I usually touch at home. I need fibre! Perhaps we need to be taking some vitamin supplements. The food they give us isn't unhealthy, but it is light on fresh fruit and veg, unless one slice of tinned pineapple a day does it for you.

• The quaint English habit of saying 'excuse me' when you want to get passed someone; the custom here is to simply fix one eye on your target and then just shoulder-barge your way through without a word.

• Being able to keep books looking nice. Unless I keep the air-con on permenantly, the humidity causes anything made of paper to become damp and curl up in a matter of days. To keep them flat, I'm having to keep my drawing pad and scrapbook under my hotplate whenever I'm not using them.

• Stainless steel.

• The night sky. Here's it's permently shrouded by smog. I haven't seen the moon since we arrived. I haven't seen a single star.

• British 'wildlife'. The wasps we have at home are halmless compared to the critters here. I've been bitten again today (though again my fault as went hiking without repellent), and lat night we saw our first cockroach. It looked dead, so we were just about to give it a poke, as you do, when it suddenly and violently came back to life and fluttered its wings at us as we ran away.

I had hoped it might be octopi

Today's tea. Clockwise from top-left, we have: mini hamburger patties with rice cakes; omelette, a vegetable, radish kimchi, beansprout and cabbage soup; rice with cereal. Relative to our usual fare, this is not bad. They've been a bit Oliver Twist with the portions though. I dared go back for seconds and was blessed with a third hamburger and more omelette. Emma had words with one of the dinnerladies yesterday after they refused her request for a second ring of pineapple, so we've learned which ones to try and avoid now. The 'vegetable' is kinda spinachy, but greyer. The kimchi (the cold pickled very spicey stuff that is their National dish which I'm now describing for the very last time) was softer than it usually is. I like it crunchy meself. The soup was dull. Spicey yet bland, like a lot of the Korean food we've tried, there's no subtlety of flavour, it's just...spice. And the rice was rice.

Not so glorious food

Luckily there's not that much that I won't eat so I've been coping alright here so far, but there's certain things that I don't think I'm ever gonna be likely to be trying... This one is a pick-your-own, you see these tanks like these outside of all the local restaurants: Possibly I could cope with the fish, though they tend to serve it full of bones I think, and I wouldn't be surprised if they also left the head and/or scales on: I can't quite make out what this is supposed to be: Sometimes it's better not to know: Like when they serve us 'meat' soup. You just learn not to ask. Anyway, thank god, I've since found these, so rest assured I'll never be going hungry...