Pancakes!

So tonight for dinner I made this:

It's supposed to be 김치전, a korean kimchi pancake, but since korean baking powder seems to be especially hyperactive, it looked more like an american pancake with kimchi inside. It was very easy to make:

That's flour, milk, agave nectar, kimchi, kimchi juice, an egg, water, and some baking powder. Here you can buy a flour mix specifically designed for making these kinds of things but I already had the regular flour.
You should always make a "nibble" pancake to see if your batter is properly seasoned. Also because your first pancake usually turns out funny-looking. I learned that from Liv:

The real reason this was my dinner is because I'm trying to use up the kimchi my aunt gave me:

I swear, after two months I barely made a dent in this thing. Plus I had to stop my aunt from giving me more. She was convinced I would run out in a week. I didn't have the heart to tell her she gave me more kimchi than I usually eat in a year.

Also, last weekend I made real pancakes, and I've had pancake-brain ever since. (Yes, that's a real ailment. Look it up.)

Apparently if you live in a country that considers December a summer month you would call these "pikelets"...
효천 brought tapioca balls and milk tea mix from Taiwan and made us bubble tea. After eating we spent the afternoon discussing politics and the economy:

Yup, serious topics. In no way did we engage in any behavior that might be illegal if performed out in public or talk about subjects unsuitable for children under 16.

Yonsei on Fire

Walking home from lunch (maybe around 2:45-ish?) we saw a whole bunch of people and perhaps 서대문구's entire fire-fighting unit crowded around a building near Yonsei's main gate:

By the smell of it, something chemical-ish was burning. Also, this poor man was hanging out the window:

When we first saw him he was so still we wondered if he had passed out. Luckily he was just trying to avoid inhaling too much smoke. He was rescued shortly:

According to YTN (the first time I could read a news article in Korean without wanting to pull my hair out, whee!) the fire started in a semiconductor lab at around 8:30 am. I sincerely hope that poor man wasn't hanging out the window for 6 hours...
The damage looks quite bad, but seeing as this is Korea, I wouldn't be surprised if the lab is up and running by Friday.


It was merely two weeks ago that Seoul had a "heat wave" and I was running at the track wearing short sleeves in 65 degree weather. This morning I walked outside and saw this:

The campus was beautiful today:

Street Food #5

Scratch anything I've ever said about other kinds of 호떡. THIS is it. Made with corn flour and fried until crispy, I can't believe four months have gone by before trying this. Gah. Must make up for lost time...

갈피 cafe

On the second floor of this Insadong cafe the waiters have to hunch down. I'm waiting to see if somebody will sit in that empty seat. I'm pretty sure even my head would hit the ceiling there. I've had a nasty cold so I haven't been able to play proper tour guide to my brother, who will be my dining companion for the next 2 weeks. Yesterday we hung out with family and today I'm catching up on homework...

Accountability

I rarely make new year's resolutions, but this year I thought "hey, maybe I should work out more."
I WANT to say that I was among those who gleefully skated around in Gwanghwamun's outdoor skating rink. (Less than a dollar for an hour session, which includes skate rental. Are you kidding me?)



But instead, I went and did this:




I had two accomplices, before you fall over in shock (or just merely shake your head, for those of you who know me well...) But when I come back home and look a little, uh, different, you'll know why...

How you know when Yonsei students are REALLY mad...

Vocab lessons...

It is really cold here. I don't think I can say it enough. My brief time back at home came with a nearly daily warning of "you know it's really really really cold in Korea, right?" from either one (and sometimes both) of my parents. It got to the point where I thought that maybe they were secretly telling me not to come back. But they weren't kidding. I've been doing a lot of mental math lately, converting things between good old F and C, since NEGATIVE 20 degrees just sounds really scary. (That's C, and yes, I know you east coasters all think I'm a wimp, but have mercy, I grew up in a place where the winter low was 40F.) At any rate, let's just say I'm adjusting. Like today, when I quickly realized I should NOT call the landlady and tell her my fridge is broken, it just FEELS warm inside because it IS warmer than outside...

I was a little worried that I would regress back to my pre-Yonsei speaking ability, having spoken mostly English over the holidays. But things have come back pretty quickly and I'm recognizing more words on TV thanks to the fact that they've coincidentally popped up in class. It's like when you buy a blue Honda Civic and then suddenly you start noticing all the other blue Honda Civics in your town. Actually, I think every other person in San Francisco DOES own a blue Honda Civic (and then some...there's my brother's in Atlanta, and Gwynna's in Seattle, and the list goes on and on) but still, it's exciting. Anyways, now I can say things like "I enrolled in the German club when I was in high school. There was no membership fee." Or "According to research reports, hiking is a popular hobby in Korea." Next week I'll learn how to say "I am your neighbor who recently moved in. Please, try some of this rice cake I prepared." I'm not sure how well that will go over though, because everybody in my building is Japanese - some don't speak Korean (lots of smiling and nodding) and the one girl I talked to seemed utterly confused. I'm not sure if it was because she couldn't believe that I like to cook every day, or if she didn't understand exactly what I was saying.

I also learned the word for "cartilage" (연골) which has been helpful because it's very awkward telling people you wrote your dissertation on "that stuff that is not INSIDE the bones in your back but is on top of and underneath those bones." Last semester I tried to tell my teacher I studied the intervertebral disc using the word that popped up in my electronic dictionary (추간판) but she circled the word in red and said "what is this? I don't know what this is!" So it made me wonder if she actually didn't know what it was, or if my dictionary is just totally wrong. My dictionary DOES have a sense of humor, since it regularly throws out phrases like "vagabond journey" or "filial piety"...but I wonder. Is it silly of me to assume people know what an intervertebral disc is?? Granted, my sample population is incredibly skewed, seeing as two of my friends have had herniated discs, I spent the last 7 years in the company of fellow bioengineering nerds, and taught several semesters of anatomy to nursing students, who HAD to learn what an intervertebral disc is. But I'm curious if it is one of these scenarios:

a) Many Koreans just don't know the word for "intervertebral disc"
b) Many people, not just Koreans, don't know the word for "intervertebral disc"
c) I just assume most people know what an intervertebral disc is because when I describe my research, they all say "Oh! Great! Mine are all broken, fix them soon!"
c) I just assume most people know what an intervertebral disc is because of the smiling and nodding (which now, I realize, in no way implies understanding/comprehension, being guilty of this habit myself)

I have half a mind to take out an ad like those ones in the back of magazines where it asks "Can you draw this?" and shows a picture of a pig wearing a hat. Except mine would look like this:

Do you know what the white thing is called? It's the thing between the bones in your back.

This is what happens when it is so cold you'd rather sit inside and let your thoughts run away instead of going outside where your face will likely freeze off. Help me!