friday’s letters/5

dear buddah,
thank you for being born, and thank you korea for recognizing it as a national holiday and therefore taking off work. we’re heading out saturday morning on the motorbike and heading to a nearby island to go camping on the beach.

dear korea,
thank you for your amazing beaches that we can camp and build epically awesome bonfires on. we will be thoroughly enjoying it this weekend.

dear sister,
just saw the latest of your pregger photos. you have exceeded my expectations for not being on bed rest yet (she’s tiny at just 5’1″, i thought she’d be laid up by month 4!) AND my expectations of how cute we all said you’d be knocked up. can’t wait to hold my niece in august!

dear hubs,
i think it’s sexiest when you wake up early and make me breakfast. i won’t argue if you decide to do it more often.

dear motorbike,
i’m not thrilled about the idea of sitting on you for two hours tomorrow and you making my butt more sore than an hour of squats. please be nice.

dog gone it!

coming to korea i knew that there would be some interesting food to try and inevitably, food that i would want to steer clear of. shortly after arriving i knew that the traditional meal of boshintang, or dog meat soup, was one of the meals that i wanted to stay as far away from as i could. as you already know, the hub’s school is best at surprising him with mystery meat and food that makes your breakfast want to make a reappearance.

boshintang is a traditional korean meal dated back to the fourth century ad. a common practice with dog meat is to beat the dog to the edge of death before killing it. this is because it is believed that the adrenaline that the dog releases will produce a much more tender meat. currently, it is more common among the older generations and is being fazed out, as many younger people have never tried it. it is claimed to have many health benefits including high stamina for men. but that is also said about most other dishes in korea. hubs asked some people why they believe that it is so good for you and they answered that the dog is the closest animal to humans as far as interaction. so it would only make sense that it would be very healthy for us to eat….right?

me and hubs had talked previously about if we ever wanted to try the dog meat. i came to the conclusion that it would probably be disrespectful to vomit in a restaurant and he concluded that if someone were to take him, then he would try it. he got that opportunity this past week when his boss took him out for lunch.hubs said that after he ate it he got a stomach ache shortly after (seems to be the theme lately). i’m not sure if it was the food or the thought of the food that he just consumed. {something tells me they’re not taking these puppies to go live and play on a farm out in the country}

what’s the strangest food you’ve tried? if you were in a country with a strange traditional food, would you try it?

heart attack in a pan

if you know the hubs, you know that a)he’s a health freak and b) he LOVES the one day a week that he allows himself to eat ANYTHING. last weekend, he went to the extreme. he invited some of his students over for an epic meal time remake. lasagna complete with quarter pounders, big macs, french fries, bacon bits and cheese. this monstrosity topped out at over 7,000 calories and it was gone by the time i got home. it was a little hard to feel sorry for his inevitable upset stomach later that night.

friday’s letters/4

{this is one of my favorite kindi students…chocolate. whenever i asked him what was on his shirt he would get really excited and yell “it’s SUNNY!” oh and timmy is behind him trying in any way possible to get in the photo}

dear boss,
thank you for surprising me by switching my schedule. a four hour workday on friday kind of rocks.

dear doctor,
i know that you were trying to talk about tissue survival rate or something (i kind of zoned out) but i couldn’t help but laugh when you mistakenly said “your survival rate is 30-50%”.

dear middle school students,
i know you don’t think i’m funny but thank you for laughing at my cheesy jokes anyway. takes the stress of being a teacher away.

dear mogis,
i know i taste good to you but can you please leave me alone and possibly bug the hubs for awhile? i’m starting to get stares in class from scratching so much.

dear kindi student parents,
please stop changing your kid’s names. a)it’s already hard enough to memorize the names of the 200+ students that i have and b)when you change their names to genius, strawberry and storious, it’s hard for me to keep a straight face during class.

this is personal

i was down right ganged up on the other night by mogis. they hide in our apartment all day and then come out to feast as soon as they know we’re asleep. i have over 25 bites on my body and 13 of those are just on my back alone (i’m starting to look like i have the chicken pox). and there lies hubs RIGHT NEXT TO ME and he only gets two bites. there should be a place where i can file  formal complaint about this. we even have the plug in mogi repellents but they just hover around them. i’m beginning to think that we read the label wrong that they attract them for whatever reason. even though he rarely gets bit, hubs is just as fed up with this as i am. he called me the other day to say that he bought a net for our bed and two nets for our doors. this is war.

green machine

is it just me or does a spinach smoothie sound like just about the least appealing thing out there? i’ve been against them for a long time but have begun to see numerous posts about this drink and was actually convinced this past week to try it by a friend that swears by them. not only is spinach packed with vitamins to make your skin, nails and hair healthy but it also is:

• fat free, cholesterol free, low in calories, and very low in sodium
• an excellent source of vitamin A, C, K, iron, fiber, folate, and lutein
• Leutin is an antioxidant that promotes good eye health, and may help prevent cancer of the liver, ovaries, colon and prostate, and even dementia.
• Dole lab tests found spinach juice has twice the chlorophyl, eight times the calcium, six times the magnesium, 10 times the potassium, 15 times the vitamin C and 43 times the vitamin A of wheatgrass juice

*facts taken from iowagirleats.com

there’s many different recipes that you can use and my friends recommends the book: The Green Smoothie Diet by Robyn Openshaw for additional recipes.
the one that i made is simple and includes:

1 banana
few slices of pineapple
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon peanut butter
then, i filled the rest of the blender full of baby spinach and blend!

it’s really simple and quick to make for a meal and i swear it tastes just like a banana peanut butter smoothie!

i’m now 40 years old

while we were in seoul, the hubs and i made a startling and somewhat disturbing realization. while we were getting ready in our hotel, jeremy decided to turn on mtv to listen to some music. that’s when it hit us. we feel like we’re 40 year olds. we had no idea who the artists were that were singing and had never heard any of the songs before. i never realized when we moved overseas that we would be so far out of the pop culture loop in the states.