i’ve been listening to this all day.

i’m pretty sure ben has crushes on all the girls, but they’re all so pretty i can’t really blame him!

ben and i have talked about it and we’ve come to the decision that…

if we’re ever jobless with no future prospects for gainful employment, we’re going to open a chain of sbarro pizzas in korea. it’s our fallback’s fallback (’s fallback’s fallback…).

because korean people love american mall food! it’s insane! auntie anne’s and gloria jeans always have long lines here.

we’d open the first storefront in sinchon (lots of drunk people) and the next in gangnam (because that’s usually the order of places in which new chains open in seoul). we would only do carry-out through a window onto the sidewalk so we wouldn’t have to clean up anyone’s garbage and vomit… maybe have a few industrial size garbage cans outside the window (not that people would use them anyway).

so far, we see no flaws in this business plan, and it only took us 5 minutes to construct!

sunday morning chats are the best.

i’m going to force ben to try vienna sausage. he might resist.

i am absolutely certain that i have the sweetest, most considerate friends in the universe.

i came home from a long day at work last week to find a note on my mailbox saying that there was a package for me in the office of our apartment. because my birthday is approaching, i wasn’t terribly surprised. i assumed it was a package that my parents said they had recently mailed. i didn’t even look to see who it was from when i retrieved it from the office. i rode the elevator up to my apartment, dropped the box on my coffee table and went to unload my bag from the day.

when i finally had a minute, i went to open the box only to recognize that the handwriting on it was not my parents… it was from california. two girls who i adore/admire/love/miss dearly had carefully pieced together one of the nicest packages. i mean, who else would mail me SILK SOY MILK from america?

(on a side note, i had a dream about silk a few months ago. i dreamt that i bought a quart of it and chugged it straight from the carton. that was it. that was my dream. short and sweet.)

there was also some tasty and much needed coffee beans that naerim picked up from brooklyn, macaroni and cheese (i was just whining to ben the other day about how much i was craving mac and cheese!), dried fruit, and many other snacks (including little tins of vienna sausage which sus and i laughed about this summer when we both found out our moms fed them to us as children… what is it about canned meats and korean mothers?). as usual, the box was topped of with a beautiful homemade card from sus.

these girls know me.

so, thank you, thank you, thank you, girls! your package made my month and makes me miss you both more than ever!!

i posted on both blogs today! i’m on a roll.

this weekend flew by.

warm spring weather. beautiful cherry blossoms. wonderful friends. lots of snacks. it was so good.

did i mention our food blog is up and running? posting has been slow, but we’re starting to get the hang of it and will start posting on a more regular basis (which will probably mean this blog will get even less attention from me… ha!). you can check it out here.

and i’ll leave you with this.

happy sunday!

this is the last one, i promise!

i know my last few posts have been mostly videos, which can get very old… but i have to share just one more! this is the song i’ll be teaching to my 5th graders starting next week. they’ve just finished up a couple of lessons on the days of the week and this is how i plan on wrapping it all up.

i’m pretty sure they’re going to go nuts over it (especially since the last song i taught them was sung by barney and they went crazy for it. they still ask to sing it all the time.). this one is waaaaaay better!

검정치마

went to go to see the black skirts on sunday night with ben and kim and her cousin. we went to the 생선 아저씨 for dinner first before heading to 홍대 to see the show. i enjoyed 2 out of 4 of the opening bands and really liked 검정치마. overall it was a pretty wonderful way to end the weekend.

제니스 and 연두

Yesterday after Ben and I hiked up 인왕산, we spent some time walking around 북촌 and 삼청동. While we walked around, we spotted a store with a familiar name:

(that’s my name in Korean)

Maybe 10 minutes later, Ben spotted another store that shared a name with my dad:

My dad’s name actually means ‘yellow green’ in Korean, so seeing a store with the same name probably isn’t too far-fetched. On the other hand, my name isn’t even Korean, so the chances of seeing it as a store name in Korea (with the same spelling) is crazy!

It made my afternoon!

here we go…

1. Someone mentioned to me recently that all of my pictures on flickr were of food. I never noticed this before and am mildly embarressed. For the record, I do have a life outside of food and I don’t sit around all day eating (although if I had my druthers…).

2. Tomorrow is 설날, or the Lunar New Year. The last time I was in Korea, I went to my uncle’s home in 공주, and we spent most of the holiday doing some graveside maintenance and a whole lot of bowing. This year, Ben and I will be staying in Seoul. Ben has the day off (first holiday he doesn’t have to work!), and we plan on eating a lot of 떡국 and doing some hiking. It feels really good to have a long weekend where we can both just relax without the following work week looming over our heads.

3.  We celebrated our 6 month wedding anniversary last week! 6 months may not seem like a long time, but we’re both shocked that it’s flown by so quickly. Niether of us are huge gift givers, and we decided that for this and future anniversary celebrations, we would treat ourselves to a fancy dinner instead of buying each other presents. We shared a delicious dinner at Sokran, a Korean restaurant in Sinchon. Of course I documented the meal. It took me longer than normal to upload the photos onto Flickr because I wanted to type out the Korean names of the dishes we ate. Unfortunately, my keyboard does not have the Korean characters on them, and I’ve been trying to memorize where each key is but it’s taking me a while. And although I think I’m getting better, it’s a slow, slow process.

4. I finished teaching winter camp! Back to school on February 2.

5. I love any candy that gummy, fruity and sour. There was a gummy in Japan that I really loved called “Pure.” I just found them at 현대백화점 this afternoon. I don’t think I really need to say any more.

6. I was going to write a long post about our trip to Japan, but Ben has done a really wonderful job chronicling the whole experience. He’s only on day two, but it’s a seriously beautiful read.

26 things to do before i’m 27

(Okay, so my birthday is in April. Seeing how that’s only 4 short months away, I’m actually going to give myself as much of 2009 as I need to accomplish these things. I know it’s cheating, but one of my resolutions this year is to be nicer to myself. So there.)

1. Conquer my fear of yeast. I will bake bread. I will bake bread. I will bake bread…

2. Put together a photo book using photos I’ve been taking and collecting for years.

3. Write more consistently in my journal.

4. Get some real use out of my sewing machine… I might need some help on this one (Sujan?).

5a. Re-learn how to knit and become good at it.

5b. Learn to knit something more than just a crooked rectangle.

6. Launch the food blog and keep it updated.

7. Buy a road bike. I love my cruiser (made by Earlboots!), but I think I’m ready for an upgrade… but not quite ready for a fixy.

8. Become a better photographer. We bought a nice digital SLR last year and I’m slowly learning. If possible, I’d also like to re-learn how to develop photos from film, but that might be stretching it.

9a. Backpack (and eat my way) through Southeast Asia.

9b. Eat chicken rice and chilli crab in Singapore.

10. Start running regularly. I come from a family of marathon runners. I’d like to join them some day.

11a. Throw away all the old make-up I never use.

11b. Stop buying make-up I’ll never use.

12. Stop checking my email constantly throughout the day… especially when I just checked it 5 minutes ago and know, for certain, that no one has sent me anything.

13. Get better at writing cards and letters to friends and family. Ben is really great at doing this and I’d like to start doing it as well.

14. Stop picking at my hair. I’ve been doing this since I was in junior high school. It’s something I used to do when I was stressed. Now, it’s just something I do all the time. I’m going to be bald soon if I don’t stop.

15. Cook more. I used to cook all the time when we lived in America. I loved it. It relaxed me. But for whatever reason, ever since moving to Korea, I’ve only cooked minimally. I’m ready to get back in the game.

16. Bake more. See above (I love to bake even more than I love to cook). Except, we don’t have an oven in Korea. This might have to wait until I get back to America. I. cannot. wait.

17. Hike all the mountains in Seoul. There are a lot… it’s a good thing I like hiking.

18. Cut back on my coffee intake. I’ve already started. It’s going well.

19. Make sure everyone I love knows I love them. This is cheesey/precious/corny/lame, but I’m going to do it anyway.

20. Post regularly here. I am horrible at this.

21. Go see a movie by myself. For some reason, I’ve always wanted to do this but never have… I’m not sure why. I like doing things by myself (eating, shopping, etc) so this shouldn’t be a problem.

22. Start making homemade yogurt and granola. They both tastes so much better when they’re homemade!

23. Start buying and mailing gifts sooner so they are not weeks late. This is beginning to be a real problem.

24. Get my planner organized to include holidays, anniversaries, and birthdays because God knows I can’t remember dates to save my life.

25. Write a post about my wedding! Overdue.

26. Work on more art. My mother and brother are naturally gifted artists and, back in the day, I used to love drawing and painting. I’d like to pick it back up and try to improve. We’ll see where it goes.