With another 3 weeks gone it is time for a new tale from the land of Kimchi eaters. Big mistake that I haven't described this traditional Korean side dish before because it is eaten with every single meal here. And yes it is served to food from all cuisines. It is cabbage soaked in a red chili sauce and then stored for God knows how long until it reaches perfection = starts to ferment! For the first many weeks I munched this side dish whenever it was available as I love spicy food. But this over intake of spice food and especially kimchi killed my stomach. For the last couple of weeks I have been blessed with painful heartburns whenever I have eaten. It finally got so bad I dragged myself to the doctor and got a ton of pills to soothe my stomach. But one thing is for sure, if you are not broad up on kimchi, you should NOT eat it.

Because it is such a big part of the meals here our work makes it for the old folk's home every year and off course Victoria and I volunteered for this. So Tuesday the 22nd of December my entire department ventured down to the old folks home to make kimchi. It was fun to try and make it and it felt good to give something back to their community.

Next day after work, I met up with Emily to check out another major shopping area called Dongdaemun. It consist of different enormous shopping centers catered for the young and trendy aka Emily and I. Around 11pm it changes character and becomes more of a wholesale market where shop owners come and do their bargains. They then leave early in the morning to go back to their own shops and sells the newly bought goods. It is huge, and with the few hours Emily and I had for our disposal we have to go back, making it a whole day thing, because the shopping was great.

This year was my first Christmas away for Denmark. This was made even weirder by the fact that my family doesn't celebrate Christmas at home at all. They spent the entire evening and night at church. In most families Christmas is not a big thing and has been more adopted as a commercial thing by the shops. Christmas Eve was spent with my fellow interns at a restaurant in the Western neighborhood Itaewon. We had a 5-course dinner, starting with oysters in 3 variations, shrimp paste soup, chicken stuffed with ratatouille, tenderloin and for dessert chocolate bread pudding with fruit and cheese. Matt, another intern, had been looking so much forward to the cheese, but when we got our plates the cheese was close to non-existing. Cheese cannot be tasted properly if it is under 1 cm2! After the dinner Emily, Peter and I decided Christmas wasn't over yet, so we went downtown to check out the bars and clubs. Around 3.30 AM I found myself with my head deep in my family's fridge, trying to find something that could be acceptable as a night snack. I ended with a peanut butter sandwich and some Marabou with Daim!

Christmas day was my turn to rock the kitchen. After going to the movies and watch Avatar with my two "sisters" I cooked a close-to-traditional Danish Christmas dinner. We had pork strips, which was kind of a fusion between bacon and roasted pork. To go with that I made oven roasted root vegetables and a fresh red cabbage salad. I was not to be deprived of my beloved ris'ala'mande and with my mom being so dear, having sent me the cherry sauce, I made a delicious version of ris'ala'mande. Because my "parents" own the bakery and it is tradition for their Christmas, they brought home a layer cake for dessert as well. Or it was more their Christmas present to me, wishing me a good life, good job and most importantly a good man. Yee thanks… just love boring layer cake and could we please cut out the whole thing with me and a good man!

That same night I woke up with excruciating stomach pains and nausea, but I wrote it off as me not being able to control my massive intake of food, cake, candy, nachos etc the previous day. Next morning was departure day for the long awaited snowboard trip with Emily and her family. Still rather nauseas I fought my way to the subway to meet them. Luckily, Emily felt as bad as I so for the 2 hours we drove, we just stared out the window trying to suppress any uncomfortableness. Without any accidents we arrived at Vivaldi, an amazing resort with everything your heart desires. One thing Koreans do well is to make sure everything is within reachable distance, making the level of comfort really high. After some lunch, which for me consisted of 2 noodles and a nap, we hit the slopes for some night snowboarding. This being my first time snowboarding, combined with massive stomach aches and nausea, I did pretty well. I couldn't get up on my own as it required too much pressure on my stomach and too much effort so Emily volunteered to help every single time - very grateful of that Emily. After some hours on the slopes we decided we were too cold, tired and sick to continue. At 10 pm there were some great fireworks and we had the best view from our apartment as the balcony faced all the slopes. Awesome is the first word that comes to mind.
After a long, painful night and a relieving shout down the toilet we were ready for day 2 on the slopes. Feeling somewhat better, I found my own awkward technique to get up without Emily's help. It wasn't pretty but it worked! We had some good hours on the slopes, but the cold gets you in the end.
That night we felt like we could eat just a bit, so we went out with the whole family, consisting of mum and dad and two boys at the age of 4 and 9. Mom and dad wanted some twosomeness so Emily and I took the boys on the merry-go-round, the bumper cars and everything else we could find. After finishing 5 liters of beer and us being feed-up with playing nannies, we went to a karaoke room and here we brought in our a-game. Or so we thought. In the car back to Seoul, we watched the filmed the dad had made of us singing. No word describes how this sounded, but one thing is for sure: two male cats, fighting, sounds a 1000 times better than we did!
While at the ski resort, the one txt after the other popped up, asking if we felt as miserable as the other interns. We could only concur to this and we all agreed it was the raw not-so-fresh oyster that caused this food poisoning.

Tuesday the 29th of December was the annual Christmas Party for the entire SK Holdings. The party was held at our hotel Walkerhill. Everyone had to be dressed in red, if you weren't; you were to skull a huge bowl of rice wine, which is actually quite tasty. But I wore a cute headband with two red hearts on the top (though they looked more like the stumps of a reindeers' horns). The dinner was a standing buffet, but no one really understood that, so at first I was busy tasting every dessert I could. Then I found out this was the dinner and then I attacked the buffet for real. My goal was to try every single thing (at least the ones looking delicious). Continuing to go back to the buffet for more and coming back mostly with dessert was a big amusement for the other females of my department. Come on girls, I go to the gym every f…ing morning, I can have as much food and dessert as I like without you judging me! My male mentor encouraged me to take more and more so I found some support there, but it is so true what they say: women are each other's worst enemy!

New Years Eve day I was working… sucked! For dinner all interns met at a restaurant in Gangnam area. I can't even remember what we had for dinner, and this was not because too much alcohol was involved. Quite contrary, I was home before 12! So I jumped into the New Year from my bed, wishing myself a Happy New Year. Does that bring bad luck for the New Year? Sure don't hope so, I could use a good year! But us interns promised each other that we would make up for it the next night. New Years Day 6 interns and one boyfriend went to Busan, which is the second biggest city in Korea, located by the sea south of Seoul. We took the KTX there, which for maybe 10 minutes reaches 300 km/hr. After checking into our hotel, where I had my own bed yaahoooo, we went to the big fish market in the pursuit of sashimi. But not everyone was so keen on seafood after the food poisoning caused by the oysters Christmas Eve. So we went to a little restaurant where some (Me and Emily) could get their crave for raw fish satisfied and other could get their crave for pork cutlets satisfied! After dinner we went to a karaoke room and here there was no mercy - everyone had to sing. It was one of the best nights so far in Korea; everyone sang, danced and drank for two hours like no tomorrow. Next day, we were up at 8 AM, not wasting one minute of our time in Busan. Oh yes, I have finally found someone who share my passion for getting up early and then go straight for breakfast (not like you some other girls I have travelled with :-)). We toured around different areas of Busan, sightseeing temples, fortresses, public play/gym grounds for old people, different bars at night time etc. Have you ever had draft beer with a shot of Galliano in it? Highly recommendable, it is yummy nectar.
The third day we went to the most famous beach in Korea - Haeundae beach. It was very beautiful and warm, that is just around freezing point. We were so into the beach that we forgot time and we had to run for our train back to Seoul, but we made it. But the ice lump stayed in my throat for the remainder of the day.

Back in Seoul, I thought I show the pictures from the trip to the two girls and also some from Australia. After that I taught the youngest girl as well, so I felt I did really well that evening but oh no was I wrong. Just as I was about to head to bed the mother asked me to come and talk with her. Then she started saying how she didn't feel I spent enough time with the girls, she didn't feel I fulfilled my part of the deal with the 4 hours of teaching. And she felt I had been so busy for the entire time I had been there etc etc. But those of you, who know me, know that I will not accept being criticized unfairly. So for about an hour we discussed back and forth, I think the outcome was that I hadn't really done anything wrong because we had gotten different information about what the home stay entails for both parties. But you never know what Koreans think and feel, they will say everything is okay and put on a happy face, while they are actually quite mad, sad or whatever. I think her being dissatisfied was more her being sad because I cancelled I dinner she had planned on the 26th of Dec in order to make me happy again, because I rather wanted to go snowboarding. I tried to explain them that I am here for me and only me. Yes, me living with them requires me to socialize with them and teach the girls English for 4 hours a week, this including actual teaching as well as any interaction that involves them speaking English, but I will not compromise the things I want to do, to please them!
But last week I have tried to be more social in the week day evenings and will continue, even though it is killing me. I don't mean it so literally, but I'm ever so happy that I have less than 6 weeks left in Korea. Especially the situation with me not having my own room is spoiling my sleep and my eyes are getting more and more swollen from the lack of proper sleep.
But I will not let the family situation and their feelings of me letting them down, spoil my weekends. Friday, Saturday and Sunday day are mine and I don't care if this upsets the family. They are actually not required to feed me in the weekend, thus I don't feel I'm required to spend it with them!

The weekend that has just passed, I spent at a Buddhist temple doing a so called temple stay. One of the other girls, Emillie, was asked to do it for a Korean TV station as a part of a series about foreign women in Seoul, embarking on the cultural experiences Seoul has to offer. She then asked if her female friends could join, so Emily and I joined in on the stay. So from Saturday midday to Sunday early afternoon we lived as monks with 2-3 cameras following our every move. We even had to do little diary comments ala big brother style. I will write a separate blog about the experience, since it is part of the deal with the TV station. When/if the show goes live it will also be online, so yes I will post a link to it on FB.