Good Cheesy Fun

The weeks continue to go by faster and faster. We've only 3 months left on our contracts, but it feels like much less because of all the revving we're doing in preparation for our Summer escapades, and we're already starting to think about where to start in South East Asia after it's all said and done. Partly in an effort to conserve money, and in part because it's too hot to do much else, we had a slow and easy weekend.



Friday I met Ryan and Shannon in Seomyeon for a short soju tent time. Brian was out with the teachers from his school, so it was just the three of us, but I think the ajuma who ran that tent could be considered part of our party because she did hand feed us some of her wares. I suppose she thought she was showing these strange foreigners how to go about eating the food on our table. I can't assume to know what was in her mind, but I can report her actions. She came over after delivering some cucumber sticks with a yummy sauce called duenjang (pronounced dwen jang). She picked up a cuke, dunked it in the sauce, and then came for my face with it, and I duley opened up. Next one for Ryan, and last, but certainly with just as much care, one for Shannon. This is actually pretty common; about every other day some kid comes up to me at school with a grimy fist full of love wanting me to open up for them to put some food in my mouth. I usually take it in my hand first, just in case. Korean kids aren't devious like students at home. I can imagine some American 6th grader trying to put a piece of chocolate that'd freshly met with a bathroom floor in a teacher's mouth, with full malicious intent. But what do I really know about American 6th graders?



Saturday David came over in the morning for some nutritional yeast gravey. If you're a meat eater and that sentence disgusted you, you really should give it a try. It tastes like a cheese sauce fit to please any T-bone muncher's palate. Just ask David. After the compulsory Super Laggis Brothers gaming, we took off for Haeundae.



On the way we found one of Busan's great Summer offerings - beverage promotions. This one was a giant can of Cass, one brand of the ubiquitous budweiser-esque lagers of Korea. I don't mind the darts promotions, those are fun, but I'm particularly partial to the spin the wheel variety. I spun and got a glass of Cass Lemon, somewhat like Tequiza. Brian got a whole can, and David won a glass of light. A great welcome to the beach it was. That night David, Brian, Will and I caroused in Kyungsungdae for a bit, but we all turned in fairly early. That gave us plenty of time for cheese making on Sunday! We'd tried before in Korea, with mixed results. But this time we were success! Yummy fresh mozzarella was ours! At home we'd made cheese with 2% milk, and it was a long time ago, but it seems to me that the whole milk we used here yielded a lot more cheese for the same amount of milk.
What with a bowl full of fresh cheese, we decided for pizza and movie night. Here's what our cheese turned into. This may not look so special to Western eyes, but keep in mind we eat rice for every meal and those bottles of beer on the table are not sold in Korea. Maybe with this cheese block we can start bulking up our dairy intake to prepare for Mongolia. I read that in the Summer months the nomads there subsist on what translates to "white foods", meaning milk, cream, cheese, yogurt, and dried cheese curds, as well as fermented mares' milk. These come from yaks, sheep, horses, goats, and maybe cows, but I'm not sure. I am sure that until we made that cheese our diet for the past 9 months has contained less than 1% dairy and I hope all my lacto-digesting parts and critters are still fully functional.



Speaking of Mongolia, we've just bought our tickets (we used Ken at Unique Travel in Pusan who speaks perfect English and finds flights 200,000 won cheaper than we or the competition can; uniquetravel@korea.com) and we're getting the final plan ironed out. Shannon, Ryan, Brian and I are leaving Busan August 8th on a flight to Beijing. We'll have 2 and a half days there to see the city and the Great Wall and hopefully catch a Shaolin Monk Kung-Fu performance. Then we're flying to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, on the 11th. Which means that we've got from the 12th-27th, 16 days, 15 nights, to see all that we can see of Mongolia. We're hiring a guide and jeep through Nomadic Adventures (ganerdene_y@hotmail.com) for the duration, and we're going to the Gobi, Central and Northern Mongolia. We're still working out the itenerary, but whatever happens, it's going to be slack-jaw-amazing.