The projects: Part 1

One of the most wonderful (and obvious) things about growing a big garden is gathering a big harvest. But sometimes, all of that harvest is ready at once. That`s what happened with our radishes.  Until now we had rarely eaten them in any form other than salad however, so we had to dig a little to use up the bounty that you see above.

Luckily, one of our recent projects is trying to create a website.  And when I say we, I mean Brian is learning a lot and working hard to create an amazing site and I am playing with a camera, working on my food photography game.  It turns out that it`s really easy to take lovely pictures of the fantastic vistas/architecture/art/street-scapes that you come across while travelling.  It takes a bit more wrangling when it comes to pictures of food or other small-ish, indoor projects.  It`s tough to make fluorescent lighting look good, but project time for me tends to be at night so my most major breakthrough was taking pictures by day with natural light.

This is the convergence of radish bounty, website creation, and photography game-upping that created the perfect storm such that we made yummy eats AND there are pictures to show and tell!

First, Brian made this simple and delicious radish and cream soup.





Our next project attempted to use all those radish greens and the preserved lemons we had in the fridge. I made those on a whim and am ever after looking for an opening to use them.  So we made radish top pesto!

And our final pictured project (we also made pickles, but forgot to picture them) we made a sweet and spicy radish chow-chow.  Brian, being a true southerner from a long line of southerners grew up on his grandmothers` chow-chows.  I had never actually tried the stuff.  But I can now tell those of you who, eyebrows raised, are wondering what chow-chow  is that it is delicious and you should get some soon.  It`s like a sweet and spicy relish, often made with fruit - pear is a favorite.  But it`s pretty amazing with radish.  We canned a few jars of this and kept one for immediate eating.  Now, I initially wanted to cut that pile-o-sugar in half, but Brian dissuaded me and he`s right.  Chow-chow is meant to be sweet and spicy.  When in doubt, add more wasabi.  

Next time I`ll show you our garlic braid!  I am VERY excited about the garlic braid!  Til then, you can find the recipes that we used at food52.com.  Here are the links!

Radish Soup

http://www.food52.com/recipes/6634_rustic_radish_soup
Radish Top Pesto
http://www.food52.com/recipes/17651_spring_pesto_with_roasted_radish_mint_and_preserved_lemon
Radish Chow Chow
http://www.food.com/recipe/rosy-radish-relish-241334
Pickled Radishes
http://www.motherearthnews.com/small-farm-chronicles/quick-pickled-radishes.aspx

Celebrating - the end of the garden, Halloween, and friends

The past month or so time`s been disappearing like a 10 year old`s Halloween stash. Partly because we`ve been a bit busy (by our admittedly, rather lax standards)and largely because there`s a certain date looming large in our near future. The countdown to our first return home in about a year and a half is on. And we`ll be home for Christmas no less! Exactly one month from today!

Our days have been filled with winterizing the garden, preserving the bumper crop, brewing pumpkin beer, making cheese and use-up-all-the-scraps muffins, enjoying the last bit of biking around the city before the snow makes pedestrians of us for the next 6 months or so, library books, permaculture, Halloween, writing for a food column for an online expat magazine, friends, banjo/guitar and most recently, decorating for Christmas. I know that last one is a bit sacrilegiously early, but because we`re leaving Japan on December 14th it seemed like only two weeks was too short for decorations.

The garden got a complete overhaul for next year. We`re still getting the fall/winter crops, but the summer plants went out with a bang. We`ve still got a couple of garden tomatoes reddening up inside even now. But with such a late bounty, we decided to try our hand at canning. We did everything pickles, tomato sauce, pickled jalapenos, habanero jelly, and habanero hot sauce (the habanero bush was prolific). Along similar lines, ever since we started brewing beer I`ve been trying to find good ways to use all those spent grains. Composting is the obvious choice. Soap worked out pretty well. Granola was ok. But the winner by a long shot has been muffins. And recently, I`ve been trying to make said muffins even more recycled. So when my friend Kelly and I made a batch of mozzarella, I saved the whey and used it as the liquid in the muffins. And though it`s not recycling, Brian and I foraged some fresh rose hips from beside the river and threw those in the mix. They`re so beautiful and taste a bit like cranberries, though not as sour. Here`s a glimpse.

Then came Halloween. Last year Halloween was a pretty low key affair at school. But this year I leveled up. When we moved in to our apartment last year, we found an inexplicable bag full of costumes. Masks, wigs, weird hats and horns, a sword, a gladiator`s vest... you get the idea. So this year, I`ve got a class of only 7 girls, and the teacher is about to retire, so it`s pretty easy to talk everyone into doing fun activities. On Halloween I took all the costumes to school, along with a pumpkin and a bunch of apples. I wasn`t sure how well the costumes would be received, being that Japanese students are typically quite reserved. It was awesome. The girls kept trying out different combinations of awkward bits of costumes together. They were completely taken in by the jack-o-lantern and roasting pumpkin seeds, and they even gave bobbing for apples a respectable go. I`m plotting bigger and better things for next year.

This past weekend, our friends Saga and Sanae invited Nat and Kelly, Brian and I over for a sushi dinner. Saga`s superior at work used to be a sushi chef (no small feat in Japan - one must make rice for a number of years before even being allowed to touch fish), so we all chipped in for a beautiful selection of fish, got a feast, and even a lesson. It was delicious and hilarious. We promised to make western food for all of them when we get back from the States. Food exchange. Brilliant.

Daisetsuzan

Fall`s come to Hokkaido. There`s that undercurrent of Fall excitement that only comes when the oppressive Summer humidity finally rolls away like some fat bully finished steam-rolling us all and we can finally breath again. The crispness and the cool and the electric blue sky and the smell of leaves all point to Fall. But we`re discovering that in Hokkaido there are heretofore never experienced Fall happenings that welcome the season. Strange and wonderful things pop up at every turn. Like the happy discovery that there is a national holiday on the Equinox - brilliant. And in the farmer`s market where we always buy our produce the price of fruit has plummeted (pinch me, I`m dreaming!), pumpkins and squashes fill the floor space, and there are beautiful, common vegetables that are uncommonly purple. I`d never seen a purple bell pepper before, but there it was, glowingly eggplant-purple in it`s basket as if nothing was wonderful about it at all. As if bell peppers had always been purple in the Fall. Potatoes too. I had seen purple potatoes, but not this purple. They have the usual purple veggies like cabbage and onions, eggplants. But there`s also purple cauliflower, purple asparagus, purple daikon like radishes and even little purple chili peppers. Our meals have been particularly beautiful recently, and Brian made the prettiest kimchi from the purple radishes.

There`ve also been a few small thanks-giving festivals to welcome the harvest season, and the salmon running season. We went to this little Ainu ceremony by the Toyohira River near our house a couple of weekends ago. To be perfectly honest, it was rather boring, even for culture vultures like us. But the 200 yen massive chunks of delicious grilled salmon were well worth it.

Last week there were two national holidays, one on Monday and one on Thursday, so Brian and I took the Tuesday and Wednesday off for a 6 day vacation to do some hiking. The onset of Fall in Hokaido means the near end of the backpacking season for a warm weather hiker like myself, and we`re not geared out enough to deal with snow and serious cold, both of which Hokkaido certainly gets. So we headed out to Asahikawa planning to do the "Daisetsuzan Grand Traverse" as lined out in the Lonely Planet.

We`d brought all our gear from home, but we still had to outfit a bit. We`d been using the Steripen for water purification in the States, but in Hokkaido there`s a nasty killer called Echinococcus (not bacterial, despite the name). This is a type of tape worm that gets in the water from fox feces, and being a worm/egg/larvae UV light and chemical treatments won`t kill it. So we finally bought a real water filter. Brian`s sleeping bag is only a 35 F bag so he got a liner as well. As we were told by pretty much anyone that we mentioned this trip to, people die in Daisetsuzan all the time, and it`s usually from exposure. No matter the time of year, have surviving hypothermia in mind when packing for this trip. We also bought maps, of course.

Choosing hiking food was a breeze in Japanese supermarkets because there are a lot of dried things available. We got noodles and dried sauce mixes, freeze dried tofu (which rehydrates most deliciously), gorp, oatmeal (with instant custard mix as a calorie booster), ramen, and CalorieMates.

We left Sapporo on a Friday night and took a bus from Sapporo Station to Asahikawa (2 hours, 2,000 Y one way) where we stayed with Megan. The next morning we took a bus from Asahikawa station to Asahidake, but because of bus times the earliest you can get there is around 10:45 - 11 AM and it gets dark around 5:45 in September in Hokkaido, so if we had that to do over again we`d take the bus out to Asahidake the night before and stay there in order to get going earlier. As it was, we were hiking by 11. There`s a gondola that goes half way up Asahidake that saves about an hour and a half (by our pace) hike up rather rotten board walks and poorly graded trails. But the woods and wetland there are beautiful and you won`t otherwise see many trees on this trip as the rest of it is above treeline.

Asahidake is the tallest peak in Hokkaido, and it`s a seriously tough climb. Extremely steep, almost non-existent switchbacks, and loose, shaley footing make the going tough. But the views are gorgeous and the camaraderie of the Japanese hikers is both energising and hilarious. Most are out for a day hike and are surprised to see hikers with large packs and especially foreign ones. Some highlights were an extremely animated woman gesturing to us about how windy and cold it was up top (many people were worried about us being warm enough as we sweated our way up the slope, but we had plenty of layers in our packs), a little boy who saw us, said hello very boldly, and then ran away screaming that we were cute, and a woman who offered to take our picture and then made sure she got one on her camera as well. We were photographed multiple times in fact. A rare breed of wildlife on the slopes of Asahidake were we.

The climb from bottom to top took nearly 5 hours, so we deviated from the L.P. trek and camped at the first campsite so as not to hike the last hour and a half in the dark. I do not recommend any hiking in the dark in Japan. The trails are not well maintained, often extremely narrow, washed out, steep, and overgrown. Especially on that trek many of the trails hug a cliff edge or follow a knife-edge ridge. Our last day we hiked for over an hour IN a river. The trail WAS the river and the river was the trail. I may or may not have cursed Japanese trails a time or two at that point.

Given our first deviation and the forecast for the next few days (freezing temperatures, rain, and then snow with gale force winds) we remade our plans that night. We decided we wouldn`t be ok if we got wet on the rainy, freezing day, had to set up camp that night and then had to hike in freezing, blustering snow the next day. We decided to hike all the northern half of the park and save the southern half for next season. We also decided to finish on the fourth day instead of doing 5 days to avoid the blizzardy conditions. That allowed us this gorgeous day of pack-less hiking in lovely weather. And this fox spotting!



This turned out to be a very wise decision. Though the distances in the LP outlined trek aren`t very long, the going is NOT easy. We`d hiked half of the Appalachian Trail, so we`re not experts or anything but we`ve got some legitimate experience, and I can confidently say that I`ve never seen such tough trails. They`re steep, very overgrown where there`s growth, totally exposed when there`s none, rocky, and not well marked. And the weather is tough. As one man (rather melodramatically) told us, "when things are good in Daisetsuzan, it`s beautiful, when they`re bad, it`s DEADLY!!!!!!!!MUAHHAHAHA!!!". Not to scare anyone off. The place is terribly gorgeous, and once you get past the first couple of huts, solitude abounds. Did I mention the stars? But overnight trips there should be planned with due consideration. Here`s a shot of one of the huts we stayed in - much warmer than our 3 season tent.

The hike was beautiful, and though not exactly what we`d planned, it was a great success. Our last day it was rainy, freezing, and the wind was gusting hard enough that I came close to being pushed down more than a few times. All that made the 2 hour soak in the hot healing onsen waters that much more wonderful. In the evening we hopped the bus back to Asahikawa and from there bussed back to Sapporo again. Then we had two lovely days to clean up our stuff and recover our legs before just a Friday at school.

Friday night we spent with Rob, Brandon, and Tamon at the Liebspiece Beer Club delicious all you can drink beer night. Delicious and hilarious, there`s a Japanese man forever in liderhosen, a group singing of some German prost song, and what must be the best and cheapest beer in Hokkaido. It inspired me to make some spicy mustard on Sunday with the seeds we brought from home.


The weekend was slow and relaxing. Saturday we cruised over to the Autumn Festival in Odori Park to sample some Japanese specialties, like this sea urchin.

Not bad, sort of sweet and fatty and oceany, but that`s probably the last time I`ll buy one of those. It`s better pre-cleaned in my sushi.

Sunday we did some painting and mustard making. And now somehow it`s Thursday again. Tomorrow is my welcome enkai (drinking party) with my base school, so I`m looking forward to being buried in mountains of sushi and welcoming drinks. And Saturday we`re heading to Niseko for a bike ride to raise money for education in Cambodia. Biking, exploring, and helping the kids? What more could you ask for.

Obviously I have lots of time on my hands today. That`s because it`s a holiday for the students, but not for the teachers, so I`m warming my desk. Warming my desk with me is this super awesome robot dinosaur mug filled with strange and not quite wonderful instant/drip coffee.

And the rest of the Daisetsuzan photos.

Hell for a weekend

Last week flew by and landed us straight in Hell. In a fun sort of way.



We`re imperceptibly becoming adept at life in Japan. We get to school no problem, we know where to buy the food we want to eat, we know where to exercise and who to ask for help. I`m getting used to feeling like a boy band as I walk anywhere near the vicinity of school with hundreds of teenage girls screaming my name followed by "Kawai!!!!!!! Kirei!!!!!", which mean cute and pretty respectively. Absurd? Yes. Flattering? Yes. Funny? Very. But it makes holding a class`s attention REALLY easy. Sure beats spit balls.

Amidst all this adaption some wonderful fellow JETs helped us arrange to get ourselves to Noboribetsu, a coastal town not far from here famous for it`s onsens (bath houses) and Hell Valley. Transportation is ridiculously expensive here, but carpooling is a much cheaper option. So we hopped in with some girls on their way down to soak up the sulfur fumes of Hell Valley and take in Hell Festival.

Our first stop in Noboribetsu was this beautiful, stinking, boiling hot lake. The sulfur stench is strong, but worth it. It was the first time Brian or I had ever seen such geothermic magic.


A bit of dillying and dallying later we found ourselves in a posse of fellow JETs exploring the stinking, steaming wonderland of Hell Valley. Strange moonscapes of burning water and a bubbling little geyser drew us in despite the stink. If I were to make a 1950s movie about aliens in Mars I would film it in Hell Valley. It reminds me of Christmas on Mars actually. Wayne Coyne could`ve popped right out of that geyser.
We opted out of trying the bath houses which Noboribetsu is so famous for because it was so hot. Instead we headed towards the festival to eat drink and make merry with the demons in town. Most kids were terrified of these demons, but this little guy loves em.


After dark the revelry got started. First came the demon parade.

Then a spell of taiko Japanese drumming (if this sounds boring to you, or even if it sounds good, it`s way better than you`re imagining) came before a parade of costumed people doing a devil dance in the street. It wasn`t quite a parade because the line of people was continuous and they went around in multiple laps.

Finally Satan himself showed up to tell us all we are foolish humans and he`s taking us to Hell. These were his minions.
And the King of Evil Himself!
Why is there a Hell festival you ask? Every town in Japan (Korea too for that matter) has a cute little mascot and because of Hell Valley, Noboribetsu`s mascots are a red and blue oni (demon). These are your basic humanoids with spiky clubs, dreadlocks and horns, but the big statue of one near the entrance to the town enigmatically has soft serve ice cream cones for horns. Hell Festival is the town`s summer celebration, and it`s lots of fun.


This week is promising to be quite slow because of the big standardized tests that are going on. That means days with no classes and lots of desk time. But this weekend we`ve got a van load of Sapporo-ites road tripping to Lake Akan for camping and marimo viewing (cute algae, easier to show you than explain). So we`ll spend our days acclimatizing and day-dreaming of algae balls til then.

Next Stop: Thailandia

From Burma we flew to Penang, an island just off the North Western coast of Malaysia, to meet David and Duck. we devoured the delicacies on hand there for a couple of days before busing up to Thailand. Compared with the poverty and difficulty of travel in Myanmar, Thailand seemed a land of luxury and easy living. We spent nearly 2 weeks on the beaches of the South and a week in the mountains of the North. At the end of our trip we came back to Bangkok for the 4th time, but it was the first time we'd had a chance to explore it.

Shannon's pictures are here!

Mongolia through Shannon's lens, Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

You can read more about our trip in older posts. It's only 4 more days til we begin our next big adventure! We're not sure how much internet access we'll have, but we'll try to keep this updated with photos and stories of our travels.

Central Mongolia - the beginnings

First day on the road. One of very few paved roads.

Our Soviet jeep in the Mongolian landscape.

Tibetan style stupas at Erdene Zuu monastery.

Young monks calling to worship with conch trumpets.

We flew from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, on the 11th where we geared up for our departure the next day. We'd read how awful Mongolian food can be, and seeing as how we'd be eating it for a long while, we opted for Indian in UB. Also, I was feeling quite a lot of trepidation about eating meat for the first time and wanted to put it off a little while longer. I stand by our decision to get foreign food, but let it be known that where there are no chickens to be seen, you shouldn't order chicken. We learned this the hard way. Shannon came down with a nasty bout of food poisoning that eventually landed her in a Mongolian hospital. They got her back into shape for the trip, but gave her some drugs that gave her intense anxiety the next night. We later read in the Lonely Planet in the health section that the greatest risk to your health in Mongolia is a Mongolian hospital. Luckily she pulled out of it safely and now has a story for the grand kids.

Tsagaan Nuur (White Lake) was one of the major highlights of the trip. Our horse guides, Sanbo and Biumbuch, got good and chummy with us, we got to stay with nomads, learn Mongolian games, drink Yak vodka, and we got to eat marmot. Blowtorched marmot. That's right.

The road to White Lake

Cheese drying at a ger on White Lake

Staying with nomads is what we thought we'd be up to the whole trip, but it turns out most families on the itinerary had extra gers where tourists sleep. But in Mongolia you aren't even welcomed in, you're assumed in to any ger you find. Around the lake the families didn't host tourists ever and they had no idea we were coming, but our guides would walk right in, find the dried cheese stash and make a fire and some milk tea even when no one was home. The family would come later and completely casually say hello and go about their business if they were shy or hang around for cards if they were less so. Hospitality is an old custom in Mongolia and was at one time a matter of survival, and probably still is. If you go though, it's polite to either pay 5000 Tougrug for your bed and meals (roughly 3.50 USD) or give a useful gift such as a wind-up radio or flashlight, batteries, duct tape, sewing kit, or crayons and coloring books for the kids. There are lots of kids to give fun stuff to.

Many families settle in small groups when they put up their gers, so the first family we stayed with was in a set of 4 or 5 gers where everyone shared in caring for the livestock.

A family of nomads moving for the winter

The best rainbow in the history of all time ever anywhere

They had yaks, goats, sheep, and horses, and that night we helped the women in a baby yak round up. This was so that the babies wouldn't feed during the night for morning milking. Shannon tried her hand at yak milking next morning, but I didn't give it a go until we got to the waterfall much later in the trip. I was full success though! It's strange, the teats are really slimy because they let the young ones suckle to get it all flowing before milking, and the slime makes them slippery and hard to pull straight down.

Best yak herders in town

Our ger owner, Otoma, milking that yak

Cheeks

Brian, Shannon, and Sanbo riding off into the mountains

There are a ton of photos in these slides, so if you want to see them bigger or slower or download them, click the slide show and it will take you to the website where they're stored and you can look at them closer there.

In central Mongolia lots of the milk products, which makes up the majority of summer food, come from yaks. Even vodka comes from yaks, though it's only 20% alcohol. There's not much water for cleaning either, so the one pot in a ger is used for everything and everything tastes kind of yak-y. Yaky became our descriptor for anything tasting animaly, even once we got to the Gobi and there were no yaks anywhere and the flavor was probably sheep. Yaky instant coffee is hard to stomach, but yaky milk tea is pretty good. Milk tea is green tea mixed with fresh whatever-animal-that's-around's-milk, butter and salt. It's more of a soup than a tea, but it warms a body up when it's freezing and raining and windy out. It's served without question at every ger in Mongolia as soon as you walk in the door.

Back to the blowtorched marmot bit - Biumbuch had shot this thing right before we arrived on the scene. He froze it and we started our horse trek during which he and Gilki, our translator, had a crush; and also he liked us because we played card games and drank vodka and the boys wrestled and had a jolly old Mongolian time. So when we got back he wanted to hang out more and share his marmot with us. He was so proud and excited about the marmot process, bossing his friends around and taking control.

We have lots of video of this part too, but Brian's going to compile it all so it'll be on the blog later. For now, you can see all the steps in these pictures. Again, these are only half the pictures, I'll post Shannon's in a couple of weeks when she gets back from Australia.

After White Lake we went to some caves, a rock formation, Tsetserleg town, and a waterfall before leaving central Mongolia for the Gobi.

If school stays as slow as it has been I'll post the Gobi later this week. We're busy procuring visas and booking flights and eating as much Korean food as possible before our go day. There are only 17 more days of teaching til we're finished. It's hard to believe we've been here nearly a year, and harder to believe that we'll be coming home soon(ish).

Beijing is Peking is Beijing

We're back! Our trips were amazing and now we've only 1 month left in Korea and lots to do before we go, so these posts from our travels are going to be short on words and heavy on pictures.

It's strange to throw Beijing in a trip as an afterthought, but it seems like it's common enough judging by all the travelers we talked to. I wish we'd have had 1 more day there, but we slammed all that we could into the time that we had and it was better than all of us were anticipating. Shannon, Ryan, Brian and I all arrived in the evening on the 8th of August and jumped right into the fun. The first night we went to Tianenmen Square and Wangfujin snack street and the night market there for all the creepy crawlies there are to eat.

Tianenmen Square

Wangfujin Snack Street

The next day we rented bikes and did a bike tour of the city, stopping at all the major and minor sites like the Forbidden City, historic hutongs (alleyways that look like old Peking (which really is Beijing, an older name for it) from Kungfu movies), newer quaint areas, and the Temple of Heaven.

Roofs of the Forbidden City

Shannon and me in the FC

Here are half the photos. Shannon and I both went camera crazy, but she's gone to Australia and all over really for 2 weeks, so rather than wait on her to come back to show pictures, I'll just post her photos later when I get them. She's got all the Temple of Heaven photos too. For now, feast your eyes on these.

On our last day in Beijing it was Ryan's 30th birthday. We did an excursion to the Great Wall that our hostel put on. But most experiences on the Great Wall are filled with shoulder to shoulder tourists and hawkers yanking your arm to get a sale the whole time. Where we went it is technically illegal to go. The land is owned by villagers that live in the nearby valley, and they encourage people to visit, but other sections you must buy a ticket from the government to see. We had to hike up to our section, which is completely unrestored and original, crumbling and lovely. Our guide was a 73 year old woman from the village who does the hike everyday, and it wasn't a cake walk. One guy in our group spoke Mandarin, so he told us how her village took bricks from the wall in the 60s to build the village. Here are too many more of the Wall.

That night we took Ryan out to what we thought would be Shaolin Monks doing their cosmos bending kungfu magic, but it turned out to be a theater full of fat tourists and the performers were certainly not monks. They were wearing makeup and shimmery robes for goodness sake. That was the only fault of the China portion of the trip. And because of it we missed out on one more delicious Chinese meal. The menus are funny in China. Beside the normal fried rice and noodles and tofu and mushrooms and chicken are dishes with donkey, dog, horse, and sea cucumber. Someone should give us a travel show where we eat weird things. We're building an impressive resume.

Mongolia's coming as soon as I can sift through the photos, til then... watch this.
Ryan



Then Brian


Then my turn


And finally, Shannon eats it too.

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.