A lovely day

I had a really fun day today.  First I met my friend and fellow English teacher, Miranda, for lunch at her favorite Korean restaurant.  Delicious!  (Te-Wen, it's payback time!)   :)

Then we walked around a bit and she showed me a really cool jewelry shop near my house.  Then we went back to #12A to make another round of Russian Teacakes.  Great food and even better conversation.  Thanks Miranda - let's do it again soon!

This lovely collage is from Miranda's FB.  For those of you not familiar with Korean food, I've broken it down for you below.

The appetizers.  Standard procedure at all Korean restaurants.  Clockwise from the upper left are: cooked greens, egg and veggie wrap, pickles, dried anchovies, kimchee (a spicy, sauerkraut-like staple), and bean sprouts. 

 This is a seafood pancake.  I'm used to having these with just veggies, but the addition of shrimp is almost always a good thing in my book.  It's actually more like an omelet, only not flipped.  Yum!

This is chap chae - or in Jess language - slimy noodles.  Sooooooooo good.  Glass noodles with thin strips of veggies and pork - kind of like a stir fry, but better.  Miranda is going to show me how to make this.

 And the main dish - bi bim bap!  A stone bowl containing rice, veggies, meat, more dried fish, seaweed and a raw egg yolk which you stir in and it cooks from the heat of the other food.  Delicious!  And we ordered so much that I was able to take leftovers home for dinner.  Miranda also got a spicy seafood noodle soup that was good but too hot for me.  I will definitely be going back asap.

 Shortly after Miranda and I finished baking, Beth got home from her trip up north.  She filled me in about her adventures and then we relaxed with a movie from her collection, Love Actually.  She really likes it and it's set during Christmastime and one of my students recommended it to me in his Independent Learning Reflection Essay, so I figured I'd better give it a chance even though I generally avoid romcoms.  It was cute, especially the scenes between Liam Neeson's character and his stepson.  I really don't understand what everyone sees in Keira Knightley though.  I just see bad teeth.  Ditto Mr. Bean.  But I love Alan Rickman and Bill Nighy played a horrible funny character and Hugh Grant was actually pretty charming for once.  Which made him totally unrealistic as the Prime Minister of England, especially since he still looks so young, but we can suspend disbelief just a bit in the spirit of the holidays.  It also had a cute language barrier component that Beth and I really appreciated as only people who grade ESOL homework can.

And THIS is the present Beth brought me back from Beijing.  Try saying that 5 times fast.  No, it's not a muzzle.  It's a cloth mask.  Chinese folks wear these all the time: when they're sick, if it's a high pollution day, in place of a scarf, etc.  I'm being completely sincere.  In fact, they have mask dispensers in the hallways all over campus, and special trashcans to throw them in.  It's totally common to see someone walking around with a mask on, out and about, all dressed up and fashionable as though it's just another accessory.

At first I was very against the masks, because they remind me of a hospital or movies about epidemics, and they creep me out.  But as it started getting colder, I remembered that my nose is always the first thing to go numb, and started to wonder if a mask might be the solution.  Then I started noticing that some people had ones made of cloth (even flannel) and that some even had nice patterns on them.  Not as scary as the standard hospital style, but still kind of weird.  Then I saw a great one with monster teeth and decided I liked it.  (This is probably a sign that I've been in Asia too long.) 

Anyway, Beth has clearly been listening to all my comments about this phenomenon because she brought me back a lovely cloth mask in classic (true) black.  Matches with everything.  Thanks Beth!!!