cooking class

so I've fallen behind on my blogging, mostly because we went away last weekend on a retreat (which was very much needed!), about which I will post later...We've got a lot of stuff to do right now because Camp Fulbright started today. On Wednesday I'll observe my Camp Instructor's class, and then on Thursday I teach my own class! craziness! So in the next few days I have to 1) plan a second lesson for Camp Fulbright 2) design powerpoint for my first lesson on Thurs 3) fill out my placement preference form 4) do my cultural adjustment check (these little mini-essays we submit to the orientation coordinators every week, just so they can see how we're doing) and....i guess that's it? well it seems like a lot. At any rate, about these pictures! We had our first cooking class, where we made chapchae and kimpap, and it was delicious and fun. But before we even started, Olga and I had quite an adventure getting to the place. There was a line of cabs carrying everyone else, but we got in the last one that left a few minutes later. When we arrived, convinced we were going to be late, the cab driver got out of the car and started walking around, talking on his cell phone. at first we thought we had gotten lost. he wouldn't even attempt to communicate with us (unusual, most of the cab drivers i've met here are at least polite, usually somewhat friendly) and when he came back into the car, he asked us to pay. which we did, but we didn't realize that because the cab had been called in advance, we owed him 1,000 extra won. we thought he was just ripping us off since the cab had been sitting for several minutes. So when I tried to give him a 500 won coin, he shoved it back at me and started angrily talking on his cell phone. Meanwhile the cooking instructor has come out of the building and is trying to help us deal with the angry cab driver, along with another random ajumma who decided to defend us. In the end, he got on the phone with our RA and she convinced us to pay him the 1000 won, even though we still didn't understand why. He continued fuming for a while even after that. We had no idea why he was so angry! Oh, misunderstandings...i feel I'm in for a lot more of them to come.

So, when we finally got into the cooking classroom....there were no other ETAs there. It turned out that everyone had gotten lost, but for a short while Olga and I were unsure we'd ended up in the right place. We tried to talk with the teachers in our nonexistent Korean and their broken English, but we ended up mostly using gestures and giggling to bond with them, which we did, I think. I at least got across that my mother was Korean, and that I had had chapchae before.

Once the other ETAs arrived, we started cooking (about an hour later than planned). My cooking partners were Olga and Alex. We had a lot of fun and made some delicious final product. 맛있어요! The first picture is the chapchae. mmm mmm mmmmmm! then some of the cooking process, the ingredients, the teacher rolling kimpap (which came out 100000000000x neater than ours!) and the fantastic cooking team. Oh and thrown in there is one of me and Olga looking crazed (on purpose!) with large knives. Enjoy!