Spring Snow

It is officially Spring but yesterday it began snowing in the afternoon and continued through the night, covering everything in a thick wet blanket of snow.

By morning there were clear skies, the sidewalks had been shoveled, and there was evidence that someone was enjoying the snow.

They made a Korean snowman...

and they wrote their name in the snow.

Dulce's name was actually "Snow" when we adopted her.

It's not because the ground is cold - she actually sits with one paw lifted a lot :)

*******

"Snowmen fall from heaven... unassembled."

~author unknown

Vaguely Familiar

Once in a while I'll see something out of the corner of my eye here that looks familiar but after doing a double-take, I snap a picture, smile and move on :)

A big electronics store... but it's not Best Buy, it's Best Shop!

There's chicken and an owl with big eyes... Hooters?  Not quite.

Mmmm - Kit Kats!  Waaait a minute... Kic Kers?

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"You'll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut."

~Dr. Seuss

Tea Time

I've never been an avid tea drinker and I'm not very fond of 'flavored' teas.  My tea of choice always was (and still is) strong black tea with sugar.  However since we've been in Korea, I've been exposed to many more types of tea that I'm finding enjoyable.  Restaurants here will bring you a little teapot filled with hot water and loose tea leaves that gets strained as it is poured into your cup.  I've never had a tea made with loose leaves that I didn't like yet.

I got an adventurous urge in the tea section of a store recently and brought home some new teas to try.  I'm starting off with teas that have English words telling me what's inside.  Someday I may try the other teas in the boxes and bags with no English.  I have yet to find a selection of loose tea leaves but I'm sure there's a store around here somewhere that has them.

Upon bringing home my new teas, I found many great websites, including www.teabenefits.com, that have information about all types of tea and the benefits they have.

* Lipton Yellow Label Tea *  I had to buy this box for nostalgic purposes.  In 2007 I lived in Guatemala for three weeks to study Spanish and my host family offered me this tea at every meal.  I've never seen it sold in the States.  It has a slightly stronger and smoother taste than the regular Lipton black tea.

* Rosemary Tea *  I didn't think it would taste as good as it does.  It's pleasantly mild and fresh.  This tea supposedly has a lot of benefits including:  improving memory, improving circulation, reducing headaches and fever, fighting rheumatism, and relieving muscle pain.

* Lemon Verbena Tea *  This tea is made from a shrub that has a lemony fragrance.  It doesn't taste very lemony but it is enjoyably light and sweet.  The benefits of this tea include: relaxing the nervous system, calming the digestive system, calming itching, and reducing fevers.

* Chrysanthemum Tea *  This tea is made from dried flowers and has a light taste and fragrance.  Benefits of this tea include: lowering blood pressure, relieving headaches, reducing fevers, helping skin problems, contributes to clear vision, alleviating dizziness, and contributing to alertness without caffeine.

* Green Tea *  There are so many types of green tea available here!  I chose this one to try and I'm very happy with it.  It's very mellow and smooth.  Green tea has many benefits including: lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, improving heart health, reducing risk of cancer, and inhibiting viruses.

* Matcha Green Tea *  I got turned onto Matcha during my stay in Seattle where I had my first green tea latte.  It's not easy to find in stores in the States so I used to buy it online.  I love that it's available in the stores here and that, compared to online, it's very cheap.  I put it in my smootheis and make my own green tea lattes at home.  Matcha green tea is powdered green tea leaves.  "One glass of matcha tea is said to contain the equivalent of 10 glasses of green tea in terms of its nutritional value and antioxidant content."

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"If you are cold, tea will warm you;

if you are heated, it will cool you;

if you are depressed, it will cheer you;

if you are nervous, it will calm you."

~William E. Gladstone

A Laughable Snack

Walking through stores here you'll see some product names that are written only in Hangul, some that are written in Hangul with an English translation, and some that were given a name written only in English.  Sometimes the things translated to or written in English just "aren't quite right" in the eyes of a native English speaker. This snack that I recently found is a perfect example of that :)

These are actually really tasty!  The package says "Taste & Simple Sesame Stick."  While they do contain some sesame seeds and have a slight sesame flavor, they mostly taste like a sweet vanilla cookie in stick form.

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*******

"C is for cookie, that's good enough for me"

-Cookie Monster

Happy Suwon

Saturday was a relatively warm day here - highs in the 50's - so Dulce and I took advantage of the warm weather and went on a little adventure.  When Johnnie and I took the subway to Seoul to pick up my bike, we passed by a lake with lots of people walking and biking around it.  On Saturday, Dulce and I folded up the bike, put it in the back of the car along with some water and Korean Gatorade and headed out to find this lake.  We drove through two cities to get to the lake.  Seeing other cities always makes me very aware of just how small our city is.  Funny how I felt the exact same way when we were living in Georgia.

Our GPS is not loaded with Korean maps but luckily I have a map app on my iPhone that guided us directly to the lake.  The lake is approximately 1.25 miles in circumference with a nice path around it that was mostly paved.  Despite how empty some of my pictures look, there were a lot of people there enjoying the warmer weather.  Dulce and I biked around the lake 5 times and then ran around it 3 times.  I have a basket on the front of my bike that Dulce loves to ride in - needless to say, we got a lot of stares, smiles, and some pictures taken of us.

There were bathroom buildings, a basketball court, some kind of croquet-style game course, and of course no Korean park is complete without random exercise equipment :)

There were snack tents set up selling food, beverages, and ice cream.  There was also a rental tent here at which you could rent all types of bicycles including tandem bikes, adult bikes with child seats on the back, and kids bikes with or without training wheels.

*******

"The reason I exercise is so that I can have the quality of life that I enjoy."

-Kenneth H. Cooper

Dulce Goes to School

The director of the school I teach at asked me to bring my dog in for the students to see.  Dulce is well trained and socialized so I had no doubt that she would be perfectly fine with a group of children petting and grabbing at her.  A lot of the students have never actually touched a dog or even saw one up close before so they were either thrilled or terrified when they saw her.  It didn't take long for Dulce to win them over!

Dulce loved all of the attention and was very eager to do her tricks.  She must have rolled over, played dead, and shook hands at least 50 times.  I recently taught Dulce how to pick up things that fall on the floor and bring them to me and this was the favorite trick of the students.  All throughout class they took turns dropping their pencil or eraser and Dulce would trot over, pick it up, and bring it to me.  I brought her bed to school and during class time she patiently rested there... waiting for things to drop :)

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"A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than it loves itself."

~Josh Billings

Korean Gatorade

Gatorade is a drink that I only find enjoyable if I'm really thirsty - at least in the States.  Korean Gatorade is different.  I love Korean Gatorade so much that it's my drink of choice here if I need to grab a bottle of something.

How is it different?  Korean Gatorade only comes in one color/flavor and it's not officially labeled with a "flavor" name.  It's pale yellow and is available in cans or bottles with English writing on one side and Hangul writing on the other.  The ingredients are written in Hangul.

UPDATE: New colors/flavors of Korean Gatorade are now available since this post was originally written but I still personally think the yellow flavor tastes the best.

Despite my efforts, I can't find any information (in English) about Korean Gatorade. However, you can tell simply by appearance and taste that Korean Gatorade and American Gatorade are not made from the same recipe.  American Gatorade is available on the military base here so I bought a bottle of Lemon-Lime for comparison.  

The color is obviously different.  American Lemon-Lime Gatorade is florescent yellow in comparison.  The Korean version must not have (or at least not as much of) Yellow 5 dye in it.  The taste is completely different as well.  American Lemon-Lime Gatorade has a strong flavor that is very sweet and tart.  Korean Gatorade is not tart at all and therefore is very easy to drink. It's not overly sweet and does not have an overpowering taste or smell.  It's difficult to describe but it's almost tastes like a very mild lemonade that it perfect for quenching thirst.

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"You have a choice.  You can throw in the towel or

you can use it to wipe the sweat off your face."

~Gatorade advertisement