Dirt Pudding & Live Octopus

This past weekend was excpetionally good. Seth came to Cheongju, as well as my friend Josh. Friday night the two visitors and most of the Cheongju ETAs went to a wine party downtown that we had heard about from one of Kate's students (who is in h.s. by the way). None of us knew what to expect since nothing here is ever what you think it will be like. I am happy to say that for the first time, the wine party was exactly what it was supposed to be: free wine, good snacks, a nice atmosphere and new people to talk to. The party was hosted by Kate's student's English tutor who brought her middle-aged women students to talk to us. They were all very nice and everyone had a really nice time. We spent the evening on the terrace of a wine restauarant which was awesome since there are very few wine restaurants that I've seen in Korea...if any. Me and Kate with her student Da-bin (aka Mickey) Saturday I spent the day with Seth planning our winter vacation trip. I originally wanted to go to Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, but we decided Indonesia was too big and too spread out to travel around during our limited time outside of Korea. I think we've decided to spend New Years in Singapore and then travel North through Malaysia and Thailand, stopping in various cities and at various islands along the way, and ending in Bangkok. It will save us a lot of money since we can travel by bus and train with the exception of our flights into and out of Korea. I'm now really really excited for traveling...it can't come soon enough. I'm also going to Beijing in 2 weeks for 4 days with my host mom and sister to see the Great Wall and Tiananmen Square. Saturday night Seth came over to my host family's apartment for dinner. We carved pumpkins with my host mom and host sister, both of whom had never carved a pumpkin before. It was really cute and neat to share that experience with them. Seth and I also made dirt pudding with Tammy, which of course she loved since she loves anything chocolate (she eats her French Toast I make her with chocolate syrup). Let me jump back a little bit. While sitting with my host dad at the dinner table, the topic of sushi came up. A semi-common type of sushi here is live octopus. They literally take a live octopus and using kitchen scissors, cut off little pieces of the tentacles which are then eaten right away. The thing about these tentacles is that they continue moving for one or two hours after they are cut off. I've heard about this food from other Koreans and ETAs who have been served it, but I was able to avoid eating it...until Saturday night. Now fast forward to Saturday night...I guess Seth had mentioned that he liked the live octopus sushi and I mentioned that I had never eaten it. While the rest of us were busy eating our dirt pudding, my dad slipped out to go to the mart. He came back with a package of live octopus. While we are still eating our pudding, my host mom puts down the plate of live octopus that is still squirming...scratch that...not only squirming but trying to escape from the plate. I decided to try it because well, when else am I ever going to have the chance to eat something like that. Much to my surprise, it really wasn't bad! The weirdest part was having the octopus tentacles suck onto your tongue or your cheek if you didn't immediately chew it to death...literally. So anyway, that may take the cake for being the weirdest culinary experience in my life so far. Seth and the host fam with our pumpkins Tammy's Lisa Simpson pumpkin pathetic looking Spongebob pumpkin crushing oreos dirt pudding Eating octopus and dirt pudding...my host mom is in the midst of explaining what dirt pudding is to my host dad...quite the cultural exchange going on.


Octopus sushi

San Seong in the fall