Running and Cooking

I still do not have internet at my house, so I wrote this last night and am posting it today.

9/5 8:00PM

They mountains in Eonyong are intermittently shrouded in wispy gatherings of clouds, and for a fleeting moment ever so often, the clouds scatter revealing the steadfast and mighty mountains amongst them.

I just got back from a run, and as a matter of fact, I’ve been doing quite a bit of running in the past weeks. Part of it is for cathartic sake, and the other is simply because the area here is so darn gorgeous. The scenery here reminds me of a mix between Colorado and Vermont. The mountains are somewhat tall and jagged just as they are in Colorado, and at the same time they are lush and green like the ones in Vermont. Imagine Colorado’s mountains being a bit shorter, not bald on the top but covered with lots of deciduous trees, and you’ve just imagined Eonoyong.

I’m sitting in my kitchen now, Discovery Chanel Korea (the only one I get in English) is softly playing on the TV in front of me, all my windows are open, I’m sitting on one of my two chairs, and in the background, the scent of sautéed garlic is wafting around the semi-humid night air which is circulating in my apartment. I’m cooking for the first time. I’m trying to make some sort of curry concoction. Basically, it’s got broccoli, mushrooms, garlic, ginger and tofu as well as some premade curry powder. I’m just happy to be eating some green vegetables.

The food here is somewhat strange. I love all of it. Literally, I have not found a single food that I do not like; however, much of it does not seem to be wildly nutritious. There are not a lot of green veggies that I have encountered, and moreover, everything is super salty. That is my only complaint. The food is good, but SALTY. So, I’m cooking for myself tonight because I’m tired of going out to eat, and because I cannot read Korean, only being able to base my choice of a dish on price and not what I actually desire. It’s actually quite funny how I order. I simply consider how much I want to spend, and then randomly point to something on the menu, and then I hope for the best. I don’t mind because I eat everything, but at the same time, it will be nice to master reading and then learn some basic restaurant vocab.

Reading is coming somewhat slowly, but in fairness, I have not committed much time to learing Hangul (the Korean alphabet). I am traveling to Seoul this weekend because I have a few days off next week for Chousok (Korean Thanksgiving), and I’m planning on using the travel time to study up.