Thank you Apple, for inventing the Ipad

We're home!

RCP and I arrived back home in Seoul late this evening, after a very pleasant six hour flight from Kuala Lampur. I must add that we were upgraded to first class. I am only bragging because I'm never upgraded and six hours is enough to warrant a wish for an upgrade, along with hopes that the roomier accomodations would come with a more appetizing meal, as the Seoul--Kuala Lampur leg boasted traditional chicken and dry pollock stew. Not my favorite, especially when served in those old-school heavy foil "airplane food" containers and for breakfast. Sure enough, with the extra room came some tasty beef bulgogi (and a giant dragon fruit that I took from the hotel buffet the night before, in the event that the in-flight meal would again be inedible).

It is in the wee hours of the morning now here in Seoul and I'm experiencing a little insomnia, I think due in part to the anxiety, excitement and question of whether or not S. Korea was actually going to let me back into the country after Malaysia barely let me out of theirs. Long story short: My visa is a single entry visa, as opposed to a multiple-entry visa, because RCP's employer accidentally checked the wrong box on the paperwork that was completed months ago in New York. Technically, I should not have been allowed to re-enter the country after September 1. I also don't have an alien I.D. card that shows I'm a resident, but I couldn't apply for that yet because we were going on vacation and you can't leave the country while it's processing. Everyone asked said the single-entry part shouldn't pose any problem. "Enjoy your vacation! No need to worry about the visa! We'll get her all set up with her alien I.D. when you return!" they all said. Well, as you can imagine, the visa DID cause quite a delay at the check-in counter in Kuala Lampur on the way home to Seoul this morning. However, I must hand it to the Air Asia employees for doing an excellent job of questioning someone who has a one-way ticket, the wrong visa and a different last name than her husband. Homeland security is working, even in a "discount airline terminal" on the other side of the world. (The term "discount airline terminal" was actually used by the airline as we taxied to the gate after landing in Kuala Lampur from Langkawi.)

And thank you Apple, for inventing the Ipad. How else would one be able to pull up a copy of their marriage certificate when asked for it in a foreign country, when one must prove that she is married to the person she's traveling with in order to be let on a plane? After a little searching in past email attachments for a copy of the marriage license and a call from Air Asia to S. Korea (I'm guessing), we not only had our boarding passes, we also had a hard copy of the marriage license, just in case there were any other skeptical security guards or gate attendants (which there were).

Even though Malaysia had let me out of their country, it was the impending arrival six and a half hours later that kept me up on the plane and pumped me full of energy, causing my current insomnia. What if the S. Korean immigration agents don't let me out of the airport? Is there some sort of quarantine for people like me, that you have to stay in until you can get a hold of your embassy to come bail you out? Do I explain the whole craziness of the wrong visa, whip out the marriage certificate or just keep quiet and only go into detail if asked? I chose the latter method and success. **Stamp** **Stamp**  "Kamsamnida!" 

No, thank YOU S. Korea for allowing me to come back into the country I now call home. Thank you for thinking I am not really that illegal. Although, it probably would not have been TOO awful of a situation if quarantined overnight; Incheon was rated the second best airport in the world to sleep in.

(And Mom, I have an appointment on Monday to resolve the Visa issue and to apply for the I.D. card, so no need to worry. I won't cause any international incidents.)

Langkawi, Malaysia

Stay tuned for complete albums of our vacation to Langkawi, when we return to Korea on Saturday, where there's a faster internet connection to upload.

In the mean time....

Fun Facts about Langkawi, Malaysia
- Langkawi, is known as the Jewel of Kedah.
- The islands are a part of the state of Kedah, which is adjacent to the Thai border, and is an archipelago of 104 islands in the Andaman Sea.
- Langkawi means reddish brown eagle in colloquial Malay.
- Islam is the primary religion.
- Langkawi was traditionally thought to be cursed. However, in 1986 the prime minister decided to transform it into a tourist resort, planning many of the resorts himself.

Notes on Thanksgiving Travel at Incheon Airport

In order for us unwind here in Langkawi, let me rewind a couple of days to Saturday, when we left Seoul to start the holiday. Since buses are the most efficient means of transportation in and around Seoul, we chose to take the bus the airport. It's a charter bus, makes few stops and at 6 am on a Saturday the trip only took 45 minutes. What is Incheon Airport like on the Saturday before the Thanksgiving holiday on Monday? Exactly like any airport in the U.S. before Thanksgiving, multiplied by 10.

I was curious about Incheon Airport and found a plethora of fun facts that I thought the frequent flyers might find interesting. Incheon is a port city in Western South Korea on the Yellow Sea. Incheon Airport is one of the largest and busiest airports in the world. It is currently the eighth busiest airport in Asia, the ninth busiest in the world in terms of passengers and the world's second busiest in terms of freight and cargo. From 2006 to 2008, it was rated the best airport in the world by the Airports Council International and received the full 5-star ranking by Skytrax, a recognition shared only by Hong Kong International Airport and Singapore Changi Airport. The airport has a golf course, spa, private sleeping rooms, ice skating rink, a casino, indoor gardens and a Museum of Korean Culture. Also, in 2008, Incheon was named the second best airport to sleep in, according to Seoul's Foreign Ministry. The best? Singapore's Changi Airport. The worst? Paris' Charles de Gaulle. All of these accolades explain the experience that was about to unfold and a par for the Peterson's course of airline travel methods.

We were booked on Air Asia, similar to the discount airlines of Europe, comparable to Southwest in the U.S. (but with assigned seats, thank God). Since we were traveling to another country, thinking we might obtain some have-to-have large objects, we chose to check bags with lots of extra room for the potential acquisitions. Check-in was easy, then came security. For those of you who are frequent flyers and think you have experienced the longest lines in security, take that and double it, then loop it back on itself, times two. This is what the security line at Incheon was two days before Thanksgiving.

We were in the part of the line that was looping back on the original line, with an hour until departure (with boarding already beginning due to it being an international flight) when what I will call an "Air Asia Angel" appeared, looking up and down the line for passengers booked on the Kuala Lampur flight. We were the only ones and with that she swooped us out of the line, moving us to the front. She then explained to the passengers that were up next to go through security that our flight was leaving and we needed to be let through. It was as if she were Moses and the passengers were a more than accommodating Red Sea. No one protested, no one tried to say that their flight was also about to leave, everyone simply graciously let us though. I think we can all agree this would never happen at LaGuardia, for example.

 After clearing security and a customs/visa check we proceeded to play out that scene in Home Alone where the entire family is running through O'Hare at Christmastime to make a flight to Paris. Funny enough, I used to watch this movie religiously back in the day, and secretly longed to run through airports to catch flights. This probably stems from never flying anywhere as a kid and the whole idea of flying having such great appeal. Little did I know I would marry someone who has an incredible love for running to catch flights, walking on a flights as the doors close, and switching flights last minute to arrive a few minutes ahead of the original one. So just like in Home Alone, we ran and ran and ran, that funny kind of run when you're carrying heavy bags that you can't really run with. We followed our little "Air Asia Angel" down elevators, on the tram, on the moving sidewalk, all the way to what felt like another airport. We made it. I have run through many airports, but have never run with an escort who was in contact with the gate the entire time making it her personal mission that we did not miss the flight. What service. No wonder the airport has such high ratings, however, I'd rather not reenact this scene again.

Happy Chuseok!

Happy Chuseok!

(Happy Thanksgiving in Korea!)

We've left the country to spend Thanksgiving on the island of Langkawi in Malaysia!

Stay tuned for more photos and musings from 6.5 hours south of Seoul!

Thanksgiving, Chicken Tortilla Soup, and Lessons in Garbage

I've been feeling a little self-induced pressured to write about strange and exciting events from the Far East every day, but to be honest, now that I've settled in, I don't think I can keep up with my own expectations of venturing out to a new area every day and then immediately writing home about it. I do have a couple of back-up adventures (a visit to the Samsung Museum of Art and the trendy shopping district of Apgeoujong) that happened my first week here that I will write about in the case of writers block or lack of interesting topics, but some days might just be about simple happenings around the house that when you live in a foreign country are a much bigger deal than they would be at home. So, sorry for the delay in writing about something worthwhile. I didn't really venture out to explore yesterday because we had a Samsung event in the evening and I didn't want to tire myself out by walking all over the city.

However, today not only included a culinary milestone, but included preparation for our first Korean holiday trip outside of the city. Tomorrow we're headed to the Westin in Langkawi, Malaysia for a week while the rest of South Korea celebrates Thanksgiving! Chuseok is one of the largest, most important holiday's in Korea. Similar to the American Thanksgiving, it is a time when family members come together to share food and stories and to give thanks to their ancestors for the abundant harvest.

This year, Chuseok Day falls on Monday, September 12, but the holiday is observed for a total of three days (Sept. 11 – Sept. 13). On the morning of Chuseok Day, Songpyeon (a type of Korean rice cake) and food prepared with the year’s fresh harvest are set out to give thanks to ancestors through Charye (ancestor memorial service). After Charye, families visit their ancestors’ graves and engage in Beolcho, a ritual of clearing the weeds that may have grown up over the burial mound. After dusk, families and friends take walks and gaze at the beauty of the full harvest moon or play folk games such as Ganggangsullae (Korean circle dance).

Earlier this week I was at E-Mart and experienced some Chuseok preparations, but instead of turkeys and sweet potatoes, everyone was filling up their carts with much healthier choices: apples, peaches, melons....Spam. Women were even dressed in traditional Korean dress to assist with gift box selection.

Spam: the gift that keeps on giving....and stays fresh for years to come.

Not sure what everyone is signing up for, but I think it's gift box delivery.

Apples. Healthier than a box of chocolates.

Chicken [Tortilla] Soup for the Seoul

While everyone else has been prepping for Chuseok, buying fruit boxes and making rice cakes, I've just been trying to find celery and chicken stock. I only brought one cookbook and one binder of select recipes here to Korea with me. One of my prized recipes is a recipe for tortilla soup from the Houston restaurant Rotisserie for Beef and Bird. This is the most fabulous tortilla soup I've ever tasted and I have been determined to make it while living abroad. So much so that I brought a can of Rotel, cumin, chili powder and tobasco with me in my suitcase. I like to travel with my own spices since Cousin Penny had quite an unfortunate experience with some curry flavored taco seasoning in Norway recently. Since today was a rainy Friday with an early fall chill in the air and I had domestic things to do like laundry and packing for Malaysia, I decided today was the day for the tortilla soup. Boy did it turn out to be an ordeal. 

My Korean kitchen is quite fabulous. A true chef's kitchen with multiple prep sinks, 6 burner gas range, easy to reach pot and pan storage, etc. None of that really matters though when you don't have your normal cabinet full of sugar and spice and everything nice like good knives and prep bowls......or a can opener. To make a VERY long afternoon of chopping and simmering short -- after two trips to L-Mart (once for celery...yes! I finally found celery... then back for chicken...I was making chicken tortilla soup and obviously don't know how to make a shopping list), then a trip to Expat Mart for two more cans of chicken broth and lemons to make an impromptu lemon pepper seasoning, and THEN the use of a Swiss Army knife....yes a Swiss Army knife....I had chicken tortilla soup that tasted JUST like it does at home.

 Delicious success.

I have never used a Swiss Army knife to it's full potential...until now.

We are not camping, there is no reason to be using a Swiss Army knife.

Note to self - buy a can opener at E-Mart.

Lessons in Garbage

Since we're on the subject of food I thought I'd explain how we take out the garbage in Korea. Here, we separate everything. Even food. We also don't use Glad. We have to buy special garbage bags in special colors from the local mart. There's lots of information written on them in Korean, so all I know is that anything but food goes in the large white one, food goes in the smaller yellow one and all recyclables must be taken out. The food separation part has taken some getting used to, since we're not throwing it directly in a compost bin every night and there often isn't enough food to fill up a bag at once. So in an effort to conserve, I've taken to freezing the yellow food bag until it's full, then I throw it out. Again, somewhat odd, but I feel better about freezing and then throwing out a whole week of food as opposed to just one meal's scraps. That and freezing eliminates the smell.

The Official Garbage Bags of Korea

New Friends

Happy Wednesday!

Today I had a wonderful lunch get-together today with a group of GSG wives. The GSG is the Global Strategy Group that RCP is working in at Samsung. There is a really fabulous group called the GSG Better Halves which consists of all the wives/partners of GSG'ers. It is really a fantastic network and a treasure trove of information consisting of wives from each new group of GSG'ers that comes through twice a year. Since the new group has just started, all of the new wives have been here just about a month and are also brand new to everything. There is a Facebook page where everyone asks questions and posts events and information from everything like "Can anyone suggest a housekeeper?" to "Where can I have furniture custom made?" to "Anyone interested in sunbathing tomorrow?" 

Most of the GSG'ers stay and live in the Gangnam area, where the Samsung offices are located, but it looks like quite a few have chosen to live here in Hannam and in the U.N. Village so it looks like we'll have some neighbors!! One wife, Pria organized a pizza lunch at this great pizza place in our neighborhood and we had 10 ladies show up! It was great fun and I finally got to meet other people in my shoes. Most of them have been here a little longer than I have, so most have phones and have started Korean classes, so they have lots of helpful information, but everyone still seems to be figuring everything out at the same time which is comforting. The Better Halves group also gets together for coffee every Thursday, so when I attend one of those, I will be able to meet some who have been here a year and have some wisdom under their belts.

Tomorrow is a dinner for GSG members and their wives, so I will see some of them again tomorrow, but I think this will be a great support system in these first few months of getting settled. After lunch, Pria introduced a few of us to this hidden gem of a grocery store near the pizza place called Expat Mart. They had chicken stock! And green beans! They also carry a wide selection of Indian ingredients and if you don't see something, you can just ask them and they'll see if they can try to get it in stock. I want to ask for celery. It's the last ingredient I need before I can make tortilla soup. At least I found the stock!

Small sampling of the Better Halves.

From left to right (with prior place of residence):

Pria (London), Me, Priscilla (Hong Kong), Shing (Pennsylvania), Sindhu (London), Racha (Paris)

Better than Wally World

Yesterday was a very exciting day. We went to Costco! It was the end of my first week here, so why not celebrate by venturing out to see what surprises a Korean Costco could hold, in an effort to fill the kitchen with some bulk Western comforts! There are actually multiple Costco locations in and around Seoul and all are accessible by subway or bus. In the name of adventure, RCP wanted to try out the subway, so we chose the location southeast of Hannam, in the Seocho-gu area...only after a bagel and creme cheese breakfast of course.

The SunRich Cheese Cafe, a delightful establishment across the street from home, 
specializing in cream cheese and bagels and various pre-packaged cheeses and cheese cake.

Cheese is extremely expensive here, because Koreans don't eat a lot of it, 
but they do know how to make cream cheese....and sell bagels imported from NY.

Real H&H bagels.

Tough to buy them by the bag though, because they were all

pre-packaged individually, nice and sanitary.

Obviously cream cheese and bagels hasn't caught on here.

No giant mounds of cream cheese like in deli's back home.

Beautiful presentation, no whopping NY size dollops of cream cheese

overpowering the bagel, it was all delicious....

...and New Yorker approved.

Now onto Costco!


After breakfast, we spent about 45 minutes trying to find the subway station, which shockingly is not that close to U.N. Village. Everything else is so convenient, why wouldn't that be? During the search, we did encounter some picture worthy establishments.

 The Happy Cafeteria.

The Chicken Hof.

Not sure of the name, but they specialize in beef parts other than your standard steak and ribs.

Need to remember this place for my more challenging recipes.

Still no subway station to be found.

But we did find King Crab.

Are we there yet?

Why join the private gym at work when you've

got all the public parks?

We think this machine works your core.

Found the subway.

Nice, clean, not crowded, and so much better

than New York City transit.

So much better.

Aaaahhh! There it is!

I would equate seeing Costco in the distance as we got of the train, to the Griswalds driving up to Wally World....but much more exciting. For those of you who know NYC, the subway trip took about as long as it does to go from 86th St down to Wall Street; a trip you wouldn't make often, but definitely bearable (and easy) when needed.  

The warehouse carries about 50% Western products and 50% Korean. Yes, they carried the gift boxes of Spam, giant tins of red chili pepper paste, and the only way they sold peaches and apples was in gift box form, but everyone seamed to be buying them.  Vitamins also seemed to be a popular Korean purchase...we're talking baskets of vitamins. And for nearly the only two American's there, it had everything we needed! Staples like balsamic vinegar, diced tomatoes and frozen fruit and then some real treats like Cheerios, tortilla chips, picante sauce, deli turkey, and cheese that wasn't a small fortune. We were quite impressed with the meat department and procured some beautiful filets at a reasonable price (even though it was a feeding frenzy since Koreans love their beaf). The check-out process was like herding cattle, but extremely quick and efficient and the employees were very helpful to the two Americans who were purchasing three times what everyone else was. The two big successes of the trip? Dr. Pepper for me and Chivas Regal for RCP. 

Better than Wally World.

Chuseok is the Korean Thanksgiving and

is coming up next week!

 Let the madness begin.

Membership sign-up was a little chaotic but efficient. I now know I need to memorize my passport

number because they needed it and wouldn't let me sign up for a membership without it.

Costco memberships are good at any Costco around the world.

The clothing area was quite popular and a disaster as a result.

I have NEVER seen designer handbags at Costco.
Koreans love their labels!
I wonder if they're real.

 

Similar to finding the Holy Grail.

 Then we headed downstairs to where they keep the good stuff.

Upstairs is things like office supplies, dog food, and pillows.

Downstairs is food.

 They had a great wine selection, however, no $2.00 St. Genevieve Texas White. 

Dad, you still have the best deal.

Premium? Seriously?

Lots and lots of red chili pepper paste.

 I would love a fruit basket as a gift...I never want to be given dried anchovies.

People. Everywhere.

That's a lot of Korean bbq.

Fill 'er up!

Ah, Cheerios.

We will be back.