Helicopters and Snowcrabs

I feel like I’m trying to play catchup on blog posts this week.  The days are slipping away from me faster than I can keep track of them.  It’s not as encouraging as it might sound.  I’m dying for December to be over, so this month is both a crawl and a sprint.  My students are pretty much over the whole school thing and my Grade 3 students look at me like I just condemned them to death every time I propose the simplest English assignment.  Example:  It took them 15 minutes today just to get each student to write the name of their favorite member of Girls Generation on a piece of freakin’ paper.

The phrase in English is “like pulling teeth”.  It couldn’t be more true. 

In other news, last night I went skiing for only the second time in my life and for the first time in roughly 7 years.  It wasn’t a complete failure.  Only two slopes were available:  Easy and Difficult.  Easy got old pretty quickly so my Korean friends quickly decided it was time to take it up a notch, regardless of whether or not I was ready for it.  I wiped out pretty quickly the second time (yes, remarkably I survived the first run) after I picked up way too much speed.  I spun around on my skis and quickly pulled my left groin muscle and fell onto my hand, spraining my thumb.  Not the worst injuries, and at least I was able to keep going for another hour or so on the easy slope.  Also, the cold never got absolutely painfully bitter, so we held our own, even as the ice started to soak through my gloves.

One thing that did seem to catch the locals off-guard was the sudden appearance of thirty pitch black helicopters soaring over the slopes at a fairly low altitude at about 8:00 in the evening.  They made quite a bit of noise and literally they were flying low enough that you could plainly make out their bottoms sweeping over the tree tops and the resort next to the slopes.  Eventually I lost count and I could tell that the Koreans were fairly perplexed by their appearance.  No one seemed worried, per se, but I could definitely tell that they were confused.  Needless to say, I’ll be continuing to keep my eye on the news.  Maybe the government and military know something that we don’t.

On a lighter note, there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken at the ski resort.  Not bad considering the place where we skied is only about 12 kilometers from where I live.

I also have to remark on my first poor meal experience.  Don’t get me wrong.  There was a lot about the meal that I liked, including one gesture on my behalf that was truly special to me.  Let me begin by saying that it’s no secret that I don’t like a lot of fish dishes.  We don’t eat a lot of fish in Kentucky that isn’t deep-fried or lemon-saturated catfish.  Long John Silver, Captain Ds, and Red Lobster pretty much round out my fish experiences.  So every time I go abroad, I am inevitably exposed to eating a lot of fish that contains tons of little bones, if not all the bones that fish has ever had.  I can pick through most of the cooked ones, just fine, and spit out the bones.  Even smoked fish isn’t terrible.

Fish in soup, on the other hand, can be a tricky matter.  I don’t enjoy soups that have a lot of little bones in them as it tends to compromise the consistence of the soup for me.  I usually struggle through it regardless, but when Koreans ask me if something is “Good”, the question really boils down to could I possibly stomach this again if it will placate my hosts.  If the answer is “Yes” (and it almost always is) then I answer “Yes”, but this meal caught me a little off-guard. 

This is where I would remark on that gesture I was talking about.  The daughter of the Lee family (my oft-mentioned caretakers) poured me a bowl of soup.  Immediately I noticed the gigantic fish head peeking out of the bowl, just aching to be placed in front of me so that he could accusingly look me in the eye with that dead, puckered face.  The father immediately noticed this and told her to take out the head and give me some of the body meat because he remembered, based on past conversations, that I have a hard time eating anything with a face (call me a hypocrite, but I still love the **** out of meat). Still, this was a sweet little gesture on my behalf that I thanked him for and it just validates over and over again how important it is to these Koreans—strangers, not more than two months ago—that I some day leave the country with a positive impression and fond memories.  To this end, there is simply no hospitality greater than that which I have experienced here. 

Back to the meal.  The REALLY tricky part of the pre-skiing dinner was eating the raw crab and eggs.  Considered a delicacy, this consisted of two crab-based items.  One involved the shells of the crabs being cracked open and served with all the “innards” basically scrambled into a brownish-gray-colored puree that tasted vaguely of soy sauce and “guts” with a touch of sugar.  Eating it was not a problem, but it’s not a meal I would revisit for the taste.  Then came the pinkish-red “eggs” that were described to me as salty and came served on rice.  I ate this, too.  The problem here was texture, as the consistency fell somewhere between runny eggs and a runny nose and sliminess so slimy that even Slimer from Ghostbusters would declare “I say, that is mighty damn slimy”.  The second dish involved eating whole crabs that had basically been drowned in soy sauce and left in that dark, salty grave to ferment for three days, after which someone removes them and apparently declares “Voila!  Ready to eat!”

So, essentially this is raw crab smothered in soy sauce.  Okay…Let me put on my game face.  I split the crab open and watched the father as he began to suck out the dripping innards.  I hope it doesn’t taste as gross as that forced sucking and slurping sounds.  I put the cleaved shell to my lips and let out a breath before sucking in everything I could.  Truth be told, it wasn’t bad at all.  Just impossible to eat.  The rest of the family made it look like no problem, but let me tell you that crab is damn near impossible to eat with chopsticks.  You remember how hard it was the last time you had crab just trying to pry open the shells and use those nutcrackers correctly?  Yeah, imagine not having any of those very useful tools and being left with nothing but a pair of cold, steel chopsticks.  I struggled for nearly ten minutes to gnaw off one of the legs so I begin grinding on it with my teeth (reminiscent of the chicken feet from a week or two ago) but it was all in vain.  I simply could not conquer this meal, and I hung my head in shame when the father told me not to worry about it.

Oh well.  At least they topped it off with a hot pork dish that would rival any meal I’ve had in Korea as one of my top food experiences.  Absolutely delish.  The father has now included that as long as something is spicy, bordering on the offensive, he’ll be able to coax an “Mmm…Good” out of me.  There’s a running gag going with that because the first few times we went out I was so nervous that every time I tried anything I said “Mmm…Good.”  Now if I don’t say that for something, the father acts like his feelings are hurt and he asks me “No Mmm Good?”

I guess you had to be there.

This isn’t a picture I took, but it is the same meal we had.  Tell me that doesn’t look appetizing.

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