Happy Thanksgiving!

Free Twitter Backgrounds Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. Wish we were home to celebrate with family and friends, but we'll be celebrating with the other family this year. SangKwun and Birth Father flew into Korea and are taking Mark and I out to dinner tonight. Guessing we won't have turkey, but I'm sure it'll be a good meal! I'll be sure to post pics! I am definitely THANKFUL to have such wonderful people supporting me no matter what my location! Enjoy the day!

Obama does Korea!

Welcome to Korea, President Obama!

from The Korea Times:

"President Lee will present Obama with the credential for taekwondo black belt holders, a taekwondo suit, a black belt and two English-language books on traditional Korean culture and food.

Obama reportedly practiced the Korean martial art for four years in early 2000s when he was the senator of Illinois.

Michelle Obama is not coming to Korea this time, but first lady Kim Yoon-ok will send her cookbooks on traditional Korean cuisine."

Do you think Michelle will be preparing a nice meal of kimchi jjigae for the fam anytime soon? Actually, if the news isn't overblown, as American people, your primary concern is probably whether or not he'll bow... and if he does, how low will he go?!??! :)

Korean cooking

Mark found an awesome Korean cooking blog with video demonstrations. The host is this adorable Korean lady who lives in Toronto. She's so spunky and cute and the recipes we've tried so far have been amazing. You can check it out at Maangchi if you're interested!

The first thing we tried was kimchi stew (kimchi jjigae -- 김치찌개). It was so tasty... but I only recommend it if you can handle some spiciness.

Tonight we experimented with panfried tofu in soy sauce (dubu ganjangjolim -- 두부 간장조림) and breaded cod fillets (daegujeon -- 대구전). It was really good, except the cod had tiny bones in it. Next time we'll have to get the boneless cod.

Tomorrow night we're going to make stir fried noodles with meat and vegetables (japchae -- 잡채).

NYT: Adopted from Korea and in Search of Identity

I need a little more time to digest this... if you're lucky I may post my thoughts in the next couple days...

But in the meantime... for those of you interested in the whole adoption issue, straight from the New York Times... for your reading pleasure...

Adopted From Korea and in Search of Identity

By RON NIXON

Published: November 9, 2009

A study says that more than half of the first generation of children adopted from South Korea struggled with their ethnic identity, and it recommends changes in adoption policy.

Halloween

A lot of American holidays have gone uncelebrated while we've been in Korea, but we didn't miss a beat this year on Halloween.

On Friday, our school had a Halloween party day for the kids. All the kids and teachers dressed up. For the first time for as long as I can remember, Mark and I didn't play on the Asian/Caucasian theme. I really wanted Mark to dress up as Godzilla and stalk around the subway so I could take pictures of everyone's reactions, but Mark didn't think it was as funny as I did. Luckily, he wasn't a total party pooper and wore spandex and fake muscles. :)

Here we are ready for the day.

Then the kiddos arrived. I loved chubby little Andy squeezed into his superhero costume.

And here are two little princesses, Judy and Chloe. I swear, about 95% of the girls dressed up as some sort of a princess.

Here's Mark with the girls from his class.

And with the boys from his class.

Each of the teachers was responsible for a station. Some teachers did jack o lantern carving, some did pin the hat on the witch, and some ran the "touch the dead man's body" station. Mark and I got lucky and got to take the kids trick or treating to some neighborhood shops. It was pretty fun.

Mark got really into his costume and posed with all sorts of batmans and superheroes.

Batman even hung out with a unicorn.

A lot of the Korean teachers chose to be very scary characters. Eunice, in particular, dressed up as a very convincing witch. She stayed in character -- hunched over -- all day. Her claim to fame was making about 3 or 4 little girls scream and cry.

Then we had a teacher's costume contest. Each of the kids got a sticker and could put it on their favorite costume. There was some stiff competition between a ninja, Freddie Mercury, Minnie Mouse, Batman, a nerd, a bumblebee, and Poly student, Shrek, and a robot.

The kids must've been impressed with his monster biceps and spandex, because Mark was crowned the winner. Check out all those stickers!

The following night -- on actual Halloween -- we had a party at our apartment. We even had some international guests! SangKwun and Emily flew in from China for it.

Here I am with some of the girls.

Here I am with Emily and her little sister.

SangKwun borrowed Freddie Mercury's stache. It looks so natural, doesn't it?! ;o)

Happy Halloween!