Mark tried to keep up by washing dirty dishes as we got them dirty, but he also got some time fluting the pastry. We first roasted the tomatoes with garlic and provencal herbs that Evelyn brought from Paris.
That was added to sauteed zucchini, and feta cheese inside a puff pastry crust. A mixture of egg and lots of heavy cream, covered with parmesan infused bread crumbs completed our French quiche. What a delicious lunch and a wonderful French cooking lesson morning!
Another morning we went exploring the area just outside the foreigner's compound. Less than a half mile away is a reservoir, with a path encircling it.
Alexia walked us to the reservoir, then turned us loose on the trails that went up into the hills. We had this handy map to help us find our way, but of course it was useless because we can't read the Korean alphabet. We had to give the paths names based on the first letter of their Hangul names. One of the letters of the Korean alphabet looks a little like a guy wearing a hat, another reminds us of a guy doing the splits, another of a tree. So some of our trail names were very imaginative.
When we saw direction signs on the trails, they weren't very helpful to us. We are finding an occasional English sign, but South Korea isn't as English-speaking tourist friendly as we had hoped. Few Koreans know English, so asking for directions isn't usually an option either.
Even without understanding the signage, we made our way to the summit of the hills surrounding the reservoir. We could barely see the tall apartment complexes that were in the city below.
We could also see a bird's eye view of the ship yard that we toured earlier. It is amazing that the city and the Sea of Japan are so close when we were hiking in a forest.
The trail was surprisingly rugged for an urban park. At times we were scrambling over boulders, while other times it was literally like a stroll in the park.
Also along the path we found an occasional garden. Obviously planted and cared for, it was surrounded by barbed wire and a padlocked gate. We aren't sure of the process whereby individuals can claim public land for a garden, but we find them all over the country.
We also found many of these green tarps covering mysterious piles. The edges were sealed to the ground, so we couldn't lift up the tarp to peek inside. Later we would find that Koreans covered piles of wood from trees that had been infested with pine beetles. The covers were designed to keep the pine beetles from infesting healthy trees, and to keep the wood dry so it could used for fire wood.
We are not surprised to find more exercise areas in the park. We finally got a picture of adult women using the heavy hula hoops on the far left hand side. We also saw many Korean women in typical exercise gear. Because they want full protection from the sun, most will exercise in long sleeves and even gloves on this beautiful fall day. Many of the women also wear cloth masks that completely cover their faces. Our best picture of the face coverings is on the far right hand side of the picture.
We met many hikers in their work clothes, catching some exercise on their lunch break. At the end of the path is an air hose station, designed to remove all the dust from your shoes before returning to work or home.
We took a picture of Denisa's shoes after she cleaned one with the air hose. Obviously that high pressure hose makes a difference because the shoe on the left looks much better.
We headed home through another neighborhood, walking amongst the tall apartment complexes that are everywhere in this city. We calculated that 96 families could live in each building, and it sits on about the same amount of land that our single family house used back in Oklahoma. It makes us a little sad that children raised here have only a tiny playground shared with four different buildings (or almost 400 families). That might be the reason for all the nice public parks that we are enjoying around the city.
We also tried our luck at finding something for lunch. We have been blessed by many of Alexia's home-cooked meals, so we haven't tried Korean food yet. We picked this neighborhood place because it had big pictures of food that we thought we could just point at to order lunch. But the owner noticed our confusion, and handed us a laminated sheet with English titles. We ordered the "pork and rice" dish, and it was more than enough for both of us. We also sampled the side dishes that came with it. The
brown soup was something akin to soggy rice krispies in beef broth. In the three-way divided plate we sampled the top orange dish that tasted a little like fermented rubber bands. The green curly stuff was some sort of fermented sea weed, and the bottom sample was the ever-present fermented cabbage called kimchi. We must not be very Korean, because none of the fermented side dishes were tasty to us. Even thought we tried each one, we could also say that none of the side dishes were edible in our opinion.
We ate most of the pork and rice, but had to leave the side dishes. We headed home by way of the neighborhood market and an ice cream snack that we are happy to report was not fermented.
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