Monday, March 29, 2010

New Favorite Korean Food: Black Rice Bread!

Okay, so I've been absent for too long from my blog, but I had forgotten my password and since I'm in Korea, when I went to Blogspot.com, it was all in Hangul and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was telling me when I was trying to reset it. Luckily, my beautiful Korean friend, Yun, came over and translated it for me today so I could reset my password and get back to writing about it here in Korea.

So we went grocery shopping at the Lotte Mart (think Super Target or something, but not Walmart, it's much nicer than Walmart) and I bought Mia some dinner rolls at the bakery. After we paid for them, I let Mia have one since she had been so patient and good while I was shopping and she gobbled it down really fast. I thought, "Wow, she was really hungry!" so I gave her another, and she gobbled that down just as fast as the first one. When we got in the car, I gave her one more for the road and predictably she was asking for more before we got home. I made her wait until we got all the groceries inside the apartment, then I gave her another one. While I was putting all the food away, Mia apparently ate all the rest in the bag (I know better than to leave these kind of things lying within Mia's reach, but I was preoccupied). I was surprised when Mia asked for more bread since she had eaten all the rolls I had just bought at the bakery. Well, I don't want to starve my growing child, (she's SOOO skinny, too) so I offered her some black rice bread I had bought for the first time and was surprised to see the bread is actually purple since it has a dark brown crust (and that was all I could see before I bought it). I tried a piece with her and it was SOOOO good! It tastes like regular bread but it is much more moist, almost a little chewy. I really really like it, but Mia took one bite and put it down on the table and it's been sitting here untouched for the past 15 minutes, so either she doesn't like it or she's finally full from eating a whole bag of freshly baked dinner rolls before. Oh well, more for me!

While I'm back, I would like to clarify my past incident with the Bongo truck driver... I'm really doing my best not to be an ignorant American picking fights with the locals, but this was really a dangerous thing he was trying to do that I simply blocked him from doing. The situation was this: I was driving home from Daegu on the interstate and there is a bridge we have to cross to get into Pusan. It was late afternoon and in the middle of rush hour traffic. We were stopped on the bridge and yes, it's everybit as frustrating as driving in rush hour traffic back in the States. There are two lanes in each direction and since neither lane was moving, some cars began to drive in the area between the furthest right lane and the wall of the bridge. It drives me crazy when they do that b/c they don't drive slowly to pass, they drive REALLY fast as if it's a third lane, which it isn't, and b/c it's narrow, they're so close to the cars in the right hand lane and all I can think is one of these a-holes is going to scratch the side of my car while they're rushing past all the stopped traffic in their pseudo lane. So, I pulled my car half in my lane, half in the pseudo lane and blocked the rest of the traffic from passing those of us in LEGITIMATE lanes so they can't cause a crash or try to sneak in front of us further up in traffic. I guess the driver of the bongo truck behind was pissed b/c he kept honking his horn at me the entire time we were on the bridge (which turned out to only be about 10 minutes) and FOLLOWED me to my exit and continued following me to where I turned to get back to my apartment. While I was stopped at a red light, he got out of his truck and knocked on my window, I rolled it down and he just started yelling (I assume angrily) in Hangul at me. So I yelled back in English that what he was doing was illegal and he would have been arrested for reckless driving back in the United States for pulling that kind of crap and he could've killed someone if he lost control of his truck and he needs to learn how to drive, yada yada yada. And it just went back and forth with him yelling at me and me yelling at him, neither of us having a clue what the other was saying, but we were both pissed, so I just started yelling, "YOU'RE DANGEROUS!" over and over and over b/c most of the people in my apartment building use that word when Mia's climbing on the playground equipment, so I figured it was a word he MIGHT understand. It must've done the trick b/c he shook his head at me like I was truly insane (and I probably looked a bit crazy at the time) and went back to his truck. I was fuming over this incident on the way home, but it felt SOOO GOOOD to finally yell at these crazy bongo drivers... they're the WORST (even worse than the taxi drivers here). I didn't use any finger gestures (though I was tempted) although a few F-bombs were dropped (I was concentrating too hard on not flipping him off, I can't not do both). So, I don't go around picking fights, I just finally stopped a crazy bongo truck from doing something illegal and he didn't like it. Oh well. The good news was the next time I drove the bridge (2 weeks later) there were signs in the pseudo lane preventing anyone from driving in it(YAY!).

Okay, now I'm tired of typing so until I have something else to say... TooDaLoo!