Hannah is Cooking in Da House!

With deadlines looming, my wonderful friend Hannah came over for the weekend. She cooked and just plain took care of us. She never follows a recipe and seems to use a million different ingredients to create her masterpieces. Here she is preparing homemade budae jjigae which is one of my favorite Korean foods.





She always has a smile on her face and a peace sign ready. I asked her why Koreans seem to cook everything on high (with the flame screaming). She said, "Is there any other way?" She always makes me smile.



Here is the budae jjigae. It was sooooo good!



The next meal she even brought the groceries. She wanted honey which I haven't had in my house since the kids were babies but she improvised with sugar.


I forgot the name but it was a chicken dish. It was spicy and sweet. I told her that I have to videotape her cooking and put it here on my blog.

One funny thing that happened on Saturday at Home Plus. Curt (hubby), Hannah and myself were on our way to lunch and on the escalator when we heard a little boy who looked about three crying very loudly. He was about 10 feet behind us with his grandmother. Hannah started laughing and asked us if we wanted to know what his grandmother said to him. Sweet little Korean grandmother told her grandson that if he didn't stop crying that the big foreigner was going to take him away. Who was the big foreigner she was talking about? MY HUSBAND!

The little boy only cried louder. I looked back to see the grandmother bending over her grandson while pointing at Curt. Hannah said that she again said that the foreigner was going to come and take him. I was shocked but Hannah said it is very common for Koreans to use this tactic with their children when they are misbehaving in public.

I still feel bad about this incident for a lot of reasons. Mostly, that this child would look at foreigners as something to be afraid of.

A funny thing happened in yoga today. It is still hot enough that I sweat in class so today I thought I would go in pigtails. A pony tail doesn't work because we spend part of the time on our back and it would be uncomfortable. I changed into my yoga clothes and walked into class a little later than usual. The entire room stopped warming up and starting pointing and laughing at me. Then they started calling me "ae-gi" which is the name for baby in Korean. Some even came over and yanked on my pigtails. It lasted for a few minutes until the teacher came in and got the class under control. My yoga buddy told me that NO ONE my age would EVER wear pigtails. It picked up again after class as we went into the changing room to change into our street clothes.

I had to do some shopping after class so over to Home Plus I went, pigtails and all. Did I get more stares than usual? I'm not sure because I'm always stared at but no one came over and yanked on them so I was grateful for that.

I was glad to see that at least today I could put a smile on a Korean's face. That doesn't happen every day to me. The U.S. beef import controversy had made things a little uncomfortable here at times. Will I wear pigtails out of my apartment again....... maybe.