a little piece of normalcy

Not that I'm ready to come home, but it is hard to get a little bit of normalcy in Korea.  I use to bake, lay in my comfy bed, watch all my favorite tv shows, drive in my car to see pretty landscape, understand the language everyone is speaking, and be alone in the big world of America...

For the first time in my life I am the minority.  Most other cities have other "expats" - other foreign teachers- but we are in a small city and haven't yet run into any other English speaking teachers. Most people, when we walk down the street or through the grocery store, stare.  It's like my face is where my butt is and I'm walking on my hands.  Though everyone is extremely nice to us.  The owner of the building our school is in, Kang, took us hiking this weekend. He has offered to take us shopping, go out to eat with us, and has even bought us stuff.  They are all very generous, and as far as I know it's mostly because we are American. We are very grateful for their hospitality, being as it is very hard to make friends around here, but it is all out of the norm for us.  Today after dinner I took a walk and decided to go get milk while I was out.  As I picked up some brown sugar and a baking dish first, I headed towards the milk aisle and who did I see ....  Andrew. Also picking up milk.  In all the grocery stores in our block, and him not even knowing I was there, we walked into the same aisle at the same place at the same time... I feel like this was Karma saying we should probably stick together - not that where we live is too dangerous to walk around by ourselves - just ironic.

 So today I longed for a little normalcy... after we got milk I attempted to make a tasty pear-apple strudel baked in a  dish with brown sugar and butter.  Sounds good right?? well it wasn't. lol. I think to make delicious food I will need more than three ingredients, and maybe an oven.  I did have a toaster oven, of course, but somehow it's just not the same.  So to go with our butter tasting warm fruit we had tea and about 5 games of sequence.  And I won 3 of the 5 :)