Oreo O-No's

Remember Oreo O's? Post made the delicious chocolatey white-speckled cereal over a period of about nine years before discontinuing it. Oreo O's haven't existed since 2007, and that's sad.

A few months ago I wanted the cereal badly enough to consider ordering a few boxes online, but, alas, it wasn't available anywhere. Plus, it all would've expired like three years ago. So you'll understand how excited I was when I spotted a (fresh) box of my favorite Oreo-flavored cereal on the shelf of a South Korean grocery store. I grabbed the box and then another, using shrill, high-pitched noises to communicate to Joe that the boxes I held were anomalies of space and time and so I had to have them. He told me to put one of the boxes back, but a few minutes later, I left that store with a beautiful blue cereal box in my hands.

By the end of the five-minute walk back to our apartment, I'd pulled the box open and struggled with the shiny bag inside long enough for Joe to have taken it away and opened it for me. I stuck my hand in there and pulled out a few pieces of cereal and ate them.

And they weren't Oreo O's at all. They didn't look right, and they sure didn't taste right.

Do those brown things in the bowl look anything like the generously-white-thing-sprinkled cereal pieces on the box? No. They don't. Because they aren't generously white-thing-sprinkled.

I could've gotten over the lack of sprinkles. But the flavor.....at first, it was only a little bit "off." Then came the aftertaste. That's when I became pretty sure that the cereal had been manufactured using some kind of bean product rather than corn.

I could be wrong on that, and I can't read the ingredient list or even find it because everything on the box is written in Hangul, but it might make sense. Beans are used in some surprising ways here, like as a topping for a popular frozen treat. And the cereal's aftertaste definitely wasn't the corn-based-cereal aftertaste.

On that day, a shining moment of hope burst into flame and burned until nothing was left but a nasty aftertaste.

...but...if you just put them in a bowl with some milk, don't eat any of them plain, and ignore the aftertaste...it's almost like reliving the lazy Saturday mornings of your youth. Almost.

(EDIT: A few weeks and a few bowlfuls later, I'm starting to think that maybe this is what they always tasted like. Maybe I'm just growing accustomed to the weirdness.)

Now I Know What My Shirt Says

We were going through the checkout line with some friends at the PX one evening after shopping for playing cards and Tupperware. While the older Korean cashier man who's kinda my friend because we always smile at each other and so I like him cashiered our purchases, me and Joe and our friends talked about what language was written above the English on my beloved-Christmas-present-from-Joe shirt.

"I don't think it's a real language," I said. "I think it's, like, off of a sci-fi show or something."

Mr. Cashier Man looked at the writing. "That's Japanese," he said.

"Oh, cool," I said. "It doesn't say anything bad, does it?" Because I've always wondered about that.

He took a few seconds to interpret it. "Talk...nerdy...to...me." Then he looked really awkwarded out. Or confused, maybe, about whether that qualified as something bad. But I think he was awkwarded out.

"Oh, good," I said, now feeling slightly awkwarded out, too. "That's awesome. Thank you very much!"

We got our receipt and I bowed my head to Mr. Cashier Man the way I do with Korean people because I think they bow to each other but I'm not really sure but that also works great as a greeting and as "thank you," and we left. I tried to look at the Japanese words on my shirt while we walked out. And all the way home I was happy that my shirt had Japanese writing on it, and also that it didn't say anything bad.

By the way, I was wondering why no one ever subscribed to my blog. Then I noticed that it's never had a Subscribe button. Don't worry, I fixed it. Now there's a button on the side over there. Click on "Join this site" now so I have more than 3 subscribers and can feel even better about myself. (I used to have 4 subscribers, but then I removed myself from the list.)

 If the button isn't there, try refreshing the page.

IT'S HERE!!!

When I traveled the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon to get to Korea from Virginia, all I could bring with me were my most precious belongings and the things I'd need for my new life in the wild west. I was allowed only what would fit into two suitcases and two carryons and my purse. Also, I had to keep within a weight limit. I brought one Teflon skillet, one Teflon pot, half of our silverware, steak knives, a cheese grater, some measuring cups, a vegetable strainer, a cookie sheet, some silicone bread pans, my large crockpot, some tongs, four bathtowels, five books, my Bible, a book of puzzles, twelve pounds of DVDs, a set of bedsheets, not enough clothing, a keyboard, a mouse, and some computer speakers. I was not, however, able to bring our photo albums, my sewing machine, any lamps, enough clothing, or my desktop computer.

Now, the computer thing wouldn't have been that big of a deal if I could play computer games on my laptop. Unfortunately, I can't play computer games on my laptop, because Lappy prefers lounging around on Facebook and browsing the Web to doing all the hard work involved in playing silly games.

I would've been okay with that. Except that, for me and Joe, games kinda put the "happily" in "happily ever after."

For the past month, I've seen what life would be like if I didn't share my husband's hobbies. It would be frustrating and boring and full of resentment. I'd spend our evenings lounging around on Facebook and browsing the Web after sulkily making dinner while Joe played games, then we'd watch laptop-TV together after dinner and go to bed. It would be a dull, depressing, hopeless existence.

But! Shortly after I arrived here, Joe ordered a new computer for me. We decided not to ship the old one to Korea, because I hadn't gotten an upgrade for, like, two years, and it was just time for a new one. So Joe ordered it and I've been waiting for weeks and it finally came today. (If you want the specs, scroll down to the bottom of the post. If you don't, I'll simplify: it's encrusted with diamonds and was designed by NASA to break the speed of light barrier.)

I'm downloading my games and other necessities right now. Once that's done, no more Facebook and resentment for me! The upcoming 4-day weekend be a glorious nerd-fest of diamond-encrusted marital bliss!

Remember, flashing the peace sign in a photo is Korean for "I'm cool."

The small print: CybertronPC Fortress TGM2221F Gaming PC - AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.20GHz, 16GB DDR3, 1TB HDD, Blu-ray ROM, AMD Radeon HD 6850, LCD Touch Fan Control, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

A New Flavor

Joe signed the lease on our apartment a little over a month ago. After the technicalities of the paperwork were over and their business was concluded, our kind Korean landlord offered Joe a celebratory drink. Mr. Landlord poured for them a thickish green liquid full of floating translucent things, and they drank in businesslike companionship of contract-signing happiness.

Ever since, Joe has been addicted to the thickish green liquid full of floating transparent things. The transparent things are slippery and nice to mush with your teeth. I myself enjoy half a glass when I'm making dinner. We go through like four bottles of this stuff per week.

What? No, we haven't found an alcoholic beverage we enjoy. This stuff is juice. Usually when you think "juice," you think grape juice, fruit juice, grapefruit juice, orange juice, apple juice. But this stuff...is aloe juice.

Sweetened aloe juice is actually widely dranken here. Drunken. Drank. Whatever. I even saw an aloe juice bottle by the side of the road earlier. There are at least three different brands, but this is the kind we like:

Note the abundance of delicious pulp!

If aloe juice seems to be out of stock at your local grocer, just ask for Guaeelchon brand aloe juice.

Assuming I interpreted that L correctly in "Guaeelchon," and that it's not an R, because L and R are the same character and you just gotta know which one is being used in your word. Also assuming that the G in "Guaeelchon" isn't more of a "K" sound, because they share a character, too. But the sounds are so similar that it almost doesn't matter.

So, yeah, ask for it. They probably just have it in the back. Shouldn't be a problem.

Our Five Minutes of Fame

Here, where it's been rainy most of August and you actually get excited when you wake up to sunlight, "Let's go to the beach this weekend" isn't as good of an idea as it sounds. Still, we put our names on the list for the Jong-Sa Beach Tour.

The morning of the expedition dawned hot and cloudy. Me and Joe and a bunch of people from Joe's unit got on a bus at 8:00 in the morning (and Joe bought me a bacon-egg-and-cheese biscuit while I found seats for us, but I was still kind of sad 'cause of having no drink, but then I would've had to use the bathroom halfway through the drive, anyway.) A couple of hours on the bus went by, and it started raining, and then the bus drove 200 feet off the highway and parked in the beach's parking lot.

It had just stopped raining when we got off the bus and claimed spots under umbrellas so our stuff wouldn't get wet. Then we went to the water and walked in it. Me and Joe found a lot of cool rocks and I put them all in the pocket of his bathing suit, which was bright green and had palm trees on it, which you may know isn't exactly Joe's style, but there wasn't much of a bathing suit selection at the PX. I love Joe because his pockets are usually for my stuff.

The water was so clear you could see your feet even when you were knee-deep. Even once we got in the water up to our chins, we could see our feet down there.

Joe and some other guys tossed a football around, then I joined in but was too scared of the ball to catch it and I really couldn't throw very well, but it was fun anyway. Then we all played in the water for a while. Then we rode an inflatable water-thing towed by a JetSki. Then I got to go in a shower tent which had warm water and felt phenomenal after I was cold and sticky from the ocean. Then we ate lunch, which was a buffet of baked beans, rolls, mac & cheese, and delicious barbecued beef and some ribs, all of which was only $8 per person. I went back for seconds on the meat and would have gone back for thirds if I hadn't been so worried about looking like a weirdo.

Then we ran out of things to do.

The beach we were on was actually a smallish part of a larger beach, and the larger part of the beach was the Korean part. We decided to walk over there.

The Korean side was a lot more crowded. There were about eight of us, and I don't know about the others, but I felt really outnumbered and out-of-place and also the bottoms of my feet hurt because the sand on those beaches was pretty sharp.

We walked past a big group of young Koreans playing a game which seemed to involve trying to prevent the opposing team from hitting the females on your team with a ball that was being thrown back and forth really hard. We stopped to watch. A few of the players waved at us, and we waved back and kept watching. The group of the eight of us spectating drew more spectators. We moved along once that became boring.

It was still awkward being the only Americans on the beach (except for one other couple we passed.) Then, when we were walking past a large tent where an event had been held and people were packing up the stuff under the tent, one Korean guy in his thirties or maybe forties noticed us and got INCREDIBLY EXCITED. He started fluttering around us, saying "Oh my gosh" and "Wow" and other American-ey phrases which I don't remember, and I think speaking Korean. There were some older ladies under the tent who just gave him disgusted looks. He had us all hold up our hands with peace signs and took a few pictures of our group. Then he had someone take a picture of him with us, again with the peace signs. (It seems that Koreans consider the peace sign to be super hip, and, oddly, it's used WAY more over here than it is in the U.S.) The whole time, he was smiling and fluttering and "Oh my gosh"ing.

After the pictures, we said 'bye and walked away, giggly and confused.

The people we thought were staring as we walked along the beach...actually had been staring. It wasn't just paranoia brought about by being the only Americans among 24,536 Koreans.

As we headed back to the American side of the beach, I was still in awe. "If we were in the States and saw a group of Koreans, we wouldn't have gotten all excited or starey," I said to Joe. Then I had a brilliant thought. My theory: "America's a melting pot. Tons of different cultures. I guess we're used to seeing all sorts of people, and they're not."

So that was my culture lesson for the day.

And the Pacific Ocean is cold.

Oh - something else cool - the sun came out as our bus left the parking lot to take us home.