The End of Classes and Maybe the End of Life

Hi Everyone!

Today was the last day of classes at university, which means final exams are coming up next week. I was supposed to present 2 final presentations today, but one of my classes was delayed, so I will present next Monday. I got to deliver a mind-blowing presentation about the Canadian berry market in my Agricultural Marketing class though, so that was a highlight of my day. I used Prezi to make my presentation, which is an online presentation maker--it's similar to powerpoint in that you have slides to convey your information, but there's lots more zooming and it looks like a movie or game when you present it. Good thing it's online too, since my memory stick wasn't working with the school computer. Too bad the students probably couldn't understand a word I said :( Oh well.

I might go shopping today, since my favourite cereal is on sale. This is what I bought last week: 

Fruit and Fibre is on sale this week!! I bought 4 750g boxes for $12.

Also, this past week my elementary school had its 3^rd annual English competition broadcast. They put me on the school’s TV channel and had me interview and quiz the best and brightest English students in the 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grade. Some of these students are real good at English!

Yesterday the local office of education took me and the other Damyang TaLK teachers out for a Korean delicacy. We had hwoe (pronounced "hwae") which is the Korean version of Japanese sashimi (raw fish--different than Japanese sushi which is raw fish on rice, sashimi/hwoe is slabs of raw fish all by themselves). We arrived at the restaurant and made our way into a dining room where we sat down at a long table with trays of hwoe already prepared for us and waiting (not a good way to start in my opinion--you should serve the food after your guests arrive so they know you've freshly prepared it). The supervisor had started pouring the alcohol for us, but I think you could tell most of us were pretty nervous about eating such raw fish in front of us—especially Irene, this is her nightmare about Korea. 

Irene, overjoyed to face her biggest fears in Korea, and Sujie, her co-scholar to her right,
secretly laughing at all of us in her heart.

Reminds me of that scene from Mr. Bean when he is staying in the hotel and eats a bunch of expired oysters that give him a nightmare about seafood. Similar experience :S

Imagine 8 American young women eating raw seafood like this.

On the hwoe tray there was some white slabs of fish (probably the safest choice since it didn’t have eyes, innards, or limbs attached), some deep purple octopus tentacles (they’re kind of beautiful to look at actually), a couple oyster things (the one that looks kind of like black snot—sorry if you like oysters! Maybe it was a clam?), a couple strands of something red, and some perfectly pink, cooked, whole shrimp (big ones too! Maybe they were prawns).

At one point in the meal, someone noticed that the strips of red things were slightly moving…. Which brings us to our next course!  

Nakji is a Korean delicacy (why is it that cultural delicacies are always the weirdest foods??) of raw octopus. I’ve only heard about it in “Weirdest things about Korea” story books, blog posts, YouTube videos and the like.

But here it was, in real life, in front of me, expecting to be devoured by hungry Asians but instead delivered to a few terrified North American women (and myself).

Nakji is incredibly fresh—perhaps you can already see where I’m going with this—so fresh it’s practically alive. Basically they pluck some octopi from the big, enticing, quality assuring fish tanks out front of the store and then kill it, cut it up, put some sesame oil and sesame seeds on it and serve it to you, still raw and wriggling. *shudder* Sorry, I’m too North American to appreciate this…

I felt like this.

If you're up for it, I took a video of our group having a go at this crazy dish. It's a few minutes long: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9EXraZ_Vuw&feature=youtu.be

That’s it for today J I hope I leave you with a positive mindset.