Oddities

Katy, here.
Happy Halloween weekend, everyone! As a sort of follow up to last week's post about the difficulties in our new social environment, I'd like to talk some about the oddities of our physical environment. It is amazing how and agglomeration of little things in your world can create a completely foreign feeling atmosphere. You know, the kind of thing that makes you look around and say "we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto" and yet not be able to point to an elephant in the room as the culprit. Fortunately these differences in our physical environment don't have the same awkward, frustrating effect on us that social differences do. Usually it's just a matter of, "well would you look at that," or a laugh that just bubbles over when you trip and fall into a brick wall just to realize that for some reason, the brick is made of foam, and if this were the US you'd have a huge scar to remind you just how clumsy you are. But not here. Chances are, if you are indoors, the brick is fake, and squishy. As a matter of fact, you can buy this stuff in bulk at Daiso (the local version of a dollar store) in a variety of nauseating neon colors if you so choose. Check it out! You can even see in the picture below the jagged edge of this wall, which happened to be in a restaurant, where they cut it with ordinary scissors to make it fit the desired dimensions. Weird, right?

Along the same lines, there is the roll out hardwood that is a favorite for indoor flooring here. Our apartment, for example, is completely floored with this roll out, hardwood-looking laminate. It is similar to laminate in the US that is made to look like a tile floor. Despite this experience with laminate flooring, the faux hardwood still tickles me when I see it curling up in the corners.

Other examples of these environmental oddities include that Korean towns and cities are too cool for straight lines on their roads downtown. These zig zags are consistent throughout most places. And it's not just the creative lines on the road that make driving fun here, it's also the color. Korean roads are often painted red. I'm sure this has some purpose, but from my perspective, it's just a nice uplifting color. There's also the lack of police to pull you over. Korean police don't patrol the roads in hopes of catching that random bad driver, but rather, driving laws are camera enforced so that if you are speeding, you just get a ticket no matter what, not only if you happen upon an officer. This keeps people's driving relatively in check.

Off the road and in the comfort of your own home, there is the fact that chairs are rather uncommon in a typical household. Similarly to dryers and ovens, standard western tables and chairs are reserved for the well off who have a nice big home to accommodate such luxury. Here we generally sit on the floor, on a pillow, or the less common "floor chair." Jamie and I have invested in these floor chairs for our own apartment, as a full sized desk and chair would completely block the entryway. Sitting on the floor has its pros and cons. Bad news first... this can be really hard on your knees, especially if you are not used to getting up and down all the time and sitting cross-legged for long periods of time. The good news is that the resulting ache-y-ness has the great effect of getting you up off your butt and out of the house more often that one is usually inherently encouraged to do when sitting comfortably in a plush desk chair. I often do work that necessitates a computer at the local coffee shop or outside, which increases the likelihood of running into people, socializing, and budgeting time wisely (as you aren't going to pay for coffee just to check facebook). Restaurants and coffee shops generally have standard western chairs and tables, at least in part of the facility. Many places offer half and half floor or table seating. Large parties of people are generally required to sit in floor seating areas, however, as there usually aren't enough big tables to accommodate crowds. An interesting effect of growing up accustomed to sitting on floors, is that there are these odd "bench" tables that are in many parks, and on sidewalks. These are large square platforms raised just a foot of the ground which people sit cross-legged on like a picnic blanket. They are used for socializing, eating together, or just taking a rest. Regardless, you generally slip your shoes off to sit cross-legged on these, facing the center so to talk together easiest. Notice in the picture below that although there are picnic tables provided, Koreans seem to prefer these bench tables as a form of seating.

There are plenty more of these differences between the built environment in a Korean community as opposed to an American community, but those above are the most amusing (or just the ones I happen to have pictures of).
I hope everyone has a great Halloween!
-Katy

Terrible Two's

Katy, here!
Well it's the third week of October, and that means we're celebrating two months in our new home. Hooray! But also that brings new meaning to the phrase "terrible two's." Mind you it's not too terrible, but life here these days does have a habit of being awkward, odd, embarrassing, and generally... oops.

We're at that point where we are settled enough to feel at home and let our guard down a bit. We've grown comfortable enough that we don't recite cultural norms to ourselves and do a little pep talk in the mirror before we leave the house (or maybe that was just me). But with the positive aspects of that familiarity comes the realization that there are cultural faux pas we can't get away with anymore. We aren't new and novel foreigners anymore. We're part of the landscape and we are expected to act as such.

Manners are just as important here as anywhere, and, just as subconscious here as anywhere. Suddenly we realize just how flippant it is perceived to give or receive anything (seriously anything) with less than two hands. We're embarrassed when we get the impression that the formality of our speech was inappropriate. And we recoil when pointed at. These and more are the things we are learning to adopt without thinking into our social interactions.

Other cultural mannerisms are much less awkward and simply take some getting used to. For example, when beckoning someone in the United States, you would put your hand in front of you, palm up and wave them over with your wrist or arm. Here, to draw someone closer, you put your hand in front of you at arms length, palm down, and open and close your hand such that you could grasp something below if there were something there to grab.

You also bow in much the same manner that we wave in the US, to say hello, but also to say thank you and even "okay" or "I understand." Bowing to someone older than you? Make sure your bow is ever so slightly deeper than theirs to indicate the humility of your social position relative to them.

Another odd interaction that took some getting used to was that here, when in conversation with a Korean, it is appropriate to show you are listening by uttering a continuous string of "mmmm" or "ahhhh ahhh" rather than the periodic nod, "yeah" or "sure" we mutter while conversing in the US. This can be distracting and seem rude to foreigners (like you are being annoyingly interrupted), but is simply how one affirms that they are engaged in what you are saying here.

And finally, there is the acceptance of what I perceive to be awkward questions. For example, I was offended the first time a Korean friend of mine said "you look tired, are you okay" to me when I came to visit one day. My thoughts included "do I look that bad?" and "jeez what a way to greet me." I got over myself pretty quickly as I picked up on how common it was to make these seemingly offensive accusations, and even talked with my friend about what they mean by it. She told me that it was supposed to be flattering, because it let you know, when greeted, that you were cared for. "You look hungry", or "you look tired" seem to simply be high-context communication mechanisms for "I'm interested in you" or "I care how you are feeling," rather than directly asking "how are you?"

These may seem like trivial things, but they are only the tip of the iceberg as far as learning how to behave in public. Taken individually, none are too extreme or difficult to get used to, but as a package deal, it can be like memorizing a long list of vocabulary terms all at once and risking offending someone if you don't manage to keep them all in mind all the time.

It can be so easy to slip up in the most innocent seeming way. I'll share a story that Jamie brought home this week from school in which he made "a terrible mistake" according to his co-teacher. The word terrible makes it seem like he really screwed up, and, I expected a much worse story when he called me, flustered and frustrated at having been scolded. But what happened was simply this; he picked up a whiteboard marker to write on the board with during class, and upon realizing it was dead, tossed it into the trash can. Granted, the trash can was a little ways away, so the toss required some force, but there was certainly no emotion behind it on his end. Now we've all seen a professor or a teacher do this, toss the marker away. But according to his co-teacher, it seemed like an act of anger. Like throwing the marker was a temper tantrum he threw momentarily due to his rage that it was dried out. In hindsight, Korean culture is very uncomfortable with excessive emotion, especially anger, in public. So if he scowled or furrowed his brow at all when the marker didn't work, before tossing it to the trash can a few feet away, it could easily have been perceived as hostile. But coming from our own cultural context, this seems perfectly innocent. Now we know, I suppose. As his co-teacher explained, the only polite way to throw something away is to gently place it in a trash bin (at least in public).

Okay, so I acknowledge that this post is significantly less fun than the previous ones, if only for it's lack of pictures. But then, the subject matter didn't really lend itself to pictures. For the sake of breaking up the wall of text, here's a picture of Jamie during our weekly Friday night embarrassment rehabilitation session... ;)

So here's to the terrible two's and our second month in Korea. I think it speaks volumes to say that, despite this particular phase of our transition, we are still loving it here, feeling more at home all the time, and making friends. We feel welcome and appreciated, even if it's peppered with a healthy dose of awkward cultural clashes from time to time.

Have a great week, everybody.
-K

냠 냠 Korean Cooking

Hi! You've got Katy this week. On the requests of a number of people, I'm going to spend this post talking about cooking in Korea, some of the recipes I make regularly, and the hurdles to learning how to feed yourself in a different culture. But first, the title. "냠 냠" is pronounced "nyam nyam" or "nyom nyom" and is onomatopoeia for eating tastey food (essentialy korean for "yum yum" in english). I know this, not because people sit around saying "냠 냠" when they eat, (actually they say "맛있어!" which traslates as "it's flavorful!") but because I have been reading a lot of baby books lately. You know, the kind with one word or phrase per page describing a super simple primary colored illustration? Like a "baby's first words" kind of book. Yeah, I check out ten of those per week in order to practice reading and learn new words. Ten is the max limit on books you can check out at the childrens library here. So many of the books I read have to do with food, because it's one of the most important vocabulary sets to my functionality here, and, most of them have 냠 냠 in the title or as part of the story.

Anyway, back to the point. So this week's post is about Korean cooking as an foriegner, and I'm super excited about it. As I've mentioned before, cooking at home requires me to do a great deal of grocery shopping at a variety of shops and markets, an endeavor that takes hours sometimes. The ingredients though, the longer I'm here, seem less and less foriegn. And usually, I'm only shopping for fresh food and perishables, as I now have a stocked pantry of korean staples to draw from. Speaking of which, I put a little effort into the pictures below to show you what a stocked pantry looks like in our home. See the description below the pictures for explanations.

 

First, the feel good cabinet (except the onions, don't mind the onions). Here we have tea and junk food. Yuja, as you see labelled is a tea made of citron, the fruit that I have mentioned is one of Goheung's proud products. This jar is the typical way of drinking citron tea which I also included a picture of in a previous post. It is essentially the fruit, all chopped up, and preserved in honey. You put a spoonful or two in hot water and drink, pulp and all. Next to that is the tower of tea.On top is rice tea. That's it. Tea bags of ground rice. Because we don't get enough rice in our diets here... Below that is green tea... with rice. Because we don't get enough rice in our diets here. It's actually 70% rice, and 30% green tea, and is the preferred manner of drinking green tea by most people I've talked to. The third tea down is buckwheat tartary, which is good for digestion, delightfully nutty, and anti-inflamitory (I hear). Finally, on the bottom of the pile, is good ol' plain green tea. Most people here think it is bitter, and many grocery stores don't even carry it. Then of course, to the far right are the sweets. Granola bars for getting Jamie between meals, sweet bread like pan dulce for me, and chocolate cakes that are a lot like little debbies for dessert. Oh, and my 70% Theo dark chocolate, because I brought over a year's supply for fear I wouldn't be able to find my favorite chocolate here.

Above we have the staples cabinet. The red arrow points to a mostly empty, dog-food sized bag of rice. The red X is a bulk bag of sesame seeds. The yellow labelled 1, 2, and 3 are dried kelp, seaweed, and large dried anchovies respectively. Then of course, underlined in red is a bag of good ol' wheat flour. The stack indicated by the yellow bracket are individual sized cups of instant ramen (J likes the red kind, I like the yellow). Then there is the bag marked by a red circle which is sesame powder. Beside that is a jar of skippy peanut butter marked by a yellow X. Now skippy isn't our favorite brand, but it is all that is sold here, and toast with peanut butter for breakfast goes a lot further than toast with jam. Below that is the rectangular jar of spam I thought I'd never buy. Spam is ridiculously common in Korea. It is used in rice bowls, kimbap, soup, and more. Meat can be pretty expensive here, so I get the impression it's the only affordable way many rural Koreans can have meat at home. Then marked in green with a 1, 2, 3, 4 is vinegar, sesame oil, and gochujang, or red pepper paste, and finally salt. Just above the sesame oil is a tall jar of buckwheat noodles indicated by the yellow arrow. Buckwheat noodles are as common if not more-so than the flour noodles we eat back home here. Lastly is a big box of cereal marked by a red asterix. With these staple ingredients I can make about 7-9 basic Korean recipes and keep us easily fed for weeks, only having to pop out for veggies and specialty ingredients. Of course there is always a bulk jar of kimchi and assorted banchan (korean side dishes that are made in bulk and served with every meal) in the fridge.

Now for a few basic Korean recipes. I've already shown pictures of kimbap, and gotten excited on this blog about that success, so I'll show something new here. But keep in mind that I'd be pretty excited to email anyone with more detailed recipes for anything you are curious about.

First, soup! I've made two soups here that I am especially thrilled with. The first was Korean chicken noodle soup, with homemade noodles and broth and topped with zuccini machsticks and green onion. In most of Asia, a long noodle indicates a long life, so there is special importance (and pressure) on noodle making ability. The second is a chicken mushroom soup that looks creamy but is actually a sesame powder based broth. There are two kinds of mushrooms involved, and of course green onion.

 

p.s. The drink in the first picture (the one of chicken noodle soup) is so-mek. A mash up of soju, and mekju. Soju being a Korean liquor and mekju being lite beer. Koreans love this combo, and we don't mind it so much ourselves.

 

Then there's always the rice dishes, whether it's creative kimbap combos or fried rice, we can usally expect for rice to feature heavily in at least 1 or 2 meals a day.

 

Now, for ttokpoki. Ttokpoki is made with a korean staple called ttok (or dok) that is a gummy rice dough. For chuseok many traditional dishes involved ttok, and there is a ttok "education center" near our house where you can take lessons in making this traditional food. Ttokpoki is ttok in spicy sauce and can be ordered at any traditional restaurant. I am going to walk through this recipe in steps because it is or particular importance to a Korean cooking repertoire, and uses some of the more unique-to-korea ingredients (and I remembered to take pictures as I made it).

 

First, you make the broth with water, kelp, and anchovies which are boiled together for some time before the broth is strained.

 

Then, you add the ttok, as many hard boiled eggs as people you are feeding so that everyone gets one, and a gochujang (red pepper paste) & brown sugar mixture and boil them together until the liquid reduces to the consistency of thick spaghetti sauce.

 

 

Then you chow down while it's hot. It's super delicious and the secret to good ttokpoki is definitely in the base broth. Anchovies give it a distinct flavor that is more complex than a cheap store bought ttokpoki and the hard bolied eggs are the kind of treat you only get at home. Yum!

 

The last food I'll describe is often considered pub food here, and is called the Korean pancake or onion pancake. I like it because it is super easy to make, and surprisingly satisfying. It's usually a quick meal for nights when I didn't make a dinner plan. It is simply fried green onions with a batter of 1part water to 1part flour poured over them and cooked until just browning and holding together. Then it is served with soy sauce. That simple. For a slightly more interesting batter, sometimes a little salt and sugar can be added. Yummers. Usually it is served with banchan (korean side dishes) to suppliment. In the picture below I served it with preserved (mildly-pickled) chopped yellow onion banchan.

 

So that's a glimpse at my adventures in Korean cooking thus far. I have to say my favorite aspects include the sheer amount of sesame everything, whether it's via oil, seeds, or powder. It's never a main ingredient, but it's almost always involved and delicious. Jamie's favorite Korean food that I can make here at home is the chicken noodle soup, while his favorite Korean meal is BBQ. I'll continue experimenting and hopefully expand to using meat and fish. Frontiers I have yet to brave include eel and octopus (commonly sold on the street in town) and making my own ttok. These will be essential to my coming around as a good Korean housewife, but I've got time. Cooking in a new culture is challenging, not simply because of the language barrier, but in getting used to new flavors and learning how different ingredients behave. For example, noodles here are made very starchy, and so forming them can be challenging as the dough likes to shrink down as you try desperately to roll it out. Anchovies must be de-headed and have their intestines removed before use (I don't know why), and kelp is different from edible seaweed (who knew?!). These are just a few examples of the unexpected hurdles of cooking in any foriegn context. But I'm getting the hang of it. In the meantime, I've subscribed to my first magazine in korean, and it is, of course, a cooking magazine. This helps me with both my reading ability and cooking, and gives me a fresh project daily.

 

As always, thanks everyone for reading along. Please do email me with any specific questions or recipe requests. I'd love to share in more detail but don't want to bore anyone here on the blog. Happy half-way through October!

-Katy






Jamie's Work Life

Hey everyone, Jamie again. The week before last I said I'd provide some details about my work situation for those who were interested in that kind of thing, so I'll follow through now.

My employer is the Jeollanam-do provincial office of education (I'm pretty sure, since my contract is with them). I teach at three different schools in Goheung-gun, one of which is designated as my main school. It is the largest, and closest to where we live, although none of my schools are in the same city that we live in. I'm at one travel school Monday and Tuesday, another Wednesdays only, and my main school Thursday and Friday. My commute to both of my travel schools takes about an hour if you factor in walking time, while my commute to my main school takes about 10-15 minutes.

My main school has about 40 students total, my Wednesday school has a little less than that, and my Monday/Tuesday school has only 13 students. At each school I co-teach with that school's English teacher. What that means exactly is mostly up to each coteacher, but all three of my coteachers have opted to have me cover the speaking and listening portions of the textbook, and design and lead my own classes while they offer support on the days that I'm at their school. Because the schools are so small, each grade has only one class in it, and each class has English four times a week. What this means for me is that, based on my arrangements with my coteachers, I teach three 45 minute classes a day every day except Thursday, when the English teacher at my main school wants to lead classes herself. This is a very light schedule, since my only other responsibility is to lead an English class during lunchtime at my main school only. I had to design a curriculum for a teacher's workshop, when my coteachers would meet at my main school every Thursday to work on their own English, but that seems to have been for documentation purposes only, since none of my coteachers are actually interested in coming.

There is also a remote teaching program in the province where they have foreign teachers lead classes over Skype at schools that are too small and rural to justify hiring a foreign teacher. I thought this would be a good opportunity, since the pay for these remote classes comes in on top of your regular paycheck and I have such a light schedule. Unfortunately, in his email to us the province's language program coordinator stressed that we should check with our schools before applying to the program, since failure to do so reflected badly on us and our relationship with our schools (obviously). We still didn't have phones at that point, so by the time I had visited all three of my schools and checked in with all three of my coteachers, the program had filled for the semester. Now that I know I have approval, hopefully I'll be able to participate next semester.

My contract says that work is from 9-5, but the expectation is that people will show up about half an hour early for work. That's fine, but because I ride the bus I have to choose between showing up around 8:00 or 9:05. When you factor in the commute, that makes Monday-Wednesday eleven hour days in which I teach for a little over two hours. It's hard to complain because I get paid full-time, but sometimes it feels a little silly.

The atmosphere in the teacher's room at each of my schools is very friendly. The Korean teachers have more paperwork to do, but I don't think any of them have heavier teaching schedules than I do, so they spend a lot of time in the teacher's room socializing or taking care of personal business. Depending on the principal, teachers leave some schools to take walks after lunch. They're always bringing fruit or bread to school as snacks to share with the other teachers. So, the fact that you have to be there all day whether or not you have any work to do is offset by the fact that you're not expected to pretend that you're terribly busy every second of the day. I'm writing this from work on a Thursday, for example.

Classes themselves have been very mixed so far. This is a rural area and most students feel that English is not relevant to them, but it's a required subject. I'm still trying to figure out how to handle the fact that a good number of my students just don't want to be there. I personally don't think English should be required, since it only seems to be important for Koreans who want to work or study abroad, or who are going to work in specific industries that require them to interact with foreigners. The sense I get from observation and asking Koreans about it is that for most people, what English is practically for is their college entrance exam. The national curriculum has a lot of language in it about the importance of English as the lingua franca in an increasingly interconnected world, and how important it will be for Koreans to compete with other countries, but so far that doesn't sync with what I'm seeing.

Ok I know I'm going off on a tangent here, but I'll try to come back around. At each of my schools, most of my students' parents are farmers or fishers. You might know that Korea's population is heavily skewed old, and they're concerned about the effects that this will have to the point that they have all kinds of incentives to try to encourage people to have children. That skew is even more pronounced in the rural areas, and most farmers are past middle age. I don't think that my students' options should be any more limited than kids in cities with more access to after school study programs and things like that, but it seems like they're pushing everyone to learn English and go to university, but university graduates are having a hard time finding jobs these days, and somebody has to run the farms. I guess what I'm trying to say is that English seems to be important mostly because of the prestige people attach to it rather than any kind of practical need, and I feel ambivalent about my role in that.

As one bad example of that prestige, we were watching a Korean show where one Korean person tried to intimidate another in business by speaking in English. When it turned out that he had much better English than her, the plan backfired, she immediately switched to Korean, and she lost footing in the negotiation. It's a silly example because it's from a TV show, but I still thought it was interesting.

Aaaaaaaaanyways, classes end at 3:10, but working hours are until 5:00 because there are usually after school programs that teachers or students run. For example, today the students are playing sports in the soccer field as part of their self-directed sports club. Everyone is supervising them out of the corner of their eye, but no teacher is running the sports club and the kids are mostly monitoring themselves. Along those lines, the kids are also responsible for cleaning the school. Every day after classes end, before they go to their clubs or home or wherever, they have assigned jobs around school to clean up. As far as I can tell there's no hired on janitor, but it seems like they do a pretty good job.

One exception to the after school clubs thing is Wednesdays, when at my main school (and apparently most schools throughout Korea) the teachers get together to play volleyball. I'm at one of my travel schools Wednesdays, but the first week I was here my main school called my travel school after lunch on Wednesday to see if I had any afternoon classes, and when they confirmed that I didn't they asked that I be sent to my main school. It turned out they wanted me to play volleyball, but they didn't tell my travel school why they wanted me to go. The next week I told them, and asked if I could make it a regular thing. I got the go ahead, so I've been coming to my main school for volleyball every Wednesday. It's good exercise, and a good opportunity to bond with the teachers. Because most of the conversation that goes on in the teacher's room goes over my head, and because I'm the new guy and a foreigner, and because I'm only at my main school two days out of the week, coming to volleyball helps me feel like I'm part of the group of teachers here. As a sidenote, I'm terrible at volleyball and I've hardly played before, but they have me up front blocking and spiking because I'm tall. They don't rotate positions the way I think it's done in the U.S. You do rotate who serves, but then they have to scurry back to their position. Before we start playing each week, the P.E. teacher has been training me in what he considers proper form, which is already getting a little old, but I just appreciate that they're interacting with me at all despite the language barrier.

Tea Time

Happy October, everyone. Katy here. I've been super jazzed about this post all week. We took a trip last weekend that is ranking among my favorite things in Korea. We didn't want a weekend away, so we decided to find something that would work as an afternoon adventure.

Boseong is a town that is only about 45min away by car, but on the busses can take as much as an hour and a half with transfers. What makes this relatively small city so worth it though is that it is home to the largest tea farm in Korea, and the only public, tourist friendly tea garden. If you've ever seen pictures of Korea that aren't the big city, or if you watch many Kdramas, the sight will be familiar to you. The farm is enormous, covering the slopes of multiple mountains, though the beautiful touristy area is mostly contained to one, climbable (if you enjoy walking strait up mountains), hillside. As far as we can tell, Koreans don't believe in the kind of zig-zag-y trail you find in the states wherever there is a hike up a mountain. For example, when I was at the grand canyon, you could walk for hours and find yourself not so far from the top due to all of the long sloping horizontal double-backs. Not here, though. Both the hikes we have done in Goheung, and this one in Boseong expect that if you want to see the top, you walk in a strait line between point A and point B, regardless of how steep that may be. If you're really lucky, there are handrails to help you pull yourself to the top, or mount the conveniently laid steps, which might be so big as to have you clambering up the depth of your thigh with each step. Reguardless to say, hikes are never all that long, but they are absolutely exhausting. The tea garden was no different. Check out that slope!

 

Fortunately, the view from the top was even more than we could have expected. The direction of that face of the mountain has you looking over the rest of the hills as they slope down into the ocean. We climbed the garden just in time to see the sunset too. The experience was nothing short of spectacular, I'm sure in part due to the endorphin high.

 

Having mentioned the hikes we've done in Goheung, and, given that this post is full of pictures of beautiful views, it seems only fitting to include a couple from the top of the mountain on the south side of Goheung-eup. The hike up this mountain is as steep as any, and despite being less than a kilometer to the top, we stop every time to rest half way up. This is one we do more frequently, because the trail actually starts from downtown and is very easy to get to and hike (the trail is mostly gravel and well laid).

 

From this lookout we can see just over 180 degrees around us which easily includes the whole of Goheung in our view. There is the rocky outcropping that a very brave Jamie is standing on in the picture above, and a picnic lookout spot in the pictures below from which I can take pictures of Goheung to give you an idea of it's size and our place in it.

 

So in looking at the pictures above, the first one shows all of downtown. Can you spot the ball field in the first picture? We live directly across the nearest street from that field. The second pictures shows the rest of Goheung including the bus station and PC bang in town, and the rice fields just outside downtown which stretch all the way to the bay. This time of year the rice is turning golden and almost ready to be harvested. When we arrived is was a bright spring green.

 

So between the tea fields, our own homey mountains, sunsets, and picnic hikes, we have no shortage of beautiful views to remind us just how lucky we were to get placed here. As fall sets in, it has been particularly nice to get outside and enjoy the natural environment. Thanks for reading our blog, and last but not least, a happy hilltop selfie to send you off with....