Winter In Korea
Seasoning The Home AND The Belly
Last year, we celebrated Christmas with our families and in multiple cities and homes. The year before that, we had just arrived to Korea, were overwhelmed with culture shock and had thrown together some decorations from the previous tenants. This year, we are very well acclimated to the culture and our home in Korea, and are here through the entire holiday season. Therefore, I wanted to make sure we had an appropriate amount of Christmas vibes to celebrate the season. I went to Daiso (our favorite dollar store) and bought a ton of Christmas decorations. A few days later, I received more adorable decorations from Luke’s family! Our huge window acts as a mantle so we have ornaments strung across the window, Christmas puppets and fake flowers on/in wine bottles. We also bought a $5 tree and lights from Daiso so we have a cute little Christmas corner. I’m pretty satisfied!
Tis the season for yummy food yet not finding the ingredients you need so you have to go out of your way in a different city to find the one store that sells it. Some of my recipes and plans have been a bust and very frustrating, but some have turned out quite delightful. My apple dishes were a win - apple cider in the slow cooker, and apple crisp! (Recipes linked.) We even added some apple brandy to the cider one evening and it was amazing!
Food Culture Street
As the weather got colder, there were fewer activities outside that were available or that interested us. But we decided to take a day and check out some of the smaller sites nearby instead of making another trip into Seoul. About a 20 minute bus ride away, is a small area called “Food Culture Street”. It looked to be semi-exciting with a whole entrance archway that typically signifies an interest point. They seemed to have a lot of restaurants, bars and noraebangs, but nothing too exciting or out of the ordinary. We meandered over to the Seonhak Byeolbit Library - from afar we thought it might have been a planetarium but no, just a really cool looking library!
Munhaksan Hike
Not long after we walked through the Food Culture Street, we started an easy hike up Munhaksan, or Munhak Mountain. It was a nice walk with of course some stairs to climb at the end. But all in all it took us about an hour and a half round trip, including some hang out time at the top!
I will say though, I was stunned to see just how gorgeous the view was! I’m not sure why I was so surprised, as we have never been let down from a single hike here. The hike just seemed to be much more leisurely and it was a cold late fall evening so I didn’t think much of it. But when we reached the top around sunset, we saw thousands of city buildings everywhere, including the sweet sports stadium!
