Cantina: Mexican Food in Cheonan - WHAT?

This week, the unimaginable happened.  A Mexican restaurant opened up in my town.  And not just any Mexican restaurant... no:  An American-owned-and-run Mexican restaurant.  And it's heaven.  From the moment the food crossed my lips, I knew my wallet would never be the same.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  Before, we took the 45 minute trip to Songtan for Mexican food.  Now, it's just a 20-minute walk.

The owners, Dylan and Jenny, are currently in the process of growing their own veggies on the premises, and Dylan, although he never trained professionally to be a chef, spent much of his life in the food industry, picking the brains of any chef with whom he shared a restaurant.  He studied their work and practiced at home until he was able to create the amazing food he set before me at Cantina.

Although the menu lists a grand total of zero vegetarian main dishes (one if you allow for fish), all it took was for Dylan to hear me talking about not eating meat to offer me several options to suit my taste.  He went on to tell me that he was blown away by the number of vegetarians in the city who'd come out of the woodwork  so he was in the process of making a veggie-friendly revised menu.  In the meantime, he instructed me to warn him on Facebook before I wanted to come by, and he'd be sure to have veggie offerings for me.  What service!

Jenny, who is superwoman at the bar, is in charge of events and other such details.  My friend Nick and I knew immediately that we wanted to move the location of another friend's baby shower to the restaurant, so we spent a bit of time dealing with Jenny on those details.  Not only did she seem to know every trick in the book for how to throw a good party, she was also incredibly friendly about it all.  The conversation flowed easily, and Nick and I left the meeting with big grins on our faces.

Nick, me, and our grins.

The overall decor of the place is great, too.  It's a little loud, because, in keeping with the latest style in Cheonan, there's minimal fabric to absorb sound, but it's not so loud as to deter me from returning.  There are several tables at the front of the house.  In the back is an open-air kitchen and a pool table, positioned in front of this mural:

Painted by JnJ Crew from Hongdae (Seoul), this mural sets the tone for the whole restaurant.

I ordered their chimichanga, which melted in my mouth.  It was amazing.  Somehow, they'd gotten their hands on fresh cilantro, which adorned my plate.  After not having had it in two years, it was a phenomenal taste.  They didn't skimp on the sour cream (actual sour cream!!!) either.  The complimentary chips and salsa were delicious, and the Cantina Peppers were surprisingly good.  I could taste the spice on everything through my dish (which means it's probably pretty spicy, as my tolerance is rather high), but Dylan and Jenny assured me that they could make the food in non-spicy versions as well.

So, what have we learned?

Excellent food.
Excellent service.
Excellent location.

I'll definitely be returning.

Birthday Week (plus)

The past week has been a whirlwind to say the least.  I've finally (almost) gotten over a cold-turned-burgeoning-sinus-infection this week; I'll finish my antibiotics tonight.  I've still got a bit of a sore throat, but I think that's allergies taking over at this point.  I've been keeping my window open, because the weather's finally nice enough for that (meaning that my apartment is starting to take on over-like qualities), but the cool breeze brings pollen with it.  What's a girl to do?  I cracked open the Claritin D that Mom sent this morning, and that seems to be helping.

In spite of being sick and voiceless (even literally for a day), I still went about life as usual, because it hit hardest during BIRTHDAY WEEK.  What is it with me and getting sick on my birthday??? (Last year, although I didn't blog about it, I ended up in the ER, unable to breathe on my birthday night.  They ended up giving me some medicine to which I'm allergic... so the whole thing was a pretty big ordeal.)  This year, I planned a bunch of birthday week activities, and had an absolute BLAST.  Even though there are still some ongoing festivities (things I didn't plan, but people wanting to do more for me - I love my birthday and apparently others do, too!!), I'm going to post about what all's been happening!

Monday, April 22, 2013

For sure during Birthday Week, I wanted to go to Mt. Fishtail, my favorite restaurant here in Cheonan.  It's a bit of a trek for me, involving planning my schedule around that of the subway.  Many people go there for birthdays, so it's become a bit cliché to do that.  I don't really like doing the same things as everyone, and people have been starting to complain about that, so I asked two of my friends, Ashley and Heidi, if they'd go with me after our Korean class (which ended up involving a surprise TWO cakes and drinks!).  They happily agreed, making everyone winners.  The two ladies were super nice and even treated me!  

The picture you are seeing actually has nothing to do with Birthday Week, but I wanted to point out that the first time I hung out with Heidi was also the first time I went to Mt. Fishtail.  I conveniently had this photo, therefore, to show me, Heidi, and the restaurant, so I could have just let you think that it was from Birthday Week.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013 - Birthday!

On Tuesdays, I normally spend time with a young lady I'm tutoring/mentoring.  If you follow my Facebook,
you'll often see me writing about "my student;" that's her - Kristin.  Kristin's family wanted to take me out for my birthday and offered to do it any night, but I thought it was be sweet to see her on my birthday itself.  That afternoon, she and her mom actually met me at my school to walk me over to the restaurant.  Sadly, it was raining that day, and I had worn the wrong shoes, so I got soaked (probably contributing to how sick I got), but it was sweet nonetheless.  Kristin's mom decided just to let the two of us eat, so she paid and left us there.  This restaurant was also a first for me: My first teacher dinner had been there.

The place is rather expensive, but they give you enough food to feed an army.  Just when you think, "Okay, I'm stuffed; I can't eat anymore," they bring another course.  Then, you think, "Surely, that's it," but then, they bring another course.  And I'm not meaning, just a main dish and maybe a side... We actually had to move things off the table to fit all the food on it.

My co-teacher Sam (The CT, again, for Facebook followers), had given me a small cake in the morning to eat at the restaurant.  Often, cakes here come complete with a knife, candles, matches, and poppers for the the occasion, so we had a good time making a lot of noise in the restaurant.

Kristin was pretty nervous about the poppers at first.  I think maybe she doesn't like the noise... Or perhaps she thought she was going to burn her hand?  I'm not really sure, but once the confetti and streamers came out, she was one happy camper.

We both left too stuffed to move properly.  I waddled her home and vowed not to eat another large meal that week... until I realized I'd already planned a couple more.  Oops.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Wednesday was pretty low-key.  I went out for coffee with Kris and Cora, which was so fitting, considering Kris' new coffee website that he's about to launch.  We tried a coffee shop that just opened behind Korea Nazarene University called La Noche.  The Spanish in the name caught my eye, and, as it turns out, the owner spent some time in Spain and speaks Spanish.  That's not something to run into every day here.  (I'm not even sure they have a word for Spanish... every time I hear people talking about it in Korean, I'm pretty  sure they're saying "Spain's speaking.")  The place was cute, and the coffee was good (although too sugary for my liking... it tasted sweeter than I'm used to having), but by 8 it was HOPPING, and we, being all of the introversion persuasion, opted to leave.  It was awesome to get some time to talk with them, though, and hear about Kris' new business venture.  We even got a chance to chat a little about copyright law!  (It's begun to cross my mind to do a bit of online copyright law consulting once I'm done in Korea...)

Thursday, April 25, 2013

I had intended Thursday to be a pseudo-rest-day to prep for the insanity of the weekend to come, but I ended up scheduling a non-birthday-related meeting instead.  Sitting still is apparently not my forte.

Friday, April 26, 2013

I planned my big dinner for Friday night at a buffet called Applebee (no relation at all to Applebee's in America).  I hadn't been there in a while, so I did realize they'd removed all the reasons that had made it worth the price of eating there, which was a bit of a bummer, but we still had fun.  I'd seen an interesting game on a Korean reality TV show, and I wanted to give it a try.  For lack of a better name, I dubbed it "Food Bingo."  Basically, you fill a 5x5 Bingo card with different foods.  Each player takes a turn choosing a food.  If you eat the whole of that food that you placed on your card, you get the space cleared.  If you don't eat all of it, or you didn't select that food, you can't clear the space.  You must have 3 Bingos to win.

My filled BINGO card

To make things more interesting, we required players to include a lychee (Although, at the time, we didn't realize that's what they were... we just saw the spiky fruit.), something dipped in the chocolate fountain, some wasabi, and one of the whole shrimp (gross).

We confused a lot of people while we were playing, and ended up scaring the employees to death: They saw Ashley and me walking around with a notebook, writing down foods, and they assumed we were conducting an inspection of some kind.  Luckily, our Korean friend had come and he explained what was happening to them.  BUT it was a blast, and I'd highly recommend playing it, although, perhaps you should play it at home...

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Saturday morning, all of the KNU program teachers went to Seoul for a culture trip (temple and a show).  IT was pretty fun, but I was mostly jazzed about what was waiting for me afterward.  Seoul has this cool trend that's, sadly, on its way out of fashion, but I'm going to take advantage of it until it dies entirely.  Popular these days are board game cafes.  You go in, buy a drink, pay hourly after the first hour, and have access to basically every board game every created.  Here's a smattering of them from my first trip to Board School:

Situated directly over one of the two Taco Bells in Korea, Board School was Heaven for my inner geeky child.  We stayed for three hours and played our way through Ticket to Ride (I won), some odd pirate game (see the video below) (I think Ashley won), Hulli Gulli (a Korean favorite that is basically Egyptian Ratskcew, plus math) (Ashley also won), Apples to Apples (Nick), and Uno (I don't remember who won this, but Nick introduced us to Killer Uno, which has about 20 extra rules, but is so much fun).  It was definitely the highlight of my week, and I'm already anxious to go back for more!

Plus

More birthday activities keep popping up.  This weekend, Kershea took me to my now undisputed favorite buffet, All That BBQ.  I should be going out with Jolie for coffee tonight.  Maybe I'll also hang out with Joshua on a similar adventure.  This weekend I'll be staying with Samuel and Ashley... it just keeps going, and I love it all!  I don't know how I'm going to top all this next year for the big 2-5, but I'm sure I'll come up with something. :)

Where did you go, Fall?

Apparently, Fall has decided to skip Korea this year.  Already, I'm waking up to near-freezing temperatures, and needing to turn on the heater at school.  Somehow, my allergies still haven't acted up too badly, which leads me to believe that Fall got bored of Korea and moved on.

Somehow, I mentally seem to be in the same place.  I was walking with some friends last night, and everything just felt like Christmas.  We stopped and got some 호떡, a favorite cold-weather treat of mine, and the impression of that glittery season just hit me.  I went home and put on the Christmas music (for the second time this Fall), and started doing some cooking.  It made me really want to do Christmas up right this year, so I think I may go all-out.  We'll see what the actual season brings with it, but, frankly, I'd be quite content to skip straight to December, at this point.

I know, I know, that desire means that I would have to skip over Thanksgiving, that favorite of favorites, but the thought of spending another one apart from my family brings a lump to my throat and stinging tears to my heater-dried eyes.  Whereas most of you would lament spending Christmas alone, I don't think that I will (although, that's just a conjecture, as I've yet to spend it without family).  It's always been Thanksgiving that's been cherished, although I never realized how much until last year.  The thought of not seeing the full extent of my mother's family at that time is gut-wrenching.  I'd much rather skip it all together than face it without them.

That's enough of that.  I'll not think on those thoughts any longer in this post.  I'll continue to focus on my desire to revive the Royster-family infamous Christmas party.  I made a most excellent cheese ball last night, and I have my mom's excellent cookie recipes to fall back on (although, there's a key ingredient in her chocolate-chip cookies that would probably be hard to find...), so, while I don't think it would be anywhere near the scale of what she did, even if I invited everyone I'd ever met in Korea, I think it will end up being entirely appropriate for my current level of Christmas Party mastery.

So, that's my plan:  December 22, 2012 (I know it's not the second Saturday of December, as per tradition, but I have to teach on every Saturday before then)... The Christmas Party will live again!

Vacation: The Reason for the Visit

What you may or may not have known about this trip is that it's been planned since Christmas, and it had little to nothing to do with my family.  See, while I was in an elevator with my mom, I got a message from my very dear friend Meret, telling me that she was engaged.  Unless you know Meret, this probably won't be a big deal to you, but, to those of us who were present through the growth of her and Casey's relationship, this was very exciting news.  It was so exciting that I started screaming in the elevator.  Those poor Korean women who were there with us had no idea how to handle it, and exited as quickly as they could.

Fast forward a couple of months, when I deliver my boss the good news, and ask to have my vacation over the weekend of Meret and Casey's wedding.  My boss looks at me, full of compassion and says, "I really want you to be able to go to the wedding.  I can tell it means a lot to you.  Can you ask your friend to move her wedding to August 11?  That would be better."  Dumbfounded, I tell her no.  (Please note, my boss wasn't being snide here.  This is apparently a decently standard practice in Korea.)  Later, I jokingly tell Meret about the request, as I express my regret that I'll be unable to make it.  Meret's response, however, surprises me even more.  "Tell her 'sure'," she says.  "I haven't put any deposits down anyway."

I went back to my boss, ate me words, and the rest is history.

By the time all was said and done, I had become an honorary member of the wedding party, and played all the music for the ceremony itself.  It was quite a daunting task, and I ended up doing a lot of rearranging of music on the spot, as dictated by my nerves, but, from what I've been told, it all turned out well.  I was given the opportunity to present the bride and groom with my gift - a song I had written for them, detailing their relationship from my point of view, via violin.  Meret loved it so much, she asked me to play it as her wedding march.  I was and am still incredibly honored.

I am so, so glad that got to see these two wonderful people wed.  I am and will be praying for them, and I cannot wait to meet up again with them (hopefully) in another year.

Abba G-d, shine your mercy and love on these two beautiful people as they twine their lives together, becoming one, bound by You.  You have promised us that a cord of three is not easily broken, so let it be with them.  Keep their eyes fixed steadfastly on You, as they grow together in Love and Truth.  Bring them to a place of doubtless trust, honor, and faithfulness.  Teach them to love each other as You love; give them a love that never fails.  Help them celebrate their joy fully and endure the pain together, always growing stronger.  What You have brought together, let no man tear apart.  In the name of Jesus Christ I pray.  Amen.

Chanukah 5772

Well... I finally get to post about CHANUKAH!  If Chanukah was a person, I would fall in love with it.  But, as my friends at Blimey Cow pointed out, I should be more conservative about my usage of the word "love," so, we'll just say that I really like Chanukah.  As I explained to my friends, Chanukah is a holiday about eating fried food, swapping chocolate, and spinning tops - if you can't find something in there to like, I can't qualify you as a person, so you should stop reading now (just kidding).  But my point is that it's really fun.  (For the REAL meaning of Chanukah, click here... I mean here... oh, sorry, I mean the title.)

Anyway, I threw a party, as is quickly becoming my Korea-tradition, and we had an excellent time.  This is how it went down:

1. My family and I made potato latkes and apple latkes, then I went out and bought some 호떡 (Don't get confused, they have nothing to do with rice cakes.) and 붕어빵 (which are usually shaped like fish when you buy them on the street, but that requires a special waffle iron, so don't sweat it).  We ate all these yummy yummy foods until we were stuffed... mostly because I was cooking for an expected 12-15 people, and 9 showed up.  Oops.


2. I gave a short lesson/presentation on the history and traditions of Chanukah, then lit my menorahs and gave everyone a line of tea-light candles so they could sort of make their own, too.  My dad had the brilliant idea of grabbind cups to raise up the shamash, so the menorahs could be kosher.

3. We then broke into two groups and played some excellent games of Dreidel.  It was better than usual, and I think this had something to do with it:

Yeah... We play by our own rules.  How very American of us.  Ah well... the vast majority of us are Waygooks, so I'm not complaining.  Although, how my head teacher fits into that mix, I may never know.

Hope your holidays were good!

(PS.  The next post is one I've been especially looking forward to posting, so be excited!)

<3

Classroom Christmas Parties

So, I had this brilliant idea to throw a Christmas Party for the kiddos... all 320 of them, split across 10 classes, of course.  The plan was golden:

1. Sing a Christmas song as a warm-up
2. Decorate Christmas cookies
3. Make Christmas ornaments while we
4. Listen to the Christmas story
5. If time, take Christmas photos

There was just one problem: I severely underestimated the amount of work that goes into making 640 sugar cookies.  Oops.  It resulted in this:

But all that work resulted in this:

Some people call it "chaos;" I call it love.  

Anyway, this love resulted in my Christmas tree going from looking like this:

To looking like this:

That is my brother, whom I call Bug, and my beautiful Christmas tree, which we spent all of 15 minutes decorating.

This picture was simply so you could understand the vertical challenge we had.

The moral of this story:
Love freely.  It's worth it.

(Yes, I know I didn't really write enough words to condone that moral, but each picture is worth a thousand of them, so go back and find the in-between parts that will justify the moral.)

:) <3

Wow... Thanksgiving-Themed Epic Fail

I totally forgot to post the photos I took at the TWO Thanksgiving dinners I went to!  I just found them today when I uploaded the photos I took at the Christmas party.  Epic fail.  I'm so sorry!

So much food!  I had childhood flashbacks to when we'd all go to my Pop-pop's church and have Thanksgiving there, because the family was too big to gather in anyone's house.

The turkey.  Vegetarian or not I've never been a fan.  This year's bird looked lovely, but did not tempt me in any way, shape, or form.  I'm actually rather thankful for that, as ingesting it would cause me severe pain.

Leslie and Carly making the honorary first cut.

Larry taking over from there.

Once again, I was very much reminded of my family.  So many people - such a long table!  So much love!

Thanksgiving party number 2.

I spent the vast majority of it hunkered down in my corner, trying not to give into the food coma that was steadily settling in on me.  It was my first time truly experiencing that feeling, and, let me tell you, I did not like it at all.

Well, now that I TRULY am caught up on my posts, we'll soon resume our regularly scheduled Advent-y/Christmas-y posts.  Hope this didn't catch you too off guard, but, just in case it did, your calendar is not very wrong, it is, in fact, two short weeks away from Christmas.  This post was entirely brought on by my scatter-brained nature. ;)

<3