First meal in Paris

Question: What could be better than watching a block of cheese get all browned and gooey under a table-top broiler and scraping away the melted bits to eat with baguettes and perfectly boiled potatoes?

Answer: Very few things.

Raclette is an ingenious excuse for eating several servings of cheese in one sitting, along with heavy starches and various meats and pickles, if you want them.

Voila, l'appareil:


Et le fromage:


Et, bien sur, the happy customers:

Omid, my kind host and current Teaching Assistant for the district of Versailles.

And moi, after a sleepless overnight flight, three train changes on the Paris metro at morning rush hour (rather unpleasant), and an eight hour nap, ready to enjoy all the lactic delights of the town.

Sadly, this would be the only cheese I would eat for the next three days, but as I ate half of that sizable block, I think my digestive system was probably ok with it. I have since gone on to eat all kinds of brie and chevre, and just purchased a cheese from Bourgogne that looks and tastes like butter. And with a week and a half left of my trip, I imagine I'll find plenty more to eat in the fatty, cheesy, and delightful category.

Moral of the story, I will never be vegan.

Brugge!

I am absolutely in love. Brugge is a city after my own heart in so many ways: cobble stone streets so my shoes are always clicky, 9% alcohol beer, ADORABLE HOUSES, friendly people, canals, and stores that sell nothing but cheeses and cured meats. Plus Flemish is a wonderful language to listen to and I would imagine to speak, and don't get me started on the fries, waffles, stews, chocolates and other deliciousness these people have cooked up.

Mostly though I am in love with the beautiful neighborhoods that make up the city center and the clean, picturesque waterways that intersect them. And now I'll try to demonstrate my new-found love with an unnecessary number of photos:

A brief moment of clear sky on our last day.

Some cobblestones (maybe not cobblestones by definition but it's just easier this way):




And now, my first Belgian beer in Belgium (our server called me a "real lady" for ordering this):


My sixth Belgian beer (in Belgium), a delicious tripel called Straffe Hendrik that's made in Brugge's last working brewery:


An unbelievable warm goat cheese salad from a tea shop called Cafe au Lait (Nordzaandstraat 28):


And lastly, how I felt pretty much constantly while in Brugge:

Early view of Paris

Subway stop close to where I'm staying, around 5pm.

NYC

My first view of the city:


My welcome to the Cornell Med School dorms (after signing in at security):


I admit that I was really intimidated by the thought of visiting New York. I'm just a small fish from a small pond in the slow-moving, relaxed, and often passive Pacific Northwest, and the thought of the fast-paced, populous and traffic-congested New York I'd seen on TV was kind of scary. Luckily for me, I have ambitious friends who got their butts in gear and started grad school there, so I had built in tour guides/fellow explorers, and even a surprise welcome sign!

My first day I spent about three hours wandering Central Park, which was beautiful. I spent about half that time in search of the Conservatory Garden, eventually realizing that the maps function on my phone puts me about 20 yards east of wherever I actually am and I'd been wandering in its vicinity for about 20 minutes without ever seeing it. That was thanks also in part to some small hills that blocked it from view. I eventually did find it, by which time I was much more interested in the bathroom than the gardens themselves.


That's me! With New York in the background!
The Brooklyn bridge:

With Freddie!


And one of the only other moments I took out my camera, when I found a grocery store called Garden of Eden! So many things to love about that.


Basically it went like this:

Day 1: Central Park and rooftop bar with triple hot alcoholic chocolate.
Day 2: The Met, Soho, Greenwich Village, Gray's Papaya hot dog, Brazilian food, and Bhangra dancing.
Day 3: China town, Wall Street, Brooklyn.
Day 4: Astoria, Queens, really cool sculpture park (photos to come), lamb on a stick.
Day 5: Bowling Green, Statue of Liberty for afar, Brooklyn Bridge.
Day 6: Artichoke Benedict at Norma's, MOMA, a 30 block walk to Union Square, drinks at the Empire Hotel of Gossip Girl fame.
Day 7: One last bagel!

Catching up: Dr. Fish

This is me, sitting in a cafe with my new friend Kelsey. We left Seosan together after my weekend trip and bussed up to Seoul, where we spent most of the evening lost in a busy commercial area in the south side of the city. But why do I look so excited?

Doctor fish! A trend that has swept the parts of the globe where people can afford pedicures, these are the little fish that feast on dead skin. What started in various Asian countries and moved into trendy Western boutiques has now become part of your regular relaxation experience in Korea. After enjoying cafe beverages and a complimentary mini toast bar, you step up to a platform that holds two tanks full of constantly moving water and little hungry fish. After a quick rinse, you stick your feet right in, like so:

This is the tank with the small fish, maybe an inch in length and pretty non-threatening. The tickling alone was probably too much for me to start, but the idea that fish were gnawing away at the dead skin on my feet had me unbearably spooked. After about two seconds, I gave up and left Kelsey to brave the hungry, flesh-eating hordes while I sat around and took pictures.

And then we get to the second tank, which the lovely attendant informed us would tickle more but be better for our feet. At first, the bubbling water appears empty, almost inviting, when suddenly, sensing our presence and our dry heels, this appears:




Except instead of just one, it's hundreds, hundreds of two to three inch long fish, bigger around than my thumb, eyes bulging and mouths opening and closing furiously, as if to say, "come on in, the water's fine". I don't let them fool me though, I can see that it's teeming with creepy looking carp and I want my feet nowhere near it, thank you very much.

Sadly, instead of feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, I left the cafe with still-dirty feet and a new fear of aquatic life. But after a good latte, complimentary mini toast, and a two-second run in the pool, I think I still count this night a win.

Catching up: Jeju Island

Welcome to Jeju Island!

Here to greet you is one of the island's many dol hareubangs, or stone grandfathers. If you think it looks like a penis, you're not wrong. These guys are phallic as all get out (though they are alternatively said to look like mushrooms), and offer protection and fertility to the towns on the island. They're placed at the entrances to villages, and if you rub one's nose upon entering a place, you should be blessed with a son.

Known to locals as the Hawaii of Korea, Jeju is a volcanic island just south of the peninsula in what wikipedia tells me is the Strait of Korea. It's got a warmer climate than the rest of Korea and is a very popular tourist destination for people in China and Japan as well as Korea. Because of its warm climate, Jeju is teeming with beautiful plant life:



And monstrously large grasshoppers!!


Not really. He was just a regular sized grasshopper. But the warm Jeju sun had him so relaxed he let me get about six inches away from him to take this picture.

Jeju also has several lava tube caves, about which I know basically nothing. But the two I visited had quite a variety of geological features, including both stalagmites and stalactites, and some holes in the ceiling that look like dragons. None of those things are pictured here.




Jeju also features this, which is called something that translates to sunrise peak:


There is a massive crater at the top:


Which we were able to see, thanks to the path of stairs that has been set up for the climbing pleasure of the island's many visitors. My uncle wanted to move on to the next site after climbing a third of the way up, but ever the intrepid adventurers, we insisted on getting to the top. And we were rewarded with some amazing views. Not bad, eh?

There are tons of beautiful places on the island to visit, but we only had a few days, so many will have to wait for the next trip. Luckily we were able to squeeze in one last excursion to a green tea farm and museum, where we looked at hundreds of teacups from around the world and tried some delightful ice cream.

Yes.

Gyeongju: The Korean Valley of the Kings

If I had to have the same view for all of eternity, I wouldn't mind this one. This is Gyeongju, the capital of the Silla Dynasty and home to many well preserved spiritual and governmental sites. The modern city is in pretty much the same spot as it was first built, situated in a beautiful green valley on the Hyeongsan river.

Many sites have been well-preserved or discovered and restored, and most have been made available to the public for small entrance fees. The most common sites are tombs, which would have been for royalty or people of high rank and with the means to build them. They look like huge, perfectly shaped hills and are built up with stone of various sizes and soil, with the actual tomb buried at the bottom. We saw a cross section of one mound, and the precision with which the stones were placed was impressive. It's no wonder these tombs have remained unchanged for so many centuries.
Many of them are unmarked and unadorned, which I imagine is because the accompanying statues and markers have been lost or taken over the years. But I don't know very much about anything so don't take my word for it. I think also the amount of outer adornment had to do with how much importance a person had, or how much money they had to decorate. This is the tomb of General Kim Yushin, who was one of the driving forces behind the unification of the three separate kingdoms on the Korean peninsula in the 7th century.

The actual burial mound was pretty small, but it came with some sweet decoration. The wall around it is spaced with reliefs of the twelve animals of the Asian Zodiac. In the lower left corner you can see a little bit of the ox (that's me!).

This is at Oreung, a burial site for several early Silla kings. They have not one, but two gates protecting their tombs.

I'm not sure how the landscaping works. In my imagination, large groups of gardeners come out at dusk with grass clippers and go over each mound carefully. Or someone just goes crazy on a riding mower.

We saw a lot of these tombs, and you could say that once you've seen one you've seen them all. There's only so much variation on the grassy mound theme besides height or steepness and ornamentation. But there was something really stirring about staring up the slopes of these ancient markers. It might have been the natural beauty of their surroundings, or the warmth and sunshine, or it might have been the thought of all the care and attention that goes into their upkeep. Their simplicity is perfect, melting into the landscape around them and quietly reminding visitors of the rich history that is often overshadowed by the bustle of Korea's modern cities.

They also look like they'd be really fun to roll down.