My Mandu Morning (at noon)

I am proud to say first and foremost that this time around I wasn't hungover and it made all the difference in the world. On Sunday three kiddos came over around 11am and we had some time to kill before Angela arrived with all our lunch-making crap, so we played a quick game of go-fish and I attempted to teach them Rummy. It's really hard to explain even the simplest of card games when they don't understand what you're saying.

After Angela arrived, around 11:30 or so, we started in on the kimchi mandu-making craziness. She made a HUGE bowl of filling and we spent the better part of an hour filling, and folding, and filling, and folding those little dumpling bastards.

Angela cutting some more kimchi for the filling. Everything was vegan! Even the kimchi! Deeelicious! The filling is kimchi, glass-noodles, onion, bean sprouts, fake meat that looked like cat food, and tofu, and this powdered almond and cashew stuff that Angela threw in last minute. It's wrapped in a dumpling wrapper and sealed along the edges with spit. Ok, no, water. Then you can fry them, like Angela did. I know a lot of people like their mandu fried, but it was a little much for me. I definitely prefer it in a soup. Which Angela also made. Well, she cooked vegan ramyeon and then dumped the mandu inside. I like the gooey texture much more than the fried, greasy one.

Folding the mandu. We learned to make a few different shapes. By the end I felt like a mandu-making expert.

See? Isn't it pretty?

This is only one plate. We had two. And this doesn't even show the mounds we had already fried, and the mounds that were to come later. I've never seen so many dumplings in my life. And although these were easily the BEST kimchi mandu I've ever had, and kimchi mandu is easily one of my favorite foods here, if I don't eat another one for a while I think I'll be alright. (Sorry, leftovers in the fridge!)

At some point during our mandu-making, about 5 more students came over. We didn't know they were coming. They just kind of showed up. This is probably the most Asian our apartment has been in a long while. It would have been nice to have a bit of a heads though. I wasn't expecting to entertain 8 Korean children on my Mandu Morning. Luckily they were all really well behaved and didn't make too much of a mess. :)

Here's Cait working her charades/explaining-game skills.

Drawing out of the hat.

Drawing for pictionary. We didn't have a white-board so we just used our giant windows. Perfect!

Around this point. One of the girls started to cry. Nobody seemed to notice or care. When Cait and I finally asked the students why she was crying they said, 'oh, he called her an 11 year-old. Her age.' She was crying, because she was insulted to be called her age. I guess she was the youngest one there and they were making fun of her. Poor girl.

When we got tired of English games we just started playing cards. We went through a few rounds of go-fish before we all got pretty bored. Next up, Spoons! We played with metal chopsticks first, but the girl in red (the eleven-year-old) who is in fact still crying (again) in this picture is proof that metal chopsticks were not a good idea. You can't tell in this picture, but in addition to some sad, sad tears, she is also sporting a brand new band-aid!

After chopsticks/spoons got old, Angela taught Cait and I a new game. I don't remember what it was called, but it involved drawing a name out of a hat and moving around in chairs until one whole row was filled with your team members. It was kind of hard to understand, and we couldn't use our real names because Cait and I are stupid foreigners who can't remember 8 Korean names. We used colors instead. Like Reservoir Dogs. Nice-uh.

It was around 5 pm when Angela asked if we wanted to play the chair game again that I had to say, "NO!" I had a wicked headache and my belly was starting to feel queasy from it. It had been a fun day, but there were way too many students at our apartment for way too long. We definitely needed a break. I looked at Cait across the room and could tell she definitely felt the same way. Angela graciously passed out the remaining mandu and left.

She called Caitlin a little bit later to say that she hoped I felt better.

I went straight to bed. Wicked headache and all. What really sucks I think is the fact that this was in no way a hangover headache. I figure if something is going to hurt that badly it might as well be because of something really, really fun. Anyway, I napped, and then went to the coffee shop for a few agonizing migraine-y hours before thinking I was going to barf all over my favorite barista and went home. Took some Tylenol PM and passed the fuck out around 11:30.