Before I continue, apologies to all those members of PETA and any other animal rights organizations who might be reading this posting...however, before you start promoting those causes, please be sure to leave South Korea out of your list of "evil" countries. This just in, dog meat is pretty darn tasty.
Allow me to explain. Even for those of you who don't know that South Korea has the worlds fourth largest city (Seoul - 23,000,000) or that South Korea's Gross Domestic Production ranks three places behind Canada (13th compared to 16th), or that South Korea packs 48,000,000 people into a space slightly smaller than the State of Indiana, even if you didn't know those facts, you probably know that South Korean's eat dog meat. We aren't talking about your pound puppy type dog, we're talking about dogs bred solely for the purpose of consumption. Before you struggle to not close your window of this blog, and declare your outright hatred for me, understand that this is no different from a cow; the only difference being that we can't milk a dog. So when one of my friends who I teach invited me to join him for dog meat, I jumped on the opportunity, and wrote into my mental calendar....(where I store all of those birthdays I forget, and those e-mails I was supposed to send out a long time ago...)
After spending the afternoon forgetting about it, I met my friend, and, well, dog meat is quite tasty. Its texture looks similar to a good tasty roast, and the taste is close to a mix between chicken and roast. I was quite pleased. Not knowing what to expect, I was thinking that it would be chewy and not as tasty as it was. There were pieces of the meat that were looking similar to fat on a steak, but were also quite tasty. I wish I could have shown you a picture, however, I wasn't going to take my camera into the restaurant. When we entered the restaurant, the owner came and ushered my friend and I into the private room, with luxurious chairs and table settings. When I tried to just get a normal seat, she resisted, and my friend translated that she wanted me to have the room - it was her honour.
So far, I'd rank dog meat right up there on my list of experiences, that along with my rice-flavoured protein shakes. This weekend I'll be traveling to visit some historic caves of Korea, so hopefully I'll have some pictures to post for you, to inject some new hightlights into my travels.
I hope things are going well with you all...
God Bless,
Bryan

Do I ever miss hockey. With so many Koreans playing baseball in the US, we always have baseball games of some sort on television - they will give preference to games where Koreans are playing, even if they are on the bench. However, they don't even know what hockey is, much less how its played, where its played, or anything else regarding hockey for that matter. I'm contemplating trying to download the games afterwards, but the temptation to check the scores of the games makes trying to watch the games almost 24 hours after the game without having checked the scores is almost impossible. One of the things that I have enjoyed considerably is living to the games live on the internet, via radio. Its somewhat nostalgic - comparable to people who listen to baseball games on the radio while attending the game. You get more play by play on the radio, and the colour commentary isn't exactly of Harry Neale quality, but the excitement can't be matched when you listen on the radio, and the delayed crowd reaction when a goal is scored, trust me, the feeling is the same. Either way, I wish I had SportsNet on cable here, because all I would be doing is watching hockey.
In Korea, as I might have previously mentioned, Koreans wear suits, (even the women, with a skirt) that we sometimes joke that they even go as far as to sleep in them. All this suit wearing means that dry-cleaning is a major business. So when I went to the dry cleaner to get my shirts dry-cleaned (and ironed, of course...) imagine my surprise when I discovered that for five pairs of pants, and seven shirts, it was only ONE dollar to dry-clean, and less than that to iron 'em. For all those shirts and pants, I paid 20,000, or just over 23 Canadian. Awesome. The dry-cleaner was so excited to see so much "work", that he gave me a discount.
Things here in Korea are otherwise going well - the weathers changed for the better, into the fall season, or as Koreans will tell you, season THREE of FOUR seasons that Korea has...right...The tree's haven't changed yet, but eventually they'll do so rather quickly, and then its a mad rush to the mountains to go hiking. And then after they all go to the mountain, the Koreans go to one of the Sea coasts - either the East or West coast. It's also massive shrimp season right now. On a side note, I absolutely love shrimp right now. I feel like I've missed out on a whole opportunity to enjoy seafood when I was living in Grand Rapids. Sure, Sarnia's not a hotbed for shrimp or squid or octopus, but I'm sure that Grand Rapids had some nice restaurants. Over here though, seafood is not only cheap, but its also incredibly healthy. Right now, its fall "super-shrimp" time in Korea, where a special kind of shrimp is in season - fist-sized shrimp...shrimp the size of a fist. Even though I haven't tried it yet, I just like typing it- shrimp the size of a fist. Mmmmm....Now that's a meal.
Well, I need to get going - a few of the people at my school are planning a Thanksgiving turkey type festival this afternoon, but I don't know what's going down - so its my time to check out what's going on, and what part I need to arrange. Take care all, enjoy your thanksgiving turkey, and remember to thank God for everything that he has blessed you with

Caio,
Bryan