If We Can Keep Kosher Here...

"Just think, if we can keep kosher here we can keep kosher anywhere..." my husband (Nir) said this to me during our first week in Korea. We were living in a hotel without a kitchen while we searched for our new apartment and eating only kosher snicker bars and pringles. This may sound like a great excuse to indulge on junk but, trust me, it has been nearly 2 months since that first rough week and I still cannot bring myself to eat another snickers.

Before we arrived here Nir and I had romanticized the idea of keeping kosher in Korea. We'd buy only fresh veggies and fruit and would make food from scratch... and this is exactly what we are doing. But, romantic? No, it is work! The end result though is delicious and very rewarding to be sure. On Thursday night Nir and I didn't sleep as we worked in the kitchen side by side preparing food for our anticipated first Shabbat guests. The flour for the challah needed to be sifted beforehand and our little convection oven could only fit one loaf at a time. In Korea, people use gas burners and rarely have ovens in their home. Despite the prep time it was the best challah we had ever made. [Mom, take a look at our challot in the pic above and rest assured that we are NOT starving!]

But keeping kosher here reaches beyond just prep-time. Sometimes to find essential kosher ingredients we need to go to several different places - including the black market. Currently we have no meat but are able to find kosher milk at around $6 for half a gallon. Yikes! But what can we do, we must have milk for our daughter. Jokingly I told Nir that this experience here is making me rethink the value of food; I feel my life is some weird combination of Survivor (the tv series) and the experiences of those from the Great Depression. If you've ever cried from happiness because you've found Philadelphia cream cheese ($4 each package) you know what I'm talking about! Overall, it is hard to be kosher here but we are making it happen everyday and learning a lot from the experience.

Even so... the next time you chow down on a turkey sandwich or cheese pizza think of us and know that someone, far away, wishes they were eating your food :)

We're Not in Kansas Anymore...

I'm 25 years old and until now I have never lived outside of Kansas. Sure, I did a study abroad trip in college and I have tried to travel abroad as often as I could... but these activities never actually amounted to me living somewhere "exciting" for more than several weeks. And by "exciting" I mean somewhere OUTSIDE of Kansas! [FYI mom, I love that I could grow up in Kansas and I miss it already...] But today my husband Nir, our little daughter Ayalah and I are officially residents of Seoul, South Korea. We have now lived in our Korean apartment for 30 days and will be hanging our Mezuzot scrolls tomorrow. These scrolls will hang on every doorpost of our home and indicate to all who passby that we are a Jewish family.

Before sundown tonight Ayalah and I went out to get some Coca-Cola from a local vendor. As she and I left our house we saw the sun setting against an amazing view of the city's sky scrapers. This image is what you see when you walk out the door of our apartment; the glass globe structure is a main train station called Noksapyeong. Suddenly as we walked up the street all the sights that had seemed foreign to me for the past month felt different. There was the man on the sidewalk handling glass with white workman gloves stained with red paint; workman gloves are actually manufactured in Korea with ready-made red paint stain splotches on the fabric (I know, somewhat odd but kinda cool so long as you aren't a perfectionist.) A large wagon of fresh fruit was being carted down the street by a man on foot - a powerful flashback to a scene that might have happened in the U.S. in the 1920's. Yet modern cars passed by busily, nearly each one with LCD TVs and GPS systems gleaming from their windows.

All these and other sights of Korea that my senses seemed to rebel for the past few weeks seemed to change in a single moment. Suddenly they felt familiar to me. I wonder if this is why Mezuzot should be hung only after 30 days, is this how long it takes for someone to feel comfortable enough in a place to call it their home?