I found a new spicy food

 

That's a bowl of pork bibbimbap. At the restaurant¹ that has Vicky's favorite noodles (japchae), I usually get the beef bibbimbap, but I was being wild and crazy today...The thing is, that rice isn't really brown. It should be red. It turns out, the pork meat is covered in a spicy red pepper sauce, and in this hot bowl full of rice and veggies, which gets all mixed up, the pepper gets everywhere.

 

It's definitely proof that I'm able to tolerate spicier foods than before we moved here. Okay, it took a plate of pickled radishes², a bowl of cold vinegar soup, and two cups of water, but I ate it!
 

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1 Yujin Katusa Snack Bar, on Yongsan South Post ^↩

2

In the Korean grocery store, they're called "mat pickles". The kids don't like them, and Jay only takes some to be polite, so they're mine, all Mine! muhahaha! ^↩

Spanish and El Caballero Fantasma

That would be, The Ghost Knight, written by Cornelia Funke.

I've been studying spanish lately (more than Korean, sadly) and I've found that small children's books are about my reading level. The library here has a small selection. Curious George was a doable, because I know it so well in English, and El Pinguino was fun, especially when the penguin pinched the lion's nose.

But, I was hoping that maybe my vocabulary would be sufficient for a grade-school level chapter book. Amazon says this book(English version) is for 8-12 year olds. Unfortunately, I'm finding it's not (sufficient, that is), but I'm using google to translate for me as I go along, and this book is interesting so far. I say "so far", because it took me all evening to read chapter one. yep, pretty slow.

But the next chapter is "Los Hombres Muertos". The Three Dead Men! oooh!

Book list

Let's see, I haven't wrote one of these in a while. But, I would like to see how much I read this year.

 

One of my Christmas presents from Big J and the kids was a stack of books.There was Portal, by Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor, Too Many Curses by A. Lee Martinez, the Nebula Awards Showcase 2013 anthology, and Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit by Corey Olsen. I've read them all except for the one about The Hobbit... I will probably get to that soon.

 

Star Trek the Next Generation, A Hard Rain by Dean Wesley Smith, with Picard solving film noire mystery on the holodeck. Not the best, but not bad.

Korean-English board book on vegetables. I wrote down all the words to improve my vocabulary.

 

The Alchemist of Souls by Anne Lyle. Fantasy set in an alternate Tudor England. Rather good, interesting "elves", and system of reincarnation. It was a Barnes&Noble recommendation in an email. First in a series.

 

Baen Books Free Short Stories 2013. The last story was by David Drake, and in his intro to the story, he mentions Manly Wade Wellman. This is rather serendipitous, because yesterday I had been trying to remember the name of the author who wrote the John the Balladeer stories. I read them when i was a teen, and they are the rare horror-fantasy that I like. Drake's story is about fantastical events, too, and is quite good.

 

Total books Read: 7