Blogs

We at the publications team have been busy editing and compiling submissions for the past few months, and finally have something to show for ourselves. We have just unveiled the inaugural issues of Passages, a journal dedicated to sharing the experiences of Dr. David Chu Scholarship recipients who conducted research or took part in fieldschools or exchanges in Asia. This bright group of students, undergraduate and graduate, have some great stories and reflections to share. We're so glad to finally make them available to the rest of you. Please check the publications section to access Passages.

It's interesting how I've learned so much about myself by going away, then again, since we define ourselves by what we're not as much as by what we are, traveling can be a revealing process.

At one point during our trip we tried to come up with possible entries for Canada into an international cuisine contest. The result of putting our heads together were: maple desserts and other maple products, apples and other autumn harvest related dishes, and wild game found only in Canada (ie beaver and moose). The greatest challenge was to find dishes that were truly national, which excluded west coast fare, Quebecois cuisine, and other region-specific cooking.

After almost a week in Korea, there are a few phrases I've picked up to help me get around. The title of this post means "not spicy," something we decided was important after our violently spicy meal on Saturday. "Thank you" is probably the one thing we can all say, and we often say it as a group when we get directions. I've taught myself "how much is it," and "receipt" and have been forced to learn "straight ahead" and "stop here" for taxi rides.

The low number of blog entries is due to our incredibly intense schedule, and the most recent event has been an attack of food poisoning.

Rather than recounting one of our many adventures, this entry will be a list of interesting firsthand observations.

It's about 7:45 on Tuesday morning, which means four nights down and five nights to go. I've created a backlog of things to blog about but the days have been quite full and I need my sleep. There is also the problem of my internet not working on my laptop I hauled all the way here, so I am forced to type this in iHouse's computer room.

I've been unable to blog a full account of our adventures because the past two days have been a long quest for pyjamas, clean underwear and a towel.

Hello Readers

You may have noticed that the polls have not been functioning as they should over the past couple weeks. This was really unfortunate as the polls are one of my favorite features of the site.

It seems to be fixed for the time being, however if you encounter a problem later on let me know: adam@asiapacificreader.org

Don't forget that you can go back and vote on any poll that you missed.

Cheers,

Adam

[Correction: There was a typo regarding remittances to the Philippines, and it now reads as "13% of its annual GDP" rather than its "population". I have also updated the link to the Migration Information Source.]

We're here in Seoul, staying at Ewha Womans University (yes, "womans" is spelt that way officially, apparently it was a grammatical error, but they've maintained it for historical reasons).