Cooking food at your table, perhaps not up to health code, but really good

So another thing that Korea does really well is let you cook your own food. It's really ingenious. People come to your restaurant and instead of having to cook for them, you give them all the ingredients and they have to do all the work. Brilliant! Why didn't we think of this? Perhaps because I could possibly kill myself with the uncooked meat I am consuming, but no matter, it is really tasty and a great communal meal with friends.
We haven't snapped any photos of Korean BBQ, or galbi, so we'll have to post more on that later, and believe me, it deserves a post to itself. Recently, we discovered a new dish, whose name I can't remember, that entails a light broth cooked over a gas flame in the center of the table. You are given a platter of veggies and thinly slice meat to add to the soup, and when they are cooked to your liking, you eat from the pot. The really cool part though is still to come: around the outside of the pot is a cast iron circle on which more meat cooks. This meat you wrap up in rice paper wrappers with another platter of veggies and then dip in 4 tasty sauces. Amazing!



The second photo is of our friends Chris and Tony and gives you a good view of the pot and cast iron skillet-thing, as well as the arm of our waitress (as a side note--they are so helpful, partially because they think we are incompetent, so they do a lot for us rather than letting us stumble through it ourselves). In the first photo you can see Ryan, being a weirdo like always (don't worry, he hasn't changed), but more importantly, you can see the platter of veggies that go into the wraps with the meat, as well as a few little plates just behind that piled high with kimchi. Yum! (more about Kimchi in further posts)
The crazy part is that the meal didn't end there. After finishing the wraps and the soup, large udon noodles are poured into the remaining broth in the pot. When those are finished, a waitress empties the pot and makes a quick stir fry with egg, rice, and minced vegetables at your table. That's 4 meals all in one!
So who wants to come visit?

our new home

Hello all. Ryan and I recently moved into a new apartment--one of the perks of Ryan being a manager at school. It's small and cute and, most importantly, warm. Yes, the weather's been plunging down below 0 degrees celsius lately...no fun. Anyway, it is great, with the exception of a few strange idiosyncrasies: our lofted bedroom is only 3.5 feet tall, if we forget in the middle of the night and try to stand up, we'll have quite a headache in the morning.

You may notice that our washing machine in under our stove top. That is efficient use of space...

The Puppy Mobile

I just thought this was pretty cool.

Standing out....

A teacher named Chris and I went out for a Korean lunch today. He's a pretty tall fellow, I'd say 6'2" or so, with pasty white skin, a head that glistens after he Bicks it every morning, and a southern drawl. His height and bald head usually attracts a few stares or comments while we are out, but today, as we ate lunch in traditional Korean style, we got more snickers than usual. First of all, traditional Korean meals are eaten sitting pretzel style on the floor on pretty low tables. We must have looked pretty uncomfortable trying to sit pretzel style for over half an hour. After about 5 minutes I wasn't able to sit still and must have resembled one of my five year olds that has to pee but is holding it in. Chris was even more of a spectacle because his knees barely fit under the table and he would bump it every time he moved, making everything on the table shake.
We ordered by picture, a style of ordering that we are becoming quite accustomed but is still full of surprises. Is that egg in there? Does this look like rotten spinach to you? Or, my personal favorite, what the hell is this? Well, today we ordered something that looked like ham soup. The soup that came out was pig, just not the cut I thought it would be. Apparently, hot dogs and Spam are considered traditional Korean food. That's right, we ate hot dog and Spam soup for a Korean lunch. He thought it tasted like on of those Ham Top Ramen packets mixed with soy sauce. I thought it more closely resembled spicy Ketchup in Spam juice. Needless to say, there we were: two white guys in ties, terribly uncomfortable, fumbling our way through our hot dog and Spam soup.
But that wasn't the worst part. As we were laughing about our situation (and the people around were laughing at us), Chris happened to spill a spoonful on his bright white shirt. Since costumer service is incredible here, the tiny and ancient Korean waitress immediately came out with a hot towel and started rubbing him like a mother trying to clean a child's face. Another younger waitress followed suit, this time bringing out two adult size bibs for Chris and I. They insisted that we put them on, which in itself attracted the attention of the restaurant. So there we were, two white guys with shaved heads in white shirt and ties, eating hot dog and Spam soup, fidgeting like 5 year olds, wearing adult sized bibs. Man o man, I love this country.

A few photos...

We haven't posted any photos in a while. Here are a few random shots from the past couple of weekends.


A really cool indoor market in a little neighborhood called Insadong. There are blocks and blocks of vendors selling goods, veggies, fish, and lots of cooked food. There's hustle and bustle everywhere, some friendly folks, and some not so friendly. Take a look at the lady that is pointing at us. Seconds after this photo was taken, she proceeded to shoo us away from the area like pests.
Lots and lots of street food in Seoul. Beth's favorites, or rather the favorite of Beth's sweet tooth, are these pancake like desserts filled with cinnamon, sugar, and pure yumminess!
Edge! Here's our neighborhood mascot, Edge. He's a real tough guy, always barking at passerbys. That's until the weather gets too cold and he shivers and whimpers and his owner puts him inside the store window. And then, back to barking!
A cool building in the Jonggak subway station. There's tons of cool buildings all around Seoul. It's a pretty modern city.
We're having a blast!