Celebration Korean Food! Lunch, Dinner and of course, Coffee

Yesterday I had lunch with all my yoga buddies. We bought 10,000 won ($10 US) coupons and were told to meet at this restaurant from 11-2. We all went together after class and luckily someone drove because it would have been a long walk. When we arrived at the restaurant, all the yoga teachers were the servers so I thought one or more owned the restaurant but that wasn't true. They were just "renting" for the couple of hours so I'm assuming it was a fundraiser although I'm not too certain. These were the side dishes and then we were also served soup. The older women really wanted me to try the side dish with the tiny fish (anchovy?). See it in the center of the picture. They pointed to their knees (mine are always sore from class) letting me know that it was good for my knees. I pointed to my eyes and the eyes of the fish letting them know I won't eat anything that can look at me. They laughed so hard at that and I'm sure they thought I was one crazy American. The kimchi was fantastic!!!



I went into Seoul for a night of maedeup with my Korean girlfriends. This week, we tried another traditional Korean restaurant that specialized in a fish soup. I've never had fish soup and as long as I didn't have to eat octopus, I was fine. These are the sides we received.

What I didn't know and should have was that the fish in the soup had bones! Yike! I was kinda freaked about eating a fish bone (and I think I may have). I had trouble separating the fish from the bone. Eventually my friend Hellena helped me out by deboning the fish before she put it into my bowl. I felt like I was two again. The soup was really spicy but good (except for the bones). I even ate tofu which I don't really like but in a soup, it takes on the taste of the soup.

It was so noisy in the restaurant with so many Korean men drinking too much soju that we ate and left immediately. You couldn't hear the person talking across the table from you. It was really that loud.

Of course, after dinner, is coffee. The girls surprised me with this and it was so cool looking I just had to take a picture. The coffee was topped with whipped cream and caramel. Mmmmm, my type of coffee.

They also bought these pastries. I could hardly eat any more so they had me bring most of this home to Curt (hubby). We got out our maedeup and I showed Hellena, with Hannah's help, how to make the male butterfly maedeup. We laughed and talked until 10:00pm. Time to get on the bus back to Suwon.