bean sprouts and pig fat

It's Tuesday night here, and this was our short day. What that means is, today we went in at 3:30pm and got off at 8:00pm. We've grown to love Tuesdays and Thursdays almost as much as Fridays!!! Today was a fairly normal kind of day. I got up around 10 o'clock this morning and had a woman come to my apartment and do something to my gas line...who knows, but she said she would be back in 6 months :) After showering, I met Chris and we made our way to the market where we made a few new purchases. Everything is inexpensive in it's own time around here. Obviously, when things are in season you can get them cheap, but when they aren't you pay BIG!!! Evidently, apples are in season right now because we got a really good size bag for only 2,ooo won ( about $1.80). We also bought bean sprouts because in finally coming to the realization that Chris really doesn't like Korean food, he also discovered that he really does like bean sprouts over the weekend...go figure. I'll explain later!!! After the market, we went to Fasillo!!! This is the seafood, shabo shabo, and sushi buffet that I think I've mentioned before. We love this place, and it's conveniently located about three doors down from our apartment tower.

In other news, we had a nice relaxing weekend. We didn't do a lot. However, we made plans with some co-workers on Saturday evening. We made a trip to Monsu Stadium and park. This is a huge stadium and park that was built in order to host the 2002 World Cup soccer games. That being said, the park and stadium was really nice. It's huge. There's a rose garden and inside the stadium there's even a tradition Korean wedding chapel. After visiting the stadium we moved on to dinner, which is where the major epiphany took place. We thought that our good friend Willy, a native Korean and fellow teacher at ELC was planning to take us to this Korean Barbecue that we've been hearing about, but instead he took us to eat Sam Gibson. This is a popular Korean meal where you fry pork, mainly fat, right there at your table and wrap it up in lettuce, dress it with a mystery sauce and then, in my opinion... stomach it. If you're name is Chris, you don't even try to stomach it, you just say, "I can't eat this." And then proceed to find anything amongst the 20 odd side dishes that you might "be able to eat." What he came up with was bean sprouts! And boy did he eat some bean sprouts! I'm pretty sure the owner brought him three different refills of bean sprouts. You'd think he'd never want to look at another bean sprout in his life, but to my surprise, he wanted to buy bean sprouts at the market today! If anyone has any idea how to cook a bean sprout or possibly season a bean spout, any advice would be appreciated:) After our lovely bean sprout and pig fat dinner we moved on to the karaoke room. Karaoke is a popular social event in Korea, and so our native friend had to show us the ropes! Willy, who is very serious at work. He's a teacher and second in line to the school director. We'll just say he cut lose. He sang, he danced, he entertained!!!

Willy by day on the left and Willy by night on the right :)

The night was a blast, but we called it quits early because the bean sprouts were unfortunately not that filling! On our walk home we stopped at a Korean style fast food joint, where we enjoyed one of our favorites, deep fried octopus. It's so good. We then finished the night off at the bakery across from our apartment buillding. Chris had carrot cake which was amazing. I unfortunately had a not so good pick; it looked like a cookie but tasted like rubbery goo. On Sunday, out of frustration, I bought some ingredients and began baking at home. No more being hungry for us, we'll eat snickerdoodles everyday if we can't find food in Korea. That's our life over the last few days!!!

I'll try to find something else to write about other than food, I know it's becoming quite repetitive...sorry:)

Later Tater (ok maybe I'm just hungry)

Am :)