Russian Foodz.

On Saturday, Josh, Jiyoung and I met up and went to Gostiniy Dvor for dinner. The restaurant was small and near to Dongdaemun and pretty bizarre to get to in that all of a sudden you are in Korea but all of the people (many of whom I would have guessed were Korean) were speaking Russian and everything was in Cyrillic.

We started out with some vodka shots.



Which we chased with the pickled stuff platter. The pickles weren't sweet which is like a miracle in Korea.



Then we had lamb ravioli things which I presume are not actually called ravioli in Russia but I have no better way to describe them.



And stuffed bell peppers. Yum.



The spread. We also had borscht and these stuffed pancake things which were delicious.



And we ran into one of my friends there who kindly took this lovely photograph of us being too stuffed to move after the meal!

Mudfest.

was so much fun.

and it didn't rain, unlike every other day of my korean life it would seem.




The bus ride there was fun except for the obnoxious people we had to sit by.





Proud to be at Lotteria!



Group dancing is pretty much the funniest thing of all time.



Welcome to Boryeong! Note the saddos under the sign.



Welcome to Boryeong Sabine, Jon and Becky!!!!



Token mud! But actually I conceded and got just real muddy later. :)



Jon got real muddy clearly.



The Koreans got real muddy, too!





The sea!!! This is the whole group of people I went with.



This was the best samgyeopsal ever. Also: Look Mom, no glasses! This was the only day I've successfully worn contacts yet.



The sea!!!!! Goodbye Mudfest. :(

HARRY POTTER!!!

Harry Potter came out early in Korea. So, a big group of us went to go see it on the day it opened.

We were excited.

Rainy Day Jeon

In Korea, when it rains, which it seems to do all of the time lately, you are supposed to eat Korean pancakes and drink magkeolli, this this rice wine. So, tonight when I met with Jaeyeon for our language exchange, we went to this cute little traditional restaurant near Sangsu to give it a shot.

This is me with the makgeolli.



We settled on kimchi pancake which was delicious but full of little squid tentacles. Oh my!



Close-up. The purple things are the tentacles which I totally ate without dying.



And because we weren't quite full we ordered the acorn jelly salad which was excellent and did not contain any sort of sealife that I could find.



At any rate, it doesn't seem that our meal stopped the rain, but it was pleasant nonetheless.

Eating Meat in Korea

So, I've given up on veganism for the time being. I've been in no mood to cook. It was really exciting at first to be able to eat anything I wanted, but now it's making me feel lethargic and unhealthy, so I think it's back to a vegetable-based diet for me soon.

In the meantime, I've been trying to have some new meat eating life experiences. So, last week at my language exchange, we met up in Sinchon and went out for Chinese-style lamb skewers. It was delicious.

I love that so much of the meat people eat here is grilled at the table. It makes the whole dining experience so much more exciting.



I haven't showered in days! As usual, I suppose.



MEAT!!!



We also had some sort of spicy-noodle soup which was really nice. It's interesting how much Chinese flavors differ from Korean ones. We also had Chinese-style dumplings (but I forgot to take a picture) which tasted just completely different from any of the Korean dumplings I've had and also very different from the dumplings I had in Taiwan.



We also split a bottle of Tsingtao which was a very nice change of pace from all of the cheap Korean beers.