fooooooood

hi! people have been complaining about how i (katie) never write on here anymore so i decided to give in and fill you guys in on what's been going on. please excuse the lack of capitalization...i'm too lazy today :)

let's see...brian can talk again, which could be seen as both good and bad news. haha. last week went by pretty quickly and uneventfully. this week should be a little more exciting: we're going on a field trip (to the dino expo place we went to last weekend, coincidentally) on tuesday and our new canadian teacher starts on thursday! joy, the american teacher who works with us now, is leaving on wednesday, so that will be a bit sad. oh well...brian and i won't be the newbie teachers anymore! score!

yesterday we had a bit of an adventure. we met up with joy and got our hair cut. this was scarier for me than for brian because he's a boy...there are only so many ways his hair could be messed up. mine could be a disaster! thankfully, though, the woman cutting my hair spoke a little english and did a pretty good job. my haircut does have a slight korean-girl feel to it, though, which is sort've funny to me. what's even funnier is that brian's hairstylist went crazy with the gel/hairdryer/other styling products and when she was done he looked completely metro. anyone who knows brian should find this hilarious and i really really wish i had taken a picture.

next we took a bus to geoje, a town on geoje island (about 20 minutes away from tongyeong). there's a huuuuge department store there called home plus which has amazing western food, like different kinds of cheese. and more than two types of cereal. it's awesome. we wandered around there for a while and then walked outside where there were some beautiful cherry trees blooming. they're everywhere in korea and they're so pretty.

anyway, on to the main topic of this blog : food. a lot of you guys have been pretty curious about the food here and if we like it or not. there are a few different categories of korean restaurants here : pork restaurants, raw fish restaurants, regular korean food restaurants, and western-ish restaurants.

these turtles have nothing to do with food. they're for sale as pets and brian wanted me to post this for mr. and mrs. regan. cute, aren't they?

this was taken at a 'japanese' restaurant (it really wasn't japanese food). brian is about to take a bite out of a baby octopus tentacle. yummm. they actually put the whole baby octopus in the pot first, let it cook, and then cut off the pieces and eat them. the woman in blue behind him is the director of our school.

this is the standard layout for most normal korean restaurants. there's one main dish and then several side dishes (in this case there's soup, kimchi, and pickled japanese radishes). the main dish here is pork mixed with rice and topped with an egg...it's soooo good!

a pork place! here you cook your own food on the little plate in the middle of the table. you usually sit on the floor in these places too, which brian isn't very good at. there are also a ton of side dishes, most of which you can cook with the meat or eat raw. after you finish cooking and eating the meat, you get either noodles or rice to finish your meal with.



one of the western restaurants we went to...called a 'tourist restaurant' actually! we got a korean variation on a salad, bread/biscuits, pickles (they come with pretty much everything, including pizza, around here), and ribs/chicken and pasta. mmm. if you look closely, you can see the tater tots mixed with the fries. koreans are big fans of the tots :)


i don't have any pictures of the raw fish restaurants b/c i hate fish and try to stay as far away as possible! but basically they have tanks out front where you can pick out your favorite fat fish, they kill it, and then put it on a plate for you to eat. fresh fish!


that's all i've got for now...i'm sure we'll write again soon!


p.s. i almost beat brian in the college basketball brackets. i'm so proud of myself!