Food Adventure with Family!

Best part about hanging out with my parents? Well, I guess it's actually the second best because the first best is being able to be with my parents. So the second best is... EATING!!!! 

We met up with my mom's friends family and we went to this delicious restaurant in 홍대 or Hongdae, named after the arts university in the area. It's got a lot of cute places to eat and so we went to one called 어머니가 차려주는 식탁 or The Table that Mother Prepares [for you to eat]. YAY! 

Super cute, yeah?

Basically it's a lot of traditional Korean foods with modern twists. It came out in about 10 courses. I didn't upload pictures of all of them — I just put up my favorites. But wow, I was so SO full by the end. 

Delicious salad with tofu slices and an (edible) peony on top. 

This one was super interesting. The folded green and white slices are thinly sliced pieces of rice cake, kind of like the rice paper they give you at all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ restaurants but thicker and slightly tougher. Take a slice (using chopsticks of course) and then take some of the salad and place it in the middle of the rice paper slice. Then wrap it, dip it in the sweet sauce, and mmm. So good. 

This is the modern twist of the 삼겹살, or the Korean equivalent of bacon, but way better because it's fattier. It was so good. It was so soft and tender and greasy. It was on top of this delicious salad and if you ate it together it was the perfect combination of meat and veggies. 

Isn't the presentation of this one awesome? Look at the heart! 

The food looks like fried stuff, and yes it is, but it's not your typical tempura. Inside the one that looks like shrimp is actually ginseng. I thought it would taste so weird, but it was actually quite good. And the other fried food is two slices of eggplant, held together with mashed shrimp. Yummmm. 

Then this is your typical 갈비, or Korean meat, right? WRONG. It's the most tender, best marinated meat ever. And to "heat" it, they lit it on fire. Yes. FIRE. And yes it's sitting on top of rocks and spruced with some kind of pine leaf or whatever. 

To finish the meal, we have greens mixed with rice and spicy sauce. I was about to die by this time because my stomach was so full. 

To finish it off, a nice cup of coffee, plus watermelons+oranges in the background.

So that was another entry. No pictures of me, but y'all are more interested in the food anyway, right? Wow I'm hungry. More updates soon :)

NEW PHILADELPHIA RETREAT

Sorry that I haven't updated in a while. It's been quite busy. This last weekend I went to a retreat with my church to Holy Mountain Jesus Town. Yes, that's the actual name. 

You can see the name of the retreat center above. It was very different from my past retreats. Namely there were no cabins or any need to go outdoors, for that matter. Everything — the rooms, cafeteria, worship room — were all self-contained in this one giant building. 

This was my room! And my bed in my room. We slept on little futons on the floor, which was heated. So comfy. 

My small group!

Pretty flowers on the last day!

Most of the Emmaus crew that came :)

More updates coming soon!

Black Day

So in Korea, April 4 (4/14) is Black Day. I told you guys about White Day, right? So Black Day is the day where singles go out and get 자장면 (or 짜짱면), which is black.. noodle... dish... SO DELICIOUS. See picture below. 


I know I'm not single, but since my boyfriend is really really far away, I thought I was justified in going out to eat some black noodles with my friends :) Here we are, beginning our journey to our quest to find the black noodles! 

Isn't it pretty?? Check out the cherry trees on the hillside. And below, you can see all the budding leaves on the streets. 

Chung and Victoria are ready for their foodz.

Tina and me with our green chopsticks!

Forest path around sunset time. Cool. :) More updates coming soon!

Easter Sunday

I hope you all had a pleasant Easter last week. At church, everyone was all dressed up and soo pretty! These were taken right outside our church, JSEM or New Philadelphia. 

Judy and me. She is sooo beautiful :)

Judy and Chung! They're such Gs.

Emmaus Staff! Mat, Brian, P. Marcus, Erin 사모!!! 

Then afterwards I went out with family because we were celebrating birthdays! It was Hyunjoo's dad's birthday and Hyunjoo's mom's brother's wife's birthday too. She's expecting twin boys in late July! We went out for some really really traditional Korean food. And it was delicious and not heavy. Yum. So here come the food pictures :D

The meat in the middle right is 떡갈비, which is finely chopped/diced pieces of meat that are then molded into normal meat shapes using rice. It's got a really interesting texture and it's delicious. 

I generally haaaate shellfish/clams/whatever. But these were actually really good and not salty. 

The end :) Will post again soon! 

More cherry blossoms

Hey, guys. I've been super busy because of classes. Midterm exams are coming up and it's starting to be crunch time! But here's an update for you faithful readers :)

Last Saturday, the 11th, Christine, Joanna and I went to Yeoido near the National Assembly for the Cherry Blossom Festival. Basically it's this really famous, really beautiful street that has cherry tree after cherry tree. They were all in full bloom and gorgeous. But there were also a TON of people. 

Joanna and me!

Too many people!!! 

They clear out the streets of cars so that people can walk around freely. 

Afterwards, the three of us decided to go to 명동 (Myongdong) and we ended up eating at this place famous for 칼국수 (kalguksoo). It's basically a flat flour-based noodle dish that was SO DELICIOUS. Wow. It was insanely good. 

We ate it all. Bwahahah

Afterwards, we went to a cake cafe, where you get a free slice of cake for every drink that you buy. Really really cute. This is Christine, excited for our order :)

I'll update again soon :) Keep checking back!

Yesterday was Monday

So I've started this new thing yesterday where I walk around campus every afternoon and explore. Because I think I'm gaining weight -_____- and because I don't want to sit on my butt every day while the weather gets nicer. So yesterday I got to take lots of pretty pictures! 

More green is popping up everywhere.

 

More pretty flowers. 

GORGEOUS CHERRY BLOSSOMS. AHHHH

LOOK HOW PRETTY THEY ARE.

PRETTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These white flowers are bomb too. They're a type of magnolia. This above picture was actually taken after my walk. This was after my Korean class ended and a bunch of Emmaus girlies and I went out to eat. This is in front of Mary's 하숙집. 

This was our dinner. It was 찜닭, like chicken marinated in soy sauce. And then we added dumplings and ramen into the mix too. It was really good, but we got a really small size -___- Bad idea. 

Hanna, Mary, and Arum

Joanna, Me

The end!

Sunday Update

So this weekend was super fun and super busy. Saturday morning I met up with Christine, who went to my summer program in Korea 2 years ago. We caught up on our lives AKA we talked about boys. Hahahah. 

Then for lunch I met up with another Christine and we had really good donkatsu and then we found this awesome WAFFLE PLACE. It was only 1,000W or 80 cents. It was basically a waffle with whipped cream inside and syrup drizzled on and then folded. SO GOOD. 

And then on Sunday, I went to church. We have gorgeous godly ladies over here :)

After service/fellowship/Bible study/games (electricity!!), we went over to Seoul National University where they had a park. I just checked out the gorgeous flowers. 

And both Christine AND Joanna came to JSEM/New Philadelphia today so I was super happy. Yay!

I just finished studying for my next Chinese characters quiz which is in 10 hours. Woo hoo! It definitely takes up the bulk of my studying, but it's nice to know that I'm learning something while I'm here. I guess I've learned over 100 characters now? 150? 

So now it's time for my beauty sleep. Bye :)