First Korean meal

After days of eating toast, yogurt, apples, grilled (processed) cheese sandwiches, and pork dumplings (mandu), I finally went to an authentic Korean restaurant for lunch. Now, this place wasn't totally authentic because I didn't have to take off my shoes at sit on the ground, but it still counts. The menu on the wall was in all Korean and there were no pictures.

Thank goodness I ended up sitting next to Jean who is Korean but lived in Texas for 10 years because his dad is American. Jean goes to the Kyunghee University a few blocks from both the restaurant and my officetel. In the year 2004 he was in the Korean army because guys go to the army when they are about 20 years old. This is why it takes so long for Korean guys to complete their university education, he told me. Jean has been in school for 8 years including the army time and he is studying to be an architect. The friend that he was eating lunch with (whose name I never did find out) is studying engineering and he lives right across the street from me. Unfortunately, said friend does not speak any English at all. Jean gave me his number and told me to call if I had any questions.

I might, as he was really helpful and explained lots of things on the menu to me. "This is a bean soup, this is a spicy rice dish," and so on. After he pointed out all these things and we discussed how I didn't like very spicy things, he ordered for me basically what his friend was eating but with the sauce on the side.

And it was good! Just a 1/2 teaspoon of the sauce though was more than enough spice for me. Note to self: learn how to say "sauce on the side, please"

Well, I took a few bites before I remembered to take a picture, but what you see here is an egg in the middle with seaweed on top. There is a whole rice layer on the bottom and different pickled vegetables on the sides: carrots, bean sprouts, and some things I can not identify but were very good.

When you go to a restaurant and order something you get lots of side dishes. The first one (top left) was a fried potato cake of sorts. The second one was an vegetable-egg omelet type thing that upon eating I decided tasted kind of soapy. The third (top right) is spicy kimchi. On the bottom left is some green (deceivingly spicy) kimchi stuff. The bottom middle was this mashed potato and corn thing that was sweet and my favorite of all the things that I ate. On the bottom right (sort of cut-off) is salted seaweed strips.