Thursday, August 13, 2009

This morning I brought the pastries I had purchased yesterday to class to try them out for breakfast. The first was filled with bean paste that had actual chunks of bean in it. It was good and I liked how it was more filling than a plain pastry. The second, which was purple colored, was blueberry flavored. It had a mild blueberry flavor and was nice and light and flaky. We had a typical class and then I had noodles with a fried vegetable cake in the food court at the Student Union.

At 2:00 was our visit to KERIS - an educational research institute in Seoul that is government funded. They provide electronic resources, such as grade management systems, databases, full-text articles, ebooks, interlibrary loan delivery etc. to K-12 schools and universities. We have similar services in the US, but nothing is centralized.

After our visit, Kate and I met her finance, Pete, at one of the subway stops on the other side of Seoul to search for a bbq restaurant that was supposed to be really good. We tried to take 2 cabs there and neither would take us, so walked around a bit and found guy who was working in a convenience store who spoke engligh well. He was really helpful and called the restaurant for directions and then persuaded a cab driver to take us there. It's about 15 minutes away from the subway stop on the outskirts of town which is probably why no cabs wanted to go there. On the way we drove through hundreds of flower farms - I guess they must supply all the flowers in Seoul.

At the bbq restaurant we sat at picnic tables outside under a huge tent. Apparently the restaurant is very famous because a sign outside highlighted how some pro american golfers had eaten there and a man we met while eating said that David Beckham had come as well. Each table was equipped with a metal box in the middle for holding hot coals. We ordered ribs and pork belly. They were already cooked, but we grilled them over the coals for a few minutes before eating. We also had all the usual side dishes - kimchi, cabbage, salad, etc. There was one dish that seemed to be dried vegetables in a spicy/sweet red sauce. I ate a ton of it. I loved that the veggies were very chewy, which is why I assume they had been dried or dehydrated in some way.

The man at the other end of our picnic table took a liking to us and gave us a ton of his duck, which seemed to be the specialty of the restaurant. He also showed us how to eat it - dip it on the bbq sauce (which was a semi-sweet brown sauce) and then top if with a slice of jalepeno before eating. You could also add some cabbage on top for extra flavor. The combination was quite good - savory, salty, tart, and sweet. The man kept giving us more and more duck and we felt obligated to eat it to be polite so we were all stuffed by the time we left. He also ended up paying half our bill. In general, the people in Korea are really nice and helpful and on this outing we ended up having great experiences with the nice guy at the convenience store and the guy at the bbq restaurant.

We took a taxi back to the subway station and then the subway back to the university. I convinced Kate to walk back to the dorm so at least we burned off some of the calories we consumed. We arrived at our room smelling of smoke and bbq and very full, but also very happy from our bbq adventure.