A little about the food

Ok, so overall the food in South Korea is amazing! They do serve rice and soup with pretty much every meal, but there are certain dishes and restaurants that I love. Korean food is generally really spicy, but we have all pretty much adjusted and are used to it. One of my favoiretes is traditional Korean BBQ restaurants where you sit on the floor on a mat and there is a grill on the table where you cook meat, usually pork or beef, and wrap it up in lettuce with different sauces and things. It is so good! Another one of my favorite things is called Omu rice, which is like a rice omelet, with spices and veggies in the rice. It's covered in a brown gravy like sauce. Sounds kinda wierd but it's so good! Dunkas are another favorite. It is kinda like a fried pork chop with cheese in the middle, that you dip in a sauce. Curry rice is pretty popular here and is also so good! I also like another rice dish, called kimchi-bocimbop, which is rice with kimchi cooked in it, along with other veggies and a spicy sauce. Kimchi is a traditional korean food served with every meal. It is fermented vegetables, usually cabbage, that is made very spicy, and is different at every place you have it. It sounds disgusting, and it was an acquired taste, but we all pretty much love it now.

There are several dishes that I don't personally like, but are pretty popular amongst Koreans and other foreigners. Kimbop is almost like a california roll. It is filled with various vegetables, and usually ham or some kind of fish, wrapped first in rice and then in seaweed. They also serve a lot of tofu here, which I am still trying to acquire a taste for. Sometimes it's good, when cooked in the right thing, but the texture is just too much for me.

Now...as with every foreign country, there are some food nightmares...things that kinda make me sick just looking at them or thinking abou them. The obvious one is dog...which is usually served in a soup, and said to increase male's sexual stamina, yeah I don't need that. Seafood is very common here, which I have a hard time with even in the states. It doesn't help when some of the dishes here are just horrifyingly awful. For example, live octopus that is still moving on your plate, or raw fish with the head still attached...yeah, enough about that. There is also a fish version of spam...that is served on a stick by a ton of street vendors, and the koreans absolutely love it. Can't quite make myself try it.

Most of the time our school serves awesome food, but as always there are exceptions. One day we were all excited at what we thought was green beans, until we looked closer and realized they were small, minnow type fish staring back up at us. Gross! Luckily they did not make it onto my plate! There are some days when all of the employees walk into the kitchen for lunch and turn around and walk right back out. On these days we settle for convenience store food!

I'm sure I'll come across more intersting food dishes while I am here, and while I am travelling. I will update you on these and warn you if it is too graphic!

haha, love and miss you all!