Man Date

I went out on a man date with James.

This is a chicken dish that I don't remember the name of. I like that it came with a splatter guard.

After dinner James and I went out for an ice cream sundae.

Here is Megan with a can of Confidence.

My thoughts exactly.

The pepper grinder broke on my breakfast.

Business Trip

Our work sent us to Guam for three days to take care of some official government business.

As you can see we were very upset about this.

I assure you that while I posed for this picture I was actually thinking about teaching Koreans grammar.

 This is deep fried parrot fish with rice and butter. The people of Guam really like deep fried food.

Free Gifts

In Korea it's very popular for stores to give you a little something extra with your purchase, they call it a "service". With our purchase of this regular milk they included 2 containers of banana milk. I knew we wouldn't drink the banana milk, but it's so hard to pass up free stuff.

Speaking of gifts, one of the parents brought us cupcakes. Here is Matt getting ready to enjoy said cupcake.

This is a man who is ready for Saint Patrick's Day. Who knew being Irish for a day was so popular in Korea.

Sally ordered the most disgusting drink ever invented (actually James wanted to order it but we managed to talk him out of it). They call it the Blue Monkey some of its ingredients include: blue liquor, banana liquor and milk...

Shinee Lucifer

This is the Namsangol Hanok Village, it is a village of traditional homes.

The village is located down an alley of high rises and food stands.

Here I am trying to decide what delicious treat I want.

Fish shaped pastries filled with red bean paste,

nuts and puffed rice cakes,

hot dogs, corn-dogs and fish-dogs,

or possibly cotton candy.

Did I mention that it is still very cold out?

Here is Megan in a traditional Korean costume.

We were informed that if you sit at the entrance of the house, you will receive good energy from the spirits who have lived here in the past.

Historical...

Here is Megan asking our tour-guide a pertinent question about Korean social structure and how it influences architecture.

Here we are enjoying history.

This meal consisted of several types of dried noodles that we cooked ourselves over a hot-plate in the middle of our table.

Included with the meal was the Korean version of ice cream. It really put the "ice" in ice cream.

Shinee Lucifer, indeed.

Ghost Town

It's the Lunar New Year (about a week ago).

For the New Year everybody goes to visit their families.

Apparently everyone except for this shop selling assorted lighting.

It's the Lunar Holiday and as we have no family in the area we think this is a great opportunity to explore Seoul. The slight problem being that everything is closed because it's a holiday.

While searching for food in a very quiet city of 24.5 million people we wandered into what seemed like a very quiet market.

Apparently the "food court" was still open.

Each area seemed to offer a different exotic dish.

For instance mysterious meat,

steaming noodles,

dried fish,

or cute Americans.

We settled on a traditional Korean pancake.

Plus some festive side dishes.

The meal is traditionally washed down with Makkoli (a milky white fermented rice drink).