Picking up where I left off..

Saturday is officially over.

Where did I last leave off? Tuesday night? I met up with Kraig after his internship and before our time with Yeram. We walked around and went into many of the shops we always pass but never had entered. Many beauty stores like entice shoppers with free samples, like the one we went into, Skin Food. Of course, it was a sample of skin whitener! Kraig is going to see if he'll become a ghost with it! After a little exploration, we met up with Yeram, Kraig's friend from high school.

I loved having dinner and dessert with Yeram! We meshed so well together, no doubt due to the fact that she has a very inviting and friendly personality. She's a native Korean, but grew up all over the place due to her dad's awesome job, learning new languages, forming an alphabet for the language and then translating the New Testament for the people. I think he's a big deal in Korea.

After meeting up with her at a subway stop, we found our way (thanks to the many strangers she stopped to ask directions from) to our destination, the artsy, crafty part of town, Insadong. Instead of selling the generic purses, shoes, and key chains we always pass by, there were handcrafted jewelry, masks, and delicate fans being sold. The main street was slightly less congested than other parts of downtown Seoul, thankfully. We stopped to watch a small candy shop put on a pretty impression show of making honey candy. He starts out with a block of honey and works it until it is doughy and in the shape of a circular rope. The he twists it in half and calls out '2' and twists it again and calls out '4.' He continues the pattern until he gets to 16, 382 strands, all in less than a minute. We didn't stay to try it, but sometime I will considering it's called the 'candy of kings.'

After the show, we walked around some more until we found the restaurants. We got mush better answers about Korean food than we did with Tim! After hearing about the different types of meals, Kraig and I were confident and excited to try more Korean food, so Yeram found this cute Asian-cabin style restaurant. We ended up getting a seafood pancake and seafood hotpot to split. The pancake reminded me of egg foo young, only not as thick (and not as good!). I'm not sure what the batter is made out of, but it has lots of spring onions, tentacles, mushrooms, and shrimp in it with a dipping sauce on the side. I'm sure you can guess which parts I stuck to.

The hotpot had giant prawns (with the heads still attached!), oysters, mini octopuses, mushrooms, onions, and mysterious brain, to name the main ingredients. The soup that it was cooking in was quite spicy; I could only take a sip and a half before having to blow my nose 10 times and wipe the sweat off my cheeks. Spicy, but oh so good! I think it was my first time to try oysters and they were surprising yummy. Of course, they had mini oysters (which I ate) and giant ones (which I shoved onto Kraig's plate).

And, being a Korean meal, we had the usual side dishes. There is one in particular that I could eat an entire bowl of, some sort of sweetened diced potato. Yeram was surprised that I liked it so much as it's normally unpopular with most foreigners. For me, there are very few ways I don't like potatoes (such as the way they serve them at Kraig's work, baked without butter! without butter!!!!)

I wouldn't mind having that meal, minus the pancake, again, but with more people (we only ate 2/3 of the food). Also, it was a little on the pricey side, but Yeram treated us! Either the Koreans are very hospitable or they think we're pour. I don't really mind.

After dinner, we moved onto Red Mango, a frozen yogurt joint. We a huge bowl of plain yogurt, and my was it good! I've been craving it ever since. After we were all done, we made plans to meet for church and lunch on sunday. Hopefully she'll keep her word and take me to the thrift stores here. Woo!

It was a wonderful and fun evening. I hope to have made a friend, even if just for another 3 1/2 weeks.

Until later.