Travel Vicariously through the Fitzgerald's

We are happy to provide our experiences as a stay-cation for you! If you have any questions feel free to ask. We have a lot to learn and lots to see!



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Saturday, August 14, 2010

Day 21 & 22 - Korean BBQ & The never ending bus ride

Korean Barbeque
When your school day ends at 2:45 and begins at 8, it flies by. Well, since I am not in the classroom, it flies by for me but, maybe Stacy doesn't feel that way. Oh, wait, he agrees. :) After a brief meeting with his teacher, I dropped Ethan off with Mr. Feller so he and Elka could play. I went to play volleyball while Stacy finished up his work. We met up with the Fellers around 5pm because they were taking us to eat Korean barbeque for the first time. 

We all piled in their car. Per Korean law, only those sitting in the front seat must wear a seat belt so Kris and I and the kids all sat in the back seat. The restaurant was on the second floor of the building near my dentist's office.

There were 2 places to sit. One area was for the more traditional Koreans where you sit on the floor at this 2 foot high table and the other area is what we are more used to. We chose the standard table and chairs while Ethan and Elka chose the traditional floor seating. Because the menu was in Korean, Kris had someone write down our order at school so we just had to show the waitress. They brought a cart full of food. There was soup, salad, dipping sauces, garlic slivers, onions, squash, lettuce leaves, sesame leaves, mushrooms, jalapeno peppers, kimchi, egg souffle, pickled vegetable of some sort and then there was the pork. It was a very fatty piece of pork. It looked like a super thick piece of bacon.

So the waitress comes to your table with this cart and just starts laying it out. Remember, in Korea everyone shares the food and you don't get your own plate. Then she unwraps the foil that the meat comes in and starts cutting it into pieces with scissors right onto the grill.  She makes room for the veggies on the grill. This is all taking place in the middle of the table where the grill is located. You then take a leaf, with your metal chopsticks pick up a piece of meat, dip it into either the chili paste or into the sesame oil, stick it on your lettuce leaf,  add some veggies to your leaf, then wrap it up and eat it. These can be large bites but small pieces of meat.

It was a neat experience. I think I enjoyed most of the side dishes more than Stacy because their were lots of onions. He enjoyed the meat. Ethan didn't like any of it. He'll learn to like it, I'm pretty confident about that. Elka wasn't crazy about it either. And this is why we went to McDonald's afterwards. The kids got something to eat...and so did the parents, just as a filler. We were on a mission, a food mission. We went for dessert at Baskin Robbins because they have a fondue set. They give you about a dozen pieces of fruit and cake and a dozen or so mini scoops of ice cream. In the center they provide you with a bowl of chocolate for dipping. Okay after all of this, they didn't have it at this location. I was severely bummed.  I decided to try their new Waffle Berry Flinn. It was delicious blueberry ice cream in  a waffle cone.

The never ending bus ride
Saturday we woke up to an overcast sky. Within an hour, the sky turned dark and it started pouring. Apparently we are getting the outerskirts of a typhoon. We were going to go grocery shopping but put it off for a bit. I think it was like 2 in the afternoon when we finally caught the bus. We took the bus to E-mart but what we didn't know is that we had to go into Shinsegea Mall to the bottom level to get to E-mart. So we did some window shopping.  Again super expensive though. Ethan said he was hungry and then I started to get hungry so we went to E-marts food court where we bought sushi from a conveyer belt. You sit down at the counter and pull what you want from the conveyer belt. Then you stack your plates and pay when you are done. We went grocery shopping afterwards. Ate a little more while we were shopping because the store has so much tasty food.

After paying, we head back to our bus stop but didn't stop to look for the stop going the opposite direction. The 390 comes our way so we get on and ride it for about an hour. The driver stops at the end of his route and turns the bus off. He asks us where we need to go. Don't know how we understood that either. After speaking to each other without much communication we figure out that he is taking a 10 minute break and will continue at 7. After a 2 hour bus ride, 2 tunnels, and a sense of deja vu, we finally make it home. It was an exhausting trip but we learned from it. We also got to see other neighborhoods and stores. It was a good experience. You learn through trial and error.

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