Our first (and second) bad food experience(s)...

So tonight we decided to go eat somewhere close to our apt. that would be cheap and that we hadn't experienced before. We decided on this little nook of a spot (lots of the restaurants are little nooks, really, with only a few tables, or in this case, booths) and the picture menu looked promising. Lots of stuff on skewers. We ordered two beers (no problem!) and these bbq thingies that looked like chicken. So I put on my dumb American face and said "Uh...chicken?" and pointed at the menu. The waitress said "yes..." so we ordered them. Fifteen minutes later--after a plate of barbecued something with tentacles was put in front of us--I remembered back to my experience with the Chos, a Korean family in Columbia. Even though the mom never really understood what we were saying, she would always smile, nod and say "uh huh" or "yes" or even just something affirmative as if to say "I don't know what you're saying, but I'll just be polite..." I guess our waitress was doing the same. Maybe she thought I was pointing to the sign and telling her that it looked like my favorite food--maybe she was excited by the idea... Who knows? All I know is that we paid and went somewhere else, leaving a big, untouched plate of things that wiggled behind. So then we went to another joint by the house that looked like the standard Korean BBQ we've seen everywhere. We went in, sat down and pointed to the 8,000 on the menu and ordered that, thinking we'd just scored some actual meat or something. But then we looked around and saw that everyone had fish. Turns out all they had was fish. Strike two. We don't really trust the fish around here--everything tastes like fish. So we headed to the Korean BBQ place directly across the street from our house. The same guy who is always outside was there--we looked at him and said "chicken?" He smiled and nodded. We went in and decided we wanted pork instead, so we had to put our fingers on our noses and oink. This time our waitress understood. And it was awesome. Some of the best Korean BBQ we've had thus far, though I'm convinced I think that every time.

I really thought I was going to be excited about the seafood over here, not like I have much experience with it, but still...I like crab, lobster and shrimp. But everywhere we go we see squid and octopus, and if there is crab or something, it looks really gross. Flat out gross. Koreans don't necessarily take any time to make their food look appetizing, something I guess I take for granted. Or maybe there's nothing glamorous-looking about squid and/or octopus.

That's all for now. Tomorrow we are meeting our Australian friend Ricky (we met him at an ESL party, and he has been here for about as long as we have...) to go to "Chuncheon Museum." I don't know what they have there, but I'm sure their toilet paper in the bathroom has more history than most of the United States. Not to knock the US or anything, it's just weird to be in a place that has been around for forever.