food, 노래방, and korean glasses

So this is 짜장면, or jjajangmyeon, and it's the equivalent of Chinese takeout in Korea. It's noodles with black bean sauce, as you can see, and it's DELICIOUS. so bad for you though. The best thing about it though is that you can order it, they will deliver it to your door in nice dishes, and all you have to do is leave the dishes outside your door when you're done and they come to pick them up. Amazing! Since we've gotten a little sick of dining hall food, we've been eating out a little more, and one of our more recent solutions to food dissatisfaction was ordering in. mmmmm, i can't wait to do it again!



This street is called 명동, or Myeongdong, it's named after an area in Seoul where there's a lot of shopping. There's an underground mall at the Chuncheon version of Myeongdong, and we explored there for a short while yesterday afternoon before going out into the actual street and finding delicious pastries filled with red bean paste...and shaped like fish! so cute! Anyway, we are planning to go back there tomorrow. In the evening, we went out to dinner (2 dinners actually). First we had 찜닭 (jjim dalk), of which I didn't take any pictures...It's a chicken dish with glass noodles and assorted vegetables. When you're done, if you ask for it, they take whatever you have left on the plate and fry it up with rice, so it becomes like a fried rice dish. It was delicious! After that, of course not yet satiated, we moved on to a 삼겹살 (samgyeopsal) place, which had the best pork belly bacon that Colby (our resident Korean food connaisseur) had ever tasted. It was thick and juicy, served on lettuce leaves with either sesame oil mixed with salt or bean paste sauce...delicious, but so sinful. Here's a picture from there, they cooked it for us on the table:


After our dining experience, we went out to find the rest of the ETAs, and we headed over to a 노래방, or karaoke bar (pronounced noraebang), where the singing is less singing and more screaming into a microphone. enjoy these few photos of us shouting away with our Korean 진구들 (chingudul=friends!)
Last but not least, here is a picture of my new Korean glasses. Cute, aren't they? You can't tell but they're actually a plum color. They were so cheap too! $75 for frames, lenses (compressed 3x) and exam. Also, they're so much better than my old glasses because, as it turns out, I have astigmatism now, how wonderful. Thanks mom! So now I see clearly, and I'll wear my contacts less often...stop destroying my eyes.


Anyway, I haven't had a chance yet to write about my first teaching experience, which happened on Thursday. It went fairly well, but I think the lesson I planned was a little too advanced for my class, which ended up being low intermediate. I tried to teach them about Quebec nationalism, which went over well considering the circumstances. They voted at the end, and believed 7 to 5 that Quebec should be independent, I think because I connected Quebec's uniqueness to that of Korea.

I can write more on that later, and even on my second lesson, which will happen on Monday and is about the Aesop's fable about the mouse and the lion. Let's hope it goes well.

안녕히계세요! Bye!