Wednesday Night Dinner...

Desiree and I have taken to meeting for dinner every Wednesday night (and other nights of the week too but Wednesdays are a given).  Tonight we decided to take a left turn away from downtown rather than our customary right turn toward downtown.  We stumbled upon a barbeque restaurant and went in.  We were greeted by a host of people who were excited to be entertaining foreigners.  We ordered barbeque pork (though where the barbeque part came in is still a mystery to me :) ) and went to work.  We enjoyed our spectacular meal and amusing conversation. 

As we got up to leave, I spotted the neighborhood trash lady and her husband who is the copy man at school.  I've had several delightful greeting exchanges with both of them in their respective environment, but I've never seen them together, or outside of our familiar settings.  We walked over to say hello.  Mr. Copy-Man was so excited to see us that he insisted we sit down with them and share a shot of soju with him.  Desiree and I looked at each other hesitantly.  He compromised by backing down to half a shot (it wasn't the alcohol itself that had me hesitating - it was the complete lack of previous alcohol consumption with anyone associated with our school that had me unsure...).  We poured me the agreed upon half shot and proceeded to get some chopsticks ready for Desiree.  She thought he was offering me a shot and her some food.  Little did we know... we were off to the races.  We each took half a shot of soju with Mr. Copy-Man.  Then, he insisted we eat some of their meat too.  After we were done. he pointed to his wife across the table and said "Wi-puh"  Desiree said, "Beautiful" and I said, "YES!"  He whacked my arm way hard, and I thought I had offended them, but then he gave me a big smile and an arm squeeze and I knew all was well.  He vigorously shook each of our hands.  We thanked them for their hospitality, paid for our meal and enthusiastically waved goodbye one more time.  I'm still a little shocked at this delightful encounter and I can only imagine him telling his pals at the EB school about his encounter with the foreigners at school tomorrow.  Yikes. 

The next order of business was dessert.  All week we have seen several girls toting these huge ice cream cups back up the hill to school.  Tonight was our time to try them out.  We walked up to the counter and asked for ice cream.  They reached for cones.  We stopped and said, "Cu-puh?"  They nodded knowingly and said, "Bing-su," pointing to the huge banner in front of us.  Duh.  What happened next sounds disgusting, but trust me friends, this is a delicious delight.  With bare hands (Korean food practices are not for germophobes!), the woman layered cornflakes, a healthy helping of shave ice, a few pieces of tapioca, some fruit cocktail, and Korean sweet beans into a plastic sundae cup.  As if that isn't awesome enough, it was topped with a generous dollop of chocolate ice cream and *sprinkles*!  Now that it's all melted together and mixed up, it looks like I'm eating sludge, but it is some of the most delicious sludge I've laid my hands on.  Typically, I'm told bing-su involves sweetened and condensed milk rather than chocolate ice cream, but here in the Gwanj, (what I've taken to calling my beloved home), I guess we do things a little differently...

Also, I'm feeling much better today (thanks for asking :) ).  As I walked into school today, Vice Principal Choi asked how I was feeling, the teacher that sits at the front of my desk pod congratulated ( !! ) me for getting over my cold, and one of the adorable concerned students from my lunch encounter yesterday stopped me on the street to tell me she was so glad I am feeling better.  Their concern warms my heart.

On a quick book review note, I just finished reading FREEDOM! by Jonathon Franzen.  This 560 page saga involving a seemingly cookie cutter suburban Midwestern family of four was delightful, in a Thornbirds kind of way, minus the saucier bits.  It was honest, funny, thought provoking and intriguing.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, plus, it's pretty gratifying to finish a 560 page book.  Just sayin'.