Friends + Food = Quite the weekend

Is a "Wedding Taxi" a real thing? Anybody?

One thing I was looking forward to most was meeting up with my friend Choi Sunmi, who was my language exchange partner from last year. She graduated from college back in February and started a new job in April, so she works super long hours (12+) because she's one of the new employees. That's just how it goes here in the workplace. She had some time on Saturday, so we met up in Gangnam - yes, that Gangnam from the song - and walked around, sat and talked in a park, and went to a popular dessert cafe called 설빙, Seol Bing, which is famous for their desserts with soybean powder, which is currently all the rage. I promise it tastes better than it sounds - it gives it a nice nutty flavor. The patbingsoo was all right, but nothing spectacular. Not enough red bean paste, in my opinion. The real winner was the sandwich on the left, called 인절미 토스트, Injeolmi Toast. Basically, it reminded me of a grilled cheese sandwich, but instead of cheese, there was chewy sweet rice cake spread inside, the soybean powder and almonds on the top, and no butter on the toast. The toast was so crispy and the ddeok (rice cake) was so chewy...mmm...

Patbingsoo = pretty, but average. Injeolmi Toast = plain-looking, but awesome.

There is this meat-grilling restaurant nearby the guesthouse in Sinchon where I stayed before I moved into the dorms, and every morning I would see them butchering like half a cow in the shop. I didn't even see a name of the restaurant. It's in a side street nearby Sinchon station. Then, if I came back around lunch or dinnertime, I would see a line of people waiting to get in. It smelled awesome, and I always wanted to go in, but you just don't grill meat by yourself in Korea. Don't do it, it'll be ridiculously awkward.

I've been coveting this since I first saw it last summer.

However - this summer, I have plenty of friends who also like to eat, so I spent a day of eating with my friend Victor again. We lined up outside the place, and this kid from inside started pretending to shoot us with his gun, so we played along, and said hello and asked if the food was good in Korean. His mom tried to prompt him to answer in English, so it was a weird little bilingual exchange. Then he came out and played more with us while we waited.

So stinkin' adorable!

The smell of the meat grilling was Ah. Mazing. Nobody sits down (there's no chairs), so you stand around these barrels like you're homeless and grill your meat.

The ahjumma came and cut up the meat for us. It was pretty simple - only really good-quality meat, dipping sauces, peppers/pepper sauce, and we got sodas in glass bottles, which added to the ambiance.

Victor's showing off his meat-grilling prowess, his Coke at his side.

Random interjection: this was in the stall in the subway bathroom at Sinchon station. I was so tempted to push it, but since it was pretty busy at the time, I didn't want to do anything weird. Still wondering what "Saund" is.

For dinner, we headed to Hongdae to go to a legit Japanese ramen house. There wasn't any Korean sign on the outside (it's called Menyasan Daime, which I only saw on the chopsticks) so it was kind of hard to find, but if you look up the name, there are blogs with the directions.

In a small alley, so it's easy to miss, but that would be sad.

Lots of famous people have been here (though many signatures in other restaurants are forged), and one of my favorite bands, Busker Busker, came here and drew the cute little guitar on the bottom row 2nd from the right.

You had to separate the gyoza with your chopsticks...

...but so worth it. Best gyoza of my life, and they had 2 dipping sauces.

I got the Tsukemen, which is cold noodles that you dip in super-rich, hot, flavorful broth. It was perfect for summer.

Victor got the Black Ramen. That pork you see is charred with a blow-torch in the kitchen.

We ate it like we had never eaten before.

One night this weekend, I hung out in Children's Park to see some live music, and caught this show by a pretty good singing/rapping group.

Errbody was pretty into it.

Sunday evening, I met up with some girls from my class and we went to one of my favorite places, Cheonggyecheon.

The yellow ribbons on the fence are in a lot of places around Seoul. They are for the Sewol ferry disaster back in April. It's only been a few months since it happened and it's still very much in the forefront of people's minds here in Korea.

Yay! The weird unicorn horn at the beginning of Cheonggyecheon!

I love my blue waterfall.

I also love the openings between the concrete with the water and lights. I'm fascinated by very simple things.

It looks pretty when the water rushes by.

Blurry selca with my friend Marianne photobombing so well.

Sometimes my phone doesn't take as good of shots, but I kind of like that it did this to the lights under the water.

There was a laser light show projected onto mist with music in the background.

It was just a bunch of shapes at first.

Then came a flying dinosaur...

...in all it's glory

These computerized flowers were projected onto one of the walls, and apparently the flowers grow and change every day. I want to go back soon and see what they look like. I'll post more then.