As you know I went to an orientation for new English teachers last week.  My room mate at the orientation was this Scottish guy named Andrew Algie.  It turns out that he lives just around the corner from me here in Goyang.  He’s a good guy once you get past the goofy accent.  Anyway, we have been spending a bit of time together just hanging out or exploring.  Which brings me to our adventure down the Gyeong-ui subway line.  This is a newer subway line that we just learned about very recently.  It’s actually good for us because it’s a more direct route into Seoul.  One day we decided we’d  head into Seoul using the new line and we figured we’d stop someplace along the way for lunch.  We picked a place called Hwajeon not to be confused with Hwajeong which is where we live.  So we got off at the Hwajeon station only to discover that this town is very small and very rural.  There wasn’t much to see but we decided to wonder about and get some food anyway.

  

Eventually after wandering around a bunch of streets like the one above we found a nice restaurant.  We couldn’t read the menu and there were no pictures of the food so we asked if they served chicken…well that’s what we thought we asked…you see no one spoke any English at all.  So our food came and it was all shellfish and squid…and other stuff I’d never seen before.  I hate seafood in case you didn’t know.  We tried to tell the waitress before she started cooking it but they had no idea what we were saying.  I even flapped my arms like a chicken and made choking gestures to get our point across…no luck.  Andrew enjoyed a nice seafood lunch while I ate rice and cold mushrooms…yum!

Here is our meal.  Boy Andrew looks happy.  It’s very common to have a meal in this way.  They are often cooked right in front of you and you share the meal.  They usually have several side dishes that go with he main course.  Most restaurants only serve one or two dishes so you pick the restaurant based on what kind of food you feel like having.