Valentine's Day!

Holidays in another country are interesting. You have a set pattern of what you do while you're in the States... Maybe it's Olive Garden, maybe it's getting flowers, maybe it's cookies. There are just unspoken expectations on what a holiday will look like. In Korea, we have discovered that holding expectations will only result in disappointment. We realized during Valentine's Day weekend that we need to talk through what we'd like to do on each holiday BEFORE it happens. The nice thing is it's all an adventure -- we're having a blast, no matter what we wind up doing! I think the highlight of our Valentine's Day had to be pork soup. There's a restaurant by my school that I've been trying to take Daniel to for a long time. We finally went for Valentine's Day! Pork soup is AMAZING. It's pork (on the bone) in a semi-spicy broth with onions and other vegetables. They bring out a bowl for the bones, a bowl for you to put the pork pieces in, and a sauce for dipping the pork in. It was AMAZING... Daniel wants to go for pork soup every day -- it's really that good!!!! We took more pictures of food. I know I promised to blog about something more meaningful after my last food post, but I am again blogging about food. My apologies.

This is pork soup, in all its delicious awesomeness. Yum! The pork is on the bone, but it literally falls right off when you stir the soup. Amazing!

Some of the side dishes -- the silver bowl is for the bones after you remove the pork. The green stuff is delicious -- cold, spinach-y, garlic-y. Above the green stuff is radish kimchi. It's good! Above that is Daniel's meal -- he's removing pork from the bone after taking it out of the black pork soup bowl. There's a small bowl to his right with the amazing dipping sauce. (Yes, that's a Coke. Yum!) The dish to the right of the green stuff is cabbage kimchi. It's all delicious!!!!

The silver bowl next to Daniel's black pork soup bowl is rice. Usually, unless it's a rice dish, you get a small portion of rice. Underneath that, in the small bowl, is a soy sauce for the mandu. You can see the mandu to the right of the sauce. Next to the soy sauce is something -- not sure what it was!! Underneath that is a white bowl that looks like it has nothing in it. It's actually a clear broth with ice in it -- it's a cold, bitter soup-type thing. To the left is the cabbage kimchi from earlier.

This was the biggest mandu I've ever seen. It was SO GOOD!!!!!!! There was way too much food, but it was an excellent Valentine's Day feast. Daniel wants to go get more today... :-) Not a bad idea...