Weird things I ate today

I met Liezle and her Korean co-worker Keung He for lunch today. Keung He is hilarious, in my opinion. She's one of those people who is unintentionally funny, but not a spazz or anything. She's the one who started "strong to alcohol". She's really nice and helps Liezle and me with lots of Korean issues - like doctors etc. She also texts or calls me to ask English questions - what phrases mean, grammar and culture etc. Today's were "woman repeller" from an episode of "Friends" when Joey gives Chandler a gold watch, if you very say "so I am" instead of "so am I", and whether we throw rice at weddings.

Anyways, we went to lunch at a Korean soup place today. I totally should have taken pictures, but I didn't. We went in and they put us in the tiny room in the back. It was actually kind of nice because we could talk and not bother people (which is the point, I'm assuming). It was also a sit on the floor restaurant and the back room had a backrest you could lean on, which is nice for me. You could only order 2 kinds of soup - that's it. So we all ordered the same thing - which ended up having shrimp and tiny clams in it. It was spicy enough that you couldn't taste the seafood though, so I just ate around it. It also had peppers, onions and tofu. I actually like tofu in the spicy soups because it gives texture to the soup and flavor to the tofu.

With the soup, the lady brought out a bunch of side dishes. Japchae (clear noodles with veggies and sometimes fish cake), 3 seaweed things that I didn't try, cucumbers with spices on them (good), some kind of gourd that didn't really taste like anything (it looked like honeydew melon), nuts with honey on them, and tiny hot dogs cut up and mixed with something called devil's tongue. It was pretty funny trying to figure that out because Keung He knows the Korean word for it, and looked it up in her dictionary, but neither Liezle nor I had ever heard of it. Apparently it's a type of flower (like a Calla lily) and smells like rotting water buffalo. Luckily it didn't smell that way when we ate it. Even luckier, it didn't taste like that (or what I'd imagine rotting water buffalo to taste like). Basically it didn't taste like anything, it was just really really chewy.

After lunch, Keung He had to go to work and Liezle and I still had around an hour before either of us did, so we went for coffee. We went to this cute place near my school called Coffee Flower. I ordered a vanilla latte. The waitress repeated our order and it sounded a little like banana latte. I joked to Liezle, I wonder if I'm getting a banana latte. I shouldn't have joked because that's exactly what I got. I'm not sure there was actually any coffee in the drink, but it was like a frothy, hot banana shake (but not quite so thick). Needless to say, it was not my favorite. Next time I will be sure to be clear on the vanilla.