Lunch week with Dallas (and others)

This whole week (well last week now) Dallas and I have had lunch together because his school is sort of on vacation. Basically none of the kids are there, and teachers are sort of supposed to be there, but aren't expected to do anything and it's perfectly acceptable to come in late, leave early or both. This is true of almost all of the public schools. This is part of the reason why I both wish I had a public school job, and am glad I don't have a public school job - I would be going crazy just sitting there all day doing nothing.

Anyway, because we usually don't get to have lunch together, and because he's bored after a couple of hours, we've met up everyday. Here's what we did/where we went.

On Monday he really wanted meat, so we tried to go to the meat buffet. Luckily (for me, because I didn't really want to eat that much meat and then teach for 8 hours), it was closed. So we ended up going to a kimbap place (which is directly across the street from my school) and spliting kimbap. He had kimchi jjigae and I had ramen. I suspected that this was the place my co-workers order from everyday and this suspicion was confirmed later that evening when the delivery guy dropped off food and we nodded hello when he recognized me from earlier. We also had coffee at illy coffee and he quizzed me on some Korean vocab.

On Tuesday we went downtown to SP. We split mandu. They were really hot and when Dallas bit into his first one, it squirted across the table and hit my arm. Then he had tofu soup and I had bibimbap with steak in it. It was actually really good because it is also served in the stone bowls that keep cooking your food, so the rice was almost like fried rice. Then we had take out coffee from Cafe Bene and walked around downtown for a little bit. I bought some silver hoop earrings and he had to put the top one in for me because I didn't have a mirror. We got stared at, but that's nothing unusual.

On Wednesday, Amanda and I met up and went to Dallas's school at 10 to play a game of Catan before we had to go to school (she works at the hagwon literally next door to mine). Dallas met us then made us tea and gave us lollipops. We played 2 games (I won both, thus regaining my title) while listening to the end of Pitch Perfect and then music. Then we went to lunch at the kimbap place again because I had to slightly rush because I have to be at school at exactly 2 on Wednesdays because I have a single student who comes at 2. Amanda and I had bibimb guksu (cold, skinny noodles with vegetables) and Dallas ordered cheese dduckbokki and when it got there it was huge! I ate part of it and it was really good. Then he made me eat one of these meatball looking things which was a fish cake ball. Luckily I still had enough of my food to get the fish taste out of my mouth. Dallas asked for the rest of mine to be put in a take out box and the people there are so nice - they gave me sides and chopsticks in a little bag. It was nice having dinner, but it has a semi strong smell and my desk smelled like food the whole day.

Fish cakes, fish balls, cabbage pieces, rice cake pieces, rice noodles and ramen

I had plans to have lunch with Corinne on Thursday and Dallas came too. We went to the tofu soup place that Kyeong He took me to earlier in the year. Apparently it's green tea tofu soup. I like it and that's all I know!When we walked in, I wasn't sure we were in the correct place because the tables were arranged differently, but we decided to wing it. When we ordered and she started bringing the sides I knew we were in the right spot. I'm not sure if Corinne really liked the soup or not, but at least it was something new. Then we had coffee and Dallas left to get some school supplies and we decided we needed to take another weekend trip somewhere soon because she leaves at the end of April which will get here faster than we think it will.

Sides (minus the 2 whole fish that went in that empty space in the middle). From top left (left to right): pickled seaweed, mushrooms that Corinne ate but I couldn't bring myself to do because they look like octopus, kimchi fish cakes, pickled cucumbers, kimchi, salty seaweed (I love that stuff), what I thought were apples but turned out to be potatoes with a lightly sweet sauce on them, seaweed with what it probably some type of cheese, more seaweed

Friday was a day off and I'll talk more about it in another post, so that was my lunch week with Dallas (and others). I like going to lunch with people because I tend to eat at least one "good" meal a day that way instead of eating random crap. Plus I like smaller groups of people and tend to be able to do lunches with 1-3 people easier than dinners.