Did I really just eat that?

Yep...I did. Good thing smothering anything in red bean paste and wrapping it in lettuce can cover the gruesome truth. Before I get into the gory details (and yes I do mean gory) lets get some background information straight. As you can tell from my last post, when I eat food, TEXTURE MATTERS, and nothing makes me want to bow down to the porcelain goddess more than the feeling of chewing fat. I used to sit at the kitchen table for hours because I wouldn't even touch the food on my plate that had a little bit of fat or gristle on it. As I said before: boneless, skinnless, trimmed...they don't exist here. People eat it all and they like it.

Today I went out to dinner with all the Korean English teachers because one of them is going to a 4 month conference. The dinner menu? Samgyeopsal. Samgyeopsal literally translates to three layered meat. This is because you're basically eating uncured bacon. Just a big slab of pork belly, mostly fat, a grill, and a lettuce leaf to wrap it in. Tastes delicious with all the sauce and stuff you put on it, but at the end of the day you're still eating a hunk of pork fat. Served as side dishes were galbi, a Korean short rib complete with bones and fat, some raw sea creature that tasted a whole lot like iodine and had the texture of an overcooked clam, and strips of raw marinated beef. The raw beef was definitely the saving grace of this meal. Oh, and one more tasty treat went along with this. A piping hot soup. What was in this mystery cauldron? CHUNKS OF CONGEALED COW'S BLOOD. Really? Yup, really. Cow's blood. Oh and did I mention that its seen as being incredibly rude if you refuse a dish or piece of food that your dinner friends put on your plate or ask you to please try? Yeah, no way out of eating cow's blood. To top it all off, half of the teachers were male, so soju was definitely involved. Try washing your pork fat, mystery clam, and beef blood with a nice cup of straight up plain Burnett's vodka. I better get a pat on the back from Anthony Bourdain.

I'd say that other than what I just mentioned the rest of the dinner was good. Soybean soup, a really spicy salad, pumpkin, and 6 different kinds of kimchi. I just can't get over the texture.

School today was great. These kids are learning the Rhode Island version of English and American culture. The lesson plan today? Wicked. I worked in a slide to my powerpoint presentation about the proper way to say wicked. My favorite part had to be when I was asking my second graders (8th grade) if they knew the names of any US states. One of them shouted out "New Jersey". Without even noticing I made a face of disgust and said in a tone of disbelief "you really know about New Jersey?". The whole class started laughing hysterically and I had to tell them exacly why New Jersey is so dirty.