a staff lunch somewhere on a mountain somewhere in Daejeon

This is the raw beef, soaked in a chili sauce and served with slices
of pear and raw garlic. All on a bed of thinly sliced cucumber! 

I have a feeling this is going to end up being a pretty sizable post... mostly with pictures. So the mountain trip yesterday! There was no mandatory hiking! After eating, some of the teachers wanted to go "trekking" as one put it, but then a smaller group split off and took me with them because they wanted a short walk. I definitely didn't mind that. We ended up meeting with my co-teacher who wandered off alone, and we paper-rock-scissor battled our way up a stair case (kai-bai-bo as they say in Korean, correct romanization or not). They decided how many steps you could go up for each different way of winning, and then we played each round until there was one winning hand (like, one type beat everything else, so more than 1 person could win). Fun! haha- we ended up playing this again later when a teacher was talking about a snack, so then the loser had to buy it for everyone. 

Okay so lunch. Some new things here. First, raw beef. Drenched in a chili sauce, and still a little frozen. It was good! Not something I would go look for myself, but it was enjoyable and I'm not sick. My brain is so conditioned to have alarms go off at the sight of raw meat thanks to the way it's raised in the states and the consequences that have followed because of those methods. Granted, who knows, maybe beef in Korea is produced the same way. I haven't really been able to figure that out yet. The main feature of lunch was a soup called galbi tang (갈비 탕) where the "tang" sounds a little like "tongue." It's a simple soup with some beef ribs boiled into a broth, some scallions, and some sweet potato starch noodles. No lurking little sea monsters in the bottom. Nice. 


And then there was the rice. I've had rice like this maybe twice before, but I hadn't thought to photograph it yet. The first time I saw it served this way I was baffled. My mind was just about blown when I saw what the Koreans did with it, and then my brain evaporated when I realized there was more to be done. Now? Still a little strange and not my favorite thing, but far more normal to me. The wood encases a stone bowl which is heated super hot to the point of making the rice crackle. So what you do is after letting the rice sit closed for a couple of minutes, you scoop most of it into a bowl. Don't fight the rice that's stuck to the sides. Then you pour some water into the stone container and put the lid back on. Ignore it for the rest of the meal and eat the rice you took out. After you eat, go back to the stone container, mix the water and rice,which is now no longer stuck, and eat. The water gets a little thick and starchy from the rice, and to me, you get a little flavor from the rice that was toasted by the heat. I think part of this process is getting the burned rice off of the bowl, and not letting food go to waste. So again, not really my favorite thing to eat, but a good cultural experience. 


... aaaand three days later, here I am finishing up this post with: that day was awesome and it feels like it happened a month ago! Enjoy the pictures! 

Picture demonstration for the rice! This is what it's served in: the stone bowl in a wood case.

I had to sneak this photo in between my co-teacher telling me to let it sit for 2 minutes... Black rice gives it the purple color, and it's common to have a type of bean or another grain mixed in. I think it's a good idea, it gives some nutrition! Scoop what you can out and dump it into another bowl...


This is the rice water soup stuff you eat at the end of the meal. It tastes like rice water. Hot rice water. Definitely better than hot ham water, though.