Wednesday, November 2, 2011

NaBloPoMo

So I was surfing the web this morning and discovered that according the the Blogher network, November is NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). I'm not really part of whatever they're doing, I only stumbled across it by chance and I'm not part of their network or whatever, but I like the idea of it, so I've made a goal to make a blog post every day this month.

They're posting post topic ideas every day this month if you need some inspiration so I'm using their topic for today, which is "If you knew whatever you ate next would be your last meal, what would you want it to be?"

When I think of the best meal I ever ate it makes me think of Korea. One day when we were in Korea the adoption agency assigned us a tour guide to take us around the city for the day. Her name was Ji-Hee and she was awesome. We had the best time with her! We went to Gyeoungbokdong palace, we went shopping and then she took us out to lunch

We went to this tiny little restaurant off a side alley in Insadong, which is kind of a touristy shopping area. Insadong is one long street full of super cool shops and there are little side alleys along the way with neat little restaurants and different things. Anyway, she took us to this little restaurant and ordered tang soo yook. Tang soo yook is actually Koreanized Chinese food, I think. It's basically sweet and sour pork. I've had sweet and sour pork before, but this was a little different, and SO GOOD! Oh my goodness, I practically inhaled it. We ate some really good Korean food while we were there, but that tang soo yook was awesome.

So a couple of days later Shawn and I were back in Insadong, wandering around and doing a bit of souvineer shopping and we decided that we wanted to go back to that restaurant and have more tang soo yook. We thought we knew exactly where it was but when we started to go down the alley we realized that all the alleys looked exactly alike and we couldn't remember which alley we had gone down or what the front of the restaurant looked like. It was a tiny little restaurant and it didn't have a flashy front window or anything that would make it memorable. All we did remember was that there was a cool tree in the middle of the restaurant.

So we wandered up and down the alleys of Insadong for a really long time trying to find that restaurant again. We peeked in every window and couldn't find it. It was like it had dissapeared or something. It was the weirdest thing, because we were sure that we knew where it was but when we got to where we thought we remembered it, it wasn't there.

After walking for what seemed like ages, there it was. It was just a small little restaurant wedged between two other stores and it was really easy to miss. The only way we recognized it was by peeking in and seeing the tree.

So we went in and ordered more tang soo yook. The waiters didn't speak english and of course our Korean is minimal so we just sat down and said "tang soo yook!" They brought our food and it was as delicious the second time around as it was the first time and it was totally worth searching for.

When I think of Korea I always think of that little restaurant. When Shawn and I reminisce about our trip we always bring it up and giggle over the day we searched all afternoon for the restaurant with the tree in it. Some day I'm going to go back to Korea with my kids and we're going to go back to that little restaurant. I remember where it is. If you ever go to Insadong, it's down the first alley on the left, quite a ways down on the left hand side. Look for the tree in the middle of the restaurant, and be sure to order tang soo yook!

So if I knew that a meal was going to be my last, I would want it to be in Korea, in that little restaurant with the tree in the middle. Before I die I want to go back to Korea and eat tang soo yook one more time.

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