Mmmmm....kalbi!

On Thursday night, a bunch of the teachers went out for kalbi. One of the Korean teachers, MJ, is leaving for a month to bum around Canada, so we went out to dinner to send her off. (She actually didn't end up getting there until about 10:30. Because apparently she is South American....or something. Hehe.)

Kalbi is basically big hunks of beef, cooked over an open flame.  The tables are low to the  ground and you sit on the floor.  Each table has two grills built into it, and the food cooks in front of you.  There are also lots of kinds of kimchi (basically, pickled cabbage...or sometimes radishes) and various other side dishes.  You take a leaf of lettuce and pile it up with pieces of meat, some kimchi, onion, yummy brown bean paste stuff, whole cloves of garlic (!), and whatever else you like.  Then you make a little lettuce wrap out of it and chow down!  In this picture you see the grill (obvi) and a bowl of warm kimchi.
Jess and Kyle, pre-engorgement.  Notice the conspicuous emptiness of the tables at this point; that wouldn't last long.  (Hey Furmanites: doesn't Kyle look a little like Mark Overcash?)
The restaurant.  I took this so you could see how the tables are situated.  And do you see the bookshelf thingies in the corner?  Those are for shoes; when you come in, you take off your shoes.  Fabulous.  Oh, and the basket of lettuce leaves is also in this picture.

Hot, bubbly cauldron of egg stuff.  I never caught its name.  It was steaming like fajitas when they brought it to the table!  It was yummy.
Kimchi!
Another kind of kimchi!
Bowl o' raw onions and brown liquid they brought us.  Looks weird, right?  And anyone who knows me knows that I'm not exactly the world's biggest onion fan.  But Y'ALL.  IT WAS REALLY GOOD.  Who knew?
Kyle's ridiculous/awesome dessert thing.  I HAVE NO IDEA HOW THIS THING WORKS.  It is kind of terrifying.  I mean, the top part is ice cream; check.  But the reddish-brown stuff?  IS BEANS.  Seriously.  And they're sweet.  (?)  And the clear cube things, Kyle and I decided, reminded us of "a cube inscribed in a spheroid" of a grape....because we are nerds.  Anyway, they're grape-like in texture, but sweeter.  On the bottom was shaved ice with some kind of flavoring.  And there were crispy flaky things sprinkled throughout.  And somehow, the whole thing had a pervasive Froot Loop-like taste.  HOW CONFUSING IS THAT???

Anyway.  I was lovely!  Oh, and eventually, MJ came.  How adorable is she?