experiment

James advises that I should make sure my pictures are big enough for printing later, so here I am trying posting a bigger one. I'd made the others little on purpose for less material to be posted, but I think the actual files are nice and big. I haven't done anything to make them smaller except to choose "small" as the uploading option to put them on this blog, so I hope that they are okay for later. Since this "big" picture is not too enormous, I might make the future pictures big so you can see them better.

What you're looking at is, in fact, a bowl of kimchee sitting next to an Outback Steakhouse coaster. That's because after the fortress wall, Jo and Debra and Anna and I were craving western food, so we went to an Outback. The brown bread they served is one of the yummiest and most comforting things I've had here, mmm. Anna ordered a steak, Jo and Debra had pasta dishes, and I had chicken served over rice. And Koreans apparently can't help putting kimchee with rice, even in a western restaurant, so this came with it. We thought this was very funny, and I hope that you also enjoy it.

I have not gotten into kimchee much. I am trying to be a very good sport about Korean food, seeing as it's everywhere, but I'm also trying not to culture shock my stomach too much by overloading with spicy food. The meat and rice is different enough. I can't put a finger on how it is different from plain meat and rice at home, but it is definitely not the same, nor is it the same as if you get meat and rice from an oriental restaurant. In some cases, it's been different enough to make me a wee bit queasy. Not usually spicy without the pepper paste and kimchee and stuff added, but different. Among other things, they often mix in with the meat and rice these weird noodles that appear clear. I don't know what they're made of, but they're entirely too much like eating plastic bracelets, and I'm not overly fond of them but they're in just about every dish I've had here. I'm doing better than some of the europeans, though. The people from Holland are used to having potatoes as the major part of every meal, every day, and this stuff has not been easy on them at all.