Trunk Fish= Turtle Fish!

No 한글 tonight. It's actually rather difficult to give you those fantastic titles. My computer doesn't type in Korean, so what I do is pick the word, look up the spelling in my dictionary (if I don't already know it) and then run the English word through an online translator. I pick the correct translation and copy and paste the 한글 into the title. My keyboard has all the little 한글 symbols because I use can type Korean in Rosetta Stone, but I have no clue how to make that option available outside of the program.

Does it make me seem less impressive now?

Anywho! I just wanted to blog about my pretty fantastic evening. I met up with my Korean friends for dinner. We had planned this since last week, the idea was that we would go out for fresh seafood. I was under the impression that we were meeting up with a group of their friends at a restaurant. Nope! What we actually did was meet up with their friends (some I had already met) at the fish market owned by one of their friends. So it wasn't a restaurant at all, it was a special home cooked meal in a fish market! It was amazing and delicious! There is always so much food involved in a Korean meal. We had abalone, pork, crab, and crab ramen. It was all amazing. I felt really, really, really bad for the abalone (again). We grilled them alive and watching a snail trying to escape as it writhes in pain is sad and pathetic and fills me with a million different questions and ethical issues... issues I don't seem to face when watching crabs be boiled alive. Grilled abalone with sesame oil is really delicious... I had a good time. It's hard to communicate sometimes, but between there English, the handful of Korean words I know, and the power of charades (and my apparent ability to read people well... I've surprised my friends on several instances when I've answered a question correctly without translation simple based on inference) we understand each other most of the time.

Of course, we were in a fish market. So what did I do? Ran from tank to tank teaching them the English names of the fish (trigger fish! lizard fish! trunk fish!) The Korean name for a trunk fish literally translates to 'turtle fish.' Most of the fish seemed to have some kind of swim bladder disorder, but I suppose if they're just going to be dinner it doesn't matter if they know which end is up. The trunk fish was pretty solidly dead (and still in a tank).

So that was my Saturday night. It was a lot of fun and so special and unique! I'm just sad that I forgot to bring my camera!
~Hannah
ETA: I tried to change the date that this was posted on so that it would line up with the day I actually wrote the post (9/26) but that just put the post as "scheduled to be published" and so I'm adjusting the date so that it will actually post. Don't know what the deal is with this one.