All I got left is my bones...

Well, summer is in Seoul, and that means that a number of my coworkers and friends are leaving for home or different things.  I went home for two weeks to see family and friends and take a break where I hadn't had that opportunity since around Thanksgiving of last year.  A lot of really great things happened while I was home!  It makes me regret signing a six month contract at Yonsei in Korean (harder to negotiate when you don't understand the exact terms of said contract).

My office mates and I went out to eat pork bone stew, gamjatang ( 감자탕) because one of our coworkers, Yizhuo from China was leaving.  My French/Moroccan  office mate, Erwan, left for home while I was gone. My fellow USC student, Patrick, will leave next week!  Koreans refer to gamjatang more as "drinking food" or what you eat when you're getting tipsy.  It's a pretty hardy stew and had a lot of pork bones (spine, rib, neck, etc), sesame or perrilla leaves, onions, pepper and spices, and rice cakes in a heavy broth.  I imagine it soothes hangovers quite well.  They cook the stew on your table.

You just kind of nibble on the bones and pick meat off with chop sticks and spoons.  Then you eat the stew and some ramen-type noodles you can cook in with it.

After that, even though we were mostly full, we went to get ice flakes or patbingsu (milk that is the consistency of snow with sweet red beans and rice cakes mixed in).  They're pretty delicious.  They have a lot of different variations on the dessert across Asia.