Beondgi, or boiled silkworm is a popular Korean snack sold by street vendors across the land. You always know when you are approaching someone selling a nice boiling pot of silkworms as the smell is something you will not mistake for anything else.  In fact you may not even think the smell you are smelling is food. (Ummm, because it IS NOT - it's bugs, FREAKING BUGS!)

For years I have avoided putting one of these tasty treats in my mouth.  The smell alone is enough to make one cringe, and you guys know I will eat most anything, including yummy delicious (not) snake eggs in Cambodia. I like pushing myself to do things and most of the time I feel proud...I tried it, I did it!  I conquered the beast!
These silkworms though....they were a bigger beast than I was hoping for....

Crunchy on the outside and as you bite down they squirt.  They squirt NASTY bits of squishy slime that I can only imagine to be yellowish green in color into your cheeks.  The taste just resonates in your mouth, growing larger and louder by the millisecond.   It makes you want to gag and really makes you think that cutting out your tongue is a good idea.  It is that bad.  This is a taste that stays with you for hours.  Even makali can't cut that taste....

So, what are you waiting for?  Go out and find yourself a ajumma selling a big pot of beondegi  and have a taste.  Just make sure you have a big bottle of soju to wash it down with.

Oh, and just swallow, don't bite.

With love from Korea.

              After taking the kids to the Trick Eye Museum, we ventured out to Pet Alley in Dongdaemun.
Pet Alley: where you can find anything you ever wanted for a pet and several things you never wanted for a pet. 
                                                                PETA would have a field day here.

Well, they are kind of like hamsters.

Hens, roosters and chicks, oh my!

Birds anyone?  There are THOUSANDS of them here!

If you are looking for fish, this is the place to go.  You can get fresh water or salt water fish.

I love this guy....I wish he hadn't been so big.  I love that it looks like he has Chinese writing on him.

BEAUTIFUL.

I totally thought these frogs were plastic.  They are not - they are REAL!!!

I love these little smilie face crabs! :)

Hermit crabs anyone?

Really?  Water bugs for sale?  Who would have thought?

We had told our kids we would buy them a milk snake in Korea.....we didn't realize they were going to be almost 200,000 won!  Aggg....something we had to go back on.  I just can't see spending that much money on something we will be giving away in 2 years.  I hate going back on my word.....

After keeping the kids out all day we thought we should feed them, and what better food to eat than street food?!

We have wanted to try these French fry covered corn dogs for a long time, and tonight was the night!  Now I know his face doesn't look like he is all that excited, but let me tell you we all LOVED the French fry corn dog!  We liked it better than the other corn dog, I'm not sure what the other one is....maybe panko covered?  Anyway, the French fry dog was the best!   (The other one was good too, and it will do when the French fry one isn't around.)

Then we tried a little processed meat on a stick.  We really don't know what it was, but it was good and Boy 2 liked it more than he liked the French fry corn dog.

Hubby had some sort of fried kimchi...again, another winner! 

To get to pet alley  - take exit 6 Dongmyo subway stop....walk straight, cross a couple of alleys, continue to the big intersection.  Turn right JUST BEFORE you cross the Cheonggyecheon stream.  You will be walking with pet alley on your right and the Cheonggyecheon stream on the left.

Last week Hubby and I celebrated 18 years of marriage!  EIGHTEEN YEARS.  Can you believe that?  I don't feel old enough to have been married for 18 years!  We have PCSed 11 times, lived in 14 home, 6 states, 5 countries, but only 2 of them together, 4 deployments and 4 kids. (AND Hubby was home for EVERY BIRTH - most military familes can't say that!) we have had good times, bad times and all sorts of times in between.  We are blessed beyond measure.

                 On our anniversary Hubby surprised me with a little anniversary breakfast cake - he is the BEST!

We are celebrating our anniversary in style this year with a trip to Cambodia in a couple of weeks, but we couldn't overlook the day all together, so we headed out to Myeongdong just to get out when we happened upon this:

A CAT CAFE!  No, you don't eat cat - you go there to love on cats. Really!  I'm not kidding!  A cafe full of cats!!  There are cats everywhere - on tables, on chairs, on counters, up high, down low - everywhere you turn there are CATS!!

In Korea most people don't have pets for one reason or another, so going to a cat cafe (they also have dog cafes here!) is a great option for those cat lovers.

When venturing out to a cat cafe there are rules you must abide by:

Upon entering you must take your shoes off and replace them with rubber slippers provided by the cafe and you must disinfect your hands with sanitizer so you don't bring nasty germs in.  
     
Do not pick up the cats, they can sit in your lap~ but they have to climb into your lap  on their own

Do not wake sleeping cats

 No flash photography

 Do not disturb the kitties if they are eating
     
If the cat has a colored collar on he is young or is not feeling well

Hubby feeding a kitty

There are fuzzy cats, fluffy cats, short hair cats, long hair cats, and NAKED CATS!

You can buy 'special' food to feed the cats.....

This cat thinks he would like a little drink ~

Checking Facebook while hanging out with cats.

The young lady in the background is taking a nap while her friend is just hanging out with his favorite kitty.

The entry fee to the Cat Cafe is 8,000 won, but that includes a free drink. I wish I could tell you how to get here, but I cannot - but I did take this picture with the phone number on it!  Maybe it will help!  

We finished our afternoon stroll in Myeongdong with a little street food.....

Fried potatoes on a stick. 

To all my Facebook friends, remember a couple of weeks ago I posted this:  "Out of all the things I ate on our date last night, the pig intestines were the best."?  Well this is the blog you guys have been waiting for.  (And I'm sure you have been waiting on pins and needles, right? :)

It was hours before date night and I had planned NOTHING.  NADA.  ZILCH.  So I turned to my trusty friend Google, who never disappoints, and came up with the Gwangjang Market.  Gwangjang Market was the nation's FIRST market and I have NEVER been.  WHAT?!?!  Anyway, back to the nation's first market - it is the oldest (duhh) covered market and it is bustling!  The market sells mostly textiles, traditional Korean clothing (if you need a Hombak this is the place to go!), herbal medicines and vintage clothing and is only open during the day from  9AM-6PM. Since we arrived after 6PM we didn't get to see much of the selling in action, but from what I have read this is an area that not many tourist visit and it is very old school Korean.  But what we went for wasn't the shopping.  We went for the food.  Korean street food, oh baby!  There is nothing quite like Korean street food!

We started our journey out at the first little store we could find for a little brewsky.  And this guy below, well he just cracked us up.  I wish I would have gotten a picture from the front.  He was having a ball, invited us into his store and just danced around like a total dork without a care in the world.  He was awesome.

Our friend B always adds another level of entertainment to our date nights.  The little Korean lady had to come over and help him get this shirt on as she shook her head in laughter.  Don't worry, he bought the shirt. 

Continueing  down that first alley of Gwangjang Market we happened upon this:

As we continued on our journey I knew we were getting close.   I had read that the spider like market had the good food stalls in the center of the market and as we walked the aroma was growing stronger with each step we took.  We started seeing a few vendors of herbal medicine and then gifts that they were packaging for Chusok.  And then the mother load of food stalls, we knew we had arrived!   If this had been my first stop in Korea I would have probably turned around and ran the other direction begging to return to the states, but alas it wasn't my first stop and I was (somewhat) excited to try a few new things! 

As you can see there are TONS of fun things going on in this market!

We finally found a stall that didn't look too intimidating.  It was a bibimbap buffet style booth, but it still had some of the 'good stuff'.  We sat down and started preparing our bibimbap and started talking to his local Korean couple. This young girl is the one that helped us on our food adventure.  She said she LOVES sundae and insisted that we try it, and so we did.

Sundae is that sausage roll looking thing below. Basically it is pig intestine stuffed with noodles and blood.
We also had a little the pig feet (jokbal)...

We followed everything down with a bit of makkoli, an alcoholic beverage made from a mixture of wheat and rice, which gives this Korean goodness it's a milky, off-white color, and sweetness....

Sundae wasn't bad at all, in fact I ate Hubby's as well as my own.
True story.
And jokbal aka - pig feet (pictured) tasted like, well pig. No big thang there.

The next item to tickle our tastebuds was deep fried pig skin (I don't know the Korean word for this tasty treat), but hey if I can do sundae I can do pig skin, right?  I'll just put it this way; I would rather eat an entire plate of sundae than to eat this chewy substance again.  It wasn't terrible, but I don't ever feel the need to eat it again.

Next up on our list of luscious lickables was this:

It doesn't look that bad now does it?  I'm not exactly sure what it is, but you are supposed to eat it warm.  The local Koreans that we were hanging with told us it was, are you ready for this?  Pig cartilage, from knees and elbows.  I tried looking it up and I am finding that it is another style of pig skin.  Either way this was by far my least favorite dish.  I couldn't spit it out as that would have been rude, so it was followed down by an entire bottle of Makkali (OK, not really, but it sounded good.)  This is one Korean dish that will not be passing through my lips ever again.  I would rather eat a plate of deep fried pig skin before eating this delicacy again.   

After that things just got interesting.  This guy all dressed in white with his spray painted motorcycle and boots, horn blaring came driving through this market where it is hard to even walk around!  How he got his motorcycle through these alleys are beyond me.  You could tell the people working the stalls were not very happy with him. 

Once our bellies were full we head out and took a stroll down the Cheonggyecheon Stream where we happened upon a young singer performing. 

We ended our night with a little night shopping in Dongdaemun where Hubby picked up some really hot glasses and I got myself a super cool old lady hat.  :)

                                            There is never a dull moment when living in Seoul! :)

I'm sure there are many ways to get to Gwangjang Market, we went by cab/subway -
Jongno-3-ga Station Exit 12. 
Walk straight for a few blocks, you will come to a bigger intersection, look to your right and you will see the entrance to the Gwangjang Market.
 Enter and walk down the alley for quite a while...you will start seeing food stalls, but don't stop until you hit the mother load and start seeing places to sit and eat.  You will know when you have arrived. 
Good luck and happy eating!! :)