Korean BBQ in Argentina

(A new email I received after my last post)
Brandon, PLEASE DO NOT post my emails onto your blogspot!!!
You're embarassing me.
Love,
Mom

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Today, we went to church. Took a metro and walked for a bit to a tiny Korean SDA church in Buenos Aires, where we got the typical treatment we're getting used to at churches. Lots of questioning in a mixture of Korean and Spanish, neither of which we are good at. The pastor came up to us and even reprimanded us for not knowing Korean well. What a hater. Just kidding, the church was pretty nice. Not as outgoing as Sao Paulo, but that's not surprising since the Sao Paulo church was probably the most welcoming church I've ever been to. No lie.

We sat through the service, which was about the Daniel prophecies. I don't even understand most of the prophecy sermons in English, and following them in Korean was nearly impossible. After eating potluck which was basically bap and banchan, we realized how much we missed Korean food. Luckily, the members of the church wrote down the cross streets where K-Town is located. After church, we headed back to the hostel, took a three hour nap, then headed towards K-Town to get us some Korean food. The place we found was very Korean looking. Plain on the outside, with a colorful Korean banner thing. Inside, we were seated at a table with a grill in it. No gas line, it was a coal grill. We sat down, never got a menu, and the waiters started bringing banchan. They brought out about 15 plates of banchan. Our table was covered in plates, and we hadn't even gotten any real food yet. After a couple minutes, they brought out the meat and salad... along with more banchan. We had so many different plates, we had to start piling them up. Bibimgooksoo (spelling?), mandu, maneul, chapchae, kohgoomah teegeem, hobak jook... the dishes were endless. We kept eating the meat and getting more, not sure what the price was since we never got a menu. We were a bit anxious, but we had spent close to nothing today so we were pretty sure it would stay within the budget. After eating 'til Yoontae was complaining about stomach pains, we paid ONLY 90 pesos for everything! A liter and a half of coke, 20 side dishes, a big pot of chigae, and two huge plates of meat for two people... only$25 dollars! Walking back to the metro, we were getting walking cramps after just a block, but it was worth it. Argentina has amazing cheap food, good meat, amazing bakeries... it is a glutton's paradise.

I know I enjoy food a lot and we eat a lot of meat while traveling, but (to answer you, Milee...) we don't get constipated. At least... I don't. Yoontae had some problems earlier in Brazil, but now we are pooping great. Thanks for asking.

Today, I just want to share a bit about how we travel. Like I said in the really early posts, Yoontae and I just have a backpack each and a small sleeping bag that we've only had to use once so far. We have clothes for 4 days and we usually hand-wash our clothes with shampoo (the only soap we have), but in Argentina we have the luxury of having our clothes machine washed for only 10 pesos a load (this comes with a bleaching service for whites). We have no body soap, face soap, and I don't have a real towel. I use a hengjoo.

Basically, our trip is all spontaneous, we don't plan ahead much other than our flights. Even our flights aren't planned too far ahead, and we haven't purchased all of them yet (we should get on that soon). When we get to a new area, we usually use our wonderful Footprint travel book (a gift from Junie noonah, THANK YOU SO MUCH) to get ideas of what to do, where to stay, and what to eat. Once we get to a location, we ask the hostel, pick up free maps, and ask locals and other travelers about what to do. We also go towards nice looking places, and those usually end up being entertaining, and we hang out with other travelers who usually have good ideas of what to do for fun. Occasionally, other travelers are impolite and not very courteous, but most of the people we've met have been pretty nice to travel around with. Traveling is really crazy, and no matter where you go there's something to learn.

Everyone should travel!