Ladies who Lunch

My Korean Mother wanted to take me sight-seeing on Saturday. Since she always does the best things in town, I gratefully accepted the invite. We met at the Anyang Sports Complex and two of the teachers who I work with in the first grade office and Mrs. Lim and myself went to this place for lunch.

To say it was off the beaten track was putting it lightly, but it was well worth the trip. Apparently there's a bus that goes here, so I'm sure we'll take a little gander to fully appreciate it without being couth (because we are good at uncouth-ness). The front is sort of junky; bejeweled with antiques and random Korean artifacts, but it was pretty neat to look at. The places in the city just don't have this kind of character, so it was refreshing to see a little life infused in a restaurant.

As you enter the place, this real wood-burning Korean stove (or just wood-burning stove?) keeps the place warm. Later, we stopped here for coffee. How cute is this?

The restaurant was built and over the years was expanded to include outdoor spaces like this one to join one room to the others. It reminded me of an old-fashioned wagon (like from the Grapes of Wrath)...it was pretty neat. Those are kimchi pots on the right. Can you see now, Laura, how tough it would be to send one to you (their nearly waist-high)?

Here is the little room where we dined. On the floor. Thank God I'm taking yoga here...sitting for longer than an hour used to be painful, but I'm starting to get used to it (nothing beats a good old padded chair. Argh). Anyway, the food was really good: barley instead of rice and a ton of vegetables. And that red pepper tofu soup I like so much. It was great.

Here we are after our coffee, warming up by the fire.