Wiggle wiggle wiggle!!!!!!

WE DID IT! We ate live octopus tonight with our friends and coworkers! As you can tell from the videos, we were very excited.

Our director took many of us out to dinner tonight at a Korean seafood restaurant. It was a lot of fun to go out with all the Korean teachers, our front desk workers and our vice director too. The restaurant was not too far from work. While not everyone from work was able to make it to dinner, there were 15 of us gathered around the table so it was quite the party. We were all laughing and telling stories and stuffing ourselves with delicious seafood.


We started off with whole baked mackerel. They were tasty but there were a lot of little bones. Our sides consisted of kimchi, seaweed soup, sizzling corn and carrots, edamame, garlic and tiny little shells that had oyster like things that you sucked out of the shells. After the mackerel came the sashimi platters, piled high with glass noodles and delicious fish. Then came baked eel smothered in brown sauce and sesame seeds. Then came the octopus!!!!!!!



We could NOT get over how much the little legs wiggles so much. We and our fellow American friends kept poking the dishes with our chopsticks to watch the mass of "food" wiggle and writhe on the plate. Our director and Korean coworkers were very amused with us as we squealed and screamed our way through eating them. It was really hard to pick up a leg with our metal chopsticks, because the suckers would attach to the plate and you couldn't get them to let go! The taste was actually pretty good - not as chewy as cooked octopus. We dipped the legs in a sweet and spicy red sauce and sesame oil and them chewed and chewed and chewed until they wiggled no more...if you didn't chew it enough you could feel it wiggle in your stomach! It was weird, fun and definitely a memorable experience.



After the octopus platters the food kept on coming. We feasted on spicy crab soup (which was my favorite part, it was soooo yummy), then came baked fish heads which were so tender and delicious. Our vice director told me that the fish heads have the most tender meat. We tried everything put in front of us, it was a really fun experience, especially with our Korean coworkers explaining what everything was. After the fish heads came the king crab. Nick and I were VERY happy to indulge in that. Our director was very generous with this 4 hour feast - apparently it is customary here for the boss to take all the employees out for a big dinner and some fun every once in a while. Once he saw how much Nick and I enjoy seafood he asked if we would like to go with him to the giant fish market in Seoul. He lives near there and said he would be happy to take us for another seafood feast. We are actually really happy with this invitation because we have not gone to the fish markets yet and we really want to check it out.

Nick and I will most likely be eating this again sometime, we enjoyed it not only for the wow factor but because it really was tasty!