THE RAMYEON HOUSE
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| I didn't know where we were heading when a friend first took me to this place. It is so hidden away that you could miss it going by! Amazingly enough, this place is always packed when we come in to eat, with the majority of the customers being couples or students from the nearby schools |
The end of the school year is upon us! Today, we only have classes for half the day. The other half is dedicated to a singing competition between the different classes, which ends at 4:00 p.m. Hearing about my impending return to the States, many of my students have asked to spend time with me outside of school. My former YDAC students have been particularly persistent, and so I was all too happy to arrange a date with some of my girls after their singing competitions.
We walked together to the Ramyeon House, a small restaurant tucked away from the main road whose owners are an elderly couple who, apparently, haven't updated the interior or their recipe for over 30 years! I love the bare-faced simplicity and the humble aura of the place. I especially love going through this thin, half-sized bamboo curtain, and hearing it clink behind me into a thousand broken unbroken pieces. Once inside, everything you see is what's all there is!
The only thing even more tucked away than the restaurant's location is the restaurant's secret recipe to their secret recipe bibim ramyeon (or biram for short, as Ji Eun slyly told me).
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Ji Eun being served her biram by both owners - in front and behind her.
I will miss this elderly couple a lot! I find their teamwork endearing |
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The price of each? W2-3,000 (or the equivalent of $2-3.00).
Not pictured: the equally delicious and slightly-spicy egg-drop-like soup that comes with each bowl of ramyeon |
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| My very smart and fun-loving students: Jeong Min, Ga Rim, and Ji Eun. I really enjoyed sitting down with them and asking them more about what they want to accomplish in the future. Two of them are thinking of becoming educators - win! |
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| Love these girls! Each of these girls have taken some special class with me outside of our normal class schedule, whether that be YDAC, WYLD camp, or English Book Club! |
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| After I paid for the biram, they insisted on paying for dessert and took me to Wicked Snow, a place I kept seeing but had never been to before. I will miss these bus rides around Busan - clean environment, predictable schedule, scenic island-life views! |
THE WICKED SNOW
Iced Dessert & Brunch Cafe
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Jeong Min leading the way across the street.
This dessert cafe is just across from Busan Bank, Paris Baguette, and Top Mart! |
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| They treated us to two bowls of delicious patbingsu! |
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| The air-conditioned cafe was a perfect place of respite from the humidity and heat outside |
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| I got the Korean poses down, as you can see |
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| After a while, it got to be a bit too cold, so we headed out and went on our separate ways |
I am amazed how many of my students tell me, "Teacher, I don't speak English" (with some even punctuating this by running away) when they
can speak English! These three, for example, talked so much, I have a hard time recalling how they managed to eat either the biram or the patbingsu.
Jeong Min headed on home, and Ga Rim headed to her academy. Ji Eun and I returned to Yeongdo Girls High School riding the local green bus that I had never ridden before. It was a perfect way to seal the end of my time in Yeongdo.
But, of course, I didn't want to think about it too much, so I got on and, a few minutes later, I got off.
