A meeting with the Moons

Ok, raise your hand if you knew you could 'chat' in real time with people on Facebook. Well, I didn't. But two people invited me to chat, at the same time. I never knew I was so good at multitasking! Unfortunately we spent 4 hours at it. Then I had to finish making the pants I planned to wear later. Then I got back on the computer to check e-mail. Chris came home and it was time to leave.
The three of us traipsed to the subway for the longest ride yet. We changed trains twice. Once, while transfering, we passed a stand selling Korean pretzels. But we didn't have time to stop. By the time we got to where we were going, it had taken an hour and a half. Mr. and Mrs. Moon met us at the station. They took us to a Korean restaurant located on the 2nd floor of a building. After riding the subway for so long, I had to use the restroom. She showed me the way. It involved putting our shoes back on and walking around the corner in the outside hallway. Now when we returned, our food was on the table. I so wish I had a picture. It was incredible. We had two 4-person tables shoved together. They were completely filled with small dishes. Each person got a dish of rice. All of the other dishes were community foods. There were three kinds of kimchi, broiled fish, crab, bean paste, a bowl of leafy greens including seaweed, pork with something spicy, dried seaweed, soup, bean curd, glassy noodles, mushrooms, and a few things I couldn't identify. To drink we had some kind of tea which I thought tasted like popcorn. They showed us how to remove most of the rice from the bowl, then pour tea on the burnt stuff on the bottom. Let that sit, then eat it. The leaves were for wrapping around rice or pork so you could hold it in your fingers and dip it. Same with the dried seaweed. Later I saw how the meal had been delivered: The waitress brings a tabletop covered in dishes on a rolling cart to your table and slides it over what you thought was the top of your table. Smart. We ate our fill. Then they took us back to their apartment, where we saw potted camelias and azaleas in bloom. She served us African tea, beer and coffee. We also had kiwi, apples and tangerines. And some chocolate. We talked about the succession of U.S. presidents, which they were remarkably well-informed about. And they are Korean. We talked about a lot of other things too. By 10 they had us back at the subway station. Which was good since we had 1.5 hours of travel time ahead and the subway stops running at midnight. I tried to buy Korean pretzels at the same subway station where I'd seen them, but the stand was closed.
We walked home in the cold, glad that at least there was little wind.