Tag Archives: soup or salad

08 Dec

as happy as a clam

Who taught: Sunjoo

Happy as a clam (source: http://www.civin.org/)

Do you remember the post I wrote about super salad? Let me take a moment to remind you of how important for you to be prepared for a few questions you should answer whenever you order food. A lot of those questions are very short and sometimes hard to understand if you do not know the context. One of them, of course, is “Soup or Salad.” We get this question almost always when my friends and I go to a restaurant to have dinner.

Whenever there is a time to choose soup or salad, my friend, Pat, always goes for a clam chowder soup. For those of you who may not know what chowder is. Chowder itself is a type of soup containing pieces of fish. For clam chowder, the fish is clam. In Pittsburgh, most of restaurants have only one kind of clam chowder soup. But, if you go to some other cities such as New York or Boston, they have two different types of clam chowder soups. One is Manhattan clam chowder and the other is New England clam chowder. I am not sure which clam chowder I get in Pittsburgh. I think it is Manhattan. Am I right?

Speaking of clam, I learned another expression from my friend, Sunjoo. The other day, she posted her status on Facebook, saying “breakfast in bed. happy as a clam.” As soon as I see this one, I instantly knew what it means even though I have never heard of this one before. I love this expression. Even hearing the expression makes me happy because I think of a clam having a big smile on its face. I now try to remember some other expressions that can be used to describe a big smile on someone’s face. There is one with ears in it. Can you help me out, my friends? By the way, I hope you are as happy as a clam today!

25 Apr

Super Salad

Whose story: My brother, Eunwoo

Terry and his bro, Eunwoo

Hello! My friends out there! Good to talk to you again! My apologies for the absence of new posts for a week! As I told you, my brother and sister-in-law came to the U.S. from South Korea. We took a trip to Tampa, Florida, having a wonderful time together. It was only one week being together and they went back to Korea. Came back to the house from the airport, Jessy and I felt so lonely and the house looked so empty. The week really flew by and now they are not here and we do not know when we are going to see them again. Man, I miss them already. This is one of the things I do not like about living abroad, being apart from family.

During the trip, we of course had been to many restaurants. For the first day, we went to an Olive Garden in Tampa for lunch. After we ordered drinks, my brother talked to us, “They are going to ask us about super salad later.” We then asked him, “What is super salad? We’ve never heard of it? Is it a special salad you had before?” He told us the story he experienced on his biz trip. He went to a restaurant in New Hampshire and ordered one main menu. Then, the server said, “Soup or Salad?” It was so fast that my brother understood as “Super Salad.” He thought it is just a kind of a salad and answered, “OK!” The server was like, “What do you want? Soup or Salad?” My brother was, “OK, I want the super salad.”  Then, the server was, “No, I mean it comes with soup OR salad. Which one do you want?” Finally, my brother got it and ordered salad. We all laughed about it and, hearing the story, Jessy and I realized that it really sounds like SUPER SALAD if we speak it fast. As soon as we finished the story, the server in the Olive Garden came to us to take our orders. As soon as my brother ordered a food, the server said, “Soup or Salad?” We all laughed again and talked about the story to the server. I was like, “Wow, that is really like super salad.” We also went to a Subway. I ordered sweet onion chicken teriyaki sub. My brother watched me ordering and, as soon as we got back to the table, he told his wife, “OK, there is a lesson today. We should not go to Subway in the U.S. They ask too much and it is not simple at all.” Well, I guess I am not the only one having a hard time to order a sub in the U.S. (Not any more though 🙂 ) I guess ordering a sub in Subway could be the real English test for non-native English speakers. Travel guide book authors should add the step-by-step guide of ordering subs in the U.S. in their survival English travel books. What do you think?

Today’s injuries in English taught by Andrew : Athlete’s foot

Definition : A fungal infection of the skin of the foot, usually between the toes.

Korean equivalent : 무좀 (Moo-Zom) Well, I think this one should be SOLDIER’S FOOT in Korea because almost all of the Korean soldiers experienced this. When I was in the Army, I had this too. Such a horrible infection to bear with! So itchy 🙂