I woke up early the next day to find a wonderful breakfast of cold seaweed soup with cucumber and apple, along with rice with red pepper paste, cucumber kimchee, corn, and that potato stuff I told you about. Yum!! Sounds like a big breakfast, I know, but I didn't eat nearly all of it. That's the plan in Korea. You aren't suppose to eat all the food that has been prepared for you. Well, ok; except rice. You should eat all of the rice, even though I don't always do this.
By 7am, Emo was about to leave for work, and I got online just to see if my family might be there too. Low and behold, there's my daddy; half-way across the world, on the computer at the same time I was. We chatted for a bit before he had to get ready for Bible Study. You see, my Friday morning was his Thursday night, which is the night my parents host a weekly Bible Study at their house. When mom got home, she skipped dinner with the crew to sneak into Marc's old room and talk to me. Yah!! I got to talk to her for about 40 minutes or so before she felt obligated to rejoin everyone downstairs, which is totally understandable, since I stole away the host of the whole meeting.
I watched internet TV for a bit, and then laid down for a nap. After getting up from my nap, Hansae and I got on the subway. She was going to get her hair cut and permed in Seomyeon, and I was going to meet Eunyoung in Daekeonsin-dong at 2:30pm. After meeting Eunyoung, she took me to her house for a rest, some conversation, and fruit. Eunyoung is a housewife who is married to a man who practices oriental medicine, has two children (Sarah & Ben) under ten, has a maid to clean and dust the house and looks after the children while she visits friends, and has the largest, most beautiful, fancy, high-class apartment I have seen in Korea. Sarah and Ben both study English and Chinese. Sarah is confident in her English ability and was not shy at all to speak with me and could understand much of what I said to her or with her mom. Ben, however, was very shy. He is the youngest one, and seemed to love me. He would always run into the room where I am, pretend to not be looking at me, and hide behind his mother. But then when I spoke to him, he ran away. I could tell that he wanted to be around the foreigner, but was to afraid to speak to me.
Hyeji showed up a bit later after a long morning at her university study group meeting. We sat on the floor (even though there was a sofa..lol!) and chatted for a long time, most of which was in a language I couldn't understand. We were going to go on to walk around in a nearby park, but since the discussion went on for so long, we didn't have enough time. Instead, Hyeji, Eunyoung, and I went to eat BiBimBahp with her children before heading off to Toastmasters at Busan National University.
We didn't get home until late, but when we did, we found Pizza Emo, Kristy (Pizza Emo's daughter), Emo, and Hansae waiting for us. Hansae and Pizza Emo were shucking corn on the floor while Emo was washing dishes and Kristy was playing on the computer. Even though it was quite late, and I had a big dinner, Emo of course felt the need to feed us grapes, cucumber, and boiled corn. She is such a wonderful women.
Lots of talking and laughing later, we all settled down on Emo's living room floor. Hyeji, me, Pizza Emo, Kristy, Emo, and Hansae...all in a row sleeping on the nice cool floor. It was so nice and cool with the fan blowing directly on me while I was sleeping on the cool floor, that I had to pry myself from sleep in order to eat breakfast and get ready for Saturday Toastmasters. Teokboggi (soft, chewy rice cakes in the shape of tiny hot dogs boiled in anchovie broth and then mixed with syrup and red pepper paste) with rice, seaweed, and processed fish were on the breakfast menu. So after enjoying some Korean deliciousness, I quickly got ready and headed our the door with Hyeji. Not only did we manage to arrive 15 minutes late, but I had to leave 15 minutes early in order to catch the subway to meet Eunhye in Busan Station at 12:10pm. That was the time at which I said my goodbyes to Hyeji because she had more school and tutoring for the rest of day and would be unable to see me.
Before leaving this morning, I told Kristy and Hansae that I would love for them to meet Eunhye and I, where we would eat lunch and tour Busan together. Now, let me give you a brief summary of Korean culture in this scenario. In America, I don't care if my friends, who I've invited to eat dinner with me, or whatever, invite other friends, even if they tell me last minute. This is not how it works in Korea. Generally, if you are invited somewhere, you can not freely invite whoever you please. When people invite you to dinner, or to participate in an activity that cost money, they may or may not have planned to pay for you. If you just show up with other friends, this is rude to your host, because they might now feel obligated to pay for your guest as well. But, Eunhye is younger, and knows American culture, so I asked her semi in advance and she was ok with it. Together, Eunhye, Kristy, Hansae, and I at bolibahp (barley rice) with gungnamul (bean sprouts), beans, wet-seaweed, and samjung (soy bean paste mixed with red pepper paste and some peppers), mul guk sue (sesame noodles in broth with gim-seaweed and sesame seeds), and kimbahp (rice and gim-seaweed) with kimchee. All that along with the sides that came with it. With full bellies, we ran to the double-decker, open-top, Busan City Tour Bus across the street.
How cool!! I had never rode in a double-decker bus before, must less on the top floor of one with no roof. I kinda felt like I was gonna die a bit when we would go over bridges and around cliff corners. But that wasn't the case. The breeze felt amazing!! We stopped at a place whose name escapes me. We walked up a hill along a rode that would take us to a light house, library, cliff, beautiful scenery, and nice weather. The ocean view was break-taking. After about 2 hours, we baught a bus ticket and stood in line to catch a cute nostalgic train-looking bus that would take us back to the tour bus stop. This bus was a double-decker with both roofs, and was super air-conditioned and fancy as all get-out! Leather seats, an oval meeting or poker table in between the guest on the first level, and well, not views due to the fanciness. One stop at a fish market, and we were back where we started about 6:30pm. Hansae called her mom because we were having dinner with Emo and Pizza Emo that night, which luckily Eunhye got invited too. So we all headed back to Haundae where we walked to this nice Itailian beachside restaurant. I ordered grilled mushroom salad with tomato sauce spaghetti. That was sorta weird in the eyes of Koreans, because, while they thought the salad wouldn't fill me up, adding the spaghetti was too much. We also had sides of bread and boiled potato. One bread in particular, that I seemed to enjoy eating the most, was a black bread that got its color from the ink of an octopus. Eww... I was so hungry I ate it all!!
Emo has done so much for me. She has bought me dinner on more than one or two occasions, cooked me breakfast every morning, washed my clothes, and extended her hospitality far beyond my expectations. So I asked Hansae to go with me to buy her a thank you gift. Kristy decided to join, and after much contemplation a decision was finally reached. I bought her a fancy hot mat, kitchen floor mat, and coffee cup. The hot mat because Hansae tells me that her mom always uses a book or something to set her pots on. A kitchen floor mat because I noticed she was just standing on a bathroom towel that she had folded. And a cute little pink coffee cup with clouds and a rainbow on it because both Kristy and Hansae says that Emo likes to collect them. One the way home Kristy gives me a gift that she bought me. It's so cute!! A contact case, but not just any contact case. Both lens caps are green frog heads.... That was super sweet of this 8th grade girl!!
I said my goodbyes to Kristy, and asked her to do the same to her mom, walked home with Hansae, composted a sweet little nothing card to go along with my gift, and then gave it to Emo. I could tell that she was so touched, which made me happy. Her excellent daughter translated my letter to her, and I could see her almost cry several times. She gave me a hug, and then looked at her gifts. It is customary when entering a Koreans home to bring them a gift. However, I always feel like I should give a gift at the end of my stay as gratitude for the hospitality and generosity that had been bestowed upon me. She told me that she was sad that she didn't have any gift to give me in return, and I told her that she gave me many gifts by allowing me to stay in her home. But of course, after showering and packing, she came into the room where I was and gave me a hand stitched Korean traditional pin cushion and letter opener.
Ok, so Hansae, Emo, and I need to get on the road super early tomorrow, so I must go get some sleep. Love you all. Thanks for everyone who takes time out of their day to think about me, read my blog, and wonder how I'm doing. Just know, that while I can't email everyone individually everyday, you are in my thoughts. Good night.
No comments:
Post a Comment